Alter Ego #84 Preview

Roy Thomas’ Sub-Aqueous Comics Fanzine

$

6.95

In the USA

No. 84

Aquaman, Mera, & Aqualad TM & © 2009 DC Comics

March 2009

When

STEVE SKEATES

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82658 27763

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Took The Silver Age Plunge!

Extra!

CHARLES SINCLAIR On BILL FINGER PLUS:

Vol. 3, No. 84 / March 2009 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 Jim Aparo

Writer/Editorial: Silver Threads Among The Golden . . . . . . . 2 The Silver Skeates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Cover Colorist Tom Ziuko

With Special Thanks to: Jack Adler Heidi Amash Michael Ambrose Sal Amendola Bob Bailey Daniel Bianchetta Dominic Bongo Jerry K. Boyd Al Bradford Nick Caputo Pierre Comtois Jon B. Cooke Bob Cosgrove Teresa R. Davidson Brenda Denzler Wendy Doniger Michael Dunne Peter Duxbury The Esalen Institute Mark Evanier Jorge Ferrer Shane Foley Ramona Fradon Joe Frank Ron Frantz Donna Freitas Janet Gilbert Martin L. Greim Lawrence P. Guidry Jennifer Hamerlinck Ron Harris Tom Hegeman Heritage Comics Archives Matt Heuston David Hufford Greg Huneryager

Contents

Robin Kirby Christopher Knowles Jeffrey J. Kripal Joe Latino Paul Levitz Mark Lewis Darrel McCann David McDonnell Bertrand Méheust Brian K. Morris Mark Muller Michael & Dulce Murphy Victoria Nelson Marc Tyler Nobleman Barry Pearl Dean Radin David Roach Bob Rozakis Arlen Schumer Alvin Schwartz John Schwirian Charles Sinclair Steve Skeates Warren Spavin Flo Steinberg Marc Swayze Walter J. Tanner Russell Targ Greg Theakston Dann Thomas Jacque Vallee Jim Vandore Lynn Walker Gregg Whitmore Marv Wolfman Alex Wright

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Will Elder & Tom Fagan

The unique voice and vision of writer Steve Skeates, interviewed by John Schwirian.

“You Two Guys Ought To Do Something Together!” . . . . . . 35 Writer Charles Sinclair tells Jim Amash about his friendship with Batman co-creator Bill Finger.

Esalen And The X-Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Dr. Jeffrey J. Kripal on holding a “superpowers” symposium with Fradon, Thomas, et al.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!: Twice-Told EC! . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Michael T. Gilbert on the stories Gaines & Feldstein found worth repeating.

Another Clause In The “Will” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Would you believe it? Still more artwork from the long-lost 1940s JSA adventure!

Comic Fandom Archive: Tom Fagan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Bill Schelly & Martin L. Greim pay tribute to one of early fandom’s brightest lights.

A Tribute To Will Elder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 re: [comments, correspondence, & corrections] . . . . . . . . . 74 FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America] #143 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 P.C. Hamerlinck’s roundup this time: Marc Swayze, C.C. Beck, Ron Frantz, & Jerry De Fuccio.

On Our Cover: Several major artists have done extensive stints on the “Aquaman” series since its 1941 debut, including especially co-creator Paul Norris, Ramona Fradon, Nick Cardy—and the late Jim Aparo, who drew the final years of the DC sea king’s original solo title. Our thanks to John Schwirian for providing us with a copy of what is almost certainly Aparo’s last Aquaman illustration, done for John in 2002. There could have been, it seems to us, no more fitting art to accompany this issue’s interview by JS with longtime Aparo collaborator Steve Skeates. See it in black-&-white on p. 16. [Aquaman TM & ©2009 DC Comics.]

Above: A trio of Teen Titans—Kid Flash, Speedy, and newcomer Mal Duncan—teamed up with Superman in World’s Finest Comics #205 (Sept. 1971), aided and abetted by the art of Dick Dillin (pencils) and Joe Giella (inks). More about the Titans, too, in this issue’s dynamic demi-interview with scripter Steve Skeates. Thanks to Jim Vandore for the scan. [©2009 DC Comics.]

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: $88 US, $140 Canada, $210 elsewhere. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © Roy Thomas. Alter Ego is a TM of Roy & Dann Thomas. FCA is a TM of P.C. Hamerlinck. Printed in Canada. ISSN: 1932-6890 FIRST PRINTING.

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The Silver Skeates The Unique Voice And Vision Of STEVE SKEATES In The Silver Age Interview Conducted & Transcribed by John Schwirian

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NTERVIEWER’S INTRO: In conjunction with my magazine The Aquaman Chronicles, I began a two-issue review of the Steve Skeates/Jim Aparo/Dick Giordano era of Aquaman by looking at the achievements of scribe Steve Skeates, who not only left a permanent mark on the history of Aquaman, but on the world of comics, with his work on titles ranging from the political The Hawk and The Dove in the late 1960s to the humorous Plop! in the early 1970s and beyond. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Steve’s work from the mid-’70s on will be covered in the second part of this interview, which will appear in our TwoMorrows sister magazine Back Issue #33-34, the first of which will go on sale just a couple of weeks from now.]

There is no denying that a Steve Skeates tale has a distinct feel to it— an unusual and offbeat perspective that breaks the standard super-hero mold. But how did he develop that unique voice? What inspired the mind that brought us underwater Westerns and ecological disasters akin to 1950s atomic- and space-born monsters? With some prompting, Steve Skeates clears up the mystery as he tells of his (until now) secret origins….

Steve Skeates & His Pier Group (Above:) Our interviewee reacts to his and Sergio Aragonés’ story “The Poster Plague,” from House of Mystery #202 (May 1972), winning the Shazam Award for “Best Humor Story” of the year, at the 1973 ACBA Awards Banquet. “ACBA” stood for the Academy of Comic Book Arts, an organization of comics professionals that made a few waves during the first half of the ’70s. From The ACBA Newsletter, Vol. I, No. 21 (June 1973), with thanks to Flo Steinberg.

(Below left:) Illustration by Matt Heuston for the limited-circulation publication The Official Biography of Comic Book Writer Steve Skeates, produced in 2007 by John Schwirian. The interview serialized in this issue of A/E and in Back Issue #33-34 was done for that edition—and Matt’s “sequel” to this drawing will be seen in the latter mag. [Aquaman & Aqualad, Supergirl, Hawk & Dove, Plastic Man, & Cain and Abel TM & ©2009 DC Comics; Two-Gun Kid & Spider-Ham TM & ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Lightning TM & ©2009 John Carbonaro; Underdog TM & ©2009 Total Television; Dr. Graves & Thane TM & ©2009 the respective copyright holders; Steve Skeates caricature ©2009 Matt Heuston.]

“I More Wanted To Be An Artist…

Than A Writer” JOHN SCHWIRIAN: While much has been written about your comic book career, little has been said about your life outside the industry. So let’s start at the beginning: you were born Stephen Lewis Skeates in a small town in western New York on January 29, 1943. But what was life like in your childhood?

STEVE SKEATES: I spent my formative years near the small town of Bushnell’s Basin, where my father, an heir to the Xerox empire, owned a sporting goods store and my mother held down the position of housewife. I grew up in an area almost exactly between Bushnell’s Basin and Fairport, New York, in an area known in the 1800s as Fullam’s Basin, one of the places where travelers on the Erie Canal would get off the boat and onto a stage for the last leg of their trip to Rochester and nearby stopping points. This was an area that had (as a matter of fact) lain pretty much dormant since the late 1800s when canal and stagecoach travel starting becoming a thing of the past, with (all of a sudden!) a spurt of housing construction occurring in the late ’40s and early ’50s, right when I was a kid, so there were lots of half-built suburban houses to play around in, and lots of dirt piles from recently-dug basements providing ammo for almost daily dirt-ball fights with the other kids in the neighborhood! Sophisticated stuff like that!

As a kid, I was also very into the early days of television, and living in the Rochester area was indeed great along those lines! I don’t know how things worked in other cities, but around here one of the two Rochester TV stations back there in the ’50s would borrow movies from the famed Eastman House movie library and show those classics all Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon. I was hooked on that stuff,

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The Unique Voice And Vision Of Steve Skeates In The Silver Age

especially the horror movies and most especially the Val Lewton ones, undoubtedly a portion of what got me oriented toward comic book writing!

Cat On A Hot Celluloid Roof Cat People (1942) is one of the most justly celebrated of the relatively subdued “horror films” produced by Val Lewton—though directed, it must be said, by Jacques Tourneur. [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

JS: It isn’t hard to see how those early television shows and old movies influenced your writing. Screenplays are typically split into three acts, launching right into the action (act one), filling in the background as the conflict grows (act two), and reaching climax in act three, often leaving the reader with an uneasy resolution that leaves many questions unanswered.

Your comic scripts often matched the movie serial or episodic television format. But what about novels? What literature did you read as a boy?

