Alter Ego #80 by TwoMorrows Publishing

Roy Thomas’ Barbarian Comics Fanzine

No.80 August 2008

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In the USA

SWORD-&SORCERY

IN THE COMICS

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EXTRA! CLASSIC LOU CAMERON

Vol. 3, No. 80 / August 2008 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 Mike Friedrich

Circulation Director Bob Brodsky, Cookiesoup Productions

Cover Artist & Colorist Rafael Kayanan

With Special Thanks to:

William B. Jones, Jr. Jack Adams Rafael Kayanan Rob Allen Gene Kehoe Sergio Aragonés Robert Kennedy Heidi Amash Sam Kujava Ger Apeldoorn Henry Kujawa Bob Bailey Alan Kupperberg Jean Bails Richard Kyle Matt D. Baker Arthur Lortie Manuel Barrero James Ludwig Nick Barrucci George Wilson Beahm Dan Makara Leonard Maltin Alberto Becattini Bruce Mason Jack Bender Ulises Mavridis John Benson Pat Mason Alex Bialy Christopher B. Boyko Doug McCratic Brian K. Morris Adam Brooks Jake Oster Chris Brown John G. Pierce Len Brown Bud Plant Frank Brunner Gene Reed Ken Bruzenak John Romita Mike Burkey Fred Robinson Lou Cameron Paul Samms Nick Caputo Ben Samuels Ray Cuthbert Steve Sansweet Al Dellinges Scott Sheaffer Anthony DeMaria Dave Sim Michaël Dewally Philip Simon Betty Dobson Atula Siriwardane Peter Duxbury Ted Skimmer Mark Evanier Anthony Snyder Michael Feldman Marc Swayze Shane Foley Dann Thomas Todd Franklin Mike Tiefenbacher Bruce J. Friedman Anthony Tollin Dave Friedman Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. Carl Gafford Dr. Michael J. Vassallo David George Joe Vucenic Janet Gilbert Hames Ware Don Glut Bill Warren Bob Greenberger John Wells Lawrence P. Guidry Jennifer Hamerlinck Barry Windsor-Smith Alex Wright John Haufe Spiros Xenos Bob Hughes

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Jim Mooney

Contents Writer/Editorial: The Savage Sword of Robert E. Howard. . . 2 Sword-And-Sorcery In The Comics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Overview of Robert E. Howard’s legacy in four colors, and in black-&-white, by John Wells.

“What Am I Doing Here?”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Part II of Jim Amash’s interview with the colorful, controversial, and talented Lou Cameron.

Secret History of All-American: Lightning Striking Again! . 55 Remember when Superman was revived and revamped in 1956? Bob Rozakis does!

Found! “New” Photos From The 1965 New York Comicon! . . 61 Bill Schelly annotates Jerry Bails’ treasure trove of pics from that granddad of conventions.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! The DC Alphabet . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Michael T. Gilbert & Arthur Lortie look at some alphabetized ads from the 1940s.

Jim Mooney: “The 1960s ‘Supergirl’ Artist” . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 re: [comments, correspondence, & corrections] . . . . . . . . . 74 FCA (Fawcett Collectors Of America) #137 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 P.C. Hamerlinck presents Marc Swayze—and John G. Pierce on “The Cult of the Curse.” On Our Cover: One of A/E editor Roy Thomas’ happiest collaborations during the 1990s was with artist Rafael Kayanan on Marvel’s short-lived Conan the Adventurer… so we’re naturally over the moon (iron shadows and all) that Raf let us use this powerful barbarian painting as our cover—even though it’s not specifically REH’s swashbuckling Cimmerian. Alas, since we’ll be covering that ’90s title in a near-future edition of our “Sword-and-Sorcery in the Comics” series, there’s nothing else by Raf in this issue—but that just gives you something to look forward to, right? [©2008 Rafael Kayanan.] Above: If this half-inked drawing looks familiar, it’s because it was John Buscema’s unfinished preliminary sketch of the cover for Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian #44 (Nov. 1974), which gueststarred Red Sonja, who was based on a heroine in a non-Conan short story by REH. Maybe Big John didn’t finish Big Red (including her “iron bikini”) or the heroes’ weapons because he decided to depict them atop a huge skull, as per the published cover. End result: 34 years later, we get a great “new” illustration, courtesy of original art dealer Anthony Snyder, whose ad appears on p. 82. [Conan TM & ©2008 Conan Properties International, LLC; Red Sonja TM & ©2008 Red Sonja, LLC.] Alter EgoTM is published 8 times a year 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

The Savage Sword Of Robert E. Howard Y

ou’d have thought I’d have done this a long time before now, wouldn’t you? Devote an issue of Alter Ego to sword-and-sorcery in comics, I

mean. Somehow, though, despite touching on the subject in the interviews Jim Amash did with me for issues #50 & 70, in covering the career of the late great John Buscema in #15 & 16, and in a few other places from time to time—well, I just kept putting it off. It’s a big subject, after all, because, much as I’d like to think otherwise, comic book s&s didn’t start with Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian #1 in 1970—or even with the couple of forerunners at DC (“Nightmaster”) and Marvel (“Starr the Slayer”) in the previous twelvemonth. In fact, since “sword-and-sorcery” is itself an outgrowth in part of Arthurian legend, and of the myths of ancient Greece and even Mesopotamia, the genre itself—or at least something very much akin to it—has been around since the dawn of literature, just waiting for Gutenberg to invent the printing press and for Harry Wildenberg and/or M.C. Gaines to think up a way those presses could produce magazine-size pages sporting four-color images. Still, Gilgamesh and Hercules and Gawain aren’t quite what we think of as true sword-and-sorcery. That had to wait for a young Texan named

Robert E. Howard to come along in the late 1920s and early 1930s and think up first Solomon Kane—then Bran Mak Morn and Kull—and, most importantly, a bronze-hued barbarian called Conan—so he could write the tales of sword-slashing adventure that he loved… and have a Khitaiman’s chance of selling them to a pulp mag titled Weird Tales, which specialized in things that went bump in the night (and even during the day). And thank Crom he did! “Sword-and-Sorcery in the Comics” proved way too big a subject to cover in one issue—the more so since we also had our regular features, and the second half of Jim Amash’s in-depth interview with 1950s comic artist Lou Cameron, to accommodate. In the end, because we wanted to illustrate nearly every one of the examples of the game we were discussing, we found ourselves with only room for the s&s overview I talked John Wells into writing especially for this magazine. Not to worry, though—only three issues from now, in A/E #83, Part Two will be slashing its way toward you. After that, we’ll keep the s&s segments coming, every few issues, till we’ve covered the genre the way we always intended to! We figured it’s high time. Bestest,

COMING IN OCTOBER

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Sword-And-Sorcery In The Comics Part I Of A Study Of Robert E. Howard’s Legacy In Four Colors—And In Black-&-White Article by John Wells

“A

nd at the last, O Prince, there came to pass that which all the plots of Ascalante the Rebel had failed to bring about, and for which the grim shade of Xaltotun had been conjured in vain from the moldering dust of his Acherontic tomb, and which even the hell-spawned sorceries of Yah Chieng, the Yellow Wizard of nighted and demon-ridden Khitai, had failed to accomplish; and Conan of Aquilonia gave over the crown and the throne of the mightiest kingdom in all the West, and ventured forth into the Unknown, wherein he vanished forever from the knowledge of man.” —The Nemedian Chronicles (as interpreted by Roy Thomas, in the Marvel b&w comic Conan the Savage)

The King Is Dead! Long Live The Barbarian! 1936: Robert E. Howard was dead, and with him had perished a host of literary creations from the rough-and-tumble pulp magazines, among them Puritan adventurer Solomon Kane, Atlantean-turnedking Kull, the Pict ruler Bran Mak Morn, and, greatest of all, a barbarian from a fictional land called Cimmeria. His name was Conan. Conan had been the pinnacle in Howard’s prolific career, building on rejected stories—nine of his eleven Kull tales were turned down for publication in Weird Tales pulp magazine during the writer’s brief lifetime—and a mutual admiration society with fellow writer H.P. Lovecraft and his own combination of weird horror and swashbuckling adventure. What Howard conceived was an entire world, a Hyborian Age where magic and strange lands and barbaric action all intertwined. Overlaying this concept on an unsold Kull adventure, the younger writer struck gold. “The Phoenix on the Sword” (Weird Tales, Dec. 1932) was the first of seventeen Conan stories to appear over the next four years. The precise nature of what Robert E. Howard had created wasn’t actually christened for a few more decades. In 1961, a print conversation between Michael Moorcock (who would soon create his own sword-and-sorcery series hero Elric of Melniboné) and Fritz Lieber (whose Howard-tinged Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser dated to 1939) culminated in the latter’s suggestion of the phrase “sword and sorcery.” It was an apt description and one that quickly took hold.

REH: A Man And His Myths Robert E. Howard (1906-1936), surrounded by four (or, some would say, five) of his most famous creations. (Clockwise from top left:) Solomon Kane… Bran Mak Morn… Conan the Cimmerian… Red Sonja… and King Kull. Sonja, of course, is a comic book (originally Marvel) permutation of a heroine named Red Sonya who appeared in a single quasi-historical pulp-mag adventure written by REH. The illustrator, Atula Siriwardane, is a commercial artist in Sri Lanka, who has done comics work forthcoming from two independent publishers. [Solomon Kane TM & ©2008 Solomon Kane, Inc.; Bran Mak Morn TM & ©2008 Robert E. Howard Properties, Inc.; Kull TM & ©2008 Kull Productions, Inc; Conan TM & ©2008 Conan Properties International, LLC.; Red Sonja TM & © Red Sonja, LLC.]

Robert E. Howard’s Legacy In Four Colors—And In Black-&-White

soon need new worlds to conquer. Anyone surprised to learn that he traveled to the planet Zutar in issue #20?

Valiant Is As Valiant Does Sorcery was abundant in the early days of Harold R. Foster’s Sunday strip Prince Valiant. In this panel from April 23, 1939, Val faces Time itself (himself?). [©2008 King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

The Prince Valiant influence assured regular appearances by Merlin and/or King Arthur and company in all sorts of comics throughout the 1940s. They showed up with everyone from the Young Allies (Young Allies #11) to Kid Eternity (Hit Comics #32) to Batman (Batman #36). The most notable, though, was a time-lost fellow called The Shining Knight, whose early adventures took place exclusively in the 1940s (starting in Adventure Comics #66, Sept. 1941). Eventually, however, Sir Justin was able to make return visits to the days of King Arthur, complete with occasional stories which were pure sword on sword with just a dollop of sorcery—tales like 1950’s “The Ten-Century Lie” (Adventure #150) and “Duel of the Flying Knights” (Adventure #153), both illustrated by a guy named Frank Frazetta who would figure significantly into the future of sword-andsorcery.

Fortune Favors The Valiant In the late 1930s and 1940s, though, the general public might well have called it “that Prince Valiant stuff.” Conceived by writer-artist Hal Foster, Prince Valiant (which debuted the year after Howard’s death) was one of the loveliest things on the newspaper page, and likely as not the first place many a young reader discovered the legends of King Arthur and Merlin. There was plenty of swordplay therein as young Val grew up to take his place among the Knights of the Round Table. And there was sorcery, as well, starting with the early Sunday page wherein the witch Horrit prophesied that the teenager’s adventurous life would be tempered with great sorrow and discontentment. Most of Prince Valiant would be played straight with realistic situations (albeit with major and intentional anachronisms), but magic was far from unknown, most conspicuously in the presence of Merlin himself. The sorceress Morgan Le Fey showed up for the first time in March of 1938, while the enchanted Singing Sword fell into Val’s possession later that year. Soon after, Horrit recoiled at the sight of the blade, revealing it as a sister to King Arthur’s Excalibur. Its magnificent power was wonderful if used by the pure of heart for a noble cause, she declared, but a ghastly curse if used for ill. Prince Valiant, of course, had nothing to worry about. Meanwhile, the infant comic book field was getting its footing with multiple genres often represented in the pages of each title. And while there were no Conan types among them, there were a few strips that could fairly be called sword-and-sorcery. Such was the case with a feature called “The Golden Knight,” credited to Grieg Chapian and appearing from Fox’s Fantastic Comics #1 (Dec., 1939) to 20 (July, 1941), with a final installment in The Eagle #2 (Sept., 1941). The Golden Knight, otherwise known as Sir Richard of Warwick, was a Crusader in the Holy Land whose battles with the Saracens gave way to menaces like witches and sorcerers. Luckily, Sir Richard received an enchanted cloak and a magic ring from a mage named Kara, and that more than evened the odds. Led to routs, really, as in #6, where the magic ring enabled the Knight to brush aside monsters conjured by Bdula Khan, incapacitate his warriors, and finally humiliate the wizard himself by transforming him into a statue of a hyena! Clearly, Sir Richard would

It Was A Dark And Golden Knight Richard (no “Sir” in this tale), the titular Golden Knight, battles a reptilian sea monster from a 1940 edition of Fox Publications’ Fantastic Comics. Sorry, we don’t know the exact issue number, since Ye Editor’s copy is coverless. Art by Grieg Chapian. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

Sword-And-Sorcery In The Comics

since infancy. Sandra and Geoffry had only one more issue to search for answers before the comic was cancelled. Though primarily a publisher of paperbacks and comics, Avon had its roots in the pulps and explored a hybrid in 1950 with a short-lived fantasy/sf pulp called Out of This World Adventures. The twist was that a 32-page color comic was inserted in the middle of the prose magazine—a mix of futuristic space opera, present-day fantasy, and ancient sorcery. The former two categories were ably brought to life by a young Joe Kubert, a circumstance that made John Giunta’s journeyman art on the third pale in comparison.

A Knight In Shining Armor Though Creig Flessel and others drew him first in the 1940s, DC’s “Shining Knight” is most remembered for a handful of latter-day exploits drawn by a young Frank Frazetta, before his glory days as a Conan cover painter. This tale first appeared in Adventure Comics #155 (Aug. 1950). Scripter unknown. [©2008 DC Comics.]

Avon Calling—With Slave Girl And “Crom The Barbarian” Avon’s Slave Girl Comics #1 (Feb. 1949) was a basically sorcery-free comic (penciled by Howard Larsen) but for one key element—a signet ring that could bridge time, at least in a virtual-reality sense. The ring was owned in the story’s opening sequence, set in 1948, by flame-haired socialite Sandra Worth; but archaeologist Geoffry Garth instantly recognized its power and knew the ancient spells to prove it. So it was back to the past for the duration of the comic, where Garth, an emissary of the kingdom of Ormuz, discovered their long-lost Princess Malu (Sandra) as a slave girl in the hostile realm of Tarko. Over five stories, the couple escaped and rode towards Ormuz, freeing other slave girls from a tyrant and being targeted by villains seeking the hidden powers of Malu’s ring. By the end of the issue, Malu had been freed from slavery again and now faced the task of proving her identity to the father who hadn’t seen her

Slaving Away Since the sorcerous signet ring in the story isn’t all that visually exciting, we’ll settle for showing you Howard Larsen’s splash for Avon’s 1949 Slave Girl Comics #1—and John Severin’s illustrative cover for the IW reprint done as Malu in the Land of Adventure in 1964. Severin, of course, would later be a prime delineator of Howard’s King Kull, and even of Conan. Thanks to Gene Kehoe. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

Robert E. Howard’s Legacy In Four Colors—And In Black-&-White

By 1950, much of the dwindling pulp audience probably didn’t remember Conan, but the same could not be said of some of the writers working in that field and in the intermingled comics industry. Certainly, Gardner Fox, already the co-creator of The Flash, Hawkman, Dr. Fate, and the Justice Society of America, among others, was wearing his influences on his sleeve when he and Giunta created the Out of This World hero with the oddly familiar name of “Crom the Barbarian”! And the Conan evocation didn’t stop with the reference to his foremost god, the one by whom Conan most often swore—and to Set, as well. Robert E. Howard’s stories had also included tribes of golden-haired Northern warriors called the Aesir—and that’s just where Avon’s blond Crom and sister Lalla hailed from. Conan, on the other hand, had been a Cimmerian, and that race was represented here by savage monkey-men called the Crimya. They were the enemy, but then, as a caption explained, anyone who wasn’t Aesir was the enemy in Crom’s world. “They must be killed,” a caption declared, “that his tribe might become rich and prosperous.” The lure of wealth trumped xenophobia, so Crom agreed to a lucrative deal that was dangled before him by the sorcerer Dwelf: break into a tower in wealthy Ophir (yet another REH locale) and carry off all the gold and jewels he could handle—with the provision that he also bring back waters from the fountain of youth within. This was no Tower of the

Elephant, but Crom found his share of obstacles, notably a gargantuan serpent guardian [“It is the Earth-spanner! Iormungdir itself!”] and the knife-wielding Tanit, queen of Ophir. Returning to Dwelf with Tanit in tow (she decided life with Crom would have more kicks than her own), Crom watched a fantasy cliché play out before his eyes as the waters of youth transformed the mage into an infant. The second episode was a busy affair in its own right, with Crom, Lalla, and Tanit getting snatched up by the ape-men of Akka, refused ransom by Ophir’s power-hungry King Bokris, and tossed into an apekingdom pit with the giant spider-god Spraa. No wonder Crom included gods and legends from two pantheons—Greek and Norse—in his oaths. He needed an edge! Even after hacking Spraa to death, Crom was still spoiling for a fight. Weeks later, as the trio entered Ophir, Our Hero got his wish went he came face to face with Bokris and tossed him off a balcony to his death. Claiming the kingdom and Tanit as his own, Crom declared, “May we rule wisely and justly for the people of Ophir.” Spoken like a true politician. In the third and final “Crom” installment, the hero revealed little stomach for the high-society functions of his station, silently chafing at a poetry recital. “Gods,” he moaned, “what I wouldn’t give for one good swordfight right now!” As luck would have it (from Crom’s perspective, at

A Fox With Double Vision? Gardner Fox must’ve thought he was “seeing everything twice”—’cause he was! His first “Crom the Barbarian” story saw print both in Avon’s comic book Out of This World, Vol. 1, #1, cover-dated June 1950—and a month later in Avon’s pulp magazine Out of This World Adventures, Vol. 1, #1 (July 1950), with its color insert which included the entire comic except for the Gene Fawcette cover. (The cover artist of the pulp is, alas, unknown.) The Fox photo first appeared in Dark Horse’s 1998 book Comics: Between the Panels by Steve Duin & Mike Richardson. Oh, and incidentally, the editor of the Avon pulp was none other than Donald A. Wollheim, a fiery science-fiction fan of the 1930s who’d become a pro editor and who as a publisher in the 1970s would launch the important paperback imprint DAW Books. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

Sword-And-Sorcery In The Comics

As Conan Might Say: “Crom!” The plot of Gardner Fox’s first “Crom the Barbarian” story echoed aspects of one of Robert E. Howard’s greatest Conan tales, “The Tower of the Elephant”— only Crom encountered panthers instead of silent lions, and a giant serpent instead of a spider the size of a pig within the tower. Interestingly, three decades later, John Milius, director/writer of the 1982 film Conan the Barbarian, would also rework REH’s edifice as a “Tower of the Serpent.” Art by John Giunta—an early comics fan who’d turned pro; he would later draw for DC, Fawcett, Timely, et al. (Oh, and if you’re wondering how we know the co-creator of Flash, Hawkman, Dr. Fate, the JSA, the JLA, Atom, et al., wrote the story—the pulp version listed his name on its contents page!) [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

Crom Writhes Again John Giunta signed his second “Crom” outing as “Joy Gee”—and scribe Fox adapted an element of “The Tower of the Elephant” he hadn’t used in #1, bringing in a gigantic spider. These pages are reproduced from the pulp mag Out of This World Adventures, Vol. 1, #2 (Dec. 1950). The Overstreet Price Guide lists a second issue of the pure comic book version, as well, but if it exists, its cover is one of the rare ones missed by the Gerbers’ wonderful and humongous PhotoJournal Guide to Comic Books. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

Robert E. Howard’s Legacy In Four Colors—And In Black-&-White

Giant-Size Conan—The Prototype? Crom’s third and final adventure, which was shoehorned into Avon’s Strange Worlds #2 (Feb. 1951), was apparently produced by the same creative team. As per John Wells’ précis of the story, it combined elements of REH’s King Conan (his dislike of civilized behavior) and the Texas author’s “The Valley of the Worm,” which postulated an ancient model for legends about dragon-slayers. In Crom’s case, the archetypal foe was a giant—clearly the inspiration for the story of Odysseus and the Cyclops, as well as of Jack the Giant Killer, et al. The “Crom” tale was reprinted by AC Comics, with gray tones added, in Barbarians and Beauties #1—which, like most AC titles, is probably still in print (see ad on p. 71). Thanks to Michael Feldman. [Retouched art ©2008 AC Comics, Inc.]

least), a giant named Balthar attacked one of Ophir’s trade caravans, and the blond barbarian was only too happy to lead the charge to stop him. After Crom climactically slashed out the ogre’s eyes and joined his men in killing the marauder, a caption revealed that the battle would evolve over generations into the myth of Jack the Giant Killer.

scientific technology and his hatred of humanity to bear on modern-day Earth. Fortunately, the planet was under the protection of Captain Marvel, who thwarted the beast-man’s attempt to smash the moon into the Earth and vowed to do the same on any future plots (Captain Marvel Adventures #125: Oct., 1951).

Even with dual publication of the “Crom” stories and other material both as an insert in a pulp magazine and as a stand-alone comic book, Out of This World didn’t catch fire and ended with the second issue— with the third “Crom” exploit and an inventory “Malu” tale surfacing in 1951’s Strange Worlds (comic book) #2 & #3, respectively. It was up to Otto Binder, who’d actually been serving as Robert E. Howard’s agent at the time of the latter’s death, to pick up the torch. From out of the depths of pre-history, King Kull would live again.

A large hairy presence with a skull-topped horned helmet, King Kull made a striking villain. He was a popular one, too, making a full dozen appearances against Cap and the Marvel Family over a span of two years (CMA #125, 129-130, 133, 137, 141, 145, 149; Marvel Family #67, 73, 77, 86). Only the ubiquitous Doctor Sivana and, by virtue of a 25-issue serial, Mister Mind fought the World’s Mightiest Mortal more often during his original 1940-1953 run. And had Fawcett Comics not ceased publication in 1953, Kull may even have taken them out.

The Beast-Man And The Gnome

(A decade later, Binder went the opposite direction, creating a quasibarbarian hero in a post-apocalyptic future. Endowed with superstrength, Mighty Samson—sporting a pelt-toga and an eye patch—fought various mutated horrors and technological menaces around N’yark for twenty issues of his own Gold Key comic book (1964-1969) before it was cancelled. This series wasn’t sword-and-sorcery, strictly speaking, but had many elements in common with it.)

This was not the heroic ruler of Howard’s story, mind you, but rather a ruthless beast-man whose savage race of submen had been driven to extinction by the ostensibly more civilized humans. Revived after millennia in suspended animation, Kull brought the full weight of his lost

Sword-And-Sorcery In The Comics

Kulled From The Pulps (Above & below left:) Otto Binder, another pulps-and-comics-writing admirer (and briefly, the agent) of Robert E. Howard, borrowed the long-defunct name King Kull for an ancient beast-man, beginning in Fawcett’s Captain Marvel Adventures #125 (Oct. 1951). Art by C.C. Beck & Pete Costanza, as reprinted in the 1970s hardcover Shazam! from the 40’s to the 70’s. [©2008 DC Comics.] (Below right:) Years later, Binder also scripted Mighty Samson, a Gold Key title about a post-technological (but obviously not post-mutant) future, featuring a one-eyed hero. This page is from issue #4 (Dec. 1965). Art by Frank Thorne, future illustrator of Red Sonja and numerous other fightin’ femme fatales since. It’d be great to see Dark Horse reprint this series in its hardcover Archives. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.] The circa-1942 photo of Otto first appeared in Alter Ego (Vol. 1) #7 in 1964. [©2008 Roy Thomas.]

Robert E. Howard’s Legacy In Four Colors—And In Black-&-White

Tower of the Elephant [sic]. Al Williamson did the last three panels of it because I pooped out.” As did, obviously, the publisher.

It Was A Dark And Stormy Bunch of Knights Prince Valiant aside, knighthood wasn’t exactly in flower during the 1950s, but that didn’t stop publishers from continuing to try out the genre. Toby Press’ oneshot Black Knight #1 (May 1953), for instance, had the intriguing premise of a knight (Sir Robert, Earl of Denhope) who returned from the Crusades—à la The Golden Knight a decade earlier—to find himself a pauper, all his property and monies stolen while he was away. Sorcery was strictly bunk in this strip, though, and the first story revolved around a druid priest who preyed on superstitious minds. Magic figured a bit more into Timely/Atlas’ own Black Knight #1 (May 1955), whose Sir Percy of Scandia was tapped by Merlin to wield the enchanted Black Blade as the Black Knight. Even here, though, the threats faced by King Arthur’s Number One were essentially all mortal in nature, with no magic besides Merlin’s allowed to intrude. Despite the beautifully textured art by Joe Maneely in the first three issues, the title expired with #5 (April 1956). [EDITOR’S NOTE: Tom Lammers’ detailed study of Black Knight will be seen in A/E #83.] By this point, DC had a knight of its own in the pages of The Brave and the Bold, a new comic which debuted three months after Atlas’ Black Knight #1. The Bob Kanigher/Irv Novick creation therein was Brian Kent, teenage heir to a throne he didn’t dare claim lest he be killed—secretly, of course—by the man currently occupying the throne. Instead, young Brian discovered a red and white suit of armor hanging deep in the Forest Perilous and used it to fight the injustices of Sir Oswald Bane without fear of repercussion. Convinced that his voice might give him away, Brian forever held his tongue and earned his alter ego the name of “The Silent Knight.”

Till It Be Morrow… Artist Gray Morrow’s “Orion” storyline, begun in Wally Wood’s “prozine” witzend #2 (1967), was closer to Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser than it was to anything by REH. (See p. 19 for more on “Orion.”) The photo of Gray is courtesy of Anthony DeMaria. [Art ©2008 Estate of Gray Morrow.]

Gnome Press, a publishing house founded in 1948 by Martin Greenberg and David Kyle, was doing something better than a Robert E. Howard homage. They were resurrecting the real thing! Between 1950 and 1957, they gathered all the original Conan stories in seven hardcover books, even going so far as to include tales that Howard’s editor had originally rejected, and eventually adding non-Conan stories by REH that fantasy writer L. Sprague de Camp rewrote slightly to turn them into adventures of the Cimmerian. The revival did not go entirely unnoticed in the comics field. In a 1983 article in Amazing Heroes #26, artist Gray Morrow told interviewer Kevin McConnell that he’d actually been commissioned to do a Conan comic book in 1955! “I believe they called themselves Triangle,” Morrow recalled. “They were a small outfit, and I did a whole comic book based on the novel The

Joining The Silent Knight in B&B were two other historical adventurers: an amnesic blond adventurer in a fur loin cloth known as “The Viking Prince” and a sheepherderturned-slave-turned-battler called “The Golden Gladiator.” The latter faded after a few issues, bumped in favor of a “Robin Hood” series intended to capitalize on a then-current TV series. And when DC acquired the Quality Comics title Robin Hood Tales and launched the legendary archer in his own comic, the two remaining B&B features saw their own page counts expand. Along with that came a change in tone. Up to this point, any suggestion of the supernatural in any Brave and Bold features had been promptly superseded by a logical explanation. By issue #16 (Feb.-March 1958), though, the comic veered decidedly into sword-and-sorcery

Sword-And-Sorcery In The Comics

Two Black And Stormy Knights (Above:) Toby Press’ 1953 Black Knight #1-and-only, with its dastardly druid, was drawn (and perhaps scripted?) by none other than Ernie Schroeder (photo at top), who had recently written and drawn the late “Airboy” and “Heap” features for Hillman. With thanks to Jim Ludwig. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.] (Left:) In Timely/Atlas’s Black Knight #1 (May 1955), the mage Merlin gives Marvel’s hero of that name his magical Black (or Ebony) Blade in his second story. Though this comic represented both writer/editor Stan Lee and artist Joe Maneely (Stan’s on the right in the photo) at their 1950s best, there was no sorcery in the series except for Merlin and that sword—even though one of the supporting characters was the witch Morgan Le Fey. Thanks to Betty Dobson, Peter Duxbury, and Bob Bailey for the scan. [©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

territory when Jon the Viking Prince was pulled beneath the waves to help an undersea princess save her kingdom from a beast-man sorcerer. In issues to come, fantastic menaces were the norm for Jon, who’d face threats such as an Ice King (#17), Moon Vikings (#19) and “Wotan, lord of the underworld” (#20). Meanwhile, The Silent Knight was swinging his sword at genuine dragons (#19-21), not to mention magical threats like Thando (#20), Morgan Le Fey (#21), and the Three Queens of Dread (#22). Though The Silent Knight had been the nominal star of B&B, it was the earthier Viking Prince who has proved to be the best-remembered character from the era, unquestionably due to the dynamic art of Joe Kubert. With sales slipping on Brave and Bold, two issues were given over entirely to “The Viking Prince” (#23-24), but the final figures didn’t justify continuing the strip.

Robert E. Howard’s Legacy In Four Colors—And In Black-&-White

A Prince Of A Fellow (Above:) National/DC’s entry in the “knight in shining armor” sweepstakes, The Brave and the Bold, initially featured no real hint of sorcery—unless it was the mystery of how The Silent Knight’s armor wound up hanging out in the Forest Perilous! Issue #1 was cover-dated Aug.-Sept. 1955. (Top right:) The late Robert Kanigher with some of his abstract paintings—and Joe Kubert at his studio, a few years back. Photos sent by RK and Al Dellinges, respectively. (Right:) The splash of Brave and Bold #17 (April-May 1958), which featured the Ice King and his legion of walking snowmen. This is Joe Kubert at his artistic best, illustrating a Robert Kanigher story which perhaps owed something to REH’s oft-imitated “Frost Giant’s Daughter,” and definitely gave an IOU to “The Sleeping Beauty” in its climactic scenes. Jon the Viking Prince was revived later for a time-tossed story or two in DC’s comics set during World War II. [©2008 DC Comics.]

Sword-And-Sorcery In The Comics

Conan The Blond Barbarian Outside the borders of the USA, at least one person not only recognized The Viking Prince as a proud heir to the Conan tradition—he saw Jon as an actual replacement for the Cimmerian! Such was the bizarre saga of a 1950s-60s Mexican comic book called La Reina de la Costa Negra. That translated to “The Queen of the Black Coast,” and it’s no coincidence that this was the title of a 1934 Conan short story. In this comic, the plundering wasn’t just happening on the printed page! Unbeknownst to the copyright holders of Robert E. Howard’s properties, the black-haired Conan had been recast as a blond Norseman who played sidekick to the comic’s titular heroine Bêlit. Filling out the cast was an adventurer named Yanga, his name a twist on a crewman named N’yaga in Howard’s tale. The astute reader has begun to grasp that this was not a terribly faithful adaptation, and, indeed, most issues had no relation to Howard’s epic. The climax of the REH story, however, formed the basis for #16, where the spirit of Bêlit came back from the dead to save Conan from a winged ape. In true Hollywood form, the comic delivered a feel-good ending quite different from the book: Bêlit lived. (She was the title character, after all.)