SKEATES: Books I read as a kid? Hey, I was a terrible reader, slow as anything, and like I said, I was totally into early TV. Still, once my age reached double digits, I did start subscribing to the Mad comic book and really loved Harvey Kurtzman’s stuff! Truth be known, it wasn’t until I got into college that I started reading actual novels (for high school English class there had been a lot of Cliff Notes, etc.) and, as for doing so for my own pleasure (except for a smattering of ’50s sci-fi), it was almost exclusively detective fiction—Hammett, Chandler, Spillane, both McDonalds, Rex Stout, et al.

JS: If you weren’t a heavy reader as a kid, when did you decide to become a writer?

SKEATES: Like a lot of other comic book writers I’ve talked to, I more wanted to be an artist when I was a kid than a writer. Yet (unlike those others), somewhere during high school I got intrigued by mathematics, even entered college as a math major. It wasn’t long, though, before I switched over to being an English major.

JS: A math major? That’s certainly a far cry from what you do now.

Why math and not art?

SKEATES: I gotta admit, since I was rather a math whiz in both Midvale Grade School and Minerva Deland High School, l figured that was my calling, hence my entering Alfred University as a math major. As for the art part—well, actually, I gave up on that quite early, approximately upon leaving grade school. I did not avail myself of any art instruction in high school, mainly because by then I was far more into writing than artwork.

Thing is, what I wanted to write was humor—my heroes being Benchley, Thurber, Perelman, Sullivan, and even the earlier Bill Nye, the one that wasn’t a science guy! Yet, by the late ’50s/early ’60s, humor writing was rather a thing of the past. It may have still been going on, but there obviously certainly wasn’t any money in it anymore. Thanks to first radio and then dealt an even heavier blow by television, it had been supplanted by comedy—and what I wanted to do was written word stuff, not material to be spoken or acted out! A further reason why I chose to orient myself toward math! (There was also the fact that some of my favorite writers had written merely in their spare time, whereas their real jobs were in the field of mathematics!)

In any event, college-wise I did all right in math my first semester, but in my second semester I came close enough to failing myself out of the math program that I decided to voluntarily pull myself out of it before I did flunk and try instead to aim for my real love, writing, even though I still had my doubts as to there being any money in that endeavor, especially in my doing it the way I wanted to. I wrote a lot of articles for the college newspaper, many of them with a supposedly humorous slant, and ultimately wrote my own weekly column and became the feature editor. Because of all that, I even talked someone or other (can’t remember exactly whom) into letting me do a weekly 15-minute radio program—not on the college station, since the college didn’t have a station back then, but on the local town station.

“Those Mid-’60s Marvel Comics Influenced Me In A Big Way” JS: Which is about the same time you first discovered comic books?

SKEATES: I first became cognizant of comic books in college when I wrote my first play. Part of that year, I worked writing snappy patter for a folk-singing group. It was around that same time that I wrote my first play; friends who read it told me it sounded more like a comic book story than a theatre piece. Thus I first developed my urge to become a comic book writer. (The play, incidentally, won second prize at the gala South Western New York State Drama Festival.)

Years later, a certain editor, who shall remain nameless, tried to be nice about refusing to buy any more of my stuff. He used to say, “You’re a good writer, Steve. But I don’t think you’re right for comics. Have you ever thought of becoming a playwright?”

JS: So comic books fueled your desire to be a humorist?

SKEATES: You better believe that those mid-’60s Marvel comics influenced me in a big way; Stan was putting just enough humor into those stories (especially Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, even though the more dour “Iron Man” was indeed my favorite) for me to feel that, even though there no longer seemed to be any jobs extant for humorists, here was something I could indeed write. Being about to graduate from Alfred, I immediately wrote to what I figured were the four major comic book companies in the country and wound up getting a phone call from none other than Stan Lee himself, who offered me a job as assistant editor. The rest is legend!

JS: So you actually went straight from college to the big time at Marvel?

Was it a case of instant success, or were there still lean years to struggle through?

SKEATES: Lean years? Yes, there were a few, but then again too few to men—Wait a minute! Wait a minute! That’s a song lyric (or at least a variation thereupon), whereas what I wanted to emphasize here was my youth and resilience. Yet perhaps first of all I should reach further back and into my quasi-rural youth—that four-room schoolhouse I attended, the house my father and my uncle built back in 1946 (a beautiful old place where my mother still lives), and the road out front, now a veritable super-highway and the easiest way to get to one of the largest shopping malls in the world, while back in the day it was so seldom-traveled that my dog used to safely lie around all day out in the middle of it.

Back then—in fact, it seems like forever—I wanted to be a writer (although quite a bit of the time I harbored doubts about being able to make a living doing so, hence my early emphasis on math), and furthermore I somehow knew for sure that I was gonna live in New York City—I was totally entranced by the hustle and bustle of urbanity as experienced in nearby Rochester (not all that small a city) and knew positively that New York was gonna be even better, so that’s where I was gonna go! Thus, when I was in high school, and all my friends were

The Silver Skeates

Stan The (Iron) Man Stan Lee holding up a Shazam Award, also at an ACBA Awards ceremony— which may or may not be the 1973 bash. He was, of course, the writer/cocreator of Iron Man, the “dour” super-hero Steve Skeates heralds as his favorite Marvel hero of the era. The Heck/Colletta splash is from Tales of Suspense #69 (Sept. 1965), the issue which would’ve been on sale during the summer, around the time Steve went to work for Stan. Photo courtesy of Sal Amendola, who’s prepared a feature on ACBA that will appear in an early issue of A/E. [Page ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

learning to drive and were getting their licenses, etc., I wanted no part of that, pointing out to everybody (my worried-about-me parents included) that “Hey, I won’t be driving anywhere anyway—I’ll be taking a taxi or the subway!” And what I would be doing there in the big city would be writing, although I of course had no idea back then that I would be doing a sort of writing that required one to live in the city, especially when one was just starting out, yet that’s what comics were like back when I first got immersed in them.

JS: Because, back in 1965, all the major publishers were located in New York City.

SKEATES: Right. Thus, in a rather big way, I was more prepared for New York City than I was for comics. Had no trouble at all with the New York way of life, figured I was finally where I had always belonged, but comics were another story entirely, seeing as I hadn’t exactly been a fan but merely a reader—hadn’t really tried my hand at producing my own comics nor learned everything I could about comics; I just found reading

Two Guns—Two Splashes— Two Typewriters The Western winner on the near left was plotted by Larry Lieber and dialogued by Steve Skeates, for Two-Gun Kid #80 (March 1966)—while the one on the right, for TGK #81 (May ’66), was plotted by Skeates and scripted

by Lieber. By the way, “Bill Roman” was a pseudonym for inker Bill Everett. With thanks to Darrel McCann & Nick Caputo, respectively. [©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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The Unique Voice And Vision Of Steve Skeates In The Silver Age

From Whither Came Warren Savin?

Appearing in the letters page for U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. Agent #4 is an enthusiastic missive from a certain Warren Savin of Alfred, New York.

Steve Skeates elaborates on this inside joke…

Ah yes, that issue of U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. Agent in which “Warren Savin” makes a sudden appearance, even giving his address as Alfred, New York—I daresay my first wife, Rose, was even more responsible for this touch of insanity than I was! Y’see, being married to someone who had just recently gotten into the comic book business, Rose saw this as an opportunity for her as well to do something literary and creative. During that little bit of time I was working for Marvel, Rose somehow got herself the job of picking out and purchasing the photos Stan Lee would use in whatever moviemonster-photos-with-silly-balloons magazine Marvel was putting out at that time, and later on Rose would write a number of those prose piece filler pages that Charlton threw rather willy-nilly into each of their comics. In the case of Tower, she signed on to write the letters page of at least one issue of U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. Agent, one which Samm Schwartz was too busy with other stuff to handle himself. The thing is, there were either no usable letters that came in concerning the previous issue in question, or there was but one. In either event, Rose was at a loss as to what to do, so I decided to help out by writing up a couple of phony letters for her to answer—and, as a gag (rather an inside gag, a gag that at least certain people who had attended Alfred University—were they to somehow see the comic—might well get a chuckle out of), I tossed the name Warren Savin in there!

But where did the name Warren Savin come from? That of course takes us back to Alfred University, to the occasion of yours truly becoming the Feature Editor of the student newspaper. To celebrate that occasion I wrote an article that was an interview with myself. The editorin-chief liked the piece but thought the idea of me being both the interviewer and the interviewee was a bit much; thus he changed the byline and gave the writing credit to one Warren Savin. When I asked him where that name came from, all he would say was that he made it up.

knew I was doing those scripts? And, truth be told, I rather liked it like that—not having my name connected with the series added to the freedom I felt; I was able to attempt some really serious experimentation without the fear that if I fell on my face I’d be making a total fool of myself! Yep, ’tis true—I now in retrospect realize that the absence of credits quite definitely added to the relaxing pleasure I derived from writing those Charlton Westerns – not just “Doom” and “Montana,” but “The Sharpshooter,” as well, plus five or six Western tales featuring no continuing characters whatsoever!

Meanwhile, within a somewhat similar sort of category, there was (as things turned out) that one story at Charlton that I wrote under a pen name. Yep, though I was pleased no end to have been chosen to script two series drawn by the one and only Steve Ditko, as the subsequent reality of things would have it (due, that is, to the sudden—and totally unexpected, as far as I was concerned—cancellation of all the Charlton action hero books). I only got to write one episode of one of those series.