Weird Doings On The Black Coast In the May 1934 issue of Weird Tales pulp magazine, cover artist Margaret Brundage and interior artist Hugh Rankin gave the world its first look at Bêlit, Queen of the Black Coast, while illustrating REH’s then-new Conan story. By today’s lights, neither artist did a great job of depicting either protagonist, or the ape-like winged thing that killed the female pirate… though at least Rankin’s version of the creature looks reasonably demonic. Note that (a) Conan’s name doesn’t appear on the cover (it never did, on any of the two dozen or so issues of WT that featured the hero)—and (b) the phrase “Conan the barbarian” is used by editor Farnsworth Wright in the below-the-title description on the story’s first page. So far as A/E’s Editor was ever able to determine, Howard himself never used those three words as a phrase in any of his tales of the Cimmerian. [Conan TM & ©2008 Conan Properties International, LLC.]

In the beginning, names aside, the comic was pretty blatantly taking its cues from “The Viking Prince,” with cover art and selected interior panels and situations lifted straight from The Brave and the Bold. The covers of issues #3 & 4 reworked the splash pages of B&B #2 and #11’s “Viking Prince” stories. And La Reina #2 (Oct. 8, 1958) is a dead-on steal from “The Secret of Odin’s Cup” in B&B #20 (Oct.-Nov. 1958). One has to admire the sheer guts it took to swipe art from the current issue of Brave and Bold!

After two issues published in 1952 (see next page), La Reina de la Costa Negra was published weekly from October 1, 1958, through January 1959 (11 issues) as a 32-page digest-sized black-&-white series. Credits on those early issues cited Riol de Man as writer and Salvador H. Lavalle as artist. The indicia identified Lavalle as the Art Director and Ediciones Joma as the name of the company. Artists such as J. Kstro [sic] and A. Ramirez contributed to later issues of the series, with R. Silva Quiros getting a writer’s credit. [Continued on p. 17]

Robert E. Howard’s Legacy In Four Colors—And In Black-&-White

Conan Goes South—Way South Actually, the origins of the Mexican comic La Reina de la Costa Negra (“The Queen of the Black Coast”) go back all the way to 1952! The 8th through the 11th issues of a comic called Cuentos de Abuelito (Grandad’s Stories), which launched the series, related the beginning of “Queen,” as seen above—as a tale told by an old man to a young boy. Its page dimensions were 6 inches by 4 inches. Dig out your old copy of the Thomas/Buscema version of that REH tale in Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian #58 (Jan. 1976)—or its reprinting in Dark Horse’s The Chronicles of Conan, Vol. 8, a couple of years back—and you’ll instantly spot the resemblance to not only the action on the pages below—but even the costuming in the two renditions. That’s because each creative team was following Howard’s description of events and attire in the early pages of the original story; only the hero’s hair color had been changed, to blond. Script for the 1952 comic by Loa and Victor Rodriguez; art by Salvador Lavalle and Hector Gutierrez (the latter signed the cover as “Hecky”). With thanks for the scans and info to Ulises Mavrides of Baja California, Mexico—and to Pat Mason for the translation of the comic’s title. [Conan & Bêlit TM & ©2008 Conan Properties International, LLC.]

Sword-And-Sorcery In The Comics

Bêlit Makes A Comeback The climactic events of “Queen of the Black Coast” were related in Cuentos de Abuelito #10-12. Show above, clockwise from top left, are: The cover of issue #10, which shows Bêlit battling the winged ape… Two pages from #11, in which her ghost comes back to help Conan as he battles the monster for his own life… ...and the page from #12 in which, contrary to REH’s story, she comes back to life in front of Yanga and Conan, so she can continue having adventures in the comic book named for her! Thanks to Ulises Mavridis. [Conan & Bêlit TM & ©2008 Conan Properties International, LLC.]

Robert E. Howard’s Legacy In Four Colors—And In Black-&-White

Bêlit Déjà Vu The cover and some interior pages from La Reina #16 (Dec. 8, 1965) of the third series show that Lavalle and company were retelling the events of “Queen of the Black Coast” yet again, with new art and script. Early in this version, Bêlit fell and seemed to be mortally hurt when Conan’s arrow wounded the winged ape-thing carrying her off; but her spirit, though hovering near death, arrived with his sword when he was being torn apart by the creature. Again she survived at story’s end. Note the Spanish conquistador’s helmet she wore in many scenes. Art in this 10" by 7" comic was by Salvador Hermoso Lavalle; scripting was by Rafael Silva Quiroz. Thanks yet again to Ulises Mavridis. [Conan & Bêlit TM & ©2008 Conan Properties International, LLC.]

Sword-And-Sorcery In The Comics

[Continued from p. 13] However mediocre the final product was (I’m strictly judging the art, mind you), it still represented a lot of comics pages ripe for reprinting, and Ediciones Joma did just that in 1965. This version of La Reina (whose new #1 was dated Aug. 25) had more traditional comic book dimensions and sported new cover art on each issue, along with a Prince Valiant-style logo and identifying shots of Bêlit, Conan, and Yanga along the left side of later covers. The 1965-1966 series ran 47 issues, as per information supplied by Ulises Mavridis.) Roy Thomas reported in Richard Kyle’s Wonderworld, Vol. 4, #3 (Sept. 1974), that a US fan’s discovery of the comics eventually led to Howard’s posthumous editor and sometime posthumous collaborator L. Sprague de Camp writing to the Mexican publisher about buying back issues. “He never received a reply,” Roy noted, “and it was just about then that the last issue of the comic was seen.”

Roy And Roy “I didn’t know about Conan until I met Roy,” Al Williamson told J. David Spurlock in Vanguard’s Al Williamson Sketchbook (1998). Of course, he wasn’t talking about Roy Thomas, who would launch Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian in 1970… but rather, about Roy G. Krenkel.

A Queen Meets Kubert The cover of La Reina de la Costa Negra #2 of the second (1958-59) series featured two distinctly Joe Kubert warriors (from DC’s “Viking Prince”) in the foreground, as rendered by artist S.H. Lavalle. If you’re gonna swipe, swipe from the best! This series’ page dimensions were 9 by 6 ¾ inches. With thanks to Ulises Mavridis. [Bêlit TM & ©2008 Conan Properties International, LLC.]

Such was the influence of Krenkel, the renowned fantasy artist whose feathery, textured style—and tastes in adventurous fiction—influenced several fellow legends in comic art. A mentor to future giants like Williamson, Jeff Jones, Frank Frazetta, and others, Krenkel deserves partial credit for the coming sword-and-sorcery boom that began when he suggested Frazetta as the painter for some of Lancer Books’ Tarzan paperbacks. That, in turn, led to Frazetta’s selection to paint the covers of Lancer Books’ series of Conan paperbacks launched in 1966. Add to that the US paperback publication of

Krenkel And The Conqueror In the 1950s and thereabouts, Roy G. Krenkel let numerous studies of Conan (left) and other REH heroes that he had done be printed in George Scithers’ sword-and-sorcery fanzine Amra, which took its title from a name given to Conan in one story. (Above:) In a nice touch credited to Bernie Wrightson but executed by Alan Weiss, RGK was used as the model for David Innes’ companion Abner Perry, scientist in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pellucidar series. This panel is from DC’s Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Korak, Son of Tarzan #46 (May-June 1972). Script by Len Wein. Thanks to John Wells for the DC art. [Krenkel art ©2008 Estate of Roy G. Krenkel; comics panel ©2008 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.]

Robert E. Howard’s Legacy In Four Colors—And In Black-&-White

Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, new editions of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ other adventure series, and original creations like Michael Moorcock’s Elric, Lin Carter’s Thongor, and Gardner Fox’s series set on the distant planet Llarn… and a huge revival of fantasy fiction was underway by the mid-1960s. The other Roy was not initially impressed with Conan, despite (as an old Captain Marvel fan) being drawn to the title of Lancer’s King Kull paperback. “I brought the first book [Conan the Adventurer] home and I thought it was going to be like [Edgar Rice Burroughs’] John Carter [of Mars] or Carson of Venus. But it was just this savage guy running around, kidnapping a princess, and there was very little magic, so I just read ten pages of it and tossed it in the closet.” So recalled Roy Thomas in 1998 in Comic Book Artist (Vol. 1) #2. We’ll get back to him later.

Barbarians At The Gate Harvey Comics was the first to jump on the sword-and-sorcery bandwagon. The company of Casper the Friendly Ghost and Richie Rich commissioned the legendary Wally Wood to develop a series, with the further provision that he initially do a two-page teaser that could be inserted into Thrill-O-Rama #2 (Sept. 1966). Dusting off an unsold 1940s script called “Clawfang the Barbarian,” Wood contacted Al Williamson to draw the feature—and it was good.

Set in a post-apocalypse future, the storyline had humanity essentially starting anew. Clawfang, his head and back partly shrouded by a wolf ’s pelt, led one of the primitive tribes that had sprung up, and his prowess as a warrior had not gone unnoticed. In the five-page story in Unearthly Spectaculars #2 (Dec. 1966), Princess Felina attempted to recruit him and wound up having to be rescued by him from the underground caverns of the Norns. Clawfang found not just Felina but an entire bunker full of hitech devices and a just-revived scientist who declared himself king of the world. Instead, his itchy trigger finger got him tossed into a control panel by Clawfang, and the whole chamber began to self-destruct. Perhaps, the barbarian mused in the final panel, he should have made sure James King was really dead before they left. “Who knows what sort of evil I may have let loose on the world….?” We’d never know, though. The greatest creative team in the world was worthless if readers didn’t know about them. Harvey failed miserably in that regard, inserting both “Clawfang” features in books whose covers promoted lame, campy super-heroes in a futile attempt to capitalize on the Batman TV craze. Even so, Al Williamson was glad for the experience. “It was kind of nice

Al The Barbarian Al Williamson’s “Clawfang the Barbarian” in Harvey’s Unearthly Spectaculars #2 (Dec. 1966). Al, of course, was closely identified with EC’s Weird Science and Weird Fantasy comics titles back in the 1950s, and in the late 1970s would draw the Star Wars newspaper strip. The photo of Al originally appeared in EC’s Crime SuspenStories #17 (June-July 1953). Thanks to John Wells for the “Clawfang” scans. [Art ©2008 the respective copyright holders; photo ©2008 William M. Gaines Agent.]

Sword-And-Sorcery In The Comics

The Ditko “Doom” That Came To Kadith Dramatically conceived and executed pages by Steve Ditko from his “Thane” story “City of Doom” in Warren Publishing’s Creepy #15 (June 1967). Script by Archie Goodwin (photo from FF Annual #9, 1969). See A/E #50 for a pic of Ditko. Thanks to Sam Kujava. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

to have worked on something Woody wrote,” Williamson remarked in the Al Williamson Sketchbook. “It was a very pleasant deal to be a part of.” The two would also work together in witzend, Wood’s independent outlet for his own comics work and that of his friends. Of particular note here is Gray Morrow’s six-page “Orion” feature that opened issue #2 (1967). (See p. 10 for a sample page.) The splash made reference to “Orion’s never-ending quest for the Seven Portals to the Seven Bridges to the Seven Stars,” but the body of the story involved the attempt of the sorcerer Lamonthos to lure the bearded hero to Balimodra, “a dread land harboring nameless terrors ruled over by masters of dark arts and visited only by others of that sinister persuasion.” The mage’s true goal was to steal Orion’s enchanted sword Thorbolt, but the intervention of a monocle-wearing black mercenary named Mamba of Membahtu put an end to that. A decade later, Morrow continued the story of Orion and Mama in 1978’s Heavy Metal [Vol. 1] #12-13 and [Vol. 2] #1, 3-8. Warren Publications’ contribution to the party was just as obscure (perhaps more so), despite sporting Archie Goodwin scripts and a line-up of artists that consisted of Steve Ditko, Jeff Jones, Tom Sutton, and Alex Nino—and a cover by Frank Frazetta! The adventures of “Thane the Barbarian” were as authentic a Conan riff as pre-1970s comics ever saw. If someone wondered, “What if Marvel had published Savage Sword of Conan in the Silver Age,” they’d need look no further than “City of Doom” (Creepy #15, June, 1967) for the answer. With no Comics Code to bar his path, Thane was openly an anti-hero,

motivated entirely by self-interest—the prospect of revenge, riches, and sex. Unfortunately for Thane (though not for the reader), the ancient city of Kadith (named for H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Doom That Came to Kadath”) delivered on none of that, instead revealing itself as a living entity whose tentacled heart was sustained through the services of flesh-eating ghouls and a seductive high priestess. Capped with Ditko’s sumptuously toned art, it was a remarkable piece of work. Issue #16’s “Angel of Doom” was impressive in its own right with the first comics appearance of Jeff Jones’ art. This time out, Thane was determined to kill a mysterious servant of the gods despite his superstitious tribe’s insistence on sacrificing some of their own in appeasement. The apparent death of Thane’s wife was enough to force the barbarian’s hand, leading to a clash with a giant winged insect that was anything but angelic and a properly ironic ending. Thane’s third appearance netted a stunning Frazetta cover (Creepy #27. June 1969) but was a rather conventional piece in which Thane rescued a village at the mercy of a giant metaphysical gatekeeper. Nice art by Tom Sutton, though. This time the script came from Bill Parente, though Archie Goodwin would return for the final installment—ten years later! [EDITOR’S NOTE: Learn more in A/E #83, as Will Murray writes about the Conan/Warren connection.] Oddly, another hero called Thane debuted only a few months after Creepy #16, although this time “Thane” was a title—a kind of land baron, the actual historical meaning of the word “thane,” as used in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, rather than a name. Nestled in the back of Charlton’s Hercules

Robert E. Howard’s Legacy In Four Colors—And In Black-&-White

Sliding immediately over to DC, Skeates and Aparo picked up Aquaman and sent the king of Atlantis on a quest through various underwater communities. With threats like undersea sorcerers (#40) and barbarian tribes (#42), it was the first time anyone had ever demonstrated the potential that the series had as a vehicle for sword-andsorcery— something that Kurt Busiek would demonstrate again nearly forty years later in 2006’s Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis. And then there’s the one that got away. Through an interesting twist of fate, Gnome Press publisher Martin Greenberg—he of the 1950s Conan hardcovers—was the next-door neighbor of comics artist/legend Gil Kane. And Kane could think of nothing better than to adapt Conan into comics form. During that period, he’d been working to break free of comic books’ traditional boundaries and envisioned stand-alone novels aimed at adults, minus any of the restraints that the Comics Code was putting on the mainstream product. Kane actually succeeded in getting His Name Is…Savage published as a black-&-white magazine in 1968 and envisioned Conan as his follow-up. Greenberg’s death and the newsstand failure of Savage effectively ended the plan, but Kane would later remark that the concepts he’d worked up helped pave the way for Bantam Books’ subsequent publication of his science-fiction/sword-and-sorcery paperback Blackmark in 1971. Meanwhile, witzend #5 (Oct. 1968) featured a three-page gallery “prevue” of Jim Steranko’s “Adventures of Talon.” Though images of the

Thane Or In-Thane? Jim Aparo’s splash for “Thane of Bogarth” from Charlton’s Hercules #2 (Dec. 1967); script by Steve Skeates, who will be interviewed in depth in A/E #84. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

#1 (Oct., 1967), “Thane of Bagarth” owed as much to Beowulf and Prince Valiant as it did the sword-and-sorcery boom. Especially Beowulf. Indeed, the legend on the first page revealed that Our Hero (“the young but wise Hrothelac”) ruled a stretch of land called Bagarth because he’d inherited it from his father, one of the thanes who’d joined Beowulf in his defeat of the horrific Grendel. The red-haired Hrothelac faced his own set of trials as the back-up series progressed, notably banishment by Beowulf himself. The old king soon had cause to regret that decision when he saw a vision suggesting that his actions towards the young Thane had cleared the path for his own imminent removal from power. The strip was beautifully illustrated for most of its run by Jim Aparo (#1-5, 7-10) and Sanho Kim (#11-13), but writer Steve Skeates found the experience frustrating in some respects. He chafed at editor Sal Gentile’s assignation of artists Charles Nicholas and Vince Alascia on the 6th installment, and at his refusal to add more pages to the episodes. Most of all, Skeates resented Gentile’s insertion of a 21st-century time-traveler into the proceedings. “How can you not love a guy,” he told Gary Usher in Steve Skeates: Unmerciful Storyteller (1998), “who…makes the whole thing even more a joke by actually liking this utterly terrible element, adoring it to the point of even adorning the cover of the comic in question [Hercules #10] with an actual advertisement for this utterly fershlugginer idiocy!??!” It became a moot point after Hercules was cancelled with #13, ending “Thane of Bagarth” on a cliffhanger.

Sword-And-Sorcery In The Comics

Kane The Conqueror Gil Kane, who on at least two occasions came within an ace of becoming the first American artist of a Conan comic book—framed here by his layouts for a page from Giant-Size Conan #2 (Dec. 1974), and the two-page frontispiece of his 1971 paperback graphic novel Blackmark. Gil’s portrait of himself (with the Silver Age Atom he’d co-created) was seen in full in Alter Ego [Vol. 3] #2, still available through TwoMorrows; see the ad bloc at the end of this issue. The first four issues of Giant-Size Conan adapted the early chapters of REH’s novel The Hour of the Dragon, often published under the name Conan the Conqueror. Blackmark was reprinted in 2002 by Fantagraphics Books. [Kane portrait ©2008 Estate of Gil Kane; GSK art ©2008 Conan Properties International, LLC; Blackmark art ©2008 Fantagraphics Books.]

Robert E. Howard’s Legacy In Four Colors—And In Black-&-White

Give Me The Night Musician Jim Rook learns about the ancient otherworld warrior Nacht, not long before he himself becomes the Nightmaster, in Showcase #82 (May 1969). Cover by Joe Kubert; interior art by Jerry Grandenetti (pencils) & Dick Giordano (i). Script by Denny O’Neil, seen at right in 1993 photo from the Julius Schwartz Collection; thanks to Bob Greenberger. [©2008 DC Comics.]

sword-wielding barbarian hero would surface from time to time over the years (including in Marvel’s Savage Tales #3 in 1974), Talon the Timeless never actually got a full-fledged comics adventure to call his own.

Day For Nightmaster It fell to DC to bite the bullet and actually do an up-front sword-andsorcery comic (Showcase #82-84, May, June, & Aug. 1969). There was still the question of whether comic book audiences would respond to the hero of an otherworldly realm, so writer Denny O’Neil established him first squarely on the present-day Earth as a rock singer named Jim Rook, who was sucked into the other-worldly realm of Myrra as “Nightmaster.” “I feel like a character from Howard or Tolkien,” Rook grumbled in #82. “Pretty soon, though, I’m gonna wake up and find this is a spacedout dream. And I’m gonna swear off reading sword-and-sorcery sagas!” Unfortunately, Rook was the blood descendant of a hero named Nacht (German for “Night”) who’d been magically exiled to Earth a millennium earlier. Thus, when a dimensional rift opened up in a building called Oblivion, Inc., Jim was the only person capable of pulling his ancestor’s enchanted Sword of Night from its Excalibur-like entombment in a stone

column. In Nacht’s absence, the balance of power in Myrra shifted towards the evil represented by the Warlocks, and it fell to this hottempered, sarcastic, 26-year-old rock singer to save the day. The wizened King Zolto convinced Jim to wear Nacht’s blue costume, ostensibly because its thermal qualities would protect him against the realm’s frigid environment, but secretly, no doubt, because the outfit would help Rook embrace his role as Nightmaster. Accompanied by his Earth-born fiancée Janet Jones, an albino named Boz, and the barbarian Tark, Jim fought past myriad creatures and villains before chasing Duke Spearo and his band of Warlocks through the portal to Earth. Nightmaster sent his foes packing just as the rift closed and decided that he and Janet had experienced a particularly trippy hallucination. Which didn’t explain the Sword of Night he still held. Despite an artistic line-up that included Jerry Grandenetti and Dick Giordano (#82) and newcomer Bernie Wrightson (#83-84), with Joe Kubert on covers, Nightmaster would not be called upon to swing his Sword of Night again for decades. Ultimately, though, Jim Rook learned to embrace his legacy and permanently relocated to Myrra as its champion in 2008’s Shadowpact #22. As 1970 dawned, The Viking Prince made an unexpected return at DC

Sword-And-Sorcery In The Comics

What A Night! Joe Kubert was again on hand for the cover of Showcase #83 (June 1969)—but this time the interior art was by newcomer Bernie (then Berni) Wrightson, seen in photo. Script by Denny O’Neil. The 1969 photo of Bernie at age 20 is from the Joe Vucenic collection, taken by George Wilson Beahm; sent by Christopher B. Boyko. [Comic art ©2009 DC Comics.]

in Star-Spangled War Stories #149 & 150, his presence prominently featured along with the book’s star, Enemy Ace (himself also a Kanigher/Kubert creation). The “Viking Prince” stories in the issues were only reprints, but one can speculate whether Jon was there to shore flagging sales on the title (“The Unknown Soldier” succeeded “Enemy Ace” as the book’s star beginning in #151) or to tap the pulse of the potential audience of a Conan-style adventurer.

Robert E. Howard’s Legacy In Four Colors—And In Black-&-White

Waiting For Conan In retrospect, April 1970 was a big month for Marvel writer/associate editor Roy Thomas, as least cover-date-wise. Because that—or more likely circa January—was when no less than two pre-Conan the Barbarian sword-and-sorcery co-creations of his hit the nation’s newsstands. Roy is seen at left in June 2006, at the Robert E. Howard Day Celebration in Cross Plains, Texas, where he was guest of honor on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of REH’s birth. Incidentally, this photo was taken by Paul Samms, who at that time was waiting for his book on Conan the Phenomenon to come out from Dark Horse. (It took a while longer, but it was well worth waiting for.) (Below left:) Arkon the Magnificent was an other-dimensional villain who owed as much to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars as to anything by Robert E. Howard, but in retrospect he does seem a sword-and-sorcery character— even if those lightning-arrows in his quiver may have been on loan from DC’s Weaponers of Qward. Art by John Buscema & Tom Palmer. (Below right:) This oft-reprinted quasi-prequel to Conan the Barbarian, featuring Starr the Slayer, was conceived by Roy partly to see how young Barry Smith would handle an s&s story. Damn well, as it turned out! In the tale, the hero’s arch-enemy is actually Len Carson, the man on our Earth who writes prose adventures of Starr—named after sf/fantasy writer Lin Carter. Soon after this story was produced, Roy pursued the rights to Lin’s hero Thongor (also half REH, half ERB) to become Marvel’s first ongoing s&s character. That didn’t work out and Roy happily first latched onto Conan instead. [©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Conan (Finally!) Comes To American Comics Marvel Comics had been AWOL through all this, and fans were bombarding the company with letters asking why. Reassessing his initial reaction to Conan, Roy Thomas was increasingly coming to the realization that his company needed to get into the sword-and-sorcery pool… and soon. And Stan Lee, as well, was noticing all the mail coming to their Madison Avenue offices asking for Conan or someone like him to be added to the company’s lineup. Imagining that Conan himself would be too expensive a prospect, Lee and Thomas first set their sights on

Thongor, a Howard-Burroughs pastiche hero created a few years earlier by author Lin Carter. Carter was interested, but his agent dragged his feet in the negotiations. Perhaps a Marvel-created barbarian? Thomas conceived two—an other-dimensional warlord called Arkon the Magnificent drawn by John Buscema (Avengers #75-76, April & May 1970) and a virtual Conan called Starr the Slayer with Barry Smith (later Windsor-Smith) in Chamber of Darkness #4 (April 1970). Neither was really created to be an ongoing hero, however—indeed, Arkon was a villain—although Starr could easily have become a regular feature. As it turned out, neither solution was necessary. Licensing Robert E.

Sword-And-Sorcery In The Comics

A Barry Good Year (Above:) A real find! A/E reader Adam Brooks recently sent us this early pencil sketch of Conan by Barry Smith (now, of course, celebrated as Barry WindsorSmith)—and it kinda knocked us for a loop. Why? ’Cause it’s really early— dated 1969, which means that it was done over half a year before Conan the Barbarian #1 debuted circa July of 1970. Was this perhaps one of Barry’s tryout drawings for the Cimmerian stalwart? Well, if so, he had no need to wonder, as John Lennon once famously did, “I hope we passed the audition!” He sure did—and went on to ever greater heights. Thanks to Barry for permission to print this previously unpublished drawing, and to his assistant Alex Bialy for his help. [Art ©2008 Barry Windsor-Smith; Conan TM & ©2008 Conan Properties International, LLC.] Above right is Barry at the 1973 Academy of Comic Book Arts awards banquets, where Conan the Barbarian had just won the 1972 Shazam for “Best Continuing Feature.” From the ACBA Newsletter, Vol. 1, #21 (June 1973), courtesy of Flo Steinberg.

Howard’s greatest creation proved not nearly the problem everyone had expected, and Conan the Barbarian #1 hit the stands in the summer of 1970, with an October cover date. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Like we said before: more on that in A/E #83.] By coincidence, CTB’s first two issues overlapped with DC’s Wonder Woman #190-192, wherein Diana Prince fought alongside Ranagor the Barbarian in the other-dimensional city of Chaldonor. The story was perfectly entertaining and good-looking (courtesy of Mike Sekowsky and Dick Giordano), but the approach was so different that it was like comparing apples and oranges. There’s nothing like the real thing!

Wonder What Happened to Him! (Left:) A Mike Sekowsky/Dick Giordano page from Wonder Woman #190 (Sept.-Oct. 1970), which introduced Ranagor the Barbarian for a three-issue stand. Big Mike wrote the script, as well. [©2008 DC Comics.]

Robert E. Howard’s Legacy In Four Colors—And In Black-&-White

Is This A Dagar I See Before Me? Dagar had to share cover billing with a “16-Page Fun Catalog” in Gold Key/Western’s Tales of Sword and Sorcery – Dagar the Invincible #6 (Jan. 1974)—but at least he had the lovely Graylin (named for writer Don Glut’s then-wife Linda Gray) along to keep him company. The hero was painted on the cover by an unknown artist, and drawn inside by Jesse Santos. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.] Don is seen below in a July 1975 photo, admiring some original Santos art (for another of their collaborations, Doctor Spektor). He’ll relate the inside story of Dagar in A/E #83—complete with a photo of him with Jesse in person, next time! [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

Treading The Jeweled Thrones Of The Earth Under Their Sandaled Feet That didn’t stop people from trying, mind you. Surviving threats of cancellation, Conan the Barbarian inspired imitators and spin-offs throughout the industry. In 1972 Gold Key revived Mighty Samson and launched Don Glut and Jesse Santos’ Dagar the Invincible (subtitled Tales of Sword and Sorcery). The latter title came about almost by accident, the result of a one-off short story of a barbarian hero that Glut had written for Mystery Comics Digest. After penning a sequel, he found that he’d inspired the editor to actually give the blond barbarian his own title with a full backstory related in issue #1 (Oct. 1972) that set up a four-issue conflict with the sorcerer Scorpio. Meanwhile, it was decreed that those as-yet-unpublished short stories might steal some of the thunder from the new comic, so their hero was editorially reconfigured into the black-haired Duroc in Mystery Comics Digest #7 (Sept. 1972), #14 (Oct. 1973), and #15 (Jan. 1974).

Sword-And-Sorcery In The Comics

Love Those Barbarians! We’ll deal with Marvel’s 1970s barbarians in more detail in A/E #83, but we can hardly ignore them completely this time around—nor would we want to! (Above:) While Bernie Wrightson and the team of Ross Andru & Wally Wood preceded them as artists drawing REH’s hero King Kull for the House of Ideas, it was the Severins—siblings Marie (penciling) and John (inking)—who are most remembered as handling the Atlantean-born monarch. Here’s a Kull sketch by John Severin done at a comicon for collector Bob Bailey. Bob tells us John turned it out in under three minutes! [Kull TM & ©2008 Kull Productions, Inc.] (Top right:) “Thongor of Lemuria” was another of those half ERB, half REH creations—this one by the prolific Lin Carter—who had, indeed, nearly become Marvel’s first entry as a sword-and-sorcery series. He did make the cut a bit later, and , after a several-issue run, this page is from his final comics appearance, in Creatures on the Loose #29 (May 1974), as drawn by Vicente Alcazar and written by Steve Gerber. (Center right:) In that same issue, artist Alcazar sneaked in a hidden note which reader Rob Allen recently pointed out to us: “The message is backwards and in Spanish. It says, ‘Esta viñeta se la dedico a Neal’—roughly, ‘This panel is dedicated to Neal.’ When Vicente arrived in the US [from South America], Neal Adams helped him get started in the comic book industry.” Sharp eyes, Rob! [Thongor art ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Thongor TM & ©2008 Estate of Lin Carter.]

Durak (renamed because “Duroc” rhymed with the long-running Gold Key star Turok, Son of Stone) eventually met Dagar in issues #7, 12, and 13 of the latter’s comic. He’d become part of a cast of characters that included the lovely Graylin (introduced in #3), novice witches Ling-Ra, Nura, and Meeli (#10 & 17), and—despite the fretting of Gold Key’s editors—a black warrior named Torgus (#9, 10, 13). Delighting in the shared universe he was developing, Glut also had Jarn, a time-lost caveman from issue #5, eventually revealed as the brother of later Gold Key hero Tragg (of Don’s Von Danniken-esque Tragg and the Sky Gods series), and wrote a 1975 crossover that began in Dagar #13 and ended in Glut’s present-set series The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor #15—complete with appearances by Durak and his recurring foe Xorkon. The Dagar comic ended as it began, with #18 (Dec. 1976) and #19 (April 1982) each reprinting the first issue. In between, an inventory story appeared in Gold Key Spotlight #6 (July 1977). [NOTE: Don Glut will tell his own story of Dagar the Invincible and friends in A/E #83, which will feature the second installment of “Sword-and-Sorcery in the Comics.”]