“I Never Did Get To Write Blue Beetle!”

JS: I take it you are talking about the “Question” tale (plotted and drawn by Steve Ditko) in Blue Beetle #4? Why did you use the name “Warrin Savin”?

SKEATES: I was set to take over the writing on Blue Beetle in issue #5, which (as far as I know) never made the scene; thus I never did get to write Blue Beetle! Since I’d be writing both series in the book, it was a bit of misplaced modesty which caused me to use a pen name on the “Question” stanza—quite possibly the most controversial scripting job I ever did, and usually even Warren Savin doesn’t get credit for it—people quote from that story, then attribute said quote to Ditko, which (as a matter of fact) happened just recently in the 20th issue of Back Issue.

There has been speculation, of course, that I chose to use a pen name here because I was so diametrically opposed to Ditko’s political philosophy, which was all over the place in this series. That sort of stuff never really bothered me, though! Unlike O’Neil, who simply had to transform “The Question” into a liberal series, I quite enjoy conservatives as long as they’re confined to the comic book world—as long as they don’t try to invade reality. My all-time favorite comic strip is Little Orphan Annie (back in its early days), and you can’t get more conservative than that. As for movies, I love The Fountainhead. Meanwhile, one need only check out Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward or Jack London’s The Iron Heel to note that the sort of socialism I believe in does not make for particularly worthy dramatic fiction!

Hey, I could go on and on here—about how I see conservatism (especially when it’s actually practiced) as being based upon an ugly, faulty, dangerously selfrighteous, we’re-better-thanyou view of humanity, but, instead, I think I’ll simply calm down and await your Savin Grace next question.

In any event, I loved suddenly having a pen name and proceeded to write a number of interviews employing that moniker—mock-interviews, actually, with whatever celebrities or political figures (once it was even the governor), whoever would show up in town to perform or speak at the college, the running gag being that the two would wind up talking about Warren rather than saying much of anything about the supposed subject of the interview. That was indeed fun!

Furthermore, later, when I suddenly wanted (for some reason or another) to use a pen name for some of my comic book work, I hardly needed A classic Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves moment from the story “The Perfect to make a name up—I Crime” in #3: the supernatural murder of Warren Savin! Art by Pat Boyette. already had a pen name!

Thanks to John Schwirian. [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

JS: On a lighter note, Dick Giordano described your

The Silver Skeates

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Steverinos Of The World, Unite!

Ditko plotted and drew, and Skeates dialogued, the “Question” story in Blue Beetle #4 (Dec. 1967), featuring the Ditko-created hero/anti-hero. Alas, though, Skeates never did a crack at writing a “Blue Beetle” story. For a photo of Ditko, see A/E #50. Thanks to Michael Ambrose. [The Question TM & ©2009 DC Comics.]

outlines for Abbott and Costello as some of the funniest stuff he ever read, and that the finished product never matched what you submitted. What were you doing with Abbott and Costello?

SKEATES: The thing I did with Abbott and Costello that was different from all my other scripts, the thing that generally tended to crack Dick up, is that I didn’t describe what was happening. I drew my own little pictures—got quite good at drawing Abbott and (especially) Costello, and often, according to Dick, the simplistic way in which I pictured the gag would work far better than the more elaborate version the artist would develop.

JS: I recently obtained a copy of Abbott and Costello #2. Funny stuff. I like it better than the Plop! material you did later.

SKEATES: Hey now, first of all, I am indeed happy and pleased that you so enjoyed the second issue of Abbott and Costello. That particular issue may in fact have been the best of the lot, and, at the very least, it is among the top four, those four being the first four issues. I spoke earlier of personally quite liking Sal Gentile whilst simultaneously rather vehemently disagreeing with most of his editorial decisions, and a number of those “bad ideas” of his occurred within the pages of Abbott and Costello. In other words, in my opinion, this particular magazine (after its first four issues) suffered quite a bit from the absence of Dick Giordano.

Being the only writer of this series for quite some time (up until the ninth issue or something like that), please do allow me to provide a quick rundown here. In the first issue I was trying to get my footing, trying a bit too hard to write something similar to an Abbott and Costello movie, with my first story in that issue being way too long (13 pages) and way

too silly and slapstick, whereas within the second and third story, I settled down into stuff more befitting of a comic book—more satire, more parody, and more like what was in the second issue. The third issue contains an 11-page super-hero parody dream sequence (starring Lou as Captain Costello) which isn’t bad at all; yet, in retrospect, I daresay it too is a tad too long and not quite as funny as I thought it was way back when. The big plus of the third issue was that I inaugurated there-within the use of three related one-pagers to be thrown in at various intervals throughout the magazine: “Abstraction” 1, 2, and 3 in the third issue; “Growth” 1, 2, and 3 in the fourth issue, “Sign Language” 1, 2, and 3 in the fifth issue, etc. The fourth issue remains my own personal favorite (although, as indicated above, I’m quick to concede that the second issue was quite likely a better one).

What happened was: Sal had inherited from Dick a fairly large inventory of “Abbott and Costello” stories, tales that Dick (who generally quite appreciated my way-out-there outlandish sense of humor) thought were just a bit too outlandish. Sal may have disagreed about that outlandishness, or, more likely, he was mainly interested in cutting corners money-wise, but, in any event, one of the first things he did when he became the Charlton editor was to stop buying new “Abbott and Costello” stories so he could use up this inventory, shoving the best of these stories into the fourth issue while basically following Dick’s general

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The Unique Voice And Vision Of Steve Skeates In The Silver Age

“Things I Enjoyed Writing Even More Than Super-Heroes” JS: While working for Joe Orlando, most of your work was for mystery (horror) titles, with an occasional dabble into super-heroes. Was it your choice to avoid super-heroes, or did you want to write “Superman,” “Batman,” or other “big name” super-heroes?

both The Spectre and Teen Titans. I may even at that point have consciously decided never again to invest so much of myself in any one character, never again to try to make some character mine and mine alone! At least not a hero! However, I did subsequently enjoy playing around with certain anti-heroes—“The Mummy,” “Pantha,” “This Unholy Creation”—perhaps because these sorts of characters appealed to the disillusionment, the bitterness, the cynicism that experience (the annihilator of innocence) had provided me with.

SKEATES: It was Stan Lee’s mid-’60s approach to writing super-heroes that got me interested in comics in the first place, Marvel ultimately becoming the first comic book company I worked for, as Stan’s assistant.

Of course, Stan wasn’t quite ready as soon as I got there to New York City (my having been hired over the phone while living in Alfred, New York) to plunk some huge pile of super-hero writing work atop my desk. Instead, my job initially consisted of proofreading (which I was relatively terrible at), doing art corrections (which I was absolutely terrible at), and writing Westerns (which, in all honesty, I wasn’t half-bad at).

Still, one need only take a good look at the first Western I both had a hand in the plotting of and did all the scripting for—Kid Colt #127, “Iron Mask and His Circus of Crime,” co-plotted by Roy Thomas—to get it shouted right in your face just how much into super-heroes I at that point happened to be, trying like anything (assisted

by Roy) to transform this wandering youthful owlhoot’s antics into something downright super-heroic! Unfortunately, it would be eight years before I’d actually get my chance to write a Marvel super-hero, yet I did definitely get my super-hero fix a tad prior to that, writing for Tower and even trying to make Lightning my sole property soon upon receiving my walking papers from Stan and his cohorts.

It was at Charlton (where I went after the collapse of the Tower) that I learned that there were other things I enjoyed writing perhaps even more than super-heroes—ghostly stuff, humor, and Westerns that had a hard and brooding edge to them (making those Marvel sagebrush sagas I had cut my teeth on seem like kiddie Westerns in comparison). Then, finally, ultimately, I got my big fat chance to write one truly humongous load of super-hero adventures once the big leap from Charlton to DC became a reality—Aquaman, Hawk and Dove, Teen Titans, Spectre—and, in so doing, truth be told, I was quite honestly surprised by how deeply I could still get into this sort of stuff, and how utterly enjoyable (even at this late date) doing what I had originally set out to do could be!

Was I setting myself up for a big fall? In retrospect, I can now quite sincerely say, “Could be!” That is to say, after three years of working on Aquaman, I had invested quite a bit (perhaps not even all that consciously) in that character. He had become at once my best friend and my imagined self. And, having that book fold (and for no good reason, and certainly no reason that involved my own self but simply because Infantino and Giordano couldn’t get along) was rather devastating, especially occurring as it did downright concurrently with the loss of

No Kid-ding Around!

Ye Editor feels that, since he was involved in the little matter of Kid Colt Outlaw #127 (March 1966), which Steve mentions, it behooves him to stick his own oar in. As Roy recalls it: Only a few weeks into the comic book biz for either of them (though a week or two older for Steve than for Roy), Steve asked RT to work with him on the plot to that “Kid Colt” tale. But it didn’t turn out well, through no particular fault of artist Jack Keller’s.