Elsewhere, Howard’s hero King Kull gained his own Marvel comic book by 1971 (Kull the Conqueror, later renamed Kull the Destroyer). Even Lin Carter’s “Thongor” enjoyed a stretch of stories in Creatures on the Loose #22-29 (1973-1974), but his relative lack of sales success underscored Marvel’s good fortune in landing Conan first. On a related, not-quite-s&s front, DC’s licensing acquisition of the Edgar Rice Burroughs properties was conceived in 1972 as a Tarzan comic with a “John Carter of Mars” back-up and a Korak title with “Carson of Venus” and “David Innes of Pellucidar” back-ups. Within a few months, however, a company-wide page count reduction led to “John Carter” and “David Innes” being transferred to a short-lived comic of their own called Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Weird Worlds. Fritz Leiber’s prose s&s heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser landed at DC shortly thereafter, making their comic book bow in a team-up with Diana Prince and Catwoman in Wonder Woman #202 (Sept.-Oct. 1972). [Continued on p. 30]

Robert E. Howard’s Legacy In Four Colors—And In Black-&-White

How Many Syllables In “Fafhrd”? Fritz Leiber’s sword-and-sorcery heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (see p. 30), denizens of the world called Nehwon (“no when” spelled backwards), were that legendary author’s attempt to create a more human (and often humorous) alternative to the melodramatic Hyborian Age tales of Robert E. Howard. Their first exploit, “Ill Met in Lankhmar” (Nehwon’s greatest city), appeared in 1939 in Unknown, a pulp-mag rival of Weird Tales. Thus it was only logical that, when DC writer and editor Denny O’Neil went searching for a competitor for Marvel’s bythen-fairly-successful Conan the Barbarian, he would tap this well-respected creation of Leiber, who was still living. (Above left:) To help build a comics audience for the adventuring pair (Fafhrd was a seven-foot giant, the Mouser a short thief who’d once been a sorcerer’s apprentice), editor O’Neil guest-starred them first in Wonder Woman #202 (Sept-Oct. 1972), encountering the Amazon in her non-super-powered, Emma Peel period. The script was by science-fiction writer Samuel R. “Chip” Delaney, with art by Dick Giordano. At the end of the story came the house ad at top right for Sword of Sorcery #1, with art by Howard Chaykin. Apparently, for any number of reasons, DC was concerned that the title Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser would mean little to its readers, even though by then the pair were appearing in paperback books just as Conan, Kull, et al., were. [Pages ©2008 DC Comics; Fafhrd & Gray Mouser TM & ©2008 Estate of Fritz Leiber.]

Brak-ish Waters John Jakes (photo) has been acknowledged as one of the best living authors of historical novels ever since his immensely popular eight-volume Kent Family Chronicles published in conjunction with America’s Bicentennial in the mid-1970s. Slightly earlier, however, he’d written science-fiction and fantasy for magazines and paperbacks, including a sword-andsorcery parody Mention My Name in Atlantis—and numerous stories about his frankly Conan-inspired Brak the Barbarian. Roy Thomas, an admirer of Brak and of Jakes’ prose, invited John to contribute plots to Conan the Barbarian and Kull the Conqueror—and, soon, an original “Brak” story for Savage Tales. (When the two of them finally met in person in early 1992 at a gathering of the library society of the University of South Carolina, John told Roy that he still has, framed in his SC home, the original art to the splash for their joint story “The Web of the Spider-God” from CTB #13.) When Conan departed for his own black-&-white mag, and with John now hugely busy and successful as a novelist, Marvel arranged to adapt Brak adventures to keep a sword-and-sorcery presence in Savage Tales. The Steve Gan art directly above is from ST #8 (Jan. 1975), the second chapter of “The Unspeakable Shrine,” based on the very first Brak entry. Script by Doug Moench. [Comics page ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Brak TM & ©2008 John Jakes.]

Sword-And-Sorcery In The Comics

Well Met In Lankhmar (Above:) Howard Chaykin’s cover and the Chaykin/Crusty Bunkers art from Sword of Sorcery #1 (Feb.-March 1973) show that DC’s entry could hold its own quality-wise with Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian. Editor Denny O’Neil decided that scripter Denny O’Neil should launch the series not with the team’s origin in “Ill Met in Lankhmar,” but with an adaptation of a later story. (Near right:) The lad’s sometime “spiritual advisors.” (Far right:) On p. 17, Fafhrd and the Mouser decide to settle which of them is the better swordsman. A bit earlier, after Conan caught on, Roy Thomas had briefly considered pursuing Leiber’s creations for Marvel, but had elected not to… but Denny and Howard showed that they’d have fit right into the Marvel mags of that era! [Comics pages ©2008 DC Comics; Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser TM & ©2008 Estate of Fritz Leiber.]

1976 photo of Howard Chaykin. Thanks to Steve Sansweet.

Robert E. Howard’s Legacy In Four Colors—And In Black-&-White

[Continued from p. 27] Written by science-fiction author Samuel R. Delaney and illustrated by Dick Giordano, it was a lovely, breezy confection, arguably the pinnacle of the book’s Diana-Prince-as-Emma-Peel era, and could scarcely have made a better lead-in to a comic entitled Sword of Sorcery #1. Under the direction of writer/editor Denny O’Neil, Fafhrd and the Mouser’s own title (even if it wasn’t named for them) adapted Leiber’s chronicles of the realm of Nehwon, with a lineup of artistic young Turks who were destined for stardom. Howard Chaykin penciled the first four issues, his devotion to quality necessitating several inking jobs by a group of super-star and novice artists collectively dubbed The Crusty Bunkers. (In #2’s text page, O’Neil recounted how Chaykin—of his own volition—had redrawn the splash for issue #1 six times before he was satisfied.) Walt Simonson and Jim Starlin came aboard in #4 & #5 respectively, for back-ups about the younger days of the swashbuckling duo, the latter’s “Mouser” tale written by sf author George Alec Effinger. Simonson was promoted to the lead feature with #5, which proved to be the final issue. Much later, in 1990, Chaykin got another shot at the characters, this time doing scripts (with Mike Mignola art) for a four-issue Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser mini-series for Marvel’s Epic imprint. [NOTE: Richard Arndt’s article on DC’s Sword of Sorcery comic is scheduled to appear in A/E #83.]

Raising Kane—And Not Gil, This Time (Above:) Robert E. Howard’s Puritan swashbuckler—his earliest sword-andsorcery creation—made his comics debut in the b&w title Monsters Unleashed #1 (1973—no month), with script by RT and moody, ornate art by Ralph Reese, adapting an REH short story. [©2008 Solomon Kane, Inc.]

With Sword And/Or Axe (Left:) Sword of Sorcery (sampled on the previous pages) folded with its 5th issue in late 1973, but this DC house ad from the company’s July 1975 comics spotlights its three new sword-and-sorcery titles: the epic-derived Beowulf, the more Tolkienesque Stalker, and Claw the Unconquered, who looked like Conan with a prosthesis. Longest lived of the group was Mike Grell’s Warlord, basically an Edgar Rice Burroughs-inspired creation with perhaps overtones of Howard. The caveman heroes Tor (continuing Joe Kubert’s hero, who was viewed in greater detail in A/E #77) and young Kong the Untamed prowled for a few issues each. Except of course for Tor, all these were DC-owned rather than licensed. More on this round of DC s&s stars is upcoming in A/E #83. [Ad ©2008 DC Comics; Tor TM & ©2008 Joe Kubert.]

Sword-And-Sorcery In The Comics

When Atlas Shrugged Here, hopefully to whet your appetite for more, are the covers of Atlas/Seaboard’s Ironjaw #2 (March 1975) and Wulf the Barbarian #2 (April 1975)—drawn respectively by Neal Adams and, perhaps, Pat Broderick. Scripts, respectively, by Michael Fleisher and Larry Hama. Why show you art from the second issues? Because Richard Arndt will write at greater length about Martin Goodman’s mid-’70s barbarian comics in A/E #83. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

Marvel’s persistence in establishing a presence among the more adult black-&-white magazines finally paid off in 1973 with the Conanheadlining Savage Tales #2, continuing from an ill-fated first issue back in 1971 (which had also featured a “Conan” story). By 1974, the magazine had proven successful enough for the launch of a Savage Sword of Conan title—while jungle hero Ka-Zar took over the lead in Savage Tales, and John Jakes’ Conanesque hero Brak the Barbarian appeared in a couple of stories therein. The company’s growing magazine line also afforded opportunities to get Howard’s hero Solomon Kane in on the action (beginning in 1973’s Monsters Unleashed #1 and continuing in the shortlived 1975 magazine Kull and the Barbarians and later in The Savage Sword of Conan and elsewhere). 1975 seems to have been the point where comics publishers decided to go for broke in the sword-and-sorcery sweepstakes. DC touted a bracket of titles rooted squarely in that realm (such as Beowulf, Claw the Unconquered, Stalker, and the more ERB-oriented Warlord), and others that at least featured bare-chested, loin-clothed Stone Age heroes who could be mistaken for barbarians (Tor, Kong the Untamed). Ill-fated upstart Atlas Comics (launched by former Marvel publisher

Martin Goodman and utilizing the name that company had utilized for much of the 1950s) tackled every genre in sight that year and released Wulf the Barbarian and Ironjaw as its s&s offerings. Even Gold Key released a Dagar spin-off, featuring Durak, in the pages of Spine-Tingling Tales #3. Every one of the above was soon cancelled (well, “Durak” had been only a one-shot anyway, and Dagar endured for several years), though Claw and Warlord each got reprieves, the latter actually surviving and even thriving through 1988, when it finally ended with issue #133.

The Road Of Kings Goes Ever Onward… Of all the barbarian-type heroes developed specifically for comic books, though, none penetrated the public consciousness like the character Roy Thomas and Barry Smith introduced in Conan the Barbarian #23 (Feb. 1973), adapting a story and heroine originated by Robert E. Howard himself. Her name was Red Sonja, and she, too, got her own series in 1975, first in Marvel Feature and then in her own title. Though never the sales success of Conan, the “She-Devil with a Sword” continued to pop up regularly, even starring in a movie of her own in 1985… and is currently enjoying a resurgence at Dynamite Comics, with a new film in the works. [Continued on p. 36]

Robert E. Howard’s Legacy In Four Colors—And In Black-&-White

Blood’s Not The Only Thing That’s Red Red Sonja, whose pulp-mag origins are related on the first page of this piece, was first seen in the panels above, from Conan the Barbarian #23 (Feb. 1973), as penciled by Barry Smith and inked by Sal Buscema. Roy Thomas’ script was an adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s non-Conan story “The Shadow of the Vulture,” which was set during the siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1529. She also guest-starred in #24’s “The Song of Red Sonja,” after which she returned to limbo—for a little while. Meanwhile, Spanish artist Esteban Maroto, who’d been drawing for Warren’s b&w magazines, liked what he saw and sent in the illustration at top right, which depicted the heroine in what came to be called an “iron bikini.” Roy liked it—with the result that he immediately worked with Esteban on a “Red Sonja” solo story (near left) that featured her changing clothes—never an ill-advised action for a dusty swordwoman. Both pin-up and story (the latter inked by Neal Adams and Ernie Chan) appeared in The Savage Sword of Conan #1 (1974), the first issue of what was destined to be a two-decade run for Marvel’s most successful black-&-white magazine. We couldn’t mention Big Red, though, without spotlighting a piece of art by her most prominent artist ever, Frank Thorne— as per the drawing at far right that appeared on the cover of the program book for the 1977 Red Sonja Con, hosted by the Delaware Valley Comic Art Associates. Yep, that’s right—Sonja had her own comics convention, which was attended by Frank, Roy, and a host of luscious lovelies costumed as the She-Devil with a Sword! Still more about Sonja to come in a near-future issue of Alter Ego, as well! [Conan page ©2008 Conan Properties International, LLC; Red Sonja art & story ©2008 Red Sonja, LLC.]

Sword-And-Sorcery In The Comics

Conan And Red Sonja Strip! The Conan the Barbarian newspaper comic strip had a two-years-plus run from 1978 through 1981, with regular CTB/Savage Sword artist John Buscema drawing the first episode, then moving on to greener pastures. Seen above is his art for the first Sunday strip, for Sept. 10, 1978. Repro’d from publisher’s proofs sent to writer Roy Thomas by the Register and Tribune Syndicate, Inc. Ofttimes Conan inker (and sometimes penciler) Ernie Chan took over the strip with its second adventure. Seen directly below is his daily for Jan. 25, 1979, which Roy based on a story written for a Conan recording by Len Wein. Red Sonja guested with the Cimmerian in one newspaper episode per year. In this daily (bottom of page) for Feb. 27, 1980, she battles Kull foe Thulsa Doom (before he was shoehorned into the Conan the Barbarian movie a year or two later) for the sorcerous Amphora of Zarfhaana. Thanks for the two dailies to Anthony Snyder—though Roy has a nearly complete collection himself. [Conan strips ©2008 Conan Properties International, LLC; Red Sonja TM & ©2008 Red Sonja, LLC; Thulsa Doom TM & ©2008 Kull Productions, Inc.]

Robert E. Howard’s Legacy In Four Colors—And In Black-&-White

Strangers In Parodies (Clockwise from above left:) Howard goes Hyborian in Howard the Duck #1 (Jan. 1976), courtesy of Steve Gerber & Frank Brunner… Dave Sim’s long-running Cerebus the Aardvark, seen here with both Sophia, who began life as a Red Sonja homage, and Elrod, an Elric homage, on the cover to the collection Swords of Cerebus #1 (January 1981), with thanks to Chris Day… and Sergio Aragonés’ Groo the Wanderer, seen below in wraparound cover art repro’d from a photocopy sent by Mike Burkey. Love the jokers, fellas—but you’d be the first to admit that Conan’s still the best-known of ’em all! [Howard the Duck page ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Cerebus art ©2008 Dave Sim; Groo art ©2008 Sergio Aragonés.]

Sword-And-Sorcery In The Comics

REH Lives! But Robert E. Howard and the worlds he dreamed seem destined to move on down the Road of Kings forever, as witness (clockwise from above left): Marvel kept its Conan license through the 1990s, producing 275 issues of Conan the Barbarian, as well as a couple of hundred other REH-related comics. Britain’s Colin MacNeil drew this stunning cover for Conan the Barbarian #266 (March 1993) to go with Roy T.’s adaptation of the Tor novel Conan the Renegade by Leonard Carpenter. (That’s the L. Sprague de Camp/Lin Carter creation Isparana on our right.) Thanks to Anthony Snyder for the photocopy of the original art. [©2008 Conan Properties International, LLC.] Red Sonja, that Hyborian hybrid of Howard crossed with the concepts of Roy Thomas and original artist Barry Windsor-Smith, is back in a top-selling series of comics from Dynamite Entertainment. Seen here is Cliff Chiang’s original layout for the cover of the Red Sonja: Monster Isle one shot scripted by RT a couple of years back. Shades of Julie Schwartz—Roy wrote the story based on the cover sketch! Thanks to Nick Barrucci. [©2008 Red Sonja, LLC.] Conan is back in comics, too, of course—going strong both in ongoing trade paperback reprints of the Marvel material, and in popular new adventures. Seen here is Greg Ruth’s cover for the trade paperback edition of Conan: Born on the Battlefield, featuring the work of Ruth and of writer Kurt Busiek. Thanks to Philip Simon. [©2008 Conan Properties International, LLC.]

Robert E. Howard’s Legacy In Four Colors—And In Black-&-White

who has outlived all others and is now “the last sorcerer.” Leaving the tavern, Thane travels through some of artist Alex Nino’s most stunning imagery and finally, fatefully, gets the drop on Sharkhan. And, at that moment, Thane reflects on what he’ll have to look forward to thereafter: “the piddling wars and barroom brawls” that will mark time until his death. “When you die, sorcerer… an age dies with you,” the swordsman says to the wizard. “And like it or not—it’s my age, too. We’re both the stuff of song and story now. So work whatever spells you will, Sharkhan, and let our fight continue. This world can use a few legends more!” “The dawn of civilization has come,” Goodwin concludes in a caption. “An older age is passing. Passing… but not yet gone.” [Special thanks from John Wells to Gene Kehoe, Sam Kujava, Roy Thomas, and Mike Tiefenbacher for their generous loans of material for this article. Part II of the “Sword-and-Sorcery in the Comics” series will appear in Alter Ego #83, which will sport an Arthur Suydam cover.] John Wells is an authority on the history of DC Comics and its characters, contributing information to writers such as Kurt Busiek, Steve Gerber, Geoff Johns, Denny O’Neil, Roger Stern, and Mark Waid and acquiring the title of “official unofficial researcher” during the lifespan of Bob Rozakis’ cyberspace “Answer Man” column. More recently, he’s been a presence in TwoMorrows publications such as Alter Ego, Back Issue, and The Flash Companion. The creator of a massive private database of DC Comics character appearances from the past seven decades, John is also known by his online alter ego of Mikishawm. [Continued from p. 31] As the Conan newspaper comic strip was being launched in September of 1978, the sword-and-sorcery boom was waning, with Kull the Destroyer and Red Sonja’s titles ending in ’78 and ’79, respectively. Tacking “the Barbarian” onto a character’s name (first done with the story in 1976’s Howard the Duck #1) was now a good way to get a cheap laugh, but even that had become cringe-inducing by the time Star Trek #10’s “Spock the Barbarian” cover appeared at the end of 1980. On the other hand, the jokes gave us Dave Sim’s Cerebus the Aardvark (1977) and Sergio Aragones’ Groo the Wanderer (1981), more than making up for story titles like “Quimby the Barbarian.” Sword-and-sorcery would rise again in comics, of course, but things were at a low enough ebb in 1979— except of course for the two Conan titles, which were so popular that in 1980 Marvel even launched a third one, King Conan—that one could understand a bit of melancholy on the part of the genre’s fans. Certainly, that’s the vibe one got from Archie Goodwin’s final “Thane” story (published in Creepy #112, Oct. 1979, a decade after the previous episode). Staggering into a tavern, Thane demands two tankards of wine—and someone to remove the arrow that is sticking out his back. (Thank Crom for chain mail!) Now “an aging barbarian,” he is gently mocked for his decline and his obsessive years-long quest for Sharkhan, a mage

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“Comics Were A Stop On The Way To Somewhere Else” Part II Of Our Interview With The Colorful, Controversial— And Talented—LOU CAMERON Conducted by Jim Amash

Transcribed by Brian K. Morris

ou Cameron’s career as a comic book artist during the 1950s began, as he related last issue, with his work for Story/Master/ Premiere/Merit, Ace Periodicals, and St. John Publishing. We pick up the interview at the point where I was asking him about some of the artists and other creative types he met while doing work for Ace. And thanks again to Hames Ware and Arthur Lortie for their contributions, as detailed last month. —Jim.

“I Wasn’t Working On The Superman-Type Things“ JA: Tell me about [artist] Lin Streeter. CAMERON: He worked for Archie, and for Ace. We used to meet at Ace. Lin lived in New Jersey. I think he and his wife lived in a fairly large place. because he came in with a bunch of tomatoes for everybody during tomato season. When you’re growing tomatoes, you don’t know what to do with them—or zucchini, either. [mutual laughter] He was very popular. He used to come into the city in a station wagon. We all had kids, but Lin used to bring all his kids with him. He had like four or five kids, and they were well behaved. He’d leave them out in the reception room when he went in and talked to the editor. He was a very nice guy—a blond, Scandinavian-type guy. He’d been a lifeguard, and he and his wife, among other things, grew Christmas trees over in Jersey. About 1956, I think it was, he had a sudden heart attack. He just suddenly dropped dead. It shocked us all. There was no sign, no warning—he’d had no health problems. He was a big, healthy guy. He looked like [movie actor] Wayne Morris. At one point, he said he could get a couple of us into Archie Comics, but their rates were not that good. And you had to draw in the “Archie style,” and I decided not to work there. Later, I had a similar problem at DC. I had my own style, which editor Jack Schiff was happy with, but they wanted to me to do the tight underwear-type guys. Every strip that they had—I wasn’t working on the Superman-type things—but everybody in all of their strips had to look like that. It was the same style of inking. JA: At that time, DC’s house style was kind-of like Dan Barry or Alex Toth. Would they actually tell you to draw like Dan Barry or Toth? CAMERON: Yes, they wanted that style. I preferred to do highcontrast art, but they liked the color-separation type of work. For instance, Alice Kirkpatrick, whom we talked about before, was a great inker, and inked her own stuff. And I saw her pencils. It would be at Bob MacLeod’s

Fated To Be A Comic Book Artist—For A While As a reminder of what Lou and Jim talked about last issue: here’s our sole recent pic of Lou Cameron, eyeing his splash page for Ace Periodicals’ The Hand of Fate #19 (Aug. 1953). Thanks to Lou for the photo, and to Michael T. Gilbert for the page scan. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

being lettered, and the panels were full of stick figures. There was practically nothing there, just basic indications of where the balloons went. And then she would take these figures and, working freehand—she had sort-of a semi-dry brush effect--she would just put dots in and they would turn into a face and she’d have no outline. The coloring people had trouble

“Comics Were A Stop On The Way To Somewhere Else”

listed in the Checklist following this interview. —Jim.] JA: Do you remember any of the writers at Ace? CAMERON: No. The writers were trying to go on to greater things, too. They were getting $50, $75 a script, hoping to get into grownup writing, and they didn’t sign their stuff. A lot of stuff was not signed. This is what makes it so difficult in talking to guys in your generation, because a lot of the work that I did—a lot of the people involved, no names were exchanged. They were like people you meet in the whorehouse. [mutual laughter]

“I Went Down To The Kefauver Hearings” JA: Except all the guys are “John Smith” there. Do you remember how much Ace paid you? CAMERON: They paid $30 a page, and they went to $32. Then they cut back when things got tight, and they went back down to $30, and that’s about the time I left. Things got tight because of Dr. Wertham and Senator Kefauver, and that crap. Now that was disgusting. That, more or less, caused me to ask myself, “What am I doing here?” I went down to the Kefauver hearings. I went down to testify against Dr. Wertham because I had done a Classics Illustration adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson. And Wertham, on the radio—we were listening—said, “In this Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Mr. Hyde murders this little girl, and he’s not brought to justice.” I said, “Schmuck! I mean, he’s killed! He’s lying dead on his laboratory floor. What do you mean, he wasn’t brought to justice? Plus, he never killed any little girl. I drew the damned thing! It may be in the book, but I didn’t draw a picture of a little girl being killed.” So I took a copy of it down there, and they didn’t want to hear from me. I wanted to put it in as evidence. I said, “I want to put this in as Exhibit XYZ,” and they wouldn’t let me play. JA: When you went down there, who did you talk to?

The Strange Case Of Dr. Wertham And Mr. Hyde Cameron’s splash page for the Classics Illustrated #13 re-adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, originally published for Oct. 1953. Lou says that, when he heard Fredric Wertham discussing that comic book on radio, he wondered if he’d ever actually read it—but maybe the good Doctor was talking about the earlier version of that tale drawn for CI (then still called Classic Comics) by Arnold Lorne Hicks. That edition took a few more liberties with the original story. For a quintessential history of the CI series, order a copy of William B. Jones, Jr.’s, book Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History, with Illustrations, from McFarland Press. [©2008 First Classics, Inc.; by permission of Jack Lake Productions, Inc.]

with her stuff, because it was more like a pulp illustration from the old pulp magazines. She would have been better at that stuff. And a lot of times, instead of drawing a lapel on a suit, she would just have one shadow. You could tell the guy had a lapel because you could see the shadow, but when you looked closer, there wasn’t any lapel drawn in. She would ink the slash down the chest, and then the notch. She would do two little dashes of black, and that was it. She was a fantastically good artist. JA: While you worked for Ace, you said your first writing was with Bernard Baily. Did you write any of your stories for Ace Comics? CAMERON: No, I don’t believe I did. For Bill Friedman [at Story] I did mostly horror stories. I’d tell him what I was going to do. And then I went home and did it. I wrote a couple of Westerns: “Pawnee Bill,” and I did a “Something-Arrow.“ I guess it was “Golden Arrow,“ a feature about a kid that grew up as an Indian, but he was a white kid and he had blond hair. [“Golden Arrow“ was a Fawcett feature; either Lou drew that character or else a similar one for Friedman—probably the Golden Warrior title

CAMERON: The bailiff. You couldn’t get to Kefauver. He was very important. Whomever I talked to didn’t want to be confused by facts. Then the Army-McCarthy thing came up, and the Kefauver Committee never found anything out. They left! They went to lynch McCarthy, and the case against comics was never decided one way or the other. The publishers chickened out. They set up this board to certify that the stuff was pure, nobody was being bad in the thing, no pornography, and a lot of the stuff that Wertham had sobbed about. I was loaded for bear. I wanted to know how many comic books Billy the Kid or Attila the Hun or Jack the Ripper ever read. Comic books were causing all the crimes, and I said, “Sure!” Yes, a deranged person could read a comic book or hear a joke—I mean, these terrorists in the Middle East right now, they’re reading the Koran. There’s nothing in the Koran that tells them to blow themselves up, but they’re doing it. I was disgusted with the Wertham business. I was also disgusted with the wimpiness of the publishers, and I said, “Why don’t they fight?” Well, Fred Gardener tried to fight them. Fred Gardener was a prince of the Catholic Church. He had some title, and the Archdiocese of New York went into a thing about the romance comics, and so forth and so on. [chuckles] As a matter of fact, Gardener called the Archbishop and said, “Your Holiness, this is Fred Gardener at Ace Comics. What’s this crap about our comics being bad for kids? Where in our comics have any rapes occurred? We have never done that stuff ! For Christ’s sakes, they’re put out by Ma Wyn! There are no illegitimate children, there’s no incest, there’s nothing going on! This is pure housewives’ escapism, for housewives who can’t read.” They got carried away there for a very short time and it was the fad; comics were causing all the bad things that were happening.

The Colorful, Controversial—And Talented—Lou Cameron

JA: Did your friends know you did comics? CAMERON: Oh, sure. I wasn’t hiding it. JA: Did you get any grief in your personal life when Kefauver and Wertham were doing their crusades? CAMERON: No. I always felt that comics had not lived up to its potential. I always thought that, for instance, Classics Illustrated could have been an art form, but it was not done because the people doing it were not paying attention. It was being done like it was just Westerns. I was knocking it out because I wanted to earn a living. In fact, my whole attitude toward everything I’ve ever written was summed up years and years ago. I was sitting up in the Chateau Henri IV with a very nice young English girl I was trying to impress—I was between engagements at the time—and she went into the “Why-did-I-write-the-genre-stuff?” You know, the detectives and the Westerns and so forth: why didn’t I go into great literature? I gave her what Louis Lamour had already said. He said he didn’t understand why a Western was not literature, but growing up with a Jewish mother in Brooklyn was literature. He didn’t understand it. Anyhow, I said, “I write these things because they pay me. Nobody wants me to write Portnoy’s Complaint-type stuff.” So she said, “Well, if

you didn’t have to write—” I said, “Well, I have to write because I don’t know how to repair television sets. I mean, it’s a job.” She said, “Well, supposing you were wealthy, supposing you had the money, and so forth, and had the leisure, and you could write anything you wanted.” I said, “You mean if I was independently wealthy? Like a dilettante? Why in the hell would anybody in his right mind sit down at a typewriter for 12 hours when he could be out surfing? I mean, it’s ridiculous! I write because I’m making a living at it. I mean, that’s it, period.” And that’s been my attitude through the whole thing. JA: What would you have liked to have done in comics to elevate it? CAMERON: For instance, the Classics Illustrated scripts I got were abominable, and I thought with a little bit more effort, they could—they did do one thing until they went under with the wrong editor; in the beginning, they stuck to the story. They followed the story’s script exactly because kids bought a Classics Illustrated when they had a book report. Instead of reading the book—“I don’t want to read Ivanhoe. I’ll get the Classics Illustrated Ivanhoe, and I’ll do a book report on it.” But the thing was that they were Ivanhoe on the rocks. They were very, very primitive, and I always thought they could have done a better job. That’s the whole publishing business in its entirety: they chisel, they

War Of The Words Lou will have plenty to say about his Classics Illustrated work later in the interview. Meanwhile, here are his painted cover and the penultimate interior page from what many consider one of the best-done issues in the entire CI run: H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (Jan. 1955). The Martians’ machines have never looked better! [©2008 First Classics, Inc.; by permission of Jake Lake Productions, Inc.]

“Comics Were A Stop On The Way To Somewhere Else”

don’t want to pay enough, and if they paid a little bit better and put a little more effort into it, they could turn out a much better product. People ask me all the time, “Why did they put out the same old crap over and over again?” Well, they put out the same crap over and over again because they hire editors who aren’t very good editors. The guy wants to keep his job, and he doesn’t want to take a chance. [mock-nervously] “The guy’s come in with a thing called The Godfather. I’ve never read anything like The Godfather before. Let’s stick to The Sopranos,” and that’s what they do. And there’s this tendency to do this in the artwork even more, because we’ve talked about some of the people who’re putting out comics. They sort-of fell into putting out comics. I mean, even if those like Billy Friedman were okay, a lot of them were con men. Walter T. Johnson was one of the biggest con men in the business, a convincing talker and an inveterate womanizer. He’d get paid and wouldn’t do the work. Finally Unger locked him in a hotel room with packs of Bromo-Seltzer and said, “You aren’t coming out of there until you finish those 20 pages.” He eventually wound up in jail. He’d steal from his friends. He once borrowed a car and didn’t return it. The guy wanted his car back, and had Johnson arrested. He was completely irresponsible. A tall, good looking man—the comics’ version of Errol Flynn, but he wasn’t as responsible because Flynn showed up for work. Johnson was one of those characters who made it hard for people to break into the business. He’d make it hard for editors to trust other people. Everywhere he worked, he caused trouble and was difficult.

Johnson & Johnson Walter T. Johnson, as per a photo that appeared in A/E #53, courtesy of Mike Esposito—and a Johnson splash for Story’s Mysterious Adventures #1 (March 1951), courtesy of Chris Brown. The art was signed in the first story panel. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

He came from the South and didn’t understand why people got mad at him. Once, he said to [Story co-publisher] Unger, “I’d do anything for you, even pick cotton!” Unger said, “I don’t want you to pick cotton. I want you to finish drawing my comics.” JA: How worried were you about the future of comics because of all the crap that went on? CAMERON: Well, they started cutting the rates. Fortunately, I had started writing and illustrating men’s magazines. When they cut the rates, I just left. “Well, have a nice time. I‘ll see you around the campus.” I bailed out. I stayed in publishing, but I just figured the comics had had it. One of the things that happened is a lot of the cheap bastards used it as an excuse. “We can’t pay you because the comics aren’t selling.” And you ask, “Well, are you cutting the price of the magazines? Kids are still paying, aren’t they?” They were using this crisis to beat down the creators, and a lot of pros just said, “The hell with you guys.” Mario Rizzi went into the shoe business in Texas. Alice Kirkpatrick owned an apartment house somewhere, and she did very well in the artwork after she left comics. The most successful ones didn’t go down with the ship when they had the big crash. By this time, comics were for people who didn’t have a television, but had a dime. Comics did recover somewhat, but there was also this period when companies like Charlton were paying something like $15 a page, and thought they were doing you a favor. Charlton had moved up to Connecticut, and they had everybody up there at their mercy. The guys had actually followed them. They had worked for them in New York. I had done some work for them in New York and they invited me to come live with them and I said, “No, no, no. [chuckles] I don’t want to go to Connecticut with you guys.” They were paying normally in New York, but

when they got up to Connecticut, they cut their prices.

“We Had A Deadline, And We Weren’t Being Paid Much” JA: When you did that work for Charlton, who did you deal with? Al Fago? CAMERON: I worked for him when they were in New York, before they went up to Connecticut. JA: When you drew your stories, did you pencil directly on the board, or did you do thumbnails first? CAMERON: No thumbnails. I started straight out. You’ve got to understand we had a deadline, and we weren’t being paid much. A few years ago, there was a once-a-week get-together, and this one female writer named Cathy... we were talking about how many pages a day we do, and so forth. She was saying she could only get out three pages a day. I said, “Cathy, if I cranked out three pages a day, I’d starve to death.” “How many pages do you do?” I said, “Well, between 10 and 30.” And she said, “I hate you, I hate you.” [Jim laughs] I said, “Well, you have to knock them out. And that’s what God made editors for. They correct misspelling. Don’t worry about it. Knock the damn thing out and turn it in. They’re not going to pay you any more for perfection.” So that’s been, more or less, my attitude towards the thing from the beginning. So I did as little as possible, but of course you can do more. I liked the people at Ace, and they gave me enough time, and I would tend to doodle. Some of the other artists would get mad at me because I put too much into it. Like in the horror stories: I’d throw my own skeletons in and some of the people would say, “Why are you putting all this work into the damn thing? You’re making the rest of us look bad.” Then when I would get a cheap place—you know, a guy would want to pay me $14 a page—he

The Colorful, Controversial—And Talented—Lou Cameron

would get lots of silhouettes, [mutual laughter] and lots and lots of inbetween-panel ripplings, with few backgrounds. Well, as you know since you draw yourself, you can do a good job or you can do a crappy job. The hell of it is, especially with people who don’t want to pay you, they don’t see the difference. So why kill yourself? JA: How many pages a day did you draw? CAMERON: I could draw the whole thing over the weekend, but I usually penciled maybe three or four a day. Inking took a little less time because you had to think while you were penciling. JA: How complete were your pencil pages? CAMERON: Fairly complete. I didn’t do any shading or anything; they were just line drawings, pretty close to what I was going to ink. Then I did the shading and everything when I inked. I told you how Alice Kirkpatrick worked: stick figures, just basically “the girl’s head goes here, the boy’s head goes there,” and no backgrounds. She worked almost entirely in ink, did a lot of drybrush. She influenced me. I did some drybrush towards the end. JA: You were also influenced by Edd Cartier and Hal Foster. What did you take from their work? CAMERON: I tried to draw like them. I never managed it; they were both very good. Cartier was in the pulps. He did a lot of stuff for Unknown Worlds, he did The Shadow, and Astounding. In Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, my Mr. Hyde was swiped from one of Cartier’s monsters. And Hal Foster, of course, drew the original Tarzan and Prince Valiant. JA: You mentioned Sy Grudko. Is there anything about him that you remember?

The one good thing about the New York publishing field is that sort of thing doesn’t happen often, because the readership does not see you. It was unimportant to the scene. And there were editors who’d be Jewish or Catholic. There were all types of guys in the business, and it never came up. Grudko bringing it up was a no-no. So he hadn’t felt as American as he thought he had. But he evoked that, trying to get work, and that was a big mistake. I didn’t know about it. This was after I had dealt with him. Had I known that, I never would have turned So It Seems over to him. Yeah, he had a little bit of a chip on his shoulder, and I don’t know... his basic problem was that he wasn’t that talented. He was an okay artist, but you can’t think of anything he ever drew that you would remember. JA: You did the So It Seems newspaper comic strip from 1951 to 1952. Tell me about it. CAMERON: That was a comic strip for Bell Syndicate. It was a short feature, usually four panels, and it would be about a certain guy as he looks. The office big shot as he looks to the office personnel, as he looks to his secretary, as he looks to different people. One of them was Elvis as he looks to the girls, he’s an idol on a pedestal; as he looks to music fans, he’s a corn cob, and so on. But my experience with Bell was not happy, so I left them. The reason I left—you should know this, they do this to people: they used me as a loss leader. They had comics on the ropes like Mutt and Jeff, and their salesmen would say, “Well, if you will take Mutt and Jeff at our usual price, we’ll throw in Cameron’s strip for a dollar a week.” What was happening was, I was getting less than a $100 check, and this went on for a while, and I couldn’t understand why, because I was getting more and more papers. Finally, I called somebody I knew at the Brooklyn Eagle, which was still in business, and they told me, “Sure, we’re running that strip and paying a dollar.” I said, “You can’t get a strip for a

CAMERON: Sy was kind-of a strange guy. He was a little abrasive. He made enemies, but I got along okay with him. He’d been in the Merchant Marines, I believe, and then he went to Israel and fought in the ’48 war for Israel. And then he started to run into all these restrictions. You know, like he was not on a kosher diet. “If I want some pastrami, I want some pastrami.” And suddenly, they started getting strict with him on his religion. He had an interesting observation. He came back after they won, and he said that when the rabbis took over, he suddenly realized, “I’m not a Zionist, I’m an American. What am I doing in this country?” He came back and he said it was very liberating. He no longer felt as Jewish when he came back. He used to feel, basically, he was a Jewish guy living in America. But after his experience in Israel, he felt like an American who found himself in Israel, and it changed his whole attitude. Sy did a lot of one-page fillers for everybody. I think he packaged them. I think he wrote and drew them himself— one-pagers like “The True Story of The Velvet Kid,” for example. [NOTE: A page of Sy Grudko art was printed last issue. —Jim.] If you made a movie about him, you’d use a young Walter Matthau. He was a pleasant enough guy, not that great an artist, and he rubbed a couple of editors wrong. He did one thing that was a big mistake, and he got blacklisted at Ace because Mac Phillips was Jewish. Grudko wanted an assignment, but Phillips had given them all out. Grudko said to him, “What kind of a Jew are you? You know that I need work, and you give the work to goyims.” “Goyim” is a not-nice word for “Christian.” So Mac says, “You’re the kind of a kike that starts pogroms. You can get the hell out of here. You are not going to get any business out of Ace while I’m here.” He was furious, almost came out from behind his desk.

Forbidden Fruits Since we’ve been unable to track down any precise artwork that Cameron did for Charlton during the 1950s, here’s something he definitely did draw—and even signed—for the American Comics Group, which isn’t discussed in this interview or listed in the Who’s Who: a splash page from Forbidden Worlds #5 (March 1952), courtesy of both Michael T. Gilbert and Spiros Xenos. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

“Comics Were A Stop On The Way To Somewhere Else”

deal with them at all? CAMERON: Norman Maurer, no. Matt Baker was the art director, and of course I knew his work, so we hit it off right away. He was the art director after Latham, mostly for St. John’s regular magazines. They did a poor man’s Playboy—forgot the name of it—and he got a rotten break. He looked like very much the impression that you got from Cab Calloway... a distinguished-looking guy. The subject of color never came up, which is the best way. I worked with several blacks in the business: there was a guy named Reilly [sp?], too. I don’t remember his first name. Reilly and I went into a joint lawsuit. We tried to get some money out of a schlock outfit that wouldn’t pay, and we used Nat Rothstein to represent us, and he got us something like 50¢ on a dollar. A bunch of us threw in together. I told the guys, “We’re not going to get paid unless we sue this schmuck. I got a lawyer, and he’s already collected for me.“ So we all got together. It was a one-shot comic book for Pete Martin Publications. He pleaded poverty. He commuted. He had a house in Malibu, and he went home to Malibu on the weekends, and owned the building in the Village, but he couldn’t pay you. [chuckles] The cash flow problem was bothering him. Anyhow, Reilly was part of the business, and as I said, the race subject never came up. He didn’t feel upset that he was black and they wouldn’t pay him. He was upset that they wouldn’t pay him. He was strictly business.

A Jewel Of A Story, No Doubt! We shot our wad last issue with the only art we had on hand by Sy Grudko— but here’s another ACG splash by Lou from that era, this one from a b&w reprint of Adventures into the Unknown #34 (Aug. 1952). Thanks to Spiros Xenos.[©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

dollar a week.” Well, from a syndicate, you could. So I thought, “Uh-oh, that’s not good.” I sold that strip to Sy Grudko for a dollar and other considerations. I wanted out of the contract, and Sy took it over. He had it for a while, and then I think he had the same problem. They weren’t paying him, so he quit.

Matt Baker was a very affable, very friendly guy, as well as a hell of an artist. But the screwing he got was that Archer St. John, the publisher— who was a bit of a character—died in the apartment of his mistress, and that was not a happy scene. Archer St. John’s wife put their son in charge, and the son proceeded to get rid of everybody that had known about his father and his father’s scandalous carrying on. I ran into Matt after it happened, outside of Bloomingdale’s Department Store, and he was really pissed. He said, “You know, the hell of it is I didn’t even know he had a mistress. [mutual laughter] Why did they fire me because the old man was screwing around?” He said this incompetent kid came in and swept house, fired everybody, and they went under. Matt said the kid was a nice kid, but didn’t know how to run a publishing house.

Somebody had to do the strip. Lin Streeter wouldn’t have wanted it. Bill Fraccio would have said “No.” A guy who could get a couple hundred dollars for a comic book assignment, he wouldn’t want to do a thing for $60 a week. And you know, it was shortsighted. Grudko ran it for a while, I think until the end of the year. I think he filled out the contract, and then told them to go screw themselves.

“[Matt Baker and I] Hit It Off Right Away” JA: You told me that you don’t remember working for Famous Funnies or Fiction House, so let‘s go on to St. John. I have you working there 1952 and 1953. CAMERON: Yes. The editor’s name was Latham, whom I mentioned earlier as briefly editing at Ace. He died of tuberculosis, and wasn’t in good health when I knew him. A nice guy, very quiet, maybe in his 40s. JA: I have you doing miscellaneous horror stories, and a feature called “The Texan.” CAMERON: I don’t remember “The Texan.” JA: How would you find out about these companies? Would you go to the newsstands, and see who the publishers were? CAMERON: Well, actually, Latham called and asked if I wanted to work for him. So I went over to see him. They were on Madison Avenue, I think at Madison and 44th. They were caddy-corner to Billy Friedman. JA: Joe Kubert and Norman Maurer were there editing books. Did you

Out Of The Weird Work This Lou Cameron splash, done for St. John’s Weird Horrors #9 (Oct. 1953), was provided by both Michael T. Gilbert and Chris Brown. Thanks, guys! [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

The Colorful, Controversial—And Talented—Lou Cameron

ran into Matt, and he told me what happened. I said, “Well, now I know why I couldn’t get in the door. I was one of the old group.” And of course, they went out of business because, I mean, you at least have to talk to the distributor. [laughs] It won’t work.

“[Al] Kantor Came Up With The Idea Of Classics Illustrated” JA: How did you get to Classics Illustrated? CAMERON: Same deal. They approached me. I guess they learned of me through Norman Nodel, who we called “Noodle.” He was a character. He looked like a handsome Mel Torme. The first editor I worked for was Mike Kaplan. Al Kantor was the publisher, the guy who invented Classics in ’41. I never met him, and I’m just as glad, from what I’ve heard. Mike Kaplan was very easy to get along with. JA: Classics Illustrated had a reputation of being very nitpicky about details, historical details and stuff, in their books. Did you find that to be true? CAMERON: Well, let me tell you the whole thing, okay? Mike Kaplan did

Baker, Bonds, And Blondes Matt Baker’s life and art were spotlighted in A/E #47. This photo of the thenrespected, now-legendary African-American comic book artist was provided by his half-brother, Fred Robinson, and his nephew, Matt D. Baker. The splash page above is from St. John’s Authentic Police Cases #18 (April 1951), courtesy of Michaël Dewally. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

Matt had a very relaxed way of talking; he talked man-to-man about publishing, and that‘s all we talked about. That one time that he was sore and told me about what had happened to him—that’s how I knew what happened to him—but that’s the only personal thing I ever heard from him. JA: When you worked for St. John, was it the same sort of situation as working for Ace? CAMERON: Yes, though I didn’t do that much for them. I would take the stuff in, and I’d pick up another manuscript, and again, they were lettered by MacLeod, too. I think that’s how Latham knew me. JA: Did you write anything for St. John, or did you just draw for them? CAMERON: Later, I wrote for them. It was toward the end of my comic career, and I’d started writing, and sold St. John a couple of short stories for their men’s magazine. It was just about that time, I didn’t know why, but all of a sudden, the door was closed. Nobody at St. John’s wanted to talk to me. So I thought, “Well, I don’t know what I did, but okay.” Then I

Classics Of Their Kind Classics Illustrated page drawn by Lou’s benefactor, Norman Nodel—from The Man Who Laughs (whose 1928 movie adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel about a man whose torture-scarred face is cast In an eternal smile is believed by many to be one of the inspirations for Batman’s nemesis, The Joker). With thanks to Jim Ludwig and William B. Jones, Jr. [©2008 First Classics, Inc.; by permission of Jack Lake Productions, Inc.]

“Comics Were A Stop On The Way To Somewhere Else”

insist on absolute strict sticking to the script, and he was the one who explained to me that we have to stick to the script because the kids buy these books to do their book reports. If we’ve changed it, if we did a Hollywood ending and we’d let the heroine live, [chuckles] it won’t work. The kid will turn in a book report and get a bad grade, and they’ll never buy another Classic. Al began to have problems with assistants who were thrust upon him by the front office. He told me this—I’m not telling stories out of school here—Kantor and company were super Zionists. They were on the subject and someone—it was Bob MacLeod--brought a new shirt of Egyptian drip-dry cotton. The drip-dry shirts were then new—this was in the ’50s—now all shirts are drip dry. Bob bought this new shirt, you didn’t have to iron it, and he was bragging about it. Kaplan said to him, “For Christ’s sake, don’t say that around here. You don’t say you buy Egyptian cotton. If they hear about this in the front office, they’ll blacklist you.” Bob says, “Oh, you’re kidding.” Al says, “I’m not kidding. They are very serious on this subject. They’re sending lots of money to Israel, and they’re very excited about it.” So apparently Roberta Strauss had emigrated from Israel and needed a job. A petite brunette, but a horrible little woman. You saw All about Eve.

A Tale Told By An Iliad Don C. may feel that Alex Blum was “not a very good artist”—and certainly his style had a slightly archaic look—but, at age ten, Ye Editor was so taken by his 1950 art for the Classics Illustrated take on The Iliad that he sought out the real thing, and now ranks Homer’s epic poem as his favorite work of literature. Roy recently adapted that tale of the Trojan War for the Marvel Illustrated series, and just hopes it measures up to the version by Blum and an undeservedly anonymous author—though Helen should’ve been a blonde. [©2008 First Classics, Inc.; by permission of Jack Lake Productions, Inc.]

Well, Roberta came in to be Al’s assistant and she was doing an All about Eve. She was after his job, and it was so obvious and so blatant. He was a man of destiny who was busy, and she was “assisting” him and sabotaging. First of all, she was obviously sabotaging any Gentiles that were working there, and Gentile writers or artists; they did not belong there. Norman, who was Jewish, told Al, “Al, you’re going to have to hear this from a Lundsman. That bitch is after your job!” Al did not listen and the next thing we knew, she was sitting in Al’s seat, and he was working on an encyclopedia somewhere. She took over and drove the company into the ground. I did not last too much longer there. The Jewish writers from the old regime couldn’t stand her, so they left. She got all new writers and artists, made enemies right and left, and the company went under. JA: But they lasted up through the ’60s.

Not Lou’s Downfall, At Least Cameron considers his art for the Classics Illustrated edition of The Downfall some of his best work. So does William B. Jones, Jr., author of the hardcover study of that company and genre mentioned on p. 37. Thanks to Bill for providing this scan from the adaptation of what he terms “Emile Zola’s Ironic novel of the Franco-Prussian War.” [©2008 First Classics, Inc.; by permission of Jack Lake Productions, Inc.]

CAMERON: Well, they mostly lasted doing reprints. One of the best things I did for them was called The Downfall. I had done it under Al, and I had signed my name. I used a lot of good swipes, and when it was reprinted after she became the editor, guess what happened to my signature? It wasn’t there anymore, and I mean that’s pretty petty. And Nodel’s signature vanished on the ones that he had done. Everyone

The Colorful, Controversial—And Talented—Lou Cameron

Time For A Change Cameron’s other adaptation of an H.G. Wells novel was The Time Machine. CI‘s editor insisted he change every page in the 44-page story to show the unnamed Time Traveler in a suit rather than in “riding britches and a sweater”—and Lou says the scripter wasn’t much help with panel descriptions that often read simply “Them!” [©2008 First Classics, Inc.; by permission of Jack Lake Productions, Inc.]

disliked her equally. I thought it was just me, but [laughs] it was everybody. She managed to destroy the company, and made nothing but enemies for them. JA: For a little while, there was an editor there named Alex Blum. CAMERON: Alex Blum worked for them. He started as an artist and he was, unfortunately, not a very good artist. He was a friend of Kantor’s. They’d known each other way, way back in the old days. Kantor came up with the idea of Classics Illustrated [originally Classic Comics]. It was a good idea, done badly, but a good idea. Blum did the first Classics Illustrateds, and they were not too well-illustrated. Finally, Mike Kaplan replaced him, then Kantor brought him back for old time’s sake. Blum was not a bad guy. I got along okay with him. He was a sort-of what they call a “nebbish.” But Roberta would insist on corrections. I only did a very few stories for her, and I finally decided she just wasn’t worth it. I was in the process of doing The Time Machine for them. Al had assigned it to me, and she took over in the middle of it. I turned the thing in and she wanted me to change the costume of the unknown Time Traveler. I had originally—for the sake of action because he was supposedly in the 1890s—I had him in riding pants and a turtleneck sweater, which allowed me to show his physique, because he had to do a lot of jumping and twisting and turning. She said that she always pictured the Time Traveler of H.G. Wells in a

suit. He was back in the Gay ’90s, he should have been dressed up, she thought. I said, “The Time Traveler is not described, Roberta. If you read the book, he’s not described, the time machine’s not described, and that’s allowed me the leeway. Every time they’ve made a movie of it, the time machine has looked different. The thing was very lightly described, and, taking advantage of it, I thought the guy going on an adventure in a time machine would be dressed like he would go out into the country, so I had him in riding britches and a sweater.” “No, no, no, it has to be changed.” So I had to change every damn panel, white the guy out, and do him over again in a suit. And the stuff had already been approved because Al accepted it. That was about the end of things. And they weren’t paying me much, maybe $23 a page. They were paying a good check only because you got a whole book to do. JA: Did someone else write the scripts, or were you adapting them yourself? CAMERON: No, the scripts were written by someone else, and they were not written well. I was not terribly thrilled. Sometimes I had or had not read the book, and whoever was writing the scripts was giving them the scripts for what they were paying him because many a panel would say, “Them.” [chuckles] That would be the description. You know, no dialogue and the guy lands, and the Morlocks are coming after him, and the wording on the panel would be, “Them!” Then it says, “Have your Time

“Comics Were A Stop On The Way To Somewhere Else”

Traveler fighting with the Morlocks.” Next panel: “Time traveler running from the Morlocks.” [mutual chuckling] “I got away!” [more mutual laughter] It was not a happy thing.

CAMERON: No, they paid at the end of the whole thing. It usually took me a couple of weeks to do a book for them. JA: Would you have liked to have written any of these stories?

JA: There were more big panels in Gilberton’s Classics Illustrated stuff than some of the other comics you were doing. So that would have made it a little easier for you, wouldn’t it?

CAMERON: I would have liked to have written a lot of the stuff that I did, which is why I started writing.

CAMERON: Yes. Well, there again, with the scriptwriter: he’s not getting paid. Why should I put seven panels on this thing? I can get away with four.

JA: Right, but I’m just envisioning you drawing this stuff and I know you had to be thinking to yourself, “I can write better than this.” Why did you not approach them to write?

JA: Did you turn your book in in chapters, or did you not come back until the whole thing was done?

CAMERON: Well, first of all, you’re breaking another guy’s rice bowl. I mean, the guy had a job, and you don’t go and say, “Why do you have this guy writing for you? I’ll write for you and he can whistle ‘Dixie.’” You don’t want to cut another guy off.

CAMERON: No, I’d take the penciling in to Mike Kaplan, and he would approve it. Then I would take the job over to Bob while I was town, and he would letter it. I would pick it up a couple of days later, take it home, ink it, and turn it in. JA: Once the penciling was approved, did you get a check for the penciling then, or did you only get paid for the whole job?

JA: So you were being very conscious of other people’s jobs. A lot of people weren’t like that. Did you ink all your Classics work? CAMERON: Yes.

“[Norman Nodel] Threw A Thousand-Dollar Job My Way” JA: Did you know anybody else at Classics Illustrated? CAMERON: Norman was the guy I knew best. I think Jim McLaughlin did some work for them, and maybe Ken Rice, too. Norman was famous because he went up to Avon, and there was a kickback editor there who said, “I’m going to agent for you on this job.” JA: Was that Sol Cohen? CAMERON: Yes. Norman said, “You’re gonna what? You’re talking about a kickback?” And he dragged Cohen across the desk and beat the hell out of him. Needless to say, he didn’t do any more work for Avon. [mutual laughter] But Norman was a very nice guy. He threw a thousand-dollar job my way one time, and I was never able to pay him back. I tried over the years. When I started writing, I tried to get Norm because he was a very good artist, very qualified. I tried to get him some cover work, but I didn’t have enough clout. Norm once called me, “Lou, I’ve got a fast thousand bucks. Are you interested?” I said, “Yeah.“ He said, “Well, be advised I don’t care for this guy. There’s a guy packaging a thing. He’s an agent and has a so-so reputation, but I’ve done some work for him, and he’s paid me, but we’re not getting along too well. Do you want to see him?” So I went to see the guy in the Squibb Building, and the job was a story about [movie actor] James Dean, who’d just died. They wanted to do a quick biography of Dean, and Norm had actually done the big picture of Dean for the cover. The agent had a very, very shady reputation and a fake French accent... maybe it was French. But I understand the family that he claimed to be from sued him. He claimed to be from the same family as the Marquis de Lafayette, and they didn’t care for this too much.

“Don’t Screw Around With Davy Crockett” At the height of the Davy Crockett craze launched by the Disney TV series, Cameron drew the legend-encumbered frontiersman for both Classics Illustrated and Ace Periodicals. Here’s a climactic full-page scene from CI #129 (Nov. 1955). [©2008 First Classics, Inc.; by permission of Jack Lake Productions, Inc.]

He told me what was involved, and gave me the script, and as we were talking, he said, [thick French accent] “Cameron, Cameron, what sort of a name — ? That is not a Jewish name.” I said, “No, it’s Scotch.” He said, “Ahh, then we do not need a contract.” And something in the back of my mind went, “BOINNGGG!!!” I said, “No, I think we do need a contract.” So I got a contract and I got paid. That was a thousand bucks that Norman threw my way. And when the comic business was folding up, and a thousand dollars—it had the buying power of ten thousand today—so it was a nice chunk of change to give a guy. And we didn’t know each other that well. We were only on friendly terms. Anyhow, that more or less was the kind of guy that Norman was. Everybody liked him, he was very friendly, and as I just said, very generous.

The Colorful, Controversial—And Talented—Lou Cameron

Goodbye, Columbus Don both painted the cover of The Man Who Discovered America (in Classics Illustrated’s Picture Progress series, Vol. 3, #1, Sept. 1955) and drew the interior art. With thanks to John Haufe. [©2008 First Classics, Inc.; by permission of Jack Lake Productions, Inc.]

JA: For Classics, you did Davy Crockett, considering how popular Davy Crockett became in the ’50s because of Walt Disney...

publisher had expected me to go. Instead of me, she went and accepted my reward; then they sent it to me.

CAMERON: I did Davy Crockett for Classics, I did Davy Crockett for Ace. I don’t screw around with Davy Crockett! [mutual laughter] Everybody did Davy Crockett.

JA: You did not find out about the award until after it was given?

JA: Did you like that character? CAMERON: Not really. I did them both fast. I wasn’t paid too much, and they were in a rush. And neither job is very good, neither job is one of my favorites. Lots of big heads and silhouettes. JA: Was there a Classics job that you were particularly happy with. CAMERON: I think I enjoyed The Time Machine as much as any of them. I got to play with that. JA: When you were doing something like The Life of Christopher Columbus— CAMERON: Oh, that’s Classics Illustrated. I got a prize for that. I got the Thomas Edison Award, for Best Children’s Comic Book. I think it was 1956. Anyhow, they had a dinner. The invitation was sent to me to appear at the dinner and get my award, which was a framed thing to hang on the wall. They didn’t bother to tell me. Roberta went to the dinner, and accepted my reward for me. It was very sweet of her. [laughs] The

CAMERON: I found out when they mailed me it to me: “Here’s your reward, schmuck.” JA: Well, you could have gone to the dinner yourself. CAMERON: Of course. I was invited. She was sitting in the chair that I was invited to sit in. [Jim sighs] “Accepting for Lou Cameron is Roberta Whack-whack, who’s out to get rid of him.” JA: How much research did you put into the work you did there? CAMERON: With the Columbus book, I actually went up to the New York Historical Society and sketched their model of the Santa Maria. It’s probably not what the Santa Maria looked like, but it’s their version. Of course, the drawings of the clothing, and so forth, were available; so was the encyclopedia. The amount of research I did depended on the story. I usually could get a library book that had what I needed. I rather enjoyed doing The Downfall, which was the story of the Franco-Prussian War. In that case, I went to a military store that had playing cards of uniforms, and I got the uniforms for the French from the Franco-Prussian War, and used it on my

“Comics Were A Stop On The Way To Somewhere Else”

characters. The rest: I stole some—I was never that good on the women. I used to swipe the women, and I had some good swipes on the girls for the costumes. That was about it.

JA: Right, but it’s people like you who can put a human face on names like Matt Baker or Norman Nodel, and bring them to life for people like me who care. And of course, we learn about you, too.

“You Have The Feeling That We Were Like The Algonquin Round Table”

You started at Timely. These are the dates that I have for you: 1955 to 1957.

JA: Did you ever want any of your original art back from any of your stories? Did you care? CAMERON: No, and I’m a little pissed about that, because I went to one of these [comic book conventions]. I think it was down near Grand Central Station. I went in, and they had some of this art up and they had a few things wrong, which I tried to correct. Nobody wants to hear you. One of the covers I did for Classics Illustrated, which they gave me fifty bucks for, was sold for $5,000. I thought, “Now that’s one of the reasons I started writing,” because when you did the art job, it said on the back of your check, that was it. That was all they owed you. They had the copyright and they owned the property. You were paid like you did a portrait. The portrait was theirs, and they could resell it, or do anything they wanted, and they did.

CAMERON: I did a few for Timely. I also did some work for Joe Simon, who had broken up with Jack Kirby. Joe Simon was doing some romance comics. He hired me to do new splash pages and a cover. The first page was a new page, and the other six pages were pages he’d used before, so he paid me peanuts. The only problem was the splashes had to fit the style of the original art, but I did it, and he paid me. At Timely, I never spoke to Stan Lee, because you would go to see him, and he would send his Girl Friday out. I’ve forgotten her name. She looked like Bettie Page with clothes on, but with a scar on her face. On one or two occasions, she would say, “Mr. Lee thinks this,” “Mr. Lee thinks that.” That was the extent of my dealings with Stan Lee.

JA: Did all the companies have a contract on the back of their checks? CAMERON: Yeah, it was like a Quit Claim. When you endorsed the check, you were signing away all your rights. JA: So it never occurred to you that you could ever get any original pages back then. CAMERON: No. JA: Would you have liked to have had them? CAMERON: Sure! I felt that way more when I found out their worth. I was rather surprised when, years afterwards, people like you surfaced and said they wanted to talk about the old times because, to me, those times were gone. Nobody wanted to talk about World War II; they wanted to talk about the comic books. [mutual laughter] But no, I’ve talked to other people, especially other writers who made the transition... there was this feeling that it was a transitory art form and it came and it went. So it’s interesting, like the Prohibition era or something. And of course, some of these people that were on the fringes of it have spread so much crap that you have the feeling that we were like the Algonquin Round Table. You know, we’d all get together for wild orgies, and it was a period that you had to have been there. Maybe you did have to have been there, but I wasn’t there. [more mutual laughter] No, all these stories are spread out. The story of Nodel beating the guy up, and the Fraccio story: these are scattered over time. They didn’t all happen in one weekend. Mostly, you just came in and got your stuff and drew it, and sort-of lost track of it. As a writer, you’re still waiting to have the bestseller. Comics were a stop on the way to somewhere else. Most of the people in the business at the time didn’t know they were in a Golden Age. They would have been terribly surprised. JA: Well, if you’d have known how important this would be later, you’d have taken notes at the time, probably. [laughs] CAMERON: Some of the people who pontificate the most have almost nothing to do with a lot of people, so they go on and on.

The Colorful, Controversial—And Talented—Lou Cameron

“Pretty Close To The End” JA: As near as I can tell, the last work you did in comic books was for DC. CAMERON: Pretty close to the end, yeah. I walked in cold and I talked to [editor] Jack Schiff. He knew my work, gave me an assignment, and I did several for him. Then they changed editors. There was another editor [Murray Boltinoff], and he just plain didn’t like me. JA: Here’s what I have for you at DC: I have you doing some covers in 1958. I have you doing Gang Busters, House of Mystery, House of Secrets, My Greatest Adventure… also Tales of the Unexpected. And I know Schiff was editing those. CAMERON: That was for sure. Tales of the Unexpected was the first thing I did for him. Schiff was a nice guy. He was easy to get along with, and looked something like Jack Klugman. Murray Boltinoff was a pain in the ass. You know, you can tell when a guy doesn’t like you. I don’t know what his problem was. I mean, I never had any trouble with him. It was not a happy house when I was there. I met Jack Kirby once at DC… a very bitter, crabby little man. He was not a happy camper. I hadn’t done anything to him. But he came storming into DC, and I said something like, “I’m glad to meet you. I’ve seen your stuff.” And his answer was very nasty.

JA: Well, he had a big problem with Jack Schiff. Kirby was doing Challengers of the Unknown for Jack Schiff, and Schiff got Kirby and the Wood Brothers to do a newspaper strip called Sky Masters. Schiff, because he set up the deal, wanted a percentage of the profits. Kirby agreed to it, he said, under duress, and felt he was basically blackmailed into giving Schiff money. When Kirby wouldn’t give Schiff his percentage, Schiff sued Kirby. They went to court and Kirby lost. So you must have seen Kirby around that time. CAMERON: Well, now I know what he was mad at. He wasn’t mad at me, he was mad at them. Now I’m learning, too. [Jim laughs] Hearing that other people had trouble with some of these people that I had trouble with makes me feel better, because I basically got along pretty well with most of them. JA: DC sometimes supplied artists with paper. Did they supply you? CAMERON: No. They also did their own lettering. I remember that. That was the only difference. I was paid a standard rate. JA: Was Boltinoff the type to ask for lot of changes? Was he being heavyhanded? CAMERON: He basically just started not giving me work. We didn’t have any arguments. There was an interval when Schiff left the books I was working on, and Boltinoff took over. I’d gone back two or three times, and

Let’s Take It Nice And DC Two genres in which Cameron worked during his stint at National/DC were science-fiction and crime… as witness these splashes from House of Secrets #11 (July 1958) and the radio/TV-licensed Gang Busters #65 (Aug-Sept. 1958). With thanks, respectively, to Michael T. Gilbert and Spiros Xenos. [©2008 DC Comics.]