Roy distinctly remembers standing uneasily in Stan’s office one day in late ’65 while Marvel’s editor lambasted the story to him and production manager Sol Brodsky (Steve was apparently not there—he was off staff by then). Stan hated the opening sequence, in particular, where two minor, nondescript baddies jam into each other as they enter a saloon, then slug it out for two pages before Iron Mask (finally) makes his entrance. At one juncture, Roy felt obliged to try to defend one aspect of the story—he forgets which one. Stan turned to him with a withering glance and said icily, “And the less you say at this point, the better!” Roy clammed up.

Maybe Stan was right about that tale—and its reception by him certainly didn’t do Steve any good at Marvel—but it still doesn’t seem all that bad to Roy. He’s read—and written—worse. Steve wrote RT a few months back, however, that he knew nothing about that conference. [©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.] Incidentally, contrary to Steve’s recollections on p. 6, Roy remembers being hired at Marvel not to replace Steve but to complement him. Stan wanted two new assistants/writers, not one—and soon hired Denny O’Neil to fill the spot vacated by Steve.

The Silver Skeates

29

Yea, Team!

Steve did write a number of key super-heroes for DC, though. In World’s Finest Comics #203 (June 1971) he teamed up with Dick Dillin & Joe Giella to script a Superman & Aquaman co-starrer—while in Super-Team Family #3 (Feb-March 1976) he scribed a Flash & Hawkman story with Ric Estrada & Wally Wood.

Thanks to Mark Muller. [©2009 DC Comics.]

There are many factors involved, of course, in one’s decision as to whether or not to pursue as the subject of one’s writings some big-name super-hero. Even one’s political beliefs play a role here, the vast number of liberals who joined the comic book industry in the ’60s (writers, mainly) being faced with the problem of chronicling in a positive manner the adventures of characters who came off as self-righteous jack-booted selfproclaimed superior beings. The very reason that Europeans, though they loved American comics, couldn’t warm up to any of our super-heroes (making for lousy European sales for those sorts of comics) is that World War II took place right there where they live, destroying their populations and making their homelands (for quite some time) all but uninhabitable.

Therefore, the idea of a benevolent fascist (a rather apt description of your regular ordinary super-hero, if you ask me) was to them not merely an impossibility; it was offensive, as well! And so it was with a number of the more liberal writers who tried like hell to tone down the inherent “might makes right” aspects of the super-heroes they were writing for.

To my way of thinking, the secret identity aspect of most of these characters only added to the problem here. A secret fascist, one who couldn’t own up to what he was doing but had to do it on the sly—what does that say? That, in fact, is one aspect of Aquaman I quite enjoyed— that he essentially didn’t have another identity. He may have been Arthur Curry, but not in any of my stories.

“Everything I Had In Mind for ‘Aquaman’” JS: Speaking of “Aquaman,” when he returned to Adventure Comics as a backup feature to “The Spectre,” you wrote the first two stories. Yet, when “Aquaman” was moved to the lead feature, you were replaced as the writer (even though Jim Aparo returned to the art). Why didn’t you write the new series?

SKEATES: Before I make the soapbox I was up on previously my home, do allow me to point out that much of what you’re talking about here comes down to decisions made by various editors rather than any decision on my part. It’s all rather similar actually to what had happened to me and The Teen Titans—“Supergirl” changed editors, and, though I would have quite enjoyed continuing to write for that character, the new editor had other ideas.

The same was true of “Aquaman”—in fact, in this instance, the editor had decided to write the series himself. He—Paul Levitz—did in fact ask me to write one fill-in issue, and I just re-read that issue (Adventure #449), thus reacquainting myself with the fact that after the experience I had writing this adventure, I no longer wanted to have anything to do with the sea king! It’s not all that bad a story—’twas in fact a variation upon the tale I had originally planned for Aquaman #57—but Paul and I just couldn’t see eye to eye on anything here. He saw my ideas as being too

35

“You Two Guys Ought To Do Something Together!”

CHARLES SINCLAIR On His Partnership—And Friendship—With BILL FINGER, Co-Creator of Batman Interview Conducted by Jim Amash Transcribed by Brian K. Morris

L

ongtime Alter Ego readers know that I never miss an opportunity to discuss Bill Finger, co-creator of Batman (as well as of Green Lantern and Wildcat), with those who had known him. A couple of years back, I was talking to Marc Tyler Nobleman about Batman for an upcoming project he was working on, when the subject came around to Mr. Finger. Marc and I both lamented the fact that our knowledge of this important creator was severely limited.

Bill Finger died in 1974, giving very few interviews, leaving us with many unanswered questions.

While talking to Marc, I remembered that Finger had a writing partner named Charles Sinclair, and that he had never, so far as we knew, been interviewed on this subject. Marc subsequently found his phone number, passed it on to me, and we both ended up interviewing Mr. Sinclair for our own projects. One of Marc’s projects deals a lot with Finger, in ways this interview does not, as you can see on his website at www.noblemania.blogspot.com. And my project of course, was for Alter Ego. Now, finally, we have Charles Sinclair to tell us about the human side of the man who died without proper due or recompense for his co-creation of Batman and Robin, as well as the many side-characters and villains who populated their fictional adventures. There is more of Bill Finger‘s story yet to be told… but for now, we gratefully thank Mr. Sinclair for his insights and help in fleshing out the biography of one of the most neglected comic book creators in our history. —Jim.

“We Concocted A Script…”

CHARLES SINCLAIR: I met Bill Finger around 1949, ’50. He was a friend of the lady I was then married to. Her name was Coral Nieland.

She had been working as a secretary at DC Comics, and got to know Bill there. One time, we had a New Year’s Eve party. I was relatively recent to New York City and didn’t know that many people—she knew a lot of people—so she got most of the invitational lists. Coral Nieland was also a

Batman & Bat-Friends Charles Sinclair in 1966 (above) and Bill Finger (date uncertain, below)—flanking Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin from the phenomenally popular TV series of the ‘60s.

Photo of Sinclair courtesy of the artist, forwarded by Jim Amash & Teresa R. Davidson.

[TV still ©2009 DC Comics.]

part-time actress, and had a minor part on the Superman radio show. I think the character was “Ginger Davis,” a copygirl on The Daily Planet. At any rate, she invited Bill Finger, whom I had never previously met, and his wife. They showed up along with Jerry Robinson and the lady to whom he was married—I believe, at that time, a beautiful blonde model named Leslie. Joe Shuster came, too; it was a very pleasant evening. I got along well with Bill Finger and Portia, and with many of Cory’s friends. Bill was living in Manhattan; I think his address was 45 Grove Street, which was right smack in the middle of the Village, just off Seventh Avenue—as Villagey as you could get.

He was an interesting and fun person in kind-of a pixyish way, which would kind-of flash out at you, a “Tom, the fun-loving rover” type. I liked his sense of humor and turn of phrase. I had the initial impression he was self-made and self-educated in many ways, and I think that impression proved to be correct.

36

Charles Sinclair On His Partnership—And Friendship—With Bill Finger

In The Nick Of Time Nick Carter, Master Detective ran on the Mutual radio network from 1943 through 1955. That’s the series from which the Internet-derived photo above shows Lon Clark voicing the title role, with either Helen Choate or Charlotte Manson as his girl Friday, Patsy Brown.

The long-lived hero originated in 1891 (!) in the Nick Carter Detective Library, whose rare first cover is seen at right—while Nick Carter Magazine was a pulp mag in the mid-1930s. In recent years he’s become a “super-agent” in paperbacks. [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

I had a background in radio.

Television was in its infancy around that point, but radio was still rolling along at the time when I met Bill. Originally, I worked as an announcer in Atlanta for a major radio station.

I came north to go back to college [Columbia] under the G.I. Bill, and stayed on in New York City.

JA: Did you get to know any of the other DC people?

SINCLAIR: Not really. I was introduced to Mort Weisinger, who was an editor, and a guy named Dick Rothman, who was the inhouse publicity guy for DC Comics and a friend of my then-wife.

Bill and I were not instant buddies, but he was added to our circle of friends, and the four of us did things. We went to Broadway shows, like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. We had a lot of common interests. I don’t know who came up with the idea of “You two guys ought to do something together!“ It just sort-of grew. With the broadcast connections that I had, I turned up a show called Nick Carter, Master Detective on the Mutual Broadcasting System, produced by a guy named Jock MacGregor. Lon Clark was Nick Carter, and was as square as the corners of drugstore ice.

He had this charming, very sexy girl [Charlotte Manson] playing Patsy, his right-hand girl. She had all the straight lines: “But, Nick, I don’t understand…” That kind of thing. I had a slight entrée to this show, which was a freelance radio drama show built around a central character. You were not creating a detective, he was already there. It’s like writing another Sherlock Holmes piece. So I suggested to Bill, “We might stand a chance of landing a script on this thing. Would you be interested?” And he was.