“Comics Were A Stop On The Way To Somewhere Else”

they didn’t have any work for me. Boltinoff was the one who said, “You don’t take a hint, do you? Don’t you know you’re out of here?” I said, “Well, okay. [chuckles] Thanks for telling me. It saves me bus fare.”

“I Started Writing And Drawing Men’sAdventure Magazine Stories” JA: And that was basically the end of your comic book days. CAMERON: Yeah, that was about it. I was doing that thing that I sued for with this guy Reilly. That was the last comic book that I did, and I finally had to get Nat Rothstein to get it for me. So I started writing and drawing men’s-adventure magazine stories. I went to Volitant, and the last illustrated job I did for them was a long novelette entitled “Orillana’s Expedition Down the Amazon.” I went there to pick up my money, and this Canadian kid was there with this beautifully done drawing, and he was willing to work for nothing. That’s when I came home, and I said to my then-wife, “Can Richie [her kid brother] use my drawing board?” And she said, “Sure. Why?” I said, “I’m not an artist any more. Tell Richie that before I change my mind, tell him to come over and pick up all this stuff.” The next story I sold, the editor asked, “Do you want to illustrate it?” I said, “No, let somebody else do it.” I just dropped it. In fact, it just took all the heart out of me, so I started writing. Shortly thereafter, I got an agent and sold my first novel, and have been working at that ever since. JA: But before you sold your first novel, you were doing short stories. CAMERON: Yes, mostly for the men’s-adventure stuff. A very educational experience. I told you about Ted Hecht at Sterling Publications. Ted was the guy who taught me how to do these stories. In other words, he taught me how to hack. [Jim chuckles] I would go in, and Ted would have an idea for a story. Once, Ted handed me a clipping of the Goliath beetle and said, “This is the biggest goddamn bug in the world.” I said, “Yeah, but it says here It’s Kinda Hard To Be Scared Of A Machine Called “Multifax” that they’re harmless. They don’t bite.” And he said, “You know DC may have called the mag House of Secrets—but its protagonists clearly got out that, and I know that. But don’t you remember the time that you into the open air (and outer space) from time to time. A Cameron splash from a b&w and that gorgeous blonde were almost devoured by these things in reprint of issue #13 (Oct. 1953), sent by Spiros Xenos. [©2008 DC Comics.] Africa?” I said, “Were we?” And he said, “Don’t you remember? Don’t you want to be paid?” I said, “Oh, sure! I remember it!” creative. I got this “you’re-lucky-to-be-working” routine. “You know, the [mutual laughter] So I went home and I started writing. [NOTE: See business is very tight.” I said. “Honey, you’re trying to con somebody p. 75 for an example of a cover for this type of magazine issue.] who’s been in this business a while. Nobody has ever published a book for Ted taught me to write narrative hooks, and how to keep the story me because they wanted to do me a favor.” If a series was not earning going. It was tabloid adventure, but he did take things a little seriously. We out—I’ve had series that didn’t earn out—they pulled the plug. I mean, had a kid who came in and wanted to write—he meant well—and he had I’ve written three or four books in a series; they didn’t take off, and they piranha in an African river. Ted said “Hey, Johnny. They don’t have don’t wait to find out. If you’re not doing better than they’re earning out piranhas in...” And the kid said, “Well, you know that, and I know that, by the fourth or fifth book, they pull it. but the people who read this crap don’t know that.” And Ted said, “No, no, So I said, “Well, I’ll write another Western and sell it to another house.” no, no, no. You start out with an outrageous situation like ‘I Married And then, while I’m thinking about it, I say, “Why do I want to write Dracula,’ but then you write it seriously. You work to sell it. If you put Westerns anyhow? I mean the 100-and-some-times I’ve ridden off into the your tongue too far into your cheek, the reader knows it, and the reader is sunset with this schmuck... [mutual laughter] I think I’ll go back to annoyed. They don’t like it.” detective stories.” They pay better. You can get more money for a detective Like the Westerns I write: it’s about a West that never was, but you try story because they take longer to do. You have to work harder on a to sell them the story, and you make your Indians as real as you can detective story. At least I did when I started writing them. I fell into the manage. But anyhow, that was the end of my comics. After I sued for that Westerns like I fell into comics. one-shot for Pete Martin Publications, I quit. I’d worked in most genres when asked to do a one-shot Western, JA: And you didn’t miss it, either, from what you’re telling me. Spurhead, for Tower Books. Sales were good. So I was asked to do a series about a similar character, resulting in my Doc Travis series for Dell. Then CAMERON: Well, it’s a funny thing. I’m going through a thing right now. the editor who’d ordered it was fired. R.I.P. Doc Travis. Then Alice Turner, I’m angry at my publisher. Some of their accounting seemed a little bit

The Colorful, Controversial—And Talented—Lou Cameron

I’d Walk A Mile— Rather Than Ride That Camel! Cameron’s 1960 awardwinning novel The Spirit Horses was a fact-based if fictionalized account of what a website calls “Jeff Davis’ Camel Corps—the rough-andreadiest bunch the West had ever known” against “the most feared of all the Nadene Apache raiders.” Ride ‘em, cowboy! Artist unknown. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

a former actress, got promoted from slush-pile reading at Ballantine to editing, and was ordered to produce a Western. Alice said she’d never read a Western in all her life, never wanted to read a Western in all her life. And her girlfriend, who was the wife of a friend of mine, said, “Well, get somebody who’s written a Western, and have them do it.” So I went to see her and she said, “I absolutely don’t know anything. I’m completely at your mercy.” The editors who don’t want to lose their job don’t let you do anything unusual. “Funny you should ask. I’ve got an idea that I think is original, and what do you think?” I told it to her and she said, “Well, I can’t picture John Wayne on a camel, but go ahead.” [Jim laughs] We called it The Spirit Horses, and it was a story of the Western Camel Corps. That was an experimental thing out in the Mojave Desert just before the Civil War. The Indians didn’t know what the hell that was coming at them, and called them “spirit horses.” I wrote it, and we won the award for the Western Writers of America, The Golden Spur. I got some good sales out of it, but as I said at the time, “Westerns are not the best category to write in. There’s more money likely to come your way from a movie deal.” I have a movie out now in France, on one of my detective stories that I wrote years ago. I said, “They don’t take one a year. Westerns are not used. They don’t want to pay you. In fact, they took my plot of The Spirit Horses, and they used it in a bad Western without paying me. They don’t have to pay for Westerns. I mean, just change the guy’s name, and make it Jane Fonda. All Westerns are pretty much the same story. But anyhow, you might go somewhere with a detective story, so I think what I’m going to do now is, I’m going to finish the contract out, but I’m going to start doing some more detective stories. Actually, I’ve been playing with just knocking it off, and retiring.

The Longarm Of The Pseudonym Far as we can gather, there‘ve been well over 300 Longarm paperback novels to date, and the Western hero is far from finished, as written by “Tabor Evans”— a house name that over the years has hidden Lou Cameron and many another. Lou probably didn’t write Longarm and the Wolf Women—but you get the general idea. Artist unknown. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

her boss, Mister Jovanovich, hailed from Colorado and had a dim view of most current Westerns. I’d spent time in Colorado as a kid. So I laced my read about Deputy US Marshal Custis Long of the Denver District Court with inside Colorado jokes, beginning with the house name—Tabor Evans— combining Senator Silver Dollar Tabor and Doc Evans, a well-remembered early governor. When old Jovanovich stopped laughing, I was “in,” and the series is still going, under Putnam. Since the issue-a-month work load required it, Sandra called in two more established Western writers: Will Knott and Mell Marshall. They both offered suggestions, of course. But nobody except Sandra, Will, Mel, or myself had a thing to do with the Longarm series until it had been on the stands a spell. I stress this because a loser who’s never been able to hold a staff job in the publishing has been claiming for years he created Longarm. The paper trail is there for anybody losing sleep over this. I soldiered on to write every third or fourth Longarm after Will left, and Mel died at his typewriter of a heart attack in 1993. In addition to writing Longarms for better than 25 years, I wrote other Westerns, adult or straight, under my own or various house names. I kicked off my cowboy boots circa 2006 for personal reasons having nothing to do with the comic book area.

Monthly! The Original First-Person History!

JA: Do you have a list of the books that you have written? CAMERON: Lord, no! How many girls have you ever kissed? I must have sold around a hundred scripts or short stories by the time I published my first novel, Angel’s Flight, for Fawcett, 1960. Then at least a hundred hard or soft covers in most genres before I won that Golden Spur to wind up typecast by agents purring, “Have I got a Western writer for you!” In 1974 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich was ready to launch a rival to the Jake Logan adult Western series of Playboy Press. Their senior editress, Sandra Orloff, remembered me from when she’d worked under Alice Turner at Ballantine. So she asked me to submit a pilot and warned me

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

“Comics Were A Stop On The Way To Somewhere Else”

LOU CAMERON Checklist The following Checklist is adapted from information that appears in the online Who’s Who of American Comic Books (1928-1999), established by Jerry G. Bails. See opposite page to learn how to access this invaluable website. Names of features which appeared both in magazines with that title and in other magazines, as well, are generally not italicized. Key: (a) = full art; (p) = pencils only; (i) = inks only; (w) writer; (d) daily newspaper comic strip; (S) Sunday newspaper comic strip. Name: Lou Cameron (born 1924) (artist; writer) Education: California School of Fine Arts Family in Arts: W.C. Cameron (father, actor under the name Louis Arnold) Influences: Edd Cartier, Harold R. Foster Print Media (Non-Comics): artist: 1950-57 pulps & 1957 paperback covers; writer: biography of Pres. Ronald Reagan (no

date), novels (many) 1957+, incl. The Amphorae Pirates; Angel’s Flight, Belle of Fort Smith, Beyond the Scarlet Door; Big Red Ball; The Block Busters, The Dirty War of Sgt. Slade; Sky Divers; The Spirit Horses; Spurhead, et al.; short stories (over 300) Honors: Thomas Alva Edison Award, Best Historical Comic Book: The Life of Christopher Columbus (for Classics Illustrated), 1956 Syndication: So It Seems (w)(a) 1951-52 COMIC BOOK CREDITS (Mainstream US Publishers): Ace Periodicals: Baffling Mysteries (a) 1952-54; The Beyond (a) 1952-54; Crime Must Pay the Penalty (a) 195354; The Hand of Fate (a) 1952-54; various features (a) 195556 in reprint; Web of Mystery (a) 1952-55 American Comics Group: Adventures into the Unknown (a) 1952; Forbidden Worlds (a) 1952 Charlton Comics: (work confirmed by Cameron, but titles and dates uncertain) DC Comics (a.k.a. National): covers (a) 1958; Gang Busters (a) 1958; House of Mystery (a) 1958; House of Secrets (a) 1958; My Greatest Adventure (a) 1958; public service pages (a) 1958, 1961-62; Tales of the Unexpected (a) 1958 Eastern Color Printing: Famous Funnies (a) 1952

Fiction House Comics: filler (a) 1952; various features (a) 1950s in Wing Comics

The Colorful, Controversial—And Talented—Lou Cameron

Gilberton (Classics Illustrated): The Bottle Imp (with “The Beach of Falesa”) (a) 1954; Classics Illustrated Special (a) 1956; The Count of Monte Cristo (a) 1956; covers (a) 1955; Davy Crockett (a) 1955; The Downfall (a) 1955; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (a) 1953; The Hurricane (a) 1954; The Life of Christopher Columbus (a)(no date); The Story of Great Britain [series] (a) 1955; The Time Machine (a) 1956; The War of the Worlds (a) 1955 Marvel/Timely Comics: Astonishing (a) 1956; Journey into Mystery (a) 1956; Journey into Unknown Worlds (a) 1955; Love Tales (a) 1957; Mystic (a) 1956; Uncanny Tales (a) 1956; World of Suspense (a) 1956 St. John Publishing: horror (a) 1953; The Texan (a) 1952; also some scripting Story Comics: Dark Mysteries (a) 1951; Fight against Crime (a) 1951; Golden Warrior (a) 1951; Mysterious Adventures (a) 1951-52; romance (a) 1951; Western (a) 1951

Life’s A Beach Lou Cameron may not have drawn super-hero comics, but is there any doubt he could’ve held his own in that genre, too? This explosive full-page scene is from Classics Illustrated #116 (Feb. 1954)—titled The Bottle Imp, after the Robert Louis Stevenson story—but is actually a scene from a second RLS tale likewise adapted therein, “The Beach of Falesa.” Thanks to William B. Jones, Jr. [©2008 First Classics, Inc.; by permission of Jack Lake Productions, Inc.]

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

A quarter of a million records, covering the careers of people who have contributed to original comic books in the US.

hat if... instead of selling his share of All-American Publications to Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz in the mid-1940s, M.C. Gaines had bought DC Comics from them?

Just imagine... a comic book industry in which Green Lantern and The

Flash and Wonder Woman are the premier early heroes—stars of comic books, radio, movies, and television—rather than Superman and Batman. Not a dream, not a hoax… just an imaginary story of an alternate universe and...

The Secret History of All-American Comics, Inc. T

heodore Paul (“Ted”) Skimmer worked in the editorial and production departments of All-American Publications from 1944 through 1997. During his 53-year career, he had a front-row seat for the history of the company, a history he has agreed to share with me… and you. All artwork on the next six pages, by the bye, is ©2008 DC Comics.

This chapter, adapted from an article that appeared in The Dynamic World of AA Comics #2 in 1974, was co-written by Ted and yours truly, based on his memories of the events leading to the Silver Age of Comics. —Bob Rozakis.

Book One – Chapter 4: Lightning Striking Again! “Maybe we should try bringing back one of our super-heroes,” said Julie Schwartz during an editorial meeting in early 1956. The other editors did not react, but instead looked at their publisher at the head of the conference room table. “It’s your issue to fill,” said Shelly Mayer, the editorial director. “There’s certainly a market for Green Lantern, thanks to the TV show….”

A Nine-Pack Of Serial Speaking of Green Lantern—here’s a choice item composed by archivist Alex Wright that we couldn’t squeeze into A/E #79: a montage of lobby cards from Chapter 2 of Columbia’s 1948 Green Lantern movie serial, featuring blond-wigged Kirk Alyn as Alan Scott/GL, Noel Neill as Irene Miller, and Edward Brophy as Doiby Dickles. Only Neill would return in the hit TV series a few years later—as Irene’s successor, Cathy Crain—and even Noel had to wait for the show’s second season! The other two actors were replaced on TV, of course, by George Reeves and Joe E. Ross, as related last issue.

“I’d like to think that I have something to do with those sales,” interrupted Mort Weisinger. “We’d still only have him in two titles if I hadn’t pushed to expand—“ “Yeah, yeah, Mort,” snorted Robert Kanigher, “all those pimply tenyear-olds wait breathlessly for every issue of Doiby Dickles.”

Lightning Striking Again!

Julie, Julie, Julie AA editor emeritus Julie Schwartz (center) in a circa-2001 photo, flanked by Bob Rozakis (on right) and radio personality Howard Margolin. Recently, Bob talked about this “Secret History” series on Howard’s radio program Destinies on station WSBU. Julie, sad to say, passed away in 2004… but his legend endures, primarily because of his revival of Superman and other lost Golden Age heroes of the absorbed National/DC. (A photo of Julie’s longtime friend and sometime rival Mort Weisinger appeared last issue— and there’ll be more of him next time around.)

reader base for all comic books, a reduction that seemed to hit the super-hero titles most of all. And, since the “Superman” and “Batman” magazines did not provide the level of sales that a few others still did, both versions vanished from the stands after a year of losses on both sides. [NOTE: See Alter Ego #76 for a more detailed discussion of the above events.]

“More than wait for any issue of Wonder Woman,” replied Weisinger. “Need I remind you how sales of Sensation Comics went up when I replaced her with Kid Lantern?” “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” snapped Kanigher. “Probably bought all the extra copies yourself—!” “That’s enough, gentlemen!” The silence that followed the words of Max Gaines, the publisher, left no doubt about who was in charge. “Did you have a character in mind, Julie?” “I was thinking of Superman.” “Superman?” Weisinger said with a derisive snort. “We beat that horse to death ten years ago. Besides, if you bring him back and get any interest, Siegel and Shuster would probably revive their version. It’ll be 1947 all over again.” There was no need for Weisinger to say anything further; the men around the table knew what he was referring to. As related in Alter Ego #76, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman, had sued in 1946 for the return of the rights to their character. Though they had sold those rights to the company for $130 along with their very first story of that hero, they felt they had been cheated out of their fair share of the profits. Despite the claims by DC’s owners that Siegel and Shuster were being “handsomely rewarded” while doing a minimal amount of work on the “Superman” stories—Siegel had, in fact, done none of the writing while serving during World War II, and the severely sight-impaired Shuster had mostly just overseen his dwindling art shop—the writer and artist were convinced they were due much more. And there seemed to be no end to the list of attorneys who were in agreement with them. A lengthy court battle ensued. The judge, citing what he felt was a similar situation, followed a ruling that had been made years earlier regarding the comic strip The Katzenjammer Kids. DC (and later AA) retained the trademark on the name of the character and was allowed to hire other writers and artists to continue producing “Superman” comic books. Siegel and Shuster could produce their own version, utilizing the same characters, but could not use the name or logo. Before long, readers found the familiar Superman and Action comic books side-by-side with Man of Steel comics produced SSK Publishing (the “K” standing for Bob Kane, who had joined them with half of “Batman” in tow). However, the end of the war had brought a shrinking

“I’m thinking we should try a new version of Superman,” Schwartz explained. “New origin, new costume, new everything. All we keep are the name—which we own—and the basic powers.” “Max,” said Weisinger, “I don’t know that I agree with this. Nobody else is doing any new super-hero books right now. If we start putting more of them out, we could be cannibalizing our own sales.” Though Weisinger was his oldest friend, it was obvious that Schwartz was upset by his colleague’s attempt to keep his territorial claim on one section of the market. “Mort, there’s room for more than one costumed character.” “We’ve got more than one! On top of Green Lantern, Jack’s still doing The Flash and Bob’s got Wonder Woman!” “We’re talking one issue of Showcase here,” Gaines interrupted. “If it sells, then we’ll worry about what to do!” As soon as the meeting ended, Julie Schwartz knew he would have to get started on his Superman revival quickly. Though he and Weisinger had been friends since boyhood, a rivalry had been growing since Mort had been brought into All-American by the buyout of DC Comics by Gaines. Julie knew that comic books that sold well were the goal, but Mort seemed obsessed with being the best in everything. So he had made sure that he had control of the entire Green Lantern “franchise” these past few years, realizing that the television series would drive character recognition and, therefore, greater sales. While the other editors were trying different genres—romance, Westerns, science-fiction, humor, etc.—Mort steadfastly stuck with Green Lantern, introducing tales of Kid Lantern first in Sensation Comics and then in his own title, and spinning GL’s sidekick, Doiby Dickles, into his own book in the early ’50s. “That fat s.o.b. is going to try an end run,” Julie told his office-mate, Bob Kanigher, when they were back in the room they shared. “I want you to write me a script at lunchtime, and I’m getting Carmine in here this afternoon to pick it up.” Normally, Schwartz would have turned to one of his regular writers, Gardner Fox or John Broome, to furnish the initial script, but he knew Kanigher was fast… and capable. For the next few minutes, they batted around some ideas. The hero would be a police scientist, and one night while he is working late, a lightning bolt strikes his lab and bathes him in electrically charged chemicals. As a result, he gains lightning speed, incredible energy, and an ability to repel objects by creating an “opposite charge.” Inspired by comic

The Secret History Of All-American Comics, Inc.

...And Who, Disguised As Mild-Mannered Barry Allen… Two of Robert Kanigher’s script pages for Showcase #4, below someone’s penciled doodle of what became the Silver Age “Superman” logo. Note that the Silver Age Superman’s secret identity, “Barry Allen,” was penciled in by Schwartz for Kanigher’s suggestion, “Frank Rock.” Kanigher never threw anything away, though, and Sgt. [Frank] Rock later became a mainstay of AA’s war mags. Julie said he replaced the old name “Metropolis” with “Central City” because the former was “too long a name for a kid to read, and wouldn’t mean anything to them.” From the collection of Bob Rozakis.

books he read as a kid, he adopts the name “Superman.” It was more than enough to get Kanigher started.

of that. If they start putting out Man of Steel again, they’ll be the ones doing the retread. My guy is brand-new.”

And so, “Mystery of the Superhuman Thunderbolt” was born. “Julie, have you got a minute?” Schwartz knew that whenever Shelly Mayer began a conversation that way, it meant they would be discussing something that would take far longer than sixty seconds to get through. “I’ve been thinking about that revival of Superman you proposed, and I’m not sure it’s a direction we should go in.” Schwartz smiled to himself. As he had suspected, Weisinger had been whispering in Mayer’s ear. “Oh?” he replied, not tipping his hand. “The boys downtown tried bringing back Captain America and the Human Torch a couple of years ago, and that didn’t pan out.” “But those were retreads of the same characters,” said Schwartz. “I plan on giving Superman a whole new spin.” “Still and all, there’s the Siegel and Shuster thing. Suppose we do well, and then they bring their version back?” “We’re using the name, and that’s it. No Clark Kent or Krypton or any

“Well…” “Look, Shelly, you’re the boss. You don’t want me to do it, I won’t. Let me get Carmine on the phone and tell him to stop…” “Carmine? You’ve got an artist working on it already?” “Of course. You know how I am about deadlines. Kanigher did the script and Carmine’s had it for a couple of days. Let me get him on the phone and tell him to stop. What could he have drawn so far, five or six pages? We’ll just pay him for those and toss ‘em.” Mayer considered this. “So you’ve paid Kanigher for a script and got pages penciled. I don’t know that I want to write off anything. Money’s pretty tight.” “It’s your call,” said Schwartz, knowing already what the answer would be. “Well,” said Mayer, “it is only one issue, and trying things is what Showcase is supposed to be about. Okay, go ahead and finish the issue and we’ll see where it goes. But don’t be doing anything on a second one without my approval.” “I wouldn’t dream of it, Shelly.”

Lightning Striking Again!

desk flipping through piles of the various “Green Lantern” books. Mort had a scribbled list of names that included such things as Lantern Legion, Pup Lantern, and Little Lanterns. “Clearly, he was looking for something else to spin off from the franchise.” One of the magazines Weisinger had on his desk was an issue of TV Guide that showed the cast of the Green Lantern TV show. Boltinoff pointed to the photo of Noel Neill, who played Cathy Crain, and said, “Why not use her? You could tell stories from the girl’s point of view, maybe bring in some more female readers.” Mort stopped as if he had been struck by lightning. “Why, that’s perfect! Thanks for helping me think of it!” Then, as if Boltinoff had not even been in the room, Weisinger charged out in search of Gaines and Mayer to tell them of his latest brainstorm.

Win, Place, And Showcase (Above left:) One of the most famous comic book covers of all time: Showcase #4 (Oct. 1956). Pencils by Carmine Infantino, inks by Murphy Anderson. Copies of this classic issue were supplied by Alex Wright.

Since it took about six months to accurately gauge sales on an issue, it was too soon to know how Schwartz’s revival of Superman in Showcase #4 had done. Early indications were good, however, so Gaines and Mayer told Julie to prepare a second issue to appear in issue #7.

Weisinger had other ideas. At an editorial meeting where they were discussing the schedule for upcoming issues of Showcase, he insisted that “Cathy Crain” had to be in both #s 6 and 7. “I know for a fact,” he told Gaines, “that the TV people are going to be playing her up on the show. We would be crazy not to cash in on that.” Gaines agreed that it made financial sense and pushed the second “Superman” to #8.

(Top right:) Superman’s famous “S”-symbol as re-designed in ’56 has become so well known in the years since that only diehard Golden Age fans remember the original “S” sported by the 1940s version of the hero. Thanks to Alex Wright.

Schwartz had no idea that, even as he was winning this little battle, Weisinger would be launching another salvo. “You would have thought they were working for different companies, the way Mort reacted to Julie’s successes,” remembered Murray Boltinoff, who shared an office with Weisinger. “If Julie was doing something and it was doing well, Mort would imitate it, but he’d take it to the next level. Like when Julie did the issue of Weird Science—or was it Strange Adventures?—with the gorilla teaching a college class and the sales spiked. All of a sudden, Green Lantern is battling a King Kong-sized ape, Kid Lantern finds Chimp Lantern, Doiby Dickles is turned into a gorilla… it was ridiculous.” [NOTE: Despite numerous attempts at analysis, no one has ever successfully explained the sales appeal of apes and gorillas on AA’s covers. — BR.] As Boltinoff recalled, very soon after the meeting in which Schwartz got the go-ahead for the revival of Superman, he found Weisinger at his

What no one in the meeting knew, however, was that Weisinger had just that morning called the story editor of the TV program, a man he’d met when the series first began. “Listen, we’re launching Cathy Crain in her own comic book. You guys’ll want to be able to jump on this and give her a larger role in the TV show.” Further, at the time he was making his demands, Weisinger did not have any material prepared for the books. He went through his inventory of “Green Lantern” stories, pulling out any in which Cathy appeared. Then he had the production department paste the newly-designed “Green Lantern’s Girl Friend, Cathy Crain” logo where the GL logo would have appeared. There was even a story that had been drawn for one of the science-fiction books about a woman who is abducted by a flying saucer

The Secret History Of All-American Comics, Inc.

and uses her wits to escape. Mort had one of the production guys change her hairstyle and paste a stock shot of Green Lantern onto the splash page. Voila, instant “Cathy Crain” story! [NOTE: “Green Lantern’s Girl Friend, Cathy Crain” made her first solo appearance in Showcase #6, bumping the already scheduled “Challengers of the Unknown.” “Challengers” was a new series created by Jack Kirby, et al., for Jack Schiff ’s turn in the Showcase slot. When Kirby learned that his book had been backburnered for Weisinger’s and that Schiff had not fought for him, he was quite angry. Though the “Challengers” did finally debut in Showcase #9 through #12, beginning six months later, it was the opening of a rift between the artist and editor. Kirby eventually left AA after a number of other disputes with Schiff and went to work exclusively at Timely/Atlas, just in time to work with Stan Lee and help launch Marvel Comics. — BR.] Julie’s second issue of “Superman” appeared in Showcase #8, which went on sale the same month Cathy Crain #1. Without having complete sales reports on the first of the two Showcase appearances, Mort convinced Gaines to put the book on the regular schedule, based on the character’s expanded role in the TV series. Sales of “Superman” were again good, but Gaines and Mayer were still taking a wait-and-see approach. Rumors popped up that Siegel and Shuster were considering a relaunch of the original version of the character. While they may have considered it at the time, nothing ever appeared. Gaines told Schwartz to prepare two more issues. They would run in consecutive issues of Showcase to see if there was sustained interest in the character. Unfortunately, because they now had four issues of Kirby’s “Challengers” in the drawer, “Superman” would not again see print until Showcase #13, ten months after his second appearance and a year and a half after his debut! With all the sales figures in hand—and they were quite impressive—Julie was finally given a go-ahead to launch Superman as a regular book. Superman #47, picking up the numbering of the original title from the ’40s, arrived on the newsstands in late 1958, a full 2½ years after his first appearance in Showcase #4. But, at last, the Silver Age of Comics was under way.

Witch Came First? “Green Lantern’s Girl Friend, Cathy Crain” made her solo debut (well, maybe not quite solo) in Showcase #6 (Feb. 1957), sneaking out ahead of Jack Kirby’s “Challengers of the Unknown.” Cover pencils by Curt Swan, inks by Stan Kaye—repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Shane Foley. Special thanks to Chris Day.

FOOTNOTE: With little disagreement, comics historians give Julius Schwartz credit for starting the Silver Age of Comics with his revival of “Superman” in 1956. Certainly, the return of Superman, followed by the successful recreations of “Batman,” “Aquaman,” and “Green Arrow,” and the creation of the “Justice League” (which, in turn, is said to be the reason Stan Lee launched The Fantastic Four and all of Marvel Comics), all under Schwartz’s aegis, marked the beginning of a second age of popularity for the super-heroes. What goes unnoticed, however, was the role Mort Weisinger played… in almost single-handedly preventing the Silver Age from happening. Weisinger certainly created the Cathy Crain title to compete with Schwartz. Filling Showcase #6 and 7 with repurposed “Green Lantern”

stories kept the second appearance of Schwartz’s new character off the stands for eight months. (We should acknowledge the long-forgotten “Manhunters” that appeared in Showcase #5, if only to say that the material had been prepared at the same time Schwartz and company were re-creating “Superman” and not even Weisinger could have bumped it off the schedule.) Weisinger also apparently had a hand in further delaying the third appearance of “Superman.” Jack Schiff acknowledged some years later that he’d had Jack Kirby prepare four issues of “Challengers of the Unknown” because Weisinger had told him to. “Mort said he didn’t have any work to keep Jack busy.” At the time Kirby was doing “Wildcat” stories in the back of Sensation Comics, as well as some other back-up material. “When the series finally got its shot, Mort made a case for having the issues come out

Lightning Striking Again!

Kirby At DC—The Final Days (Left:) The Jack Kirby-penciled “Challengers of the Unknown” was delayed till Showcase #9 by Mort Weisinger’s Machiavellian machinations. It still became an instant hit, but its postponement led to resentment on the artist’s part. (Above:) It’s rumored that Kirby quit drawing Sensation Comics’ “Wildcat” in the middle of this story because of dissatisfaction with editor Jack Schiff, which is why we have this roughly penciled panel. The tale as printed was finished by Gil Kane. Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, from the collection of Shane Foley.

consecutively, to see if they would hold the audience.” This argument was most probably also the reason Julie was told to prepare two more Showcase issues of “Superman” rather than one. Then there is the matter of the rumors about Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster reviving the original version of the character. Few people knew it at the time, but Siegel was secretly writing scripts for Weisinger from the mid-1950s and into the ’60s. If anyone would have had the knowledge to dispute the rumors, it would have been Mort. According to Julie Schwartz, it is far more likely that Weisinger himself was the source of those rumors. —BR. Next: “MORT-ification!”