So we concocted a script for Nick Carter, Master Detective, which is probably in my files somewhere. Now this is where Bill’s gimmick book came in handy. Bill had a notebook in which he would jot down ideas that might have some use in a detective or “Batman” type of story. There were all sorts of ideas: chemistry things, when you add such-and-such to so-and-so, then you’ve got a reaction, or “often mistaken for such-and-such”type facts, little-known facts; things about artwork and painters, cookery and chemistry and medicine and criminology. Good Lord, ballistics and fingerprints and powder marks on the hand of the person who shot the gun, whatever—Bill had loads of stuff on this, and the tests for it, and what they would show. He would work these things into stories. Well, one of the things he had was some information about jade. Jade is not only found in China, but also way out in Wyoming—a big streak of fairly high quality. The Chinese symbol for “virtue” also is the symbol for “jade,” which was one of his gems that he had down in his book.

So we wrote a story about jade being smuggled into New York City by a master criminal we named “Rocks” Malvern, as I remember. Rocks was very, very big on gemstones. Nick Carter finally cracked the case. The way the case was cracked—this is the idea that I added--now you begin to see a partnership forming. Bill came up with the jade subject, and I came up with a “how to locate a town in Wyoming“ idea. They go out on location, and they find this battered truck which had been used to drive around into the mining areas. The truck had a push-button radio, and the push-buttons had the designations for stations, K-something. You know, KOUF or whatever.

[NOTE: With few exceptions, radio stations west of the Mississippi River begin their call letters with the letter “K” —Jim.] There were three workable push-buttons on the truck radio.

That’s where I came into play, because I used a radio reference book for accuracy. It was alphabetical by states, and then stations within that by towns. I found three Mutual stations forming a triangle, and the truck radio was able to pick up, at one time or another, any one of these three stations. And so the center of the triangle would be the mining area where all this was taking place. Sure enough, we added to the crime lore, and it worked. The stations down the line were tickled to death that they were being mentioned and were instrumental in helping to crack this case. The bad guys were brought to justice, and the jades returned to its owners.

JA: What year was this?

SINCLAIR: It’s either ’49 or ’50. I don’t think it was ’51. That would be kind-of later on. It’s in that time frame where radio drama was fading away. By ’55, I think Bill and I, as a sometimes writing team, were off into other things that paid more. I think we were paid $300 for it; 150 for Bill, 150 for me. It might have been $600 where it was 3-and-3, I don’t remember now. That was way back. Not a hell of a lot by today’s standards, but we were tickled to death. This was found money, and we all went out to dinner on it, and listened to the broadcast. That started the partnership, and we worked together on and off after that. We did some other radio shows, and then moved over to television.

JA: Do you remember what other radio shows you two did together? It would have been a detective series, right?

SINCLAIR: Very likely, whatever was open for scripting. We worked on Murder by Experts. We were itching to get in on the TV side of the thing.

“You Two Guys Ought To Do Something Together!”

We were painting pictures with words, and doing our work with music and sound. Bill thought visually, but he was fine at radio writing, too. He couldn’t draw worth a hoot. He was not a trained artist, but he had a very good sense of staging. He was also a great movie fan, usually going by himself, and taking a notebook. He would go to Saturday matinees, and I think when his son Fred was born, Bill would take him to the movies.

They would sit through a big double feature, and Bill was taking notes quietly.

JA: Jerry Robinson told me that Bill was particularly enamored of foreign films. Do you recall that?

SINCLAIR: Yes, I do. Bill was not a linguist, but he liked foreign movies.

He liked British detective stories very much—the really neat serious stuff.

Bulldog Drummond was a kind of a British Nick Carter. Let me think of some of the movies he liked: Green for Danger, with Alistair Sim, and The Blue Lamp with, I think, John Mills. He liked little murder mysteries with Eric Portman—is that the name I’m trying to think of? Anyway, the actor I’m trying to think of was always playing courtroom dramas where he would level a finger at the accused, and thunder in this wonderful deep Baritone voice of his, [with a British accent] “I put it to you, sir, that your entire testimony is a tissue of lies.” Whammo! [mutual laughter] He used that line in several various movies in various situations. Bill loved courtroom dramas of that ilk—and to some extent, the foreign French ones, which were sometimes pretty good: Diabolique, and movies of that type.

JA: How long did you two write for radio?

SINCLAIR: As briefly as possible, because we were itching to get into television. Maybe a year or two. We got in on the tail end of radio, and couldn’t wait to get into the TV thing because (A) it was more money, (B) it was more glamour.

“Our First TV Show” JA: Who’d come up with the basic plot? Would one of you fill out a structure to the other to follow?

SINCLAIR: Ahh, interesting question. Usually, a TV deal went something like this: I would come up with the opportunity, sniffing it out through connections made as a journalist covering the TV scene, working with various major trade publications, including Billboard, which had a TV section then, competitive with Variety. We met with lots of people who were in the production field in TV. New shows, new things were happening, and we wanted in on it.

Our first TV show was, of all things, a series called Foreign Intrigue. Foreign Intrigue was filmed by a guy named Sheldon Reynolds, a New Yorker who was operating in postwar Europe, and shooting his stuff in Sweden, which is a very bilingual country, with Swedish actors. A lot of the people who popped up in Swedish movies spoke very good English, and it was sort of post-World War II European intrigue with hints of the KGB at work. I found the Foreign Intrigue door and pushed it open a bit.

Okay, they would at least read our script, so Bill and I got together and wrote an episode. It didn’t have much to revolve around, and this is where Bill’s memory for every damn movie he ever saw came up.

37

What the producer wanted was a show about a traveling hitman who would float around European capitals, knocking off defectors from an unnamed organization, that was pretty obviously the Russian Secret Service and/or KGB. We needed a villain who could float around, and not be recognized. The person who was being hit might see the face, but then bang, that’s the last one he’s going to see. So Bill came up with the gimmick that solved that one, and the gimmick went something like this: in 1948 or thereabouts, Cecil B. DeMille made a movie called The Greatest Show on Earth, with Betty Hutton, Jimmy Stewart and others.

Jimmy Stewart, for some reason or other, was on the lam. He was wanted by police authorities for a crime he didn’t commit, and he was trying to find the evidence to clear his name and was traveling around with the circus. Now why did nobody recognize him at the circus? Because he was a clown. What does a clown wear?

JA and SINCLAIR: Makeup! [mutual chuckling] SINCLAIR: Right. So we created a character named Conrad the Clown, who traveled around the European Vaudeville circuit, playing music halls, and all that stuff. He’s got this clown makeup on, and you never see his face. They hired this famous Swedish circus clown, I think, to play him, who was hilarious on stage, and shot it live in front of a big audience in a music hall setting somewhere in Sweden.

Then we had some other stuff, other situations in the story where he is knocking off somebody like a professor or physicist or whoever was wavering in his admiration for the Soviet Union. In that time, you see him without his makeup and bang, he shoots the guy. Then, way late in the story, where our hero—who is like a foreign correspondent doing kind-of a detective role here—is talking to Conrad, who is a suspect, in his dressing room. Conrad is busy taking his makeup off, and this made for a very good scene. The scene was intercut, you get shots of Conrad, closeups, white going off in makeup, all that sort of thing. Finally, he turns to the camera and bang! This is the guy who is the hitman. All right, that’s straight out of the Jimmy Stewart swipe from the Greatest Show on Earth.

This is our first-time venture into TV, a beautiful black-&-white filmed TV show, shot in Europe. Now the last part of this, because Bill is not the only guy who went to see movies a lot—I came up with a thing. I remembered a movie with Jack Benny and Carole Lombard, To Be or Not to Be, about a traveling troupe of players who were playing in Poland in 1939, and the War is about to break out. This Nazi type is tracked down in the theatre, right? And there is a chase in the theatre, and the guys working the spotlights are following him, running around on the stage, and then out up into the boxes, and running around in the mezzanine. A chase, gunfire, all that sort of thing, in the theater, right? It enormously impressed me. It was terrific direction in that movie by Ernst Lubitsch. So, as the tag for this Foreign Intrigue episode, Conrad the Clown bolts from the dressing room as the police come in, and now the chase is on in the theatre.

He’s racing around on stage, then he’s up in the boxes, and he’s running around in the mezzanine, and this is the idea I came up with.

So here were two great movie bits welded together with additional dialogue and bingo, we had a script!

Foreign Wide This is probably a still from the early TV series Foreign Intrigue, starring actor Jerome Thor. The series was reportedly filmed in Europe, and indeed was later syndicated in the US as Dateline Europe. [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

JA: So you were both working out plot and structure, and both of you wrote dialogue?

SINCLAIR: Yes, Bill was very good on dialogue because there is no

50

The Human Potential Movement And Super-Hero Comics

A/E

EDITOR’S PREFACE: From June 1-6, 2008, my wife (and ofttimes collaborator) Dann and I attended a symposium sponsored by the Esalen Institute’s Center for Theory and Research. It was held at that legendary retreat located three hours south of San Francisco on California’s Big Sur peninsula, amid its natural hot springs and breathtaking view of the surging Pacific pounding the rocks beneath the cliffs. Reluctant as we generally are to leave our own little patch of paradise in South Carolina for that long, we found it impossible to turn down Dr. Jeffrey J. Kripal’s generous invitation to be a part of this first-ever Esalen event to deal with comics books and their relation to the sciences and to the human potential movement—a discussion of varying approaches, as it were, to the notion of super-powers.

emerging guest list. Subjects to be covered would include remote viewing, UFO abductions, and various psychical phenomena, but the participants were neither wild-eyed “true believers” nor professional skeptics. These folks had credentials—and we were honored to be included. At the last moment two or three invitees, including current comics writer Grant Morrison, were unable to attend for personal reasons; but the score who were on hand for its several hour-and-a-half presentations each day found it a worthwhile, perhaps even enlightening, experience—in between the relaxing hot springs baths and the full-body massages enjoyed by some, of course. (All work and no play, etc.)