A Flash In The Pan? Some imaginative souls have wondered, “Suppose history had been different, and DC’s Donenfeld and Liebowitz had bought Gaines’ AA, instead of vice versa—and Superman had endured as the company’s flagship hero? Would the Silver Age then have begun, perhaps, with Julie Schwartz reviving Green Lantern—or Starman—or The Flash? Here’s an artist’s speculative rendering of what a cover of the latter concept might have looked like, with penciling by Carmine Infantino and inking by Joe Kubert. It seems unlikely, though, that Kubert, primarily a full-art guy, would’ve wound up embellishing someone else’s pencils.

Comic Fandom Archive

Found! “New” Photos From The 1965 New York Comicon! A Recently Discovered Time Capsule of Pics From “The First Full-Service Comics Convention”

by Bill Schelly

everal years ago—in Alter Ego #20 (Jan. 2003), to be exact—we offered extensive coverage of what seems to us to qualify as the first full-service comic book convention. We were able to present transcripts of the panels at the comicon which featured such professionals as Gardner Fox, Otto Binder, Bill Finger, Gil Kane, and many others. And in the text, along with a full recounting of the events of the three-day affair, and the inclusion of memories of many of its attendees, we were able to recreate the atmosphere in the seedy Hotel Broadway Central where this seminal event took place in Manhattan on July 31 and Aug. 1, 1965.

But the one area where we met with a certain frustration in our researches was finding photographs. Yes, we had a few in A/E #20—and they were good ones—featuring Fabulous Flo Steinberg and Dave Kaler cutting the comicon cake, and primo “Captain Marvel” writer Otto Binder posing with Phil and Carole Seuling, who were garbed as Captain and Mary Marvel…. but there were a mere handful.

Thus, we were thrilled when Jean Bails discovered among her late husband’s effects a cache of photos that had evidently been tucked away somewhere and had managed to elude Jerry’s searches over the years. Yes, folks, in a way, these photos represent Jerry Bails, in a sense the founder of modern comic fandom itself, reaching across the abyss of time, through his lovely wife, to contribute once more to the pages of this magazine which he founded in spring of 1961. The images are a variable lot, and some of them are slightly out of focus, alas. But among them are some superb pictures, and some provide visual evidence of things that are relatively important from a comicshistorical point of view. A few, we hasten to add, have previously seen print, but have been reprinted here for completeness. We’ve included photos taken of the con itself first, while those of its precedent-setting first comicon masquerade will be seen next issue. Unfortunately, we cannot provide photo credits. So without further ado, let’s take a look at the mostly “lost photos” from the 1965 New York comicon! (Left:) A good place to begin is with this shot of our fearless founder, Jerry G. Bails, ensconced behind his own dealer’s table at the con. During this period, Jerry often sold off Golden Age comic books after he had committed their pages to microfilm, so that he would have funds to buy other vintage issues for similar purposes. Too bad no one can ID any of the fans talking with him—or can they?

(Right:) Rick Weingroff (on left) and Mark Hanerfeld. Weingroff was best known in fandom as the editor and publisher of the fanzine Slam-Bang, and as the writer of the “Rocketeer Gossip” column for Rocket’s Blast-Comicollector (RB-CC). Seated next to him in front of the official comicon cake is Mark Hanerfeld, a mainstay of New York fandom who assisted Dave Kaler in organizing this and future comic book conventions. Mark was later an editorial assistant at DC and scripted at least one “Spectre” story.

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(Above:) One of this convention’s claims to being the first “full-service” comics conventions was the fact that so many comic book professionals were in attendance, while the 1964 mini-con had sported only one or two (even if one of those had been Steve Ditko!). Murphy Anderson, depicted here, was always a fan favorite. During this general period he drew tales of “Hawkman,” “Adam Strange,” and “The Spectre,” as well as various covers, and inked The Atom… not quite all at the same time, of course. Alas, so many other pros who were in attendance at the two days of that con, such as Gardner Fox, Bill Finger, Mort Weisinger, and Will Elder, among others, don’t seem to have been captured by anyone’s camera. (Above:) Dealers as well as professionals converged upon the Hotel Broadway Central. Here we find one of the earliest persons to sell back issues: Bill Thailing of Cleveland, Ohio.

(Above:) E. Nelson Bridwell (on left) was a combination of both fan and pro, though certainly his professional status—as Mort Weisinger’s editorial assistant on the various “Superman” titles beginning in 1964— was secure. Here, a nattily-dressed Nelson chats with an unfortunately unidentifiable fan.

(Above:) (L-to-r:) Unknown fan… Bill Harris (who had only recently resigned as editor at Gold Key, and would later edit the King Comics line)… and Mark Hanerfeld. It’s tempting to speculate that the fellow on the left might be Wayne Howard, popular African-American fan artist of the 1960s who became one of Wally Wood’s assistants and a mainstay at Charlton comics in the early 1970s…. but that would only be a guess on our part. Or it might be Dave Kaler’s buddy Bobby Van. Can anyone help?

Found! New Photos From The 1965 New York Comicon!

(Above:) Here’s Dave Kaler in his elaborate Dr. Strange outfit, which is shown to greater advantage later in the masquerade photos which will appear next issue. It’s too bad we can’t show it in color in the printed edition of this magazine, since it’s made of bright blue and red satin.

(Above:) This photo has been printed before—but how could we have left out this image of Fabulous Flo Steinberg (as Smiling Stan Lee christened his “corresponding secretary”), chatting with a handsome-looking Dave Kaler at the comicon in question? Flo was like a ray of light, even in the decidedly dingy décor of the rundown Hotel Broadway Central—while Dave, of course, was the host and prime organizer of the con.

(Above:) Roy Thomas, who’d moved to New York only a month before, looks anything but “rascally” here. While the focus on this snapshot makes Roy appear to be fading into the Phantom Zone, we couldn’t resist including this vintage photo taken at the “first complete comicon”—with him wearing his brand new FF T-shirt, yet! At this time, the first batch of Marvel T’s were just being advertised in the comics themselves, and this may have been the first “public appearance” of one. (Above:) One of the Guests of Honor of the 1965 New York Comicon was Otto Binder, chief writer of Fawcett’s various “Marvel Family” comics and author of scores of “Superman”-related scripts in the 1950s and 1960s. Here Otto’s attention has been captured by two enthusiastic young fans, unidentified at this time.

Roy has related elsewhere how this T-shirt (which he has sometimes misremembered as being his X-Men shirt) helped him pretend to be “just a typical comics fan” when being filmed and interviewed by the reporter whom CBS-TV sent to the con. He used the occasion to shamelessly plug Marvel without saying he’d been working there for the past two weeks—but apparently that film was never shown.

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(Right:) Three important professionals who attended the 1965 comicon were this trio. (L. to r.:) Jim Warren, flamboyant publisher of the influential Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and of the black-&-white comics Creepy and Eerie (soon to be followed by Vampirella)… Bill Harris (see previous photo for credits)… and Woody Gelman, editor/publisher of Nostalgia Press, which first reprinted Flash Gordon, EC Comics, et al. Gelman, an executive at Topps Chewing Gum in Brooklyn, which put out numerous comics-related products, had written and drawn comic books in the 1940s, including scripts and layouts for DC on “The Dodo and the Frog” and “Nutsy Squirrel,” and writing Supermouse for Pines/Nedor/Standard.

(Left:) The Dealer Room at the 1965 Comicon, with only Otto Binder recognizable, toward the right, with hand on chair. (Left:) In the Dealer Room, tables were made available to give professionals a “home base” where they could talk to the fans. In this photo, an un-ID’d attendee (probably fan-publisher Rick Weingroff) talks to E. Nelson Bridwell, left, and an Unknown Pro, right.

More rare fan-photos from Jerry Bails’ private collection will appear in A/E #83 and in other near-future editions of the Comic Fandom Archive, courtesy of Jean Bails.

Next Issue: Life Is A Masquerade!

* *See page 69!

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

ack in the 1940s, presumably to comply with new mailing regulations, National Periodicals began to carry educational features scattered throughout the pages of its comics.

This created several mini-series of related factoids, often tied together

under an umbrella title. One such feature, written and drawn by unidentified creators [and likely consisting merely of pasted up art by the production department], was the always interesting “Animal Alphabet.“ These were vertical half-pages pairing a cartoony animal with a short rhyme—with a plug for a current comic thrown in for good measure. The animals themselves were often DC characters, as well, with Fauntleroy Fox, J. Rufus Lion, and a cat from a Milt Gross-illustrated strip identifiable. And—as far I can tell—every DC comic was plugged in at least one of these entries except for Superman, All-Flash, and Wonder Woman. Published sequentially over 26 months, from October 1945 to December 1947, these were usually found on the inside front cover in black-&-white. I found five entries with an alternate color version [K, L, O, Q, S], plus three published in color only [N, P, V].

The DC Alphabet

Concurrently, there was a “Penniless Palmer” story in All Funny Comics #14 [11-12/1946], drawn by Thurston Harper, with the puzzling title of “The Twenty-five Letter Alphabet.“ Unfortunately I haven’t been able to get hold of a copy of this one yet to read it, so I can’t offer any insights. This idea continued in Superman. In “The Alphabetical Animal Adventure” from World’s Finest Comics #42 (Sept.-Oct. 1949), aliens from Uranus (in reality the equivalent of prototypical Cyclons) are selecting specimens from Earth for their interplanetary zoo, using the fictional “Children’s Picture Book of Alphabetical Animals” as their guide.

The unknown writer—likely William Woolfolk, according to Bob Hughes—even managed to find an animal beginning with the letter X that eluded the DC marketers: the African Xerus. (For the record, Superman’s incomplete—and often exotic—choices are Alligator/Aye-Aye, Bear, Cat/Coati-mundi, Dog/Dinosaur, Elephant/Echidna, Fox, Giraffe, Horse, Ibex, Lemur, Man, Nilghai, Potto, Saiga, Uakari, Woman, and Xerus.) In real life, this is a common and obvious theme for children’s books, dating at least as far back as 1842 with The Scripture Alphabet of the Animals by Harriet N. Cook, published by the American Tract Society.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

• N - Real Screen #9, World’s Finest #25

Just prior to the DC series, in fact, four books of this sort were published, and it might be interesting to see if one might have been cribbed by the comic book writers:

• O - Animal Antics #6, Superman #44, World’s Finest #26

• Beast, Bird and Fish: An Animal Alphabet by Elizabeth Morrow (A.A. Knopf, 1933).

• Q - Animal Antics #7, Boy Commandos #20

• The Ark and the Alphabet: An Animal Collection by Nathalia Crane and Leonard Feeney (Macmillan, 1939).

• S - Action #8, Animal Antics #8, World’s Finest #28

• Animal Alphabet (Learning to Read) by Bobbie Craig (Penguin, 1940).

• U - Buzzy #14

• The Alphabet Book of Animals (Samuel Lowe Co., 1944).

• V - More Fun #125

• P - Action #105, Detective #120, More Fun #119 • R - Adventure #115 • T - Real Screen #12

The book I recall from my younger years was Animal Alphabet from A to Z by Elizabeth Beecher (Simon & Schuster, 1950), which featured cuddly barnyard and jungle creatures. Following is a list of the DC comics In which I found the panels that accompany this article: • A - Adventure #100 • B - Action #90, More Fun #106, Real Screen #3 • C - Action#91, Buzzy #5 • D - All Funny #9, More Fun #107 • E - Batman #33 • F - Star Spangled #54 • G - Adventure #103, More Fun #109 • H - More Fun #111, Sensation #54 • I - Action #98 • J - Action #99, Batman #36 • K - Buzzy #9, Leading #21, World’s Finest #24 • L - Batman #37, Real Screen #8

And “D” Was For DC!

• M - Action #102, Adventure #110

The DC Alphabet

• W - Adventure #120, Detective #127 • X - Batman #43 • Y - More Fun #127 • Z - Detective #130 Michael here! And with the final letter “Z,” we end Art Lortie’s fascinating foray into DC’s Animal Alphabet. But before we leave, we thought you might enjoy seeing another alphabet—the Mr. Monster Creature Alphabet! I designed the alphabet at the bottom of this page around 1987, for an unsold rubber stamp set. The final art was executed by Mr. Monster letterer supreme Ken Bruzenak, who did his usual letter-perfect job!

That’s all for this issue, calligraphy-lovers. Our thanks to Art, Ken, Ray Cuthbert, and Bob Hughes. Next issue: Letters, punctuation marks––and even some paragraphs! See you then! Till next time...

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In Memoriam

Jim(1919-2008) Mooney “In The ’60s, Mooney Was The ‘Supergirl’ Artist” by Mark Evanier

ne of the most prolific artists ever to draw comic books passed away in Florida on Sunday, March 30, 2008. Jim Mooney was born in 1919 and had been in failing health for some time, especially since the passing of his wife Anne in 2005. Reared in Los Angeles, Mooney moved to New York City in 1940 and was a part of the comic book industry almost from its inception. His first job was probably drawing “The Moth,” a Batman imitation, for Fox Publications’ Mystery Men Comics. He also worked for the legendary Eisner-Iger shop—which he soon left, he said, because he was intimidated by how good all the other artists there were. He next worked for Fiction House and began freelancing for Stan Lee at Timely Comics (later

Marvel), starting an association that lasted off and on for the next halfcentury. At first he drew funny-animal strips, but Lee soon found out that Mooney, along with being very dependable, was a utility infielder who could do a little of everything. He was especially good at drawing cute ladies, and a lot of his assignments were chosen with that in mind. (Asked how he drew such beautiful women, he usually pointed out that his sister had been a Ziegfield Girl, so he often found himself around beautiful women.) Circa 1946 he began getting work from National/DC, where the editors were so impressed with his work on “The Moth” and other Batman imitations that they hired him to draw “Batman.” He was one of many artists whose work appeared on that feature under the signature of Bob Kane, though he never actually worked for Kane. For DC he did many other strips, including “Tommy Tomorrow,” “The Legion of Super-Heroes,” and the “Superman-Batman” team-ups in World’s Finest Comics, but his two most famous DC runs were on “Dial H for Hero,” which appeared in House of Mystery in the 1960s, and his long stint as the artist on “Supergirl” in Action Comics. For those who grew up reading comics in the ’60s, Mooney was the “Supergirl” artist. He was assigned to the feature for the most prosaic of reasons—her strip replaced the “Tommy Tomorrow” strip in Action Comics, and it was easier on the schedule to keep the same artist on that slot. Al Plastino drew the first installment of “Supergirl,” but Jim took over after that, making the character his own and drawing her from 1959 to 1968. During much of this time he lived in Los Angeles, managing an antiquarian bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard and drawing pages there when he wasn’t waiting on customers. At one point, he hired some young art students to help around the store, and they occasionally inked backgrounds for him, as well. By 1968 he’d moved back to New York, just in time to quarrel with DC editor Mort Weisinger, who was seeking a “fresher, more modern” look for the Superman-affiliated titles. Mooney phoned his old boss, Stan Lee, and the timing couldn’t have been better. Marvel was on the verge of expanding, and Stan needed new artists. He especially needed someone who could get the right look on The Amazing Spider-Man, and that’s what Mooney wound up doing primarily for the next few years. At first he inked the pencil art of John Romita or finished rough layouts. Later he penciled “Spider-Man” stories himself and also branched out to other strips, working on almost everything Marvel then published at one time or another. He enjoyed an

A Truly Super Artist Jim Mooney shares this page with one of his early assignments and an archetypal panel from a DC “Supergirl” story. At left is the “Magno the Magnetic Man” splash page from Ace Periodicals’ Super-Mystery Comics, Vol. 2, #6 (Feb. 1941), with thanks to Michael T. Gilbert. [Superman/Supergirl panel ©2008 DC Comics.]

Jim Mooney

especially fruitful collaboration with writer Steve Gerber, with whom he did Man-Thing and Omega the Unknown. Jim was so reliable that Marvel didn’t hesitate when, in 1975, he asked for a contract that would guarantee him steady work if he moved back to Florida. It turned out to be a ten-year deal, and after its expiration he cut back on his work, freelancing when he felt like it for Marvel and occasionally for DC and even several independents. Comics historians have been known to debate who, in the history of the form, worked on the most pages of art… and while names like Jack Kirby and Gil Kane and Curt Swan are often mentioned, I sure wouldn’t bet against Jim Mooney. In semi-retirement, Jim began making the rounds of the comic conventions, appearing on panels and selling re-creations of some of his most famous covers and pages. We became good friends, and I always enjoyed his company. I remember the four of us—he and Anne, Carolyn Kelly and me—spending an evening at a lovely seafood restaurant in Seattle with an ocean view. We got to the table just as the sun was setting over the water, and it was just spectacular. Jim joked, “It’s so frustrating. No matter how hard we try, none of us will ever draw anything a thousandth as beautiful as that.” Maybe not… but measured against his peers, Jim Mooney did just fine. Mark Evanier has been a writer in comics, TV, and other media for several decades now, and is the author of the important recent book Kirby: King of Comics. This tribute has been very slightly edited from its appearance on Mark’s popular website www.newsfromme.com. More coverage of the life and career and art of Jim Mooney will be seen in future issues of Alter Ego.

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And it finally came about, successfully so, in the early ’50s, and after I had left the company. I visited Whit several times in L.A. While on the editorial or artist subject, I should say that, contrary to Cardy or other artists’ opinions of Mort Weisinger, who was actually a writer and an aggressive idea man, he was a motivator. Personality-wise, he was probably too aggressive for most people. Since I was last in touch with you, I made it a point to look up [onetime DC co-publisher] Irwin Donenfeld on a trip to Connecticut last summer. I was sorry to learn he had died the previous year, but I did get to visit with his widow. It turns out she is the sister of Jay Emmett, who was a nephew of Jack Liebowitz and who, when he moved to Warner after DC was sold to them, arranged to make regular payments to [“Superman” creators] Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster and to get DC out from the pressure they were getting. Emmett was recently with a group that had lunch with the President in the White House, so he is still active, even though he got in trouble at Warner and resigned. I see you picked up a couple of items from the copies of the Independent News that I sent you and I get a credit line. Thanks. But I cannot refrain from saying that, all things considered, Charlie [M.C.] Gaines was really the idea man, the editorial pusher if I may generalize it… strong-willed in his positions and ideas, and finally Harry Donenfeld’s perpetual pain in the butt. They never seemed to greet each other without being ready for an argument.

e’re gonna get caught up on these letters pages if it kills us—and it probably will! So we’ve telescoped communications re issues #65-67 into this section, led off by Shane Foley’s opulent homage above to the Kull and Conan art of Marie Severin and John Buscema, respectively, with the amiable Atlantean tossing around our “maskot” Captain Ego while his boy ally Alter rushes to the rescue with his “Z”helmet, which enables Cap to do anything the lad can think of… except, apparently, get out of Kull’s way! Thanks as always, Shane! [Conan TM & ©2008 Conan Properties International, LLC; Kull TM & ©2008 Kull Productions, Inc.; Alter & Captain Ego TM & © Roy Thomas & Bill Schelly.] That said, we’ll begin with comments on A/E #65, whose cover feature was the super-talented Golden/Silver/Bronze-Age artist Nick Cardy. Naturally, we received many congratulatory missives on Nick’s work, and on Jim Amash’s fine interview—and why not? Since this mag prefers to showcase information rather than just plaudits, we’re leading with this letter from Jack Adams, who for many years was a major executive with Independent News, the distribution company owned by the same folks who owned DC/National: Dear Roy— Alter Ego #65, devoted to DC (National Comics) and Fawcett Publications was of interest and brought forward many memories. Nick Cardy’s feature story was most interesting, particularly with respect to his experience and ratings of DC’s artists and editors. While I knew all of them, my major contact and co-worker was Whit Ellsworth, who is barely mentioned. This surprises me, as Whit ran the editorial show with okays from Jack Liebowitz and the artists are his, if I may put it in perspective. Certainly not Irwin [Donenfeld]. After several radio and comic movies of Superman that really never got anywhere except from the publicity angle, Whit pressured Jack Liebowitz. I heard him personally urge Jack L. to make the Hollywood move and to give him the opportunity to be the producer and director.

Incidentally, as you must know, Harry D. was not a publisher as we understand editorial content and audiences, but he was a supersalesman. His big break, he would say, was in getting the Hearst Magazine contract to print 9 million subscription cards for their mags. He always told the story that he was tired of bringing in the printing business for the press he and four relations owned, and that he simply kicked or bought them out. He then went into publishing what I would call “borderline”type mags and then moving into comics when the former began to get him and his partner Paul Sampliner in trouble with local authorities. I don’t know if I told you that I started in the publishing business at Fawcett, owned by “Captain Bill,” as he was my mother’s brother. He offered me a routine job. I was there 14 years and I would say I earned my spurs in the magazine-publishing and –distributing business. Donenfeld and Sampliner hired me away from Fawcett to organize and direct Independent News from a shipping business into a distribution one, like the Hearsts’. Sampliner was in the Army during World War II and I ran Independent News, with consultation when necessary with Jack L. or Harry D. I am not sure it is of interest, but when the DC group began selling upwards of 10 million copies a month, a couple of ad men from Liberty magazine decided to form a company and to sell advertising for smaller publishers. National Comics was thus born with a guaranteed circulation of 8 million, and made more income for the DC corporation. But I wanted to say a few things about Fawcett. I knew Ralph Daigh, and Al Allard was a personal friend of 25 years or so until he quit his job and returned to Minneapolis, his hometown. Oddly, I became one of the chief witnesses when DC sued Fawcett for making Captain Marvel a duplicate of Superman. Louis Nizer, Paramount Pix’s high-priced lawyer, was also DC’s, and while Harry D. offered to settle if Fawcett would pay the lawyers’ fees, Fawcett turned them down and finally ended up paying out a judgment of $400,000, if I recall correctly. I must say, though, that I never realized that Fawcett did as well with its comic magazines as your article indicated they did. Allard and Daigh were good and professional editors, so I am not surprised. So I thank you for allowing me to reopen and visit my comic days, probably the most interesting and productive in my development. At 96 one looks back, as this letter reflects.

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people in charge who made it that way.” Doug McCratic writes: “I picked up A/E #65 and was more than a little shocked to see the sketch I sent you in the Dave Cockrum tribute attributed to Clifford Meth. No big deal! I’m glad it made it into the issue!” We correctly credited it when we ran it a second time in issue #78, Doug— but we want to acknowledge that mislabeling here, as well. Apparently Dutch TV writer Ger Apeldoorn sent us the Neal Adams illustration we used from the Comic Artist’s Cook Book, though someone else may have sent it, as well. He especially enjoyed the Nick Cardy interview: “Jim Amash has a great personal style and really seems to touch something in everyone he interviews. This sometimes leads him into areas other interviewers would stay away from. This time, I like Nick Cardy’s sidesteps into the specifics of drawing light and shadow that popped up at several points in the interview. Very information, and a good read.” You won’t find any argument about Jim’s interviewing technique from us, Ger— and of course Nick made a wonderfully colorful subject!

Incidentally, Goldwater and Silberkleit (of MLJ, later Archie) worked earlier for Paul Sampliner as order regulators when he owned the Eastern Distributing Company. Jack Adams We’ve been pleased to run your insights in earlier issues of A/E, Jack, and we can never get enough of them! We know you’ve been sharing information for several years now with Michael Feldman, a comics researcher whose letters often appear in these pages, and we get the distinct impression that one day soon a book will be forthcoming out of all that ferment. Meanwhile, we’re grateful for the nuggets of information you’ve sent. Here are some brief comments from others about #65’s various features:

Dan Makara, longtime buddy of Golden Age “Green Lantern”/“Justice Society”/”Wildcat” artist Irwin Hasen, feels that “Craig Delich incorrectly ID’d the inker of that ‘GL’ daily strip [sample from the 1940s, as seen in A/E #65]. Irwin tells me that the inking on that strip is his. Also, the Sensation Comics cover attributed to Irwin, the latter says, is not his; he believes it to be by Arthur Peddy.” Irwin ought to know, Dan, so thanks for forwarding the info—though we’d love to hear from “JSA” and art identification expert Craig D. on the subject, since nobody’s perfect. Next, a few comments out A/E #66, the first of two issues spotlighting Golden Age great Bob Powell, beginning with one from Bud Plant, owner of Bud Plant Comic Art, which of course is one of the major sources for comics-related books and other art publications: Roy, I thoroughly enjoyed A/E #66, from first page to last. I’ve been a huge fan of Bob Powell for decades (and, I’d like to think, of some of his most seminal work). It was wonderful to learn so much about him. I was surprised that he died so young. What a shame. On that note, I was touched by the recollections of his boys. It made me wish I could somehow convey to them the pleasure their dad has

John Benson, who hosted the first of the three 1966-to-early-’67 comics conventions, reports re the piece on the Calvin Beck/Castle of Frankenstein con that, at the same time Beck lured actor (and one-time Olympic swimming champion) Larry “Buster” Crabbe into attending that event, “there was a TV ad with Crabbe in which he came on camera in pants and an undershirt (not a T-shirt), put his thumb under the corner of the undershirt, and said, “You see this? It looks like an ordinary undershirt—but that’s where the sim-U-larity ends!” I used to love that ad, and wonder about a product so cheesy that they didn’t even bother Was There Ever (or know) to correct his pronunciation. I’ll still say, ‘That’s A Stag On These where the sim-U-larity ends!” at appropriate moments… but no Covers? one knows what I’m talking about.” We’d know, John! I (Roy) The painted covers of was just telling that anecdote to someone last week! Magazine Alley Oop artist Jack Bender says that, re p. 37 of #65, he can enlighten us “about the ‘1971’ on the Superman daily. I have one from the same story, and it has the number “1967” on it as well as the 1945 copyright line. The numbers… refer to the sequence number of the strips. It was common in those days to have a sequence number as well as the date on each strip to make sure newspapers ran the strips in the proper order.” Thanks, Jack. Henry Kujawa feels that “the Emilio Squeglio interview was one of the most compelling I’ve read in some time. Actually, it makes me kinda heartsick, reading about a company [Fawcett] that was such a wonderful place to work. Of course, it’s the

Management’s titles tended to feature dangerous animals and beautiful, scantily clad women… not necessarily in that order. This sample from the Stag issue for November 1950 was provided by Dr. Michael J. Vassallo. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

[comments, correspondence, & corrections]

along. In the meantime, continued good luck with your fascinating magazine. When I was eight or ten, I can tell now that the comics were my opium and sex combined. Bruce Jay Friedman We sure hope you prod some additional memories of Magazine Management and its colorful personnel out of yourself one of these days, Bruce! Speaking of “colorful personnel,” we contacted John Romita, super-star Marvel artist and later art director during this era, to ask him about MM’s use of photos of Marvel staffers in its so-called “men’s sweat” mags like Male and Stag, where their likenesses were often given alternate names—and attributes: Hi Roy— The Magazine Management mags used shots of lots of Marvel people in the ’60s through the early ’70s, but I drew the line when [secretary] Mary McPherran’s photo was used in a story about a young lady (imaginary, as were all their stories) who informed on a mobster. Remember Arnold Shuster, a young guy who spotted bankrobber Wilie Sutton on a New York street and reported to the law, leading to his arrest? Some moron gangster wannabe shot and killed Shuster just to keep citizens from “ratting” on criminals. I thought Mary was in danger… told all the Marvel folks to stop posing for phony Magazine Management stories. By the way, you ask if I may have posed for anything for MM. I posed for one, which was used in a dumb fictional story about a World War II vet who stayed in the South Pacific on a “desert island” as the King with dozens of grass-skirted beauties at his feet. My brother-in-law read the article and refused to take my word for it that was a picture of me. He was convinced that the story was true, since it was in print! John Romita

Shadow Of A Doubt Bob Powell drew Street & Smith's Shadow both in comics and in his original comic book magazine. This ad for The Shadow pulp is from True Sport Picture Stories, Vol. 4, #6 (March-April 1948). Thanks to Bruce Mason. [©2008 Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

given me over the years. I just bought the original art for an early “Shock Gibson” stories, my first Powell artwork, and I love it for the great roaring plane so integral to the story, as well as for the dynamic action. The David George article on Magazine Management was also firstrate. He’s not only one of the most articulate writers I’ve had the pleasure to read, but his memory was first-rate here. Bud Plant Thanks, Bud. Powell’s sons, who were of immeasurable help augmenting the coverage of the artist by Ed Lane and others, sent us notes of appreciation for the issues, and will now be aware of your (and others’) appreciation of their father’s art. Unsurprisingly, there was an outpouring of praise for the work of (and articles on) Bob Powell, one of the great artists of the Golden Age and later—but there were also considerable kudos for David George’s piece on Magazine Management, the company of which Marvel was merely a minority part in the 1950s and ’60s, starting with this brief message from Bruce Jay Friedman, author of numerous important novels and plays and an alumnus of MM who was mentioned prominently in A/E #66: Dear Roy— Thanks for sending along the Magazine Management piece, which I enjoyed. As you suggest, it triggered some memories. If I have any stray recollections about MM, other than the ones I’ve published, I’ll send them

Sounds like comic book fans aren’t the only one who often indulge in fantasy, John. Thanks for taking the time to add a bit of texture to that particular story! Now, here are a few other comments on A/E #66: David George himself wrote, on receiving a copy of the issue, to add some info about “the photo of the guy cowering in a corner as if he were suffering a mental breakdown. It is, in fact, none other than Ivan Prashker, the editor who wrote ‘The Boss’s Son’ for Playboy.” We wish we’d asked you about it earlier, Dave—but things get pretty hectic around here sometimes. We do what we can—and then try to clean up things afterwards. Ger Apeldoorn (where have we heard that name before?) mentions that he greatly enjoyed the Bob Powell material in #66, but asks, concerning Jim Amash’s short interview with Blanche Fago: “Am I the only one who thinks that Mrs. Fago’s mentioning that Ray Bradbury did two-page text stories for her at Charlton was either extremely special news or a trick of the mind? When she was editing, Bradbury was already established as a writer and would never have done low-paying text stories… or would he?” Almost surely not, Ger. We just didn’t get around to mentioning it at the time. Dave Friedman, underground comix cartoonist and incidentally the son of Bruce Jay Friedman, says that even he “learned some things about my Dad’s MM days that I wasn’t aware of. I remember, when I was very young in the early ’60s, my Dad coming home and telling my Mom how sad he felt for Stan Lee (whom he was always friendly with) being given a tiny office with a shared secretary, as [publisher] Martin Goodman was trying to possibly humiliate Stan into quitting, wanting to phase out the comics division altogether. The rest is history.” Carl Gafford, longtime DC staffer, reports: “Years ago, at DC, we came upon some original Bob Powell for a comic strip he did starring a teen-age girl. The strip had [then-popular singer] Bobby Rydell guest-appearing, and apparently he only approved one or two shots of his likeness, as the same faces were statted repeatedly throughout the strips. Don’t know if the strip