As the time approached, and after helping Jeffrey contact several comicsrelated people he felt might contribute to the gathering, Dann and I were intrigued and impressed by the

What follows is Jeffrey’s account of that symposium, which was officially titled “From the Supernormal to the Superpower.” It was the first but probably not the last of its kind—and if anyone out there ever receives an invitation to such an event, I wholeheartedly recommend that he/she accept at once. —Roy.

Man And Super-Men Jeffrey J. Kripal, chairman of the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University in Houston, Texas, hosted the June 2008 Esalen symposium titled “From the Supernormal to the Superpower.” Above is a photo of Jeffrey (at right) speaking with Roy Thomas and Hall of Fame comic artist Ramona Fradon during a break.

Below is the cover of Jeffrey's 2007 book Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, about the possibilities of the “supernormal” (the human potential movement was born, or at the very least midwived, at the Esalen Institute)—flanked by the halves of a montage by X-Men co-creator Jack Kirby. The latter show the original five X-Men in two different pencil drawings, as inked by Jerry Bingham and Mike Allred, respectively, for Pure Imagination’s 1994 tome Jack Kirby’s Heroes and Villains. With thanks to Greg Theakston. [Book cover ©2009 University of Chicago Press; photo by Daniel Bianchetta; X-Men TM & ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

51

Esalen And The X-Men The Human Potential Movement And Super-Hero Comics

by Jeffrey J. Kripal That such a person actually exists (or existed) seems plausible to me, increasingly so as the discoveries of psychology and physics continue to reveal the intertwinings of mind and the physical world. It is inevitable, I think, that pioneers like this will appear in our midst….

The potential is there, just like Obi-Wan Kenobi said it was.

Remote viewer Ingo Swann in Jim Schnabel’s Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies, chapter 19, “Obi Swann”

Michael Murphy in Jacob Atabet, 1977

B

Introductions

y training and profession, I am a historian of religions, a field that most people would probably better recognize as “comparative religion.” Basically, I study and compare religious systems like other people study and compare cultural systems, political philosophies, novels, or movies. More especially, I read, translate, and interpret mystical literature, that is, texts from around the world that express and enact some fundamental unity, even identity, between divinity and humanity. Put bluntly, I study how human beings come to realize that they are gods in disguise. I thus fancy myself a professional student of the first alter ego.

In the spring of 2007, I published a book on a broad spectrum of American metaphysical traditions called “the human potential movement.” I modeled much of this book on the occult novels of Michael Murphy, who in 1962 co-founded with the late Richard Price (1930-1986) something that soon came to be called the Esalen Institute. Named after a

Native American tribal group (the Esselen) that once populated the same area in Big Sur, California, Esalen quickly became both a countercultural mecca and the original home of the human potential movement. Today, about 10,000 people visit the Big Sur cliff each year for about 400 different seminars and events, ranging from folk music concerts, yoga workshops, and Buddhist meditation practicums, to seminars on greening the economy and invitational conferences on Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations or post-mortem survival (yes, that’s right).

Murphy and Price adapted the idea of “human potential” from the British-American writer Aldous Huxley, who had spoken of something he called “human potentialities.” Much indebted to his famous experiments with psychedelics (another key-word which he helped coin), Huxley used the expression “human potentialities” to argue that human consciousness and the human body possess vast untapped resources of Mind and Energy. Consciousness, for example, is not something produced without remainder by the brain in Huxley’s thought. It is something filtered through or received by the brain, much as a television set or radio receives a distant signal that is not really in the box (or the brain).

Mind, then, in its true nature is something to capitalize for Huxley. It is essentially transcendent, metaphysical, cosmic.

Yea, Team(s)!

The originators—West and East! (Left:) A photo of Richard Price, who’s on our left, and Michael Murphy, founders of Esalen, taken shortly after their first meeting in the fall of 1960. (Right:) Marvel editor/writer Stan Lee and artist/co-plotter Jack Kirby at a 1966 meeting of the National Cartoonists Society. Thanks to Barry Pearl, who says, “It’s easier to find pictures of Joe Sinnott and Jack Kirby together than of Stan and Jack, and Joe and Jack didn’t meet for 20 years!” [Price & Murphy photo by permission of the Esalen Institute.]

Drawing on such altered states and altered words, writers like Murphy would go on to suggest that the human potential includes all sorts of extraordinary powers that are “supernormal,” from psychical abilities like clairvoyance and telepathy to extraordinary physical phenomena like dramatic healings or feats of strength, even in a few rare cases (like Teresa of Avila and Joseph of Copertino) apparent levitation or flight. All of these things, of course, have been exaggerated in religious literature, folklore, and modern fantasy as supernatural but, according to authors like Murphy, they are better understood as foreshadowings or intuitions of the hidden potentials of evolution. Murphy and his colleagues, in other words, believe that evolution has granted at least some human beings extraordinary “superpowers,” and that these have been encoded, if no doubt also exaggerated, in fantasy literature, movies, science fiction, and super-hero comic books. Seen in this light, such pop cultural genres are essentially human potential genres in disguise, genres that “might prefigure luminous knowings and powers that can be realized by the human race,” as Murphy put it in his 1992 magnum opus The Future of the Body.1 1Michael Murphy, The Future of the Body: Explorations Into the Further Evolution of Human Nature (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1992), 211-213, “Superordinary Powers in Fantasy Literature, Cartoons, Movies, and Science Fiction.”

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The Human Potential Movement And Super-Hero Comics

Esalen imagined itself from the very beginning as a kind of alternative private academy for this evolving future of the body, that is, as a place where the human potentialities hinted at in psychedelic, psychical, and mystical experiences could be supported, nurtured, and developed further through consistent transformative practices and a stable institutional structure. Consider, for example, the case of George Leonard, Look magazine journalist, education reformer, and later aikido master who coined the phrase “the human potential movement” with Murphy in 1965 (after that other recently coined phrase, “the civil rights movement”).

Leonard was well known in the late ’60s for his radical models of education reform.

Hence one of the opening scenes of his wildly popular Education and Ecstasy (1968). Leonard enters a classroom and senses a young witch whose psychic powers, he realizes, are laced with an obvious and dangerous eroticism. He can feel his skin tingling as he exits the room and wonders about the young girl’s fate in a superficial and uncomprehending world. In Leonard’s model of ecstatic education, at least, the typical American high school classroom is a place where occult talents are first manifested (often around puberty and the appearance of the sexual powers) and then cruelly crushed under the weight of social control, disbelief, and pure neglect.2 The young woman will forget about her own human potential, about her own magico-erotic superpowers. She must forget them.

Origins If this is beginning to sound like the base mythology of The X-Men, well, then, you have some idea of where this is all going. If you imagine, however, that my story goes back to New York City in 1963 with Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (or even to Big Sur in 1962 with Michael Murphy and Richard Price), you may be surprised to learn that this particular “Origins” story is significantly older and more complicated than either of these early-’60s scenarios.

Power is precisely what the members of the Society for Psychical Research had in mind when they helped introduce a new word: the “supernormal.”

The idea of mystical mutations that produce various psychical and occult powers, in other words, has been in the air for at least 130 years now. It goes back to the very origins, and to one of the two historical founders, of evolutionary biology itself. It is one of our most basic cultural convictions, now more or less suppressed by official science but experiencing something of a hidden Renaissance in the human potential movement, in popular culture (think Heroes on TV), and in the superhero comics.

This anyway is what I was thinking as I finished my 2007 history of Esalen. I was struck again and again by these deep resonances between the basic ideas of the human potential movement and the super-hero comics of my adolescence and youth. I still had many of those comics. I remember pulling them out of the closet in my early forties, half-embarrassed but entirely delighted. I then visited local comic book stores in Houston and discovered and rediscovered the work of writers like Grant Morrison and contemporary artists like Alex Ross and Barry WindsorSmith. I found myself returning to—okay, obsessed with—these images and ideas, until I finally allowed myself to write an Appendix entitled “Esalen and The X-Men: The Human Potential Movement and American Mythology as Practiced and Imagined Forms of an Evolutionary and Atomic Mysticism.”

I never published that Appendix, not because it wasn’t good enough (or because the title was awfully long-winded), but because the book was already pushing 500 pages and I knew my editor would not be pleased with yet more pages to edit, copyedit, and print. So I stopped. I occulted my own occult appendix. But now I’m publishing the heart of it here, quite appropriately, I think, for Alter Ego, that “Other I.”

Meeting On The Cliff

But that is not the end of the story.