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ever saw print. It could easily have come and gone without any memory today.” Alberto Becattini informs us from Italy that he recently learned that Powell “also drew the Bat Masterson daily strip (besides the Sunday page) from late 1959 into 1960, replacing Howard Nostrand, who was evidently busy doing other things.” Thanks, Alberto! Nick Caputo was happy to see his article on Powell’s Marvel Age work printed in A/E #66, but says the word “not” got left out of one sentence on p. 42, reversing its meaning. That sentence should have read: “Don Heck inked the strip, and while his work was distinctive, it was not incompatible with Powell’s design and inventive layouts.” Ouch! Also, Nick says that the paperback comics history he first discovered, as per his bio, was not Jules Feiffer’s The Great Comic Book Heroes but All in Color for a Dime, edited by Richard Lupoff and Don Thompson—and that on p. 71 an Incredible Hulk daily strip is listed as “possible [Mike] Esposito inks”: “To my eye, that strip appears to be the work of Frank Giacoia.” You’re dead right, Nick… and sharp-eyed Alberto Becattini pointed out the same error. A/E #67 showcased the life and work of artist Bob Oksner. My (Roy’s) longtime California pal Bill Warren works with Leonard Maltin on the latter’s thick annual guides to movies on TV, DVD, and video, and showed his boss its interview with Oksner, resulting in the following letter from the eminent film reviewer: Hi, Roy… I would hardly call myself an “old friend” of Bob Oksner, but he was the first cartoonist I ever met, because he lived in my hometown of Teaneck, New Jersey, and was very kind to me when I suggested I write stories for him when I was a kid and hoping to be cartoonist myself. He

also gave me Jules Feiffer’s address and suggested I write him for advice. Feiffer had glowing words about Oksner and how kind he’d been when Jules was started out. He wanted to give me a piece of original art, but confessed that he hadn’t kept any of his Bob Hope or Jerry Lewis pages… so he signed a [Many Loves of] Dobie Gillis page to me, which of course I was very happy to have. Leonard Maltin Thanks for taking the time to drop us a line, Mr. M.! Likewise commenting on that issue was pro artist Alan Kupperberg: Roy, The Oksner issue is wonderful. As usual. FYI, re the Adventures of Jerry Lewis #105 cover on page 17, with a Wayne Boring Superman figure pasted in: I was in the production department when that cover came in. The mustachioed villain was originally drawn as Lex Luthor, I don’t recall, if I ever knew, why the change was made. Because Luthor was the bad guy in that issue’s story. Bob Oksner was a nice guy and a terrific artist. Alan Kupperberg No argument there, Alan. Issue #67 also continued the coverage of Bob Powell, about which the aforementioned John Benson had this to say: Roy— The correspondence between Bob Powell and Will Eisner was truly an incredible find! I was interested in Eisner’s warnings about plagiarism. It might have been just a reminder that what might be acceptable in comics was not acceptable in a newspaper because of the different audience, although one would think that reminder would have been given earlier in the production of the Comic Section. I had heard (I’m not sure form whom, it might even have been Eisner) that Eisner caught Manly Wade Wellman doing some pretty close copies of his Spirit strips. But one would assume that Wellman did not start writing Spirit scripts until after Eisner went into the Army, so Eisner couldn’t have been referring to that in this instance. John Benson And this added info from “Comic Crypt’s” own Michael T. Gilbert: Hi Roy! I was re-reading your comments on the Bob Powell letters, and on one you speculated as to why Powell referred to his “Mr. Mystic” script as “MM #23.” Well, Powell sent his letter in the third week of April, right? So it would have been the 23rd weekly story of the year, right? I’m guessing they numbered 52 of them each year. Michael T. Gilbert Another mystery cleared up! Thanks, Michael. Richard Kyle noted a typo at the top of page 30. The writer and cocreator of the Dondi newspaper comic strip was Gus Edson, not “Gus Eden”! Just a typo—but we’re happy to correct it. Ben Samuels of Classics Incorporated was “a bit surprised” to see the splash page to a story of which he owns the original art (“Teen Age Sex

Diving For Dollars (Or At Least For Dimes) Reader Jake Oster feels that the central figure in the cover at left by Lou Fine for Fox’s Mystery Men Comics #2 (Sept. 1939) was the model for the hero on that of Jumbo Comics #14 (April 1940)—which he feels is by Bob Powell, though it’s also been credited to Charles Sultan and even Will Eisner. The Jumbo cover was reprinted in A/E #66. The Lightning’s arms on that one are positioned quite differently from those of Rex Dexter of Mars on the Fox comic, partly because Rex is firing a raygun…but otherwise the figures are very similar. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

[comments, correspondence, & corrections]

smooth.” Nearly as good a word, Scott, as “fen,” which is some sciencefiction fans’ plural of “fan.” To date, neither has been picked up from sf or comics fandom the way the terms “fanzine” and “prequel” were, a few years back. We could have run dozens more letters, of course, re AE #65-67—a whole paean of praise, as they say—particularly for Nick Cardy, Bob Powell, and Bob Oksner, the feature subjects of A/E #65-67, and in one very definite sense we’re sorry we haven’t. But the issues, and the talents of those three gents, speak for themselves, and we hope anyone who missed the coverage of them the first time around will peruse the TwoMorrows ad bloc that begins on p. 89 and pick up a few back issues. Send any compliments or complaints or corrections to: Roy Thomas e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com 32 Bluebird Trail fax: (803) 826-6501 St. Matthews, SC 29135 Remember, there’ll be a second issue on sword-and-sorcery in comic books, this time focusing more on individual series and creators, three issues from now—while next ish will see our annual Halloween issue, focusing on the early-’70s horror comic Web of Horror, among other things!

Hope These Guys Have A Better Track Record Than The Chicago Cubs! One of the late great Bob Oksner’s early efforts was this “Commando Cubs” splash page for Nedor/Pines/Standard’s Thrilling Comics #50 (Oct. 1945), illustrating a script credited to later ACG editor/writer Richard Hughes. Thanks to Bruce Mason. (P.S.: Naturally, erstwhile Chicago baseball fan Roy T. is aware that, as these words are typed, that particular bunch of Cubs leads its division—but in June, there’s still a lonnnng season ahead. And it’s been an even longer drought of World Series wins—like, 100 years this year! [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

Club,” from First Love Illustrated #13) pictured on p. 26 of A/E #67. That’s because Bruce Mason or someone else also sent it to us from an art auction catalog… but it seems we printed the version Ben had fixed up, so we apologize for neglecting to give him credit for same. It’s harder than you might think to keep these things straight—at least, it is for us! A/E interviewer and associate editor Jim Amash advises us that the photo on p. 16 was not taken by DC production chief Jack Adler, as suggested in a caption a few pages later. And finally, re no particular issue: Fan Scott Sheaffer sent us a letter some time back using the coined word “fandamentalist” (possibly also spelled “fandomentalist”), which we wanted to pass on to you. “Fandamentalists (noun, pl.): fans who violently believe the only valid interpretation of any entertainment source is a dogmatic adherence to their favorite version of that source. Any change to the smallest detail is inherently unacceptable (see also “heresy”) and met with frantic scorn. See also Hal Jordan and Klingons, bumpy vs.

Lewis & Clark—Or In This Case, Barry In a later phase of his happily long career, Oksner drew both humor comics and the occasional super-hero such as Superman—or, in the case of this offbeat crossover, the foes of The Flash and eventually the Scarlet Speedster himself. From The Adventures of Jerry Lewis #112 (May-June 1969); script by E. Nelson Bridwell. Thanks to Bob Bailey. [©2008 DC 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 a vital part of FCA since his first column appeared in FCA #54, 1996. Last issue Marc talked about how he first got acquainted with Captain Marvel. In this issue he discusses the importance of “doodling.” —P.C. Hamerlinck.]

[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 stories 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,

oodling … rough, hasty scribbling, over to one side, for one’s personal benefit … in search of graphic solutions to graphic problems where mere words just wouldn’t do it. I called the sketches “doodles” and have kept many over the years, some from as far back as my first days at Fawcett. When I showed up at those offices in 1941, I already had a year and a half of experience in comics, but it was not comic books. It was newspaper comics. I learned much that day … about the company I was with and the super-hero I’d be drawing. At the first opportunity I stopped at a newsstand to see what other publishers, and other super-heroes, were doing … what sort of life they lived. I was surprised … at so much bitterness and violence … snarling faces behind huge fists so well-drawn in perspective aroused a tendency to dodge and fight back. The game … the contest … it appeared, did not, after all, involve the characters in the books and on the covers … but was among the artists … the objective being to determine who could draw the most intensive rage and hate.

That’s Karate, Kid! Marc Swayze writes: “Mary Marvel executing a vicious back-handed Karate chop is an example of the rough sketches that were never intended for print.” Until now, that is. 1940s drawing from Swayze’s sketchbook. [Mary Marvel TM & ©2008 DC Comics.]

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

Making Hay While Shazam Shines Swayze: “The open-handed haymaker was a bit more physical than deemed appropriate for Mary Marvel…but it was considered a point from which to recede to more ladylike action.” Another previously unpublished 1940s drawing by Swayze, from the artist’s sketchbook. [Mary Marvel © & TM 2008 DC Comics.]

Back in the office … Captain Marvel seemed a bit tame by comparison. He wasn’t fighting as furiously as those other guys. In pugilistic vernacular … boxing world language … he might have been accused of “pulling his punches” … meaning, not hitting as hard as he could. It bothered me. What was it?

writing or drawing, or perhaps both, there comes a feeling of responsibility toward the character. When I was doing Captain Marvel, I took it as my bounden duty that he always be depicted with that special ease of performance and ready for whatever the situation … and never under stress as he carried out his deeds.

There was a distinct air of calm confidence about my father and his brothers. When I was a youngster you’d hear remarks like: “I find that things generally turn out all right” … spoken with an obvious certainty of our Deity up there, in charge of things. “His way may not turn out to be the way we planned it … but it’ll be the right way. So let’s ride with it!”

The rough sketches, though, those doodles, “done over to one side,” would have us see it otherwise. They include facial expressions of the World’s Mightiest Mortal struggling and straining, plainly never meant to see print.

Growing up around such comfortable talk made you want to see others equally fortunate … even the comic book characters for which you eventually were to become accountable. The thoughts of Captain Marvel returned. Hey … that was it! There was a certain cool confidence about him as he performed his feats … no hurry, no worry, no need for excessive emotion, facial contortion, or physical effort. He wasn’t hitting as hard as he could … because he didn’t have to!!! It was Captain Marvel’s way. It apparently was also the Fawcett way. There was a general atmosphere about the place that everything was “all right” … in order … having been properly executed … an attribute likely brought by Captain Billy from Minnesota. I liked it. Somehow, when you’ve been doing a comic book character for a while,

But that was the very purpose of the doodles. They were experiments … like having the chief characters assume various poses until a satisfactory one is determined. One of the scenes is of Mary Marvel, delivering a back-handed Karate chop powerful enough to prune a sapling … when all the while we know her to be far too ladylike to behave in such a manner. Another is Mickey Malone, the Phantom Eagle, who, after a war-time of shooting down enemy aircraft, thereafter was to play his roles with never a show of anger or rage. Except in the doodle drawings! The comic book artist of the 1940s faced quite a few little drawing board challenges, and doodling, over to one side, didn’t always provide an answer. But in doing them, you felt like you were moving in the right direction!

The Cult Of The Curse The Story Behind The Other Golden Age “Captain Marvel” Serial by John G. Pierce Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck

The Coming of “The Cult Of The Curse”

ack in the 1940s, there were three great sources of entertainment for kids. One was comic books, while the other two were radio programs and the cliffhanger movie serials. This last-named, also known as chapterplays, presented a story spread out over 12 or more episodes—with each chapter except the last ending on a dramatic moment, usually with some imminent danger posed to the hero or leading lady, with the escape being revealed only at the beginning of the following week’s episode. Fawcett Publications’ Captain Marvel and Spy Smasher both starred in excellent chapterplays from the king of the serialmakers, Republic Pictures. And Fawcett licensees Captain Midnight, Nyoka, and Don Winslow also appeared in movie serials.

Cover Me! C.C. Beck’s cover for Captain America Adventures #61 (May 24, 1946). Having the cover spot got “The Cult of the Curse” off to a fine start, but, alas, it soon fizzled—at least by comparison to “The Monster Society of Evil.” But then—what wouldn’t have? [©2008 DC Comics.]

But the cross-pollination worked both ways, as such serials not only borrowed from the comics (and radio, for that matter), but also influenced them. In particular, Captain Marvel Adventures had two comic

book serials, the first being “The Monster Society of Evil” which appeared in CMA #22-46 (1943-1945). This serial, designed (from its splash page onward) to call to mind the great movie serials, introduced one of Cap’s most notable villains, the tiny worm named Mr. Mind—who still fires up writers’ imaginations these many decades later (as witnessed by Jeff Smith’s recent mini-series). But there was a second, shorter, less-remembered serial, running from CMA #61 (May 1946) to #66 (Oct. 1946). After an opening splash panel designed to simulate the Saturday matinee movie viewing experience (similar to the feel of the beginning of the previous “Monster Society” epic), this second serial, “The Cult of the Curse,” and its first chapter, “The World’s Mightiest Mortal versus the World’s Mightiest Immortal,” begins with the discovery of a temple in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. A prospector, who claims to own the mountain, is confronted by a strange being with pointed ears and wearing a toga, who introduces himself as Oggar. (Perhaps Otto Binder, the author of the story, named him Oggar as a play off the word “ogre,” which would be a good descriptive for this villain.) Oggar claims to have come from ancient Egypt, labels himself “the World’s Mightiest Immortal,” and is ready to launch something he calls

Ifs, Ands, & Butts (Above:) In this panel from the first chapter of “The Cult of the Curse” serial, in Captain Marvel Adventures #61 (May 1946), Oggar kicks butt. (Right:) Later in that same chapter, Cap and Oggar are about to butt heads this time. In all panels reproduced for this article, the story/script is by Otto Binder, the art by C.C. Beck and staff. [©2008 DC Comics.]

FCA (Fawcett Collectors Of America)

the Cult of the Curse. And he proceeds to demonstrate his power to carry out his wishes by magically killing the prospector’s donkey. Frightened but defiant, the prospector flees to get some help. But, of course, his story is not believed. “Temple? World’s Mightiest Immortal? Ha, ha! Go tell that to Capt. Marvel!” he is told, so he decides to do just that, traveling in his jalopy to the city to see Billy Batson, who “knows Captain Marvel.” Billy is skeptical, but agrees to travel with the prospector, in his jalopy, to the mountain. There they confront Oggar, who gives them the boot (or the sandal, as it may be), causing Billy to yell “Shazam!” Billy is being kicked through the air when he yells the word, so when Captain Marvel appears, he is on the ground humorously with his rump sticking up in the air, affording Oggar the opportunity to “kick butt.” But, of course, that doesn’t work against the World’s Mightiest Mortal, who, however, finds that his own blows don’t affect Oggar, either. Suddenly, it becomes clear to Oggar who the red-suited interloper is, as he seems to know about Shazam and the source of Cap’s powers. He is about to reveal something important, but instead decides to dispatch Cap with lightning from his fingertips. But that just changes Captain Marvel to Billy, who quickly changes back to Cap. In the ensuing fight, the two can’t make much headway against each other, so Oggar retreats into his temple, while surrounding it with a an invisible force-field to keep Cap out.

crown for Cap’s head. “Pah!” says Cap, rejecting the villain’s offers. “Well, what do you want?” Oggar asks. “I just want to keep punching your chin, that’s all!” Cap answers straightforwardly. But Oggar suggests a one-hour truce, so that he can tell Cap his story. So Oggar tells of how, millennia ago, Shazam was the leader, not of six great heroes, as Cap has always believed, but of seven, with Oggar himself having been the seventh. In fact, the old wizard’s name had been SHAZAMO. However, Oggar rebelled, so Shazamo banished him to the “mortal world,” and removed the “O“ from his own name, while predicting that in the 20th century he would pass on and leave his powers to a new hero, a boy named Billy Batson, who would become Captain Marvel. “So I lay low for 3000 years, while old Shazam and the six heroes passed, one by one, into the higher world. Then, five years ago, old Shazam himself went, as you know.” (This is an intriguing example of “real time” in comics, because it had indeed been about five years since Captain Marvel had first appeared in Whiz Comics. It also offers a curious view of the six benefactors, sometimes alluded to as “gods” or “elders,” who by this reckoning would be mortals with super-powers, rather than deities, per se. So, theoretically, at least, Oggar, being labeled an “immortal,” actually had a bit of an advantage over the others. But hadn’t Shazam said that he was banishing Oggar to “the mortal world,”

Upon consulting Shazam, Billy learns that the old wizard has a history with Oggar, though the details will have to wait for another time. But Shazam somewhat cryptically tells Billy that Oggar has one weakness. The chapter ends, not on a cliffhanger, but certainly on a note of suspense, as Billy makes his radio broadcast.

“The Arena of Horror” Chapter 2, titled as per the above heading, finds Oggar capturing and gagging Billy, and flying him back to his temple dwelling. Along the way in, they pass by statues of Oggar’s own “Seven Deadly Enemies,” which are the six Shazam heroes plus Captain Marvel himself. Oggar hurls a magic dagger at Billy, but the boy has been gnawing away at his gag (apparently without being noticed) and manages to say his special word just in time. And even though the dagger is magic, it has no effect on Cap. Oggar tries to summon lightning, but that doesn’t work, so a slugfest results. Since one can’t prevail against the other, Oggar offers Captain Marvel the opportunity to join him, instead, producing a coffer of gold. Cap rejects that, so Oggar magically creates a

The Cult Of The Curse

obviously meaning that the heroes lived in some other realm?) Anyway, Oggar has told his history in the hopes that he could thereby convince Cap to join him, but that fails, so they return to punching at each other, as Cap tries in vain to find Oggar’s one weakness. However, even Oggar himself doesn’t know what that weakness might be. Oggar tries again to have lightning strike at Captain Marvel, but once again it fails, so instead he dispatches Cap to the South Pole. Meanwhile, back at the temple, Oggar, reaching the conclusion that each stunt works only once, compiles a hand-written list of the tricks he has used so far. His next step is to try to recruit people for his cult by offering a free show inside his temple. Those attending are threatened with being devoured by hungry lions if they don’t join (calling to mind one of the tortures endured by early Christians at the hands of the Roman Empire). But the just-returned Billy Batson changes to Captain Marvel just as a lion is about to bite off his head. The chapter ends as lions go after a helpless man.

“The Arena of Horror,” Redux In Chapter 3 (like chapter 2, also titled “The Arena of Horror”), Cap saves the hapless victim from the lions while Oggar, upset that he has as yet gained no recruits for his cult, resorts to magic gold. He finds four willing possibilities, though they reject the offer of precious metal. “Gold! Phooey! Can you create horsefeathers?” So Oggar leads them into his temple, where he shows them the sign of the cloven hoof. “Worship it, and you will gain evil power over mortals!” But Oggar isn’t exactly the most fortunate of would-be cult-starters, as the four victims, er, recruits, when asked their names, give them as Julius Caesar, Nero, Sampson (Otto Binder goofed; it should have been “Samson,” though the name is sometimes spelled with a “p”), and Napoleon. Oggar is about to destroy these “loonies,” when he gets an idea how to utilize them: “That fits in with my great plan—to recreate in the 20th century the days of ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt—my time!” (Which is quite a compression of ancient history, to say the least!) Anyway, Oggar brands each man with the cloven hoof, but Captain Marvel shows up and starts pursuing Oggar, who then starts consulting his notebook of already-used tricks. Cap knocks the notebook away, and then starts trying to find his enemy’s one weakness. He tries bending a big toe and twisting his leg, but nothing seems to work, so he gives up and sets out to destroy the temple instead. Meanwhile, Oggar retrieves his notebook and creates a sky chariot in which he and his recruits escape. As Captain Marvel starts pulling down the pillars of the temple, he

finds someone else doing so, as well—the lunatic who thinks he is “Sampson.” But Cap has weakened the temple enough that the man thinks he is doing it on his own. Cap flies him away just in time as the temple collapses. (In the Bible, Samson’s destruction of the temple of the Philistines destroyed him in the process, too.) But because “Sampson” has deserted Oggar, the hitherto-unknown curse strikes the man, making him mad. But since he is already mad, all the curse serves to do is make him sane. He remembers his real name as “plain John T. Jones.” (Something similar happened in a Golden Age “JSA” adventure, with the Society’s Johnny Thunder in All-Star Comics #30 [Aug.-Sept. 1946], in which dreams sent by Brain Wave drove five of the male JSAers insane … but since Johnny Thunder was already crazy, his dream made him sane.) The rest of the chapter deals with Oggar’s move to California, where he re-creates an ancient Roman racetrack, and actually gives away money, if people will sign a paper. Naturally, the customers don’t pay any attention to what they are signing—a statement that they will join the Cult of the Curse if Oggar wins a chariot race. (I wonder if Oggar ever realized that he might have had better success gaining recruits if he would have used a less ominous title. I mean, would you join an organization with the words “cult” and “curse” in the name?) The chapter ends, as with part one, on a suspenseful note but not a cliffhanger per se, with a disguised Captain Marvel entering the chariot race.

“Flames Of The Magic Fiddle” It’s there that Chapter 4, titled as above, picks up. Oggar uses his magic (and really, with all of the powers at his command, it’s a wonder that he hasn’t already defeated Cap, or that he has to resort to trickery at all) to make wheels fall off, chariots crash, etc., only to discover that he can’t so easily defeat one driver, viz., Captain Marvel. But again, Oggar doesn’t give up easily. (Comics villains at least exemplify the positive traits of hard work and persistence. Sloth may have been one of the Seven Deadly Enemies in old Shazam’s cavern, but Cap seldom faced any villains with that particular characteristic!) He changes Cap’s horses into fat pigs as CM comments, “Holy Moley! I’m falling behind! Those fat pigs can’t run any faster than—well, two fat pigs!” But Cap is no slouch, either. He simply changes places with the pigs, putting them in the chariot and pulling the chariot himself. (One gets the feeling that the rules for this race were rather loose.) Thus, Oggar loses, while “Julius Caesar” proclaims that the winner gets “an autographed picture of Cleopatra, my girl friend.” (Marc Antony wasn’t around to object, obviously.) But Cap is more interested in capturing Oggar, who, in

FCA (Fawcett Collectors Of America)

Billy, who is on the ground. “It worked! I appeared where the magic lightning struck—which is right here! Meanwhile, the ball rolled past the spot because of its speed!” This seems a rather strange escape; theoretically, the change should have been accomplished, leaving Billy inside the ball. On the other hand, this was hardly the only time that the lightning was utilized in some odd fashion. But how fast was that ball rolling, to outpace lightning? Billy reverts to Captain Marvel, and easily stops “Nero.” Meanwhile, Oggar takes in refugees from the fire (which, as it turns out, can’t actually do any harm), but only if they promise to join his cult. Then it is back to flipping through the notebooks, until finally Oggar summons a sky hook to drag Cap away.

“Slaves Of The Sea” Now, If The Old Wizard Had Only Shortened His Name To “Shaz”! Billy’s vacation is cut short in this scene from chapter 5, in CMA #65 (Sept. 1946). If readers had a nickel for every time young Batson’s magic work was interrupted halfway through, they could afford to buy a mint set of Captain Marvel Adventures today! [©2008 DC Comics.]

desperation, causes himself and his minions to vanish in order to appear elsewhere. Next, Mr. Morris sends Billy to cover a violin concert at “Karneggy Hall” (a parody name, in typical Fawcett writer fashion), and of course it turns out that the violinist is the fellow who thinks he is Nero. Billy is captured and gagged, but another patron of the concert (and there weren’t many) pulls off his gag, while wondering what is going on. That gives Billy the chance to change to Captain Marvel, just before Billy is about to be branded with the cloven hoof mark. It is at this point that Captain Marvel notices that, under his sandals, Oggar has cloven feet, which is how he delivers that mark to his converts. “That was another punishment old Shazam gave me when I was thrown out of Olympus. He said it would let everybody know at first glance that I was a devil at heart!”

Chapter 5 has Cap simply dislodging himself from the hook and heading back to the city, where he finds that “Nero,” as with “Sampson” earlier, has been restored to sanity because of having failed Oggar, with the curse which is supposed to drive him mad having the reverse effect. Thus, Oggar is left with only two henchmen, “Caesar” and “Napoleon.” It is the latter whom Oggar utilizes next, summoning up a “grande armee” for “Napoleon” to command. Cap easily mows them down, while “Napoleon” himself, giving confusing orders, causes the soldiers to fire on each other. Cap merely waits while they destroy each other. (One supposes that, had these been real beings, rather than magical ones, our hero might have intervened to keep them from killing each other.) Consulting his notebook, Oggar comes up with the idea of having a pit appear in the ground, and as Marvel drops into it, Oggar escapes on a winged horse. Meanwhile, “Napoleon” has, as with the others, been restored to sanity. Next, Mr. Morris, deciding that Billy looks “a bit peaked,” gives him a week’s vacation. Billy spots a yacht giving a week’s cruise for only $5, but sadly notes that it is only for adults. However, the yacht also needs a cabin

Captain Marvel wonders if the cloven hoof is Oggar’s weakness, but it isn’t. So we come to the classic scene, perhaps the best in the entire serial, with Cap and Oggar each flipping through their own notebooks, trying to find some trick which hasn’t yet been used on the other. Oggar points a finger at Marvel, who in turn bites it. Then Cap tries yanking out some of Oggar’s hair, followed by twisting his nose. Captain Marvel comes to the end of his notes, affording Oggar the opportunity to create an unbreakable plastic ball around him. While Cap struggles to break free, Oggar sends his lackey “Nero,” his fiddle blazing with magic flames, off to burn down the city. Cap rolls the ball out the door and down the hill. At this point, he yells “Shazam!” and changes back to

You Can Look It Up! The hero and villain flip through their respective notebooks—looking for a way to outwit each other. A truly inventive scene from chapter four of “Cult,” in CMA #64 (Aug. 1946). [©2008 DC Comics.]

The Cult Of The Curse

boy, so he signs on for that—only to learn, too late, that the yacht’s captain is none other than Oggar, who had used “magic hypnosis to make your boss give you a vacation and to attract you here! Now you’re in my power!” Oggar proceeds to create a welded steel gag to prevent Billy from saying his word. Taken down to the hold of the yacht, Billy sees what amounts to “an old-time slave galley,” with “Caesar” as their master. Oggar forces Billy to work, angering one of the other slaves, a woman, who slaps him. “Stop it, you fiend! How can you treat a little boy like that?” “You dare slap me, woman? I’ll slay you on the spot! Magic arrow—pierce her heart!” But nothing happens. Billy ponders this, but has no time to pursue the thought, as he needs to free himself. He decides to wrap the chains on his wrists around the steel gag and squeeze hard, which cracks the gag. Captain Marvel frees the slaves, while Oggar, on deck, summons up a storm. The chapter ends with Marvel saving the yacht by pushing it to shore, while Oggar escapes into a jungle.

“The Battle Of The Century” Finally, Chapter 6 brings a new player into the story, as Captain Marvel, while searching the jungle, finds a female hermit who turns out to be Circe. 3000 years ago, in Egypt, she says, “I was the fairest girl in the world of that time, and all the men knelt at my feet in worship.” All except Oggar, that is, who wanted her to be his queen. When she rejected him, he tried different tricks on her, none of which worked. “Hmm, I cannot destroy her, but I can give her a gift! Fair one, I give you the gift of immortality! You shall live on for ages!” And apparently, in the realm of magic in which Oggar operates, there is a difference between tricks designed to destroy or defeat, and gifts, as the lady does indeed stay alive, aging outwardly but not dying. (A great gift, indeed, but still it somehow didn’t qualify as a trick to defeat her.) So, as men turn away from her, she plots revenge by studying witchcraft (from a book entitled Witchcraft, no less), learning “how to turn men into animals, which they are, the beasts!” (Possibly making Circe the world’s first feminist!)

Concluding her story, Circe wields her magic wand to turn Cap into a centaur, which works. Of course, he gets out of that by changing back to Billy, whom Circe merely changes into a billy-goat. (Some days you just can’t win.) In this form, he is worse off than before, because he can’t even speak. Meanwhile, Oggar has seen what has been going on and decides to hunt Billy down, utilizing a magic spear, then arrows, and finally a “magic rifle.” (We’ve all heard of “magic bullets.” Now we know what is used to fire them.) And with that, he shoots and kills Billy. Or so he thinks. As it turns out, Oggar hit a real goat, not Billy. Though the word “scapegoat” isn’t used here, that’s in essence what this other poor creature has become for Billy. Billy-goat returns to the witch’s cabin, where he decides “to butt her till I make her real mad,” which works. (A decidedly different way of dealing with a female foe!) Circe changes the goat back to the boy, “and then I can turn him into a worm and step on him!” But naturally, that just gives Billy the opportunity to become Captain Marvel again, and he zooms off before Circe realizes what has happened. Cap flies to where Oggar is plotting world domination (nothing like thinking big), socks him from behind, and tells him just how his plot to do away with Billy failed. Oggar frantically looks for his notebook, but it had fallen when Cap hit Oggar. Cap rips the booklet to shreds. “Gulp! Without it, I won’t be able to remember which magic tricks I’ve used! I can only use each trick once!” (You’d think that, with all his magical powers, he could conjure up a better memory!) Thus, in desperation, Oggar resorts

FCA (Fawcett Collectors Of America)

to stunts such as magic fire and the sky hook, which he has already used. So he and Captain Marvel set to fighting with their fists. After a while, Cap runs away, followed by Oggar— right to Circe’s cabin. (You didn’t really think that Cap would chicken out, did you?) Circe, spotting her ancient enemy, changes him to a wild boar, who runs from the pursuing Cap, and thus falls over a cliff and is killed, putting an end to Oggar. Ironically (and perhaps unintentionally), this story loosely based on the cliffhanger movie serials of the movies, ends with the villain—falling over a cliff. Captain Marvel returns to Circe, only to find that, with Oggar’s death, his evil curse on her has been lifted, and she is now just a skeleton. “And to think that was Oggar’s weakness all the time—a woman! He fought me, the Oggar R.I.P. World’s Mightiest The death of Oggar! The final panels from “The Cult of the Curse,” in Captain Marvel Adventures #66 (Oct. 1946). [©2008 DC Comics.] Man, to a standstill! was how it worked: for every good idea, there were a couple of so-so ones. But one withered old hag brought him to his downfall!” I would say that if one out of three of my ideas/plots/stories were At the end of the story, there is a panel, to be cut out, asking readers outstanding, that was a great average and something to be proud of. As for their reactions to Oggar, and if they’d like to read another serial. for the artists who worked on the Oggar serial, I have the impression that Apparently, the response wasn’t all that great, as Oggar never re-appeared, it was Beck and Costanza’s shop who illustrated it…. I don’t blame any of nor were there any more serial-formatted stories that ran more than one the artists for Oggar’s failure as the scripts were no good in the first place.” issue. And, of course, it should be noted that, except for a very early story (Fawcett Companion, page 60.) in which Sivana appeared to die, once Captain Marvel villains were dead, But perhaps the esteemed Mr. Binder was selling himself short a bit they were dead. I speak here, of course, mainly of Mr. Mind and Black here. True, this particular serial was nowhere nearly as good as “The Adam, who never returned from the dead until DC writers brought them Monster Society of Evil.” nor even as good as many of his single-story back in the 1970s.) efforts, but it had its moments. But, aside from a few absurdities, probably the most annoying part of the story, for Captain Marvel purists, was the Serial Killer tinkering with the mythos—of having Oggar be part of Shazam’s pantheon—and even his name. “The Cult of the Curse” was the product of the fertile imagination of the Marvel Family’s lead writer, Otto Binder, who years later admitted that If nothing else, those amusing scenes of Captain Marvel and Oggar it “was really a flop…. It was again one of my ideas and it seemed to be flipping through their respective notebooks in attempts to great in my mind, but when it came to writing and developing the theme, come up with a trick which hadn’t already been tried, might it just sort of went nowhere and was quickly killed after six chapters. That just have made “The Cult of the Curse” worthwhile.

TWOMORROWS BOOKS by ROY THOMAS NEW FOR 2008

ALTER EGO COLLECTION, VOL. 1 Collects ALTER EGO #1-2, plus 30 pages of new material! Behind a new JLA Jam Cover by JOE KUBERT, GEORGE PÉREZ, DICK GIORDANO, GEORGE TUSKA, NICK CARDY, RAMONA FRADON, and JOE GIELLA, there’s: GIL KANE, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, and GARDNER FOX on the creation of the Silver Age Atom! “The STAN LEE Roast” with SAL BUSCEMA, JOHN ROMITA, PETER DAVID, CHRIS CLAREMONT, JIM SHOOTER, et al.! MICHAEL T. GILBERT on WILL EISNER’s 1966 Spirit story! ROY THOMAS, JERRY ORDWAY, and MIKE MACHLAN on creating Infinity, Inc.! Interviews with LARRY LIEBER, IRWIN HASEN, & JACK BURNLEY! Wonder Woman rarities, with art by H.G. PETER! Plus FCA, new sections featuring scarce art by GIL KANE, WILL EISNER, CARMINE INFANTINO, MIKE SEKOWSKY, MURPHY ANDERSON, DICK DILLIN, plus all seven of our super-star cover artists! (192-page trade paperback) $21.95 ISBN: 9781893905597 Diamond Order Code: APR063420

ALTER EGO: THE BEST OF THE LEGENDARY COMICS FANZINE

(10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION) In 1961, JERRY BAILS and ROY THOMAS launched ALTER EGO, the first fanzine devoted to comic books and their colorful history. This volume, first published in low distribution in 1997, collects the original 11 issues (published from 1961-78) of A/E, with the creative and artistic contributions of JACK KIRBY, STEVE DITKO, WALLY WOOD, JOHN BUSCEMA, MARIE SEVERIN, BILL EVERETT, RUSS MANNING, CURT SWAN, & others—and important, illustrated interviews with GIL KANE, BILL EVERETT, & JOE KUBERT! See where a generation first learned about the Golden Age of Comics—while the Silver Age was in full flower—with major articles on the JUSTICE SOCIETY, the MARVEL FAMILY, the MLJ HEROES, and more! Edited by ROY THOMAS & BILL SCHELLY with an introduction by the late JULIUS SCHWARTZ.

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! “Jazzy” JOHN ROMITA 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 1960s-70s, 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) $24.95 ISBN: 9781893905757 • Diamond Order Code: APR074018 (208-page hardcover with COLOR) $44.95 ISBN: 9781893905764 • Diamond Order Code: APR074019

(192-page trade paperback) $21.95 ISBN: 9781893905887 Diamond Order Code: DEC073946

ALL- STAR COMPANION VOL. 2 ROY THOMAS presents still more secrets of the Justice Society of America and ALL-STAR COMICS, from 1940 through the 1980s, featuring: A fabulous wraparound cover by CARLOS PACHECO! More amazing information and speculation on the classic ALL-STAR COMICS of 1940-1951! Never-before-seen Golden Age art by IRWIN HASEN, CARMINE INFANTINO, ALEX TOTH, MART NODELL, JOE KUBERT, H.G. PETER, and others! Art from an unpublished 1940s JSA story not seen in Volume 1! Rare art from the original JLA-JSA team-ups and the 1970s ALL-STAR COMICS REVIVAL by MIKE SEKOWSKY, DICK DILLIN, JOE STATON, WALLY WOOD, KEITH GIFFEN, and RIC ESTRADA! Full coverage of the 1980s ALL-STAR SQUADRON, and a bio of every single All-Star, plus never-seen art by JERRY ORDWAY, RICH BUCKLER, ARVELL JONES, RAFAEL KAYANAN, and special JSArelated art and features by FRANK BRUNNER, ALEX ROSS, NEAL ADAMS, GIL KANE, MIKE MIGNOLA, and RAMONA FRADON—and more!

NEW FOR 2008

(240-page trade paperback) $24.95 ISBN: 9781893905375 Diamond Order Code: AUG063622

ALL- STAR COMPANION VOL. 3

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In this third volume, comics legend Roy Thomas presents still more amazing secrets behind the 1940-51 ALL-STAR COMICS and the JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA! Also, there’s 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 with commentary by the artists and writers! Plus rare, often unseen art by NEAL ADAMS, DICK AYERS, MICHAEL BAIR, JOHN BUSCEMA, SEAN CHEN, DICK DILLIN, RIC ESTRADA, CREIG FLESSEL, KEITH GIFFEN, DICK GIORDANO, MIKE GRELL, TOM GRINDBERG, TOM GRUMMETT, RON HARRIS, IRWIN HASEN, DON HECK, CARMINE INFANTINO, GIL KANE, JACK KIRBY, JOE KUBERT, BOB LAYTON, SHELDON MAYER, BOB McLEOD, SHELDON MOLDOFF, BRIAN MURRAY, JERRY ORDWAY, ARTHUR PEDDY, GEORGE PÉREZ, H.G. PETER, HOWARD PURCELL, PAUL REINMAN, MIKE SEKOWSKY, HOWARD SIMPSON, JOE SINNOTT, JIM STARLIN, JOE STATON, RONN SUTTON, ALEX TOTH, JIM VALENTINO and many others! Featuring a new JLA/JSA cover by GEORGE PÉREZ! (240-page trade paperback) $26.95 ISBN: 9781893905801 • Diamond Order Code: SEP074020

Edited by ROY THOMAS The greatest ‘zine of the 1960s is back, ALL-NEW, and focusing on GOLDEN AND SILVER AGE comics and creators with ARTICLES, INTERVIEWS, UNSEEN ART, P.C. Hamerlinck’s FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America, featuring the archives of C.C. BECK and recollections by Fawcett artist MARCUS SWAYZE), Michael T. Gilbert’s MR. MONSTER, and more!

2007 EISNER AWARD WINNER Best Comics-Related Periodical

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ALTER EGO #1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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ALTER EGO #9

ALTER EGO #10

ALTER EGO #11

ALTER EGO #12

ALTER EGO #13

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

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

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

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

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

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ALTER EGO #17 Spotlighting LOU FINE (with an overview of his career, and interviews with family members), interview with MURPHY ANDERSON about Fine, ALEX TOTH on Fine, ARNOLD DRAKE interviewed about DEADMAN and DOOM PATROL, MR. MONSTER on the non-EC work of JACK DAVIS and GEORGE EVANS, FINE and LUIS DOMINGUEZ COVERS, FCA and more!

ALTER EGO #14

ALTER EGO #15

ALTER EGO #16

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

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

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

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ALTER EGO #18

ALTER EGO #19

ALTER EGO #20

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

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

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

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ALTER EGO #21 The IGER “SHOP” examined, with art by EISNER, FINE, ANDERSON, CRANDALL, BAKER, MESKIN, CARDY, EVANS, BOB KANE, and TUSKA, “SHEENA” section with art by DAVE STEVENS & FRANK BRUNNER, ROY THOMAS on the JSA and All-Star Squadron, more UNSEEN 1946 ALL-STAR ART, MR. MONSTER on GARDNER FOX, FCA, and more! DAVE STEVENS and IRWIN HASEN covers! (108-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: DEC023029

ALTER EGO #22

ALTER EGO #23

ALTER EGO #24

ALTER EGO #25

ALTER EGO #26

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

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

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

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

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

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ALTER EGO #27

ALTER EGO #28

ALTER EGO #29

ALTER EGO #30

ALTER EGO #31

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

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

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

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

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

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(108-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: JUL032570

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(108-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: SEP032620

(108-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: OCT032843

ALTER EGO #32

ALTER EGO #33

ALTER EGO #34

ALTER EGO #35

ALTER EGO #36

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

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

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

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

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

(108-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: NOV032695

(108-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: DEC032833

(108-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: JAN042879

(108-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: FEB042796

(108-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: MAR042972

ALTER EGO #37

ALTER EGO #38

ALTER EGO #39

ALTER EGO #40

ALTER EGO #41

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

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

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

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

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

(108-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: APR043055

(108-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY043050

(108-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: JUN042972

(108-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: JUL043386

(108-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: AUG043186

ALTER EGO #42

ALTER EGO #43

ALTER EGO #44

ALTER EGO #45

ALTER EGO #46

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

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

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

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

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

(108-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: SEP043043

(108-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: OCT043189

(100-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: NOV043080

(100-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: DEC042992

(100-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: JAN053133

ALTER EGO #47

ALTER EGO #48

ALTER EGO #49

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

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

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

(100-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: FEB053220

(100-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: MAR053331

(100-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: APR053287

ALTER EGO #50 ROY THOMAS covers his 40-YEAR career in comics (AVENGERS, X-MEN, CONAN, ALL-STAR SQUADRON, INFINITY INC.), with ADAMS, BUSCEMA, COLAN, DITKO, GIL KANE, KIRBY, STAN LEE, ORDWAY, PÉREZ, ROMITA, and many others! Also FCA, & MR. MONSTER on ROY’s letters to GARDNER FOX! Flip-covers by BUSCEMA/ KIRBY/ALCALA and JERRY ORDWAY!

(100-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY053172

ALTER EGO #54 ALTER EGO #51

ALTER EGO #52

ALTER EGO #53

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

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

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

(100-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: JUN053345

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: JUL053293

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: AUG053328

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

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: SEP053301

ALTER EGO #56

ALTER EGO #57

ALTER EGO #58

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

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

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

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: DEC053401

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: JAN063429

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: MAR063545

ALTER EGO #55 JACK and OTTO BINDER, KEN BALD, VIC DOWD, and BOB BOYAJIAN interviewed, FCA with SWAYZE and EMILIO SQUEGLIO, rare art by BECK, WARD, & SCHAFFENBERGER, Christmas Card Art from CRANDALL, SINNOTT, HEATH, MOONEY, and CARDY, 1943 Pin-Up Calendar (with ’40s movie stars as superheroines), ALEX TOTH, and more! ALEX ROSS and ALEX WRIGHT covers!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: OCT053396

ALTER EGO #59 Special issue on Batman and Superman in the Golden and Silver Ages, ARTHUR SUYDAM interview, NEAL ADAMS on 1960s/70s DC, SHELLY MOLDOFF, AL PLASTINO, Golden Age artist FRAN (Doll Man) MATERA and VIC CARRABOTTA interviewed, SIEGEL & SHUSTER, RUSS MANNING, FCA, MR. MONSTER, SUYDAM cover, and more!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: APR063474

ALTER EGO #60

ALTER EGO #61

ALTER EGO #62

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

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

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

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY063496

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: JUN063522

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: AUG063690

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ALTER EGO #64

ALTER EGO #65

ALTER EGO #66

ALTER EGO #67

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

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

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

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

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: OCT063800

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: NOV063991

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: DEC064009

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ALTER EGO #69

ALTER EGO #70

ALTER EGO #71

ALTER EGO #72

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

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

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

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

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

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: MAR073852

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: APR074098

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY073879

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ALTER EGO #75

ALTER EGO #76

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

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

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

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: NOV073947

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: JAN084019

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: AUG074112

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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) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: OCT073927

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ALTER EGO #78 ALTER EGO #77 ST. JOHN ISSUE! Golden Age Tor cover by JOE KUBERT, KEN QUATTRO relates the full legend of St. John Publishing, art by KUBERT, NORMAN MAURER, MATT BAKER, LILY RENEE, BOB LUBBERS, RUBEN MOREIRA, RALPH MAYO, AL FAGO, special reminiscences of ARNOLD DRAKE, Golden Age artist TOM SAWYER interviewed, and more! (100-page magazine) $6.95 Ships May 2008

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DAVE COCKRUM TRIBUTE! Great rare XMen cover, Cockrum tributes from contemporaries and colleagues, and an interview with PATY COCKRUM on Dave’s life and legacy on The Legion of Super-Heroes, The X-Men, Star-Jammers, & more! Plus an interview with 1950s Timely/Marvel artist MARION SITTON on his own incredible career and his Golden Age contemporaries! (100-page magazine) $6.95 Ships June 2008

ALTER EGO #79

ALTER EGO #80

SUPERMAN & HIS CREATORS! New cover by MICHAEL GOLDEN, exclusive and revealing interview with JOE SHUSTER’s sister, JEAN SHUSTER PEAVEY—MIKE W. BARR on Superman the detective— DWIGHT DECKER on the Man of Steel & Hitler’s Third Reich—plus the NEMBO KID (Italian for “Superman”), art by BORING, SWAN, ADAMS, KANE, and others!

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

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Ships July 2008

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Ships August 2008

12-ISSUE SUBSCRIPTIONS: $78 US Postpaid by Media Mail ($108 First Class, $123 Canada, $180 1st Class Intl., $222 Priority Intl.). For a 6-issue sub, cut the price in half!

NEW ITEMS: Vol. 19: MIKE PLOOG

MODERN MASTERS SERIES

(120-page trade paperback with COLOR) $14.95 US ISBN: 9781605490076 • Ships October 2008

Edited by ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON, these trade paperbacks 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!

Vol. 20: KYLE BAKER (120-page trade paperback with COLOR) $14.95 US ISBN: 9781605490083 • Ships December 2008

MORE MODERN MASTERS ARE COMING IN 2009, INCLUDING CHRIS SPROUSE!

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KIRBY FIVE-OH! LIMITED HARDCOVER EDITION! Limited to 500 copies, KIRBY FIVE-OH! LIMITED HARDCOVER EDITION covers the best of everything from Jack Kirby’s 50-year career in comics! The regular columnists from THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR magazine have formed a distinguished panel of experts to choose and examine: The BEST KIRBY STORY published each year from 19381987! The BEST COVERS from each decade! The 50 BEST EXAMPLES OF UNUSED KIRBY ART! His 50 BEST CHARACTER DESIGNS! And profiles of, and commentary by, 50 PEOPLE INFLUENCED BY KIRBY’S WORK! Plus there’s a 50-PAGE GALLERY of Kirby’s powerful RAW PENCIL ART, and a DELUXE COLOR SECTION of photos and finished art from throughout his entire half-century oeuvre, a previously unseen Kirby Superman cover inked by “DC: The New Frontier” artist DARWYN COOKE, and an introduction by MARK EVANIER! This LIMITED HARDCOVER EDITION includes a full-color wrapped hardcover, and an individually-numbered extra Kirby art plate not included in the softcover edition! It’s ONLY AVAILABLE FROM TWOMORROWS, and is not sold in stores! Edited by JOHN MORROW. (168-page Limited Edition Hardcover) $34.95 US • Now shipping! Only available from TwoMorrows!

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COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR VOLUME 7

Spotlights KIRBY OBSCURA, uncovering some of Jack’s most obscure work! Learn about such littleknown projects as an UNUSED THOR STORY, his BRUCE LEE comic, animation work, stage play, and see original unaltered versions of pages from KAMANDI, DEMON, DESTROYER DUCK, and more, including a feature examining the last page of his final issue of various series BEFORE EDITORIAL TAMPERING (with lots of surprises)! Color Kirby front cover inked by DON HECK, and back cover inked by PAUL SMITH!

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #27-30, with looks at Jack’s 1970s and ‘80s work, plus a two-part focus on how widespread Kirby’s influence is! Features rare interviews with KIRBY himself, plus Watchmen’s ALAN MOORE and DAVE GIBBONS, NEIL GAIMAN, Bone’s JEFF SMITH, MARK HAMILL, and others! See page after page of rare Kirby art, including a NEW SPECIAL SECTION with over 30 PIECES OF KIRBY ART NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED, and more! (288-page trade paperback) $29.95 US ISBN: 9781605490120 Ships January 2009

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 US Ships January 2009 BRICKJOURNAL magazine is the ultimate resource for LEGO enthusiasts of all ages. It spotlights all aspects of the LEGO Community, showcasing events, people, and models in every issue, with contributions and how-to articles by top builders worldwide, new product intros, and more. Edited by JOE MENO.

BRICKJOURNAL COMPENDIUM 3 VOLUME 3 compiles the digital-only issues #6-7 of the acclaimed online magazine for LEGO enthusiasts of all ages — for the first time in printed form! This FULLCOLOR book spotlights all aspects of the LEGO COMMUNITY through interviews with builders KNUD THOMSEN (builder of a LEGO city), ANTHONY SAVA (castle and dragon builder), JØRGEN VIG KNUDSTORP (CEO to the LEGO Group) and the duo ARVO (builders of many incredible models), plus features on LEGO FAN CONVENTIONS, such as BRICKFEST, LEGO WORLD (the Netherlands), and 1000STEINE-LAND (Germany), reviews and behind the scenes reports on two LEGO sets (the CAFE CORNER and HOBBY TRAIN), how to create custom minifigures, instructions and techniques, and more! Edited by JOE MENO. (224-page trade paperback) $34.95 US ISBN: 9781605490069 Ships January 2009

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BRICKJOURNAL #3

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BRICKJOURNAL #4

FULL-COLOR issue #3 has LEGO Event Reports from BRICKWORLD (Chicago), FIRST LEGO LEAGUE WORLD FESTIVAL (Atlanta) and PIECE OF PEACE (Japan), a spotlight on the creation of our amazing cover model built by BRYCE McGLONE, plus interviews with ARTHUR GUGICK and STEVEN CANVIN of LEGO MINDSTORMS, to see where LEGO ROBOTICS is going! There’s also STEP-BY-STEP BUILDING INSTRUCTIONS, TECHNIQUES, & more!

FULL-COLOR issue #4 features interviews with top LEGO BUILDERS including BREANN SLEDGE (BIONICLE BUILDER), Event Reports from LEGO gatherings such as BRICKFAIR (Washington, DC) and BRICKCON (Seattle, Washington), plus reports on new MINDSTORMS PROJECTS, STEP-BY-STEP BUILDING INSTRUCTIONS and TECHNIQUES for all skill levels, NEW SET REVIEWS, and editor JOE MENO shows how to build a robotic LEGO Wall-E!TM

(80-page magazine) $8.95 US (Digital Edition) $3.95 (or FREE to subscribers) Diamond Order Code: JUN084415

(80-page magazine) $8.95 US (Digital Edition) $3.95 (or FREE to subscribers)

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ALTER EGO focuses on Golden and Silver Age comics and creators with articles, interviews and unseen art, plus FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), Mr. Monster & more. Edited by ROY THOMAS.

DRAW! is the professional “How-To” magazine on cartooning and animation, featuring in-depth interviews and step-by-step demonstrations from top comics professionals. Edited by MIKE MANLEY.

ALTER EGO #81

ALTER EGO #82

ALTER EGO #83

ALTER EGO #84

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

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

SWORD & SORCERY PART 2! Cover by ARTHUR SUYDAM, in-depth art-filled look at Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian, DC’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Dagar the Invincible, Ironjaw & Wulf, and Arak, Son of Thunder, plus the never-seen Valda the Iron Maiden by TODD McFARLANE! Plus JOE EDWARDS (Part 2), FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

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

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships October 2008

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships December 2008

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships January 2009

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships March 2009

ROUGH STUFF features never-seen pencil pages, sketches, layouts, roughs, and unused inked pages from throughout comics history, plus columns, critiques, and more! Edited by BOB MCLEOD.

WRITE NOW! features writing tips from pros on both sides of the desk, interviews, sample scripts, reviews, exclusive Nuts & Bolts tutorials, and more! Edited by DANNY FINGEROTH. THE RETRO COMICS EXPERIENCE!

BACK ISSUE celebrates comic books of the 1970s, 1980s, and today through a variety of recurring (and rotating) departments, plus rare and unpublished art. Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

DRAW! #17

ROUGH STUFF #10

ROUGH STUFF #11

WRITE NOW! #20

Go behind the pages of the hit series of graphic novels starring Scott Pilgrim with his creator and artist, BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY, to see how he creates the acclaimed series! Then, learn how B.P.R.D.’s GUY DAVIS works on the series, plus more Comic Art Bootcamp: Learning from The Great Cartoonists by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, reviews, and more!

Interview with RON GARNEY, with copious examples of sketchwork and comments. Also features on ANDY SMITH, MICHAEL JASON PAZ, and MATT HALEY, showing how their work evolves, excerpts from a new book on ALEX RAYMOND, secrets of teaching comic art by pro inker BOB McLEOD, new cover by GARNEY and McLEOD, newcomer critique, and more!

New cover by GREG HORN, plus interviews with HORN and TOM YEATES on how they produce their stellar work. Also features on GENE HA, JIMMY CHEUNG, and MIKE PERKINS, showing their sketchwork, and commentary, tips on collecting sketches and commissions from artists, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work, and more!

Focus on THE SPIRIT movie, showing how FRANK MILLER transformed WILL EISNER’s comics into the smash-hit film, with interviews with key players behind the making of the movie, a look at what made Eisner’s comics so special, and more. Plus: an interview with COLLEEN DORAN, writer ALEX GRECIAN on how to get a pitch green lighted, script and art examples, and more!

(80-page magazine with COLOR) $6.95 US • Ships Fall 2008

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships October 2008

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships January 2009

(80-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships Winter 2009

BACK ISSUE #29

BACK ISSUE #30

BACK ISSUE #31

BACK ISSUE #32

BACK ISSUE #33

“Mutants” issue! CLAREMONT, BYRNE, SMITH, and ROMITA, JR.’s X-Men work, NOCENTI and ARTHUR ADAMS’ Longshot, McLEOD and SIENKIEWICZ’s New Mutants, the UK’s CAPTAIN BRITAIN series, lost Angel stories, Beast’s tenure with the Avengers, the return of the original X-Men in X-Factor, the revelation of Nightcrawler’s “original” father, a history of DC’s mutant, Captain Comet, and more! Cover by DAVE COCKRUM!

“Saturday Morning Heroes!” Interviews with TV Captain Marvels JACKSON BOSTWICK and JOHN DAVEY, MAGGIN and SAVIUK’s lost Superman/”Captain Thunder” sequel, Space Ghost interviews with GARY OWENS and STEVE RUDE, MARV WOLFMAN guest editorial, Super Friends, unproduced fourth wave Super Powers action figures, Astro Boy, ADAM HUGHES tribute to DAVE STEVENS, and a new cover by ALEX ROSS!

“STEVE GERBER Salute!” In-depth look at his Howard the Duck, Man-Thing, Omega the Unknown, Defenders, Metal Men, Mister Miracle, Thundarr the Barbarian, and more! Plus: Creators pay tribute to Steve Gerber, featuring art by and commentary from BRUNNER, BUCKLER, COLAN, GOLDEN, STAN LEE, LEVITZ, MAYERIK, MOONEY, PLOOG, SIMONSON, and others. Cover painting by FRANK BRUNNER!

“Tech, Data, and Hardware!” The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, WEIN, WOLFMAN, and GREENBERGER on DC’s Who’s Who, SAVIUK, STATON, and VAN SCIVER on Drawing Green Lantern, ED HANNIGAN Art Gallery, history of Rom: Spaceknight, story of BILL MANTLO, Dial H for Hero, Richie Rich’s Inventions, and a Spider-Mobile schematic cover by ELIOT BROWN and DUSTY ABELL!

“Teen Heroes!” Teen Titans in the 1970s & 1980s, with CARDY, GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, PÉREZ, TUSKA, and WOLFMAN, BARON and GUICE on the Flash, interviews with TV Billy Batson MICHAEL GRAY and writer STEVE SKEATES, NICIEZA and BAGLEY’s New Warriors; Legion of Super-Heroes 1970s art gallery; James Bond, Jr.; and… the Archies! New Teen Titans cover by GEORGE PÉREZ and colored by GENE HA!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships July 2008

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships September 2008

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships November 2008

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships January 2009

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships March 2009

NEW STUFF FROM TWOMORROWS!

BACK ISSUE #29

ROUGH STUFF #9

WRITE NOW! #18

DRAW! #16

BRICKJOURNAL #2

“Mutants” issue! CLAREMONT, BYRNE, SMITH, and ROMITA, JR.’s X-Men work; NOCENTI and ARTHUR ADAMS’ Longshot; McLEOD and SIENKIEWICZ’s New Mutants; the UK’s CAPTAIN BRITAIN series; lost Angel stories; Beast’s tenure with the Avengers; the return of the original X-Men in X-Factor; the revelation of Nightcrawler’s “original” father; a history of DC’s mutant, Captain Comet, and more! Cover by DAVE COCKRUM!

Editor and pro inker BOB McLEOD features four interviews this issue: ROB HAYNES (interviewed by fellow professional TIM TOWNSEND), JOE JUSKO, MEL RUBI, and SCOTT WILLIAMS, with a new painted cover by JUSKO, and an article by McLEOD examining "Inkers: Who needs ’em?" along with other features, including a Rough Critique of RUDY VASQUEZ!

Celebration of STAN LEE’s 85th birthday, including rare examples of comics, TV, and movie scripts from the Stan Lee Archives, tributes by JOHN ROMITA, SR., JOE QUESADA, ROY THOMAS, DENNIS O’NEIL, JIMMY PALMIOTTI, JIM SALICRUP, TODD McFARLANE, LOUISE SIMONSON, MARK EVANIER, and others, plus art by KIRBY, DITKO, ROMITA, and more!

Features an in-depth interview and coverage of the creative process of HOWARD CHAYKIN, plus behind the drawing board and animation desk with JAY STEPHENS, more COMIC ART BOOTCAMP, this time focusing on HOW TO USE REFERENCE, and WORKING FROM PHOTOS by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, plus reviews, resources and more!

The ultimate resource for LEGO enthusiasts of all ages spotlights blockbuster summer movies, LEGO style! Go behind the scenes for new sets for BATMAN and INDIANA JONES, and see new models, including an SR-71 SPYPLANE and a LEGO CITY, plus MINIFIGURE CUSTOMIZATIONS, BUILDING INSTRUCTIONS, tour the ONLINE LEGO FACTORY, and more! Edited by JOE MENO.

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY084246

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KIRBY FIVE-OH! LIMITED HARDCOVER

TITANS COMPANION VOLUME 2

FLASH COMPANION

NICK CARDY: BEHIND THE ART

LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Hardcover version of the book that covers the best of everything from Jack Kirby’s 50-year career! Includes a wrapped hardcover, and Kirby art plate not in the softcover edition. Edited by JOHN MORROW.

This new volume picks up where Volume 1 left off, covering the return of the Teen Titans to the top of the sales charts! Featuring interviews with GEOFF JOHNS, MIKE McKONE, PETER DAVID, PHIL JIMENEZ, and others, plus an in-depth section on the top-rated Cartoon Network series! Also CHUCK DIXON, MARK WAID, KARL KESEL, and JOHN BYRNE on writing the current generation of Titans! More on the New Teen Titans with MARV WOLFMAN and GEORGE PÉREZ! NEAL ADAMS on redesigning Robin! Amazing and unpublished artwork by ADAMS, BYRNE, JIMENEZ, McKONE, PÉREZ and more, with an all-new cover by MIKE McKONE! Written by GLEN CADIGAN.

Details the histories of the four heroes who have been declared DC Comics' "Fastest Man Alive". With articles about SHELLY MAYER, GARDNER FOX, E.E. HIBBARD, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, ROBERT KANIGHER, JOHN BROOME, ROSS ANDRU, IRV NOVICK and all-new interviews with HARRY LAMPERT, CARMINE INFANTINO, CARY BATES, ALEX SAVIUK, MIKE W. BARR, MARV WOLFMAN, MIKE BARON, JACKSON GUICE, MARK WAID, and SCOTT KOLINS, it recounts the scarlet speedster's evolution from the Golden Age to the 21st century. Also featured are "lost covers," a ROGUES GALLERY detailing The Flash's most famous foes, a tribute to late artist MIKE WIERINGO by MARK WAID, a look at the speedster’s 1990s TV show, and "Flash facts" detailing pivotal moments in Flash history. Written by KEITH DALLAS, with a a cover by DON KRAMER.

NICK CARDY has been doing fantastic artwork for more than sixty years, from comics, to newspaper strips, to illustration. His work on DC Comics’ TEEN TITANS, and his amazing comics covers, are universally hailed as some of the best in the medium’s history, but his COMMERCIAL ILLUSTRATION work is just as highly regarded by those in the know. Now, this lavish FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER lets you see what goes on behind his amazing art! Nick has selected dozens of his favorite pieces from throughout his career and shows how they came to be in this remarkable art book. From the reams of preliminary work as well as Nick's detailed commentary, you will gain fascinating insight into how this great artist works, watching each step of the way as some of his most memorable images come to life! By ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON and NICK CARDY.

(224-page trade paperback) $26.95 ISBN: 9781893905986 Now Shipping

(128-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $34.95 • Ships August 2008 ISBN: 9781893905993

(168-page tabloid-size hardcover) $34.95 • Now Shipping ONLY AVAILABLE FROM TWOMORROWS; NOT IN STORES!

KIRBY CHECKLIST: GOLD UPDATED EDITION of the most thorough listing of JACK KIRBY’s work ever published! (128-page trade paperback) $14.95 Now Shipping

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!

(224-page trade paperback) $26.95 ISBN: 97801893905870 Diamond Order Code: JAN083938 Now Shipping

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MODERN MASTERS VOLUME 17: LEE WEEKS by Tom Field & Eric Nolen-Weathington (128-page trade paperback) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905948

VOLUME 18: JOHN ROMITA JR. by George Khoury & Eric Nolen-Weathington (128-page trade paperback) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905955 Each features an extensive, career-spanning interview lavishly illustrated with rare art from the artist’s files, plus huge sketchbook section, including unseen and unused art!

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JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR (4 issues)

$44

$64

$91

$152

BACK ISSUE! (6 issues)

$40

$55

$63

$91

$112

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

$26

$36

$41

$60

$74

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

$78

$108

$123

$180

$222

BRICKJOURNAL (4 issues)

$32

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$47

$66

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