Consider, for a moment, the following facts. Consider the great French philosopher, Henri Bergson. Bergson was profoundly involved in the data The idea of mystical-mythical resonances continued to haunt me. I and experiments of psychical research. Indeed, he was the President of the talked continuously about it with Michael Murphy, who had become both London Society for Psychical Research in 1913. In the early decades of the a mentor and a close friend. Mike began calling me “Professor X.” He also twentieth century, moreover, he wrote beautifully of what he famously began referring to himself as “Nightcaller” (an inside pun, as we first met called the élan vital, a kind of cosmic evolutionary force that reveals the universe to be, as he put it in the very last line of one of his books, “a machine for the making of gods.”

Well before Bergson, though, the Canadian doctor Richard Maurice Bucke had written a rather eccentric tome about evolution as a mystical force creating spiritual, cultural, and literary geniuses—his 1901 classic, Cosmic Consciousness. Earlier still, a number of Cambridge professors, spouses, and friends had gathered together to found the London Society for Psychical Research, in the winter of 1882, to be precise. Attending one of their very first meetings was none other than Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-originator with Charles Darwin of the theory of biological evolution. Fame aside, Wallace cared little for the orthodoxies of religion or science. He attended séances, performed Mesmeric experiments on his students (as Aldous Huxley did with his family and friends), asserted the postmortem survival of our mental and spiritual natures, and speculated, with his SPR colleagues, that “there yet seems to be evidence of a Power which has guided A Bridge Too Far the action of those [evolutionary] laws in definite Magneto (portrayed by Ian McKellen) deconstructs San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge in the film directions and for special ends.” This evolutionary 2 George B. Leonard, Education and Ecstasy (New York: Dell, 1968), 4.

X-Men: The Last Stand. Jeffrey Kripal, however, assures us that the structure has been fully repaired.

With thanks to David McDonnell of the invaluable Starlog magazine. [Photo TM & ©2006 20th Century-Fox. All rights reserved. All X-Men character likenesses TM & ©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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[Art ©2009 William M. Gaines Agent, Inc.]

[©2009 Eerie Publications.]

62

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Twice-Told EC — Part 1!

by Michael T. Gilbert

I

n 1953, Joe Kubert, Norman Maurer, and Norman’s brother Leonard came up with a way to do 3-D comics, and convinced publisher Archer St. John to put out a 25¢ Mighty Mouse 3-D title. It was a phenomenal success, reportedly selling out two print runs of a million copies each! Naturally, everyone wanted to get on the gravy train, including Entertaining Comics publisher Bill Gaines.

Gaines and editor Al Feldstein set to work producing three 3-D titles.

One, an EC sampler, featured stories from their horror, humor, sci-fi, and war titles, while the second was devoted to horror stories. A third was planned, devoted to science-fiction. But they had to move fast to take advantage of the fad, so they ordered their best artists to completely redraw old EC stories for 3-D. The first, Three Dimensional Classics (3-D #1) hit the stands in the spring of 1954, (see the Harvey Kurtzman cover on right), followed by Three Dimensional Tales from the Crypt of Terror (3-D #2) with the same cover-date.

Many of the scripts were originally written (and sometimes illustrated)

by EC editor Al Feldstein. This time, he assigned the art to artists like Wally Wood, George Evans, Bernie Krigstein, and “Ghastly” Graham Ingels. Though we only have room to print a handful of splash pages, these beautiful Twice-Told Tales provide the reader with a unique opportunity to see some of the finest artists in the field tackle the same script.

[All art this page ©2009 William M. Gaines Agent, Inc.]

We begin with Feldstein’s “Spawn of Venus,” originally written and drawn by Feldstein for Weird Science #5 (March 1951).

Here, Feldstein’s crude but powerful art pulls the reader into the story and never lets go.

Wally Wood’s version, three years later (below right), is much more polished but equally creepy, breathing horrible life into Feldstein’s story about an unstoppable flesheating blob. Wood’s rendition was drawn in 1954 for EC’s never-published third EC 3-D title. A 2-D version of the story was eventually printed in 1969 in the sixth issue of Wood and Bill Pearson’s prozine, witzend.

Twice-Told EC—Part 1!

Below, we have “The Slave Ship!” drawn by “Radioactive” George Roussos for Weird Fantasy #8 (July 1951), followed by Bernie Krigstein’s more design-oriented take, intended for 3-D #2, and printed in Squa Tront #4 years later.

[All art this page ©2009 William M. Gaines Agent, Inc.]

Above we have Al Feldstein’s haunting end-of-the-world tale, “Child of Tomorrow!” from Weird Fantasy #17 (actually #5) (Jan. 1951), followed

by Reed Crandall’s version from EC’s unpublished 3-D #3,which finally saw print in 1970 in Squa Tront #4.

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67

Another Clause In The “Will” Would You Believe It? Still More Artwork From The LongLost JSA Adventure!

by Roy Thomas

T

he truth is out there.

But, like Carl Sandburg’s famous fog, it comes sneaking in on little cat feet… one tentative paw at a time.

Over time, we’ve been lucky enough to savor, counting this latest 1/3 of a page, exactly 22 pages’ worth of that 48-page “JSA” saga, which was written by Gardner Fox sometime between 1943 and 1945 (probably in the former year) and illustrated by various artists. This latest tier, from the “Green Lantern” solo chapter drawn by Paul Reinman, was first brought to our attention in 2008 by the vigilant Dominic Bongo when it popped up in a Heritage Comics auction. Like the full “GL” page printed in The AllStar Companion, Vol. 3, it was won by collector Dan Makara, who kindly shared a hi-res scan with us:

[© DC Comics.]

In several earlier issues of Alter Ego, as reprinted in the first three volumes of TwoMorrows Publishing’s All-Star Companion series, various tiers (rows) of panels and even full pages from the never-published mid1940s “Justice Society” story “The Will of William Wilson” have emerged from the mist. First directly from the cache of artwork (which had mostly been sliced into thirds of pages) that was rescued circa 1969 from DC’s hungry incinerator by comics pro Marv Wolfman and distributed amongst members of The Illegitimate Sons Of Superman (TISOS) fan club, especially to the late Mark Hanerfeld—then in 2001 from Stephen Fishler,

owner of Metropolis Collectibles in New York City—and along the way as they showed up, one by one, on eBay or in Heritage Comics auctions, several other shards of the original TISOS stash.

Dan agrees with us that this pair of panels probably forms the top of page 3 of the 6-page “GL” segment, following right after the full page 2 which appeared in ASCV3—and which is likewise owned by the fortunate Mr. Makara. Of course, there’s always a slight chance that another row of panels intervenes, and that what we have is actually the middle of p. 3— not that it matters much. It’s merely a continuation of the Emerald Gladiator’s scuffle with a trio of thugs on a boat in mid-Atlantic, as he searches for a long-sunken chalice made by the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini—complete with a couple of mild quips and the misspelling of the word “occasion.” (Which would probably have been fixed, had the tale ever been printed.)

One tier of artwork. Hardly a mother lode, given the year and a half since the publication of ASCV3. If other panels of “Will” art and story still exist—let alone the totally-AWOL “Hawkman” and “Johnny Thunder” chapters—it’s unlikely we’ll ever see quite all of them.

Like the fabled frog that leaps halfway to the end of a log with each hop, we’ll probably never get to the end.

Still, it’s a journey that has been well worth the taking.

Comic Fandom Archive

69

Tom Fagan One of Early Comic Fandom’s Brightest Lights The Passing Of A Founder Of The Rutland, Vermont, Parade

A

by Bill Schelly

t 10:00 pm on October 21st, 2008, long-time comics fan Tom Fagan died. He was 76 years old.

A newspaper reporter and editor at the Rutland Herald for many years, Tom was best known in comicdom as the cofounder of the famous Halloween parade in Rutland, Vermont, which began in 1959 and continues to this day. He was also known as one of the finest authors of articles in the 1960s comics fanzines, from Batmania to Alter Ego to Comic Crusader (and others).

Though I only met Tom Fagan once (at a Comic-Con International several years ago), I feel as if I’ve known him since the 1960s. I originally “met” Tom in the pages of Biljo White’s Batmania fanzine, shortly after I found out about comics fandom.

He had contributed a wonderful article titled “The Big Parade” in issue #3 (1965), where he described the colorful Halloween parade in New England which had Batman as its Grand Marshal. Oh, how I wished I could have attended or participated in one of those parades, and not only because they sounded like so much fun! Tom’s evocative article is a classic of its kind, and as such, I chose to reprint it in my Comic Fandom Reader book in 2002.

Surveying the fanzine scene of fandom’s Golden Age, I think Tom was one of the very best writers, right alongside Richard Kyle, Rick Weingroff, and a few others. Perhaps to an extent that was to be expected, given his career in journalism, but there was something about his prose that went a step further than factual reportage. His skillful writing combined intelligence with a sense of wonder about the objects of our fascination. I only wish he had written more.

Roy Thomas or someone else would be better qualified to write about the now-legendary post-parade parties that Tom held in a Rutland mansion—and indeed, they were dealt with in A/E, Vol. 2, #3 (1999)—but

Fagan In Fact And Fantasy The drawing above was done for a Fagan t-shirt by Marty Greim (head) and Al Bradford (body), as repro’d by Tom Hegeman in CAPA-alpha magazine. The photo at right appeared on the Rutland [Vermont] Herald website on Oct. 13, 2008, and was supplied by Bill Schelly. For some of Tom’s best 1960s fanwriting, see his short piece “Warlock” from A/E [V1] #5, reprinted in the TwoMorrows trade paperback Alter Ego: The Best of the Legendary Comics Fanzine. [Art ©2009 Martin L. Greim & Al Bradford; photo ©2009 Rutland Herald.]

like any fan at the time, I delighted in seeing both Tom and the parade portrayed in a number of comic books in the 1970s. That made Fagan a comic book character himself, and I suspect it delighted him immensely.

Tom was viewed as an eccentric in Rutland, and was loved the more for it. A great admirer of James Dean, he wore his hair slicked back in his best imitation of Dean as Jim Stark in Rebel without a Cause. He also named his daughter Deana. Having come of age during the Beat generation of the 1950s, he took to wearing all black, a preference he continued for the rest of his life.

In Tom’s obituary in the Rutland Herald, Deana Fagan is quoted as saying, “In some ways, he never stopped being a child. He enjoyed having fun. He didn’t think he had to be a certain way just because of his age….

He’s one of those people who made involvement in comics more likely for an adult. He made it legitimate.”

We’ll end our tribute to Tom’s passing with this passage from Joe Latino (with his permission): “I attended the funeral services at the Clifford Funeral Home in Rutland on Wednesday, October 29, 2008. It was a

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Comic Fandom Archive

A Phantasmagoria Of Fagan (Clockwise from far left:) Tom working on a Halloween float in 1971—Tom as Batman in 1970, with fellow fan Sue O’Neil as Hela—and Tom with Bill Schelly at the 1998 Comic-Con International in San Diego. Batman/Tom photo provided by Al Bradford; others supplied by Bill Schelly.

dark, overcast, cold, and windy day that somehow seemed appropriate. It had actually snowed the night before. There was a crowd at the funeral home where the services were held.

Tom had been cremated and the box read: “M. Thomson Fagan.” It appeared to be a black lacquer box with a silver cross at the top and a simple yet elegant appearance. It also contained the year of birth and death. There were several floral arrangements, but by far and away the best was the one from the Boston Butchers with a festive Halloween theme and Batman throughout. And no other arrangement captured the Halloween flavor that Tom loved so much!”

I Remember Tom Fagan

by Martin L. Greim

T

om Fagan.

I first met Tom at Phil Seuling’s SCARP-Con in 1969. I had recently started doing material for my friend Bob Cosgrove’s fanzine Champion, and Bob knew him via contacts in comics fandom. I shook Tom’s hand and said, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Fagan.” To which he replied, “Call me TOM!” That event brought about a relationship that lasted for over thirty years.

Tom wrote a number of wonderful articles for my fanzine Comic Crusader, and I drew most of the art that accompanied them. I also did some of the art for articles he wrote for other fan publications. During our fan time together, Tom arranged for Bob Cosgrove, our friend Al Bradford, and myself to meet and interview the Binder brothers… Otto and Jack. Of all the interviews conducted for Comic Crusader, that was one of the best. Both of them had sharp memories of the Fawcett years and provided some wonderful original art to use with the piece. I certainly owed Tom a great deal for setting up that meeting.

Tom was also the driving force for the Rutland Halloween Parade.

Many comic book professionals, myself included, went to and contributed to that event. Both Marvel and DC also did stories based in Rutland about that annual parade. When I was writing the Thunderbunny comic book, I did one, too. Brian Buniak, the artist on that series, did a wonderful likeness of Tom for that story. With pardonable pride, I think it was the best story done regarding the parade. Tom even supplied me with info about street layouts and the location of a certain statue that was the other focus of Rutland. It worked out very well.

As years went by, Tom grew less enchanted with comics fandom. He became more withdrawn and was injured when he was hit by a truck on a snowy Vermont evening. As a result of that accident, he was less mobile.

He still enjoyed comics, but rarely replied to most fans who tried to contact him.

My fondest memory of Tom, in his later years, came about when I organized a trip to Florida so he could go to the various parks there. Our mutual friend Joe Latino, along with Bob Cosgrove and myself, did all the parks. My favorite remembrance of that trip was a picture I took of Tom with Mickey Mouse. Tom had a wonderful time. He did things that I would never dare to do. He rode on the Hulk roller-coaster.

That trip was the last time I saw Tom in person. I wrote him on a regular basis, keeping him up on new products coming out about comic

[Art Š2009 Estate of C.C. Beck.]

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finally coming up loudly with: “Marcus D. … er … er …

Sausage?” It brought a laugh … and didn’t take long for a barracks pal to provide the “Lord Brookfield” part.

The year was 1943. The senior officer at the reception center had been quite understanding at the suggestion that the regular dress uniform was unsuitable wear for the temporary studio work I was doing.

By [Art & logo ©2009 Marc Swayze; Captain Marvel © & TM 2009 DC Comics]

[FCA EDITORS NOTE: From 1941-53, Marcus D. Swayze was a top artist for Fawcett Publications. The very first Mary Marvel character sketches came from Marc’s drawing table, and he illustrated her earliest adventures, including the classic origin story, “Captain Marvel Introduces Mary Marvel (Captain Marvel Adventures #18, Dec. ’42); but he was primarily hired by Fawcett Publications to illustrate Captain Marvel stories and covers for Whiz Comics and Captain Marvel Adventures. He also wrote many Captain Marvel scripts, and continued to do so while in the military. After leaving the service in 1944, he made an arrangement with Fawcett to produce art and stories for them on a freelance basis out of his Louisiana home. There he created both art and 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 topselling line of romance comics, including Sweethearts and Life Story. After the company ceased publishing comics, Marc moved over to Charlton Publications, where he ended his comics career in the mid’50s. Marc’s ongoing professional memoirs have been a vital part of FCA since his first column appeared in FCA #54, 1996. Last issue, Marc discussed the Christmas cover he drew for Captain Marvel Adventures #19. In this issue’s installment, “Lord Brookfield Sausage” looks back at the Captain Marvel scripts he wrote while serving in the army during World War II — specifically, 1943’s “Captain Marvel and the Pledge of the Gremlins.” —P.C. Hamerlinck.]

My status at the time was uncertain. The officer in charge had seen benefit in my presence as one capable of preparing signs and posters promoting military insurance and war bonds among the enlisted men, plus simplifying directions for the continuous procession of recruits being classified. That was my studio work. What I called my studio was the unused end of the barracks building that had been converted to a storage facility. “Artist,” though, was not among the civilian professions listed in the manual as acceptable for reception center permanent placement.

But the officer knew how to finagle. “Ever done any personnel work?” he asked. Of course I hadn’t … but had always found it very interesting, I hastily fibbed. And, first thing you know, I’m a member of headquarters company … as a classification specialist … in the adjutant general’s department!

It has been said that once you’re hooked on comic books, you stay hooked. We were a long, long way from Times Square … the Paramount Building … Fawcett Publications … but there was a comic book character that kept buzzing around in the back of my mind … getting into and out of various fictional scrapes … demanding a place on the typed sheet. You may have experienced the feeling. The character was Captain Marvel.

I

may have been considered the camp clown … parading around the military grounds day after day clad in the utterly informal blue jeans referred to as “fatigues”. Yet, I bore a rather distinguished title …

“Lord Brookfield Sausage!”

That title? It was a chilly morning outside Barracks C, the entire shivering membership awaiting mailcall … two noncoms assigned to that duty puzzling over an envelope …

“Lord Brookfield Sausage” Marcus D. Swayze, center, and a pair of Ft. Oglethorpe buddies during World War II (1943): “My assignment at the time was posters promoting the purchase of war bonds among the military.” Photo courtesy of MDS.

So I wrote. And my procedure was simple … get the hero in trouble and have him get out of it by his own powers. Of course when the hero is a superguy it’s unlikely a trouble can be found that bothers him much … so the distress must befall someone else … someone he cares about. Billy Batson … the station WHIZ radio kid? No. But Billy could be of help in getting things rolling … like bringing on the Shazam act and turning the rescue stuff over to the Big Guy. Back in the days of Ed Herron, editor of Fawcett comics, there had come to my attention the importance of having the hero on stage in Act I, that is, in our game, having Captain Marvel appear early in the story, at least briefly.

Thereafter he could rest up for a while, to be brought back for that important part of a narrative the French referred to as the “denouement” … pronounced duh-noo-maw … with that last syllable sort of accented up

84

The De Fuccio Papers – Part III JERRY DE FUCCIO And The History Of Comics

F

by Ron Frantz Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck

ormer Mad associate editor, the late Jerry De Fuccio, possessed a vast amount of knowledge of the Golden Age of Comics—self-proclaimed “nuggets” of which he would often share in correspondences with people such as myself and Ron Frantz, editor of the short-lived ACE Comics line from the ’80s. While my gab-fest with Jerry during the final six years of his life centered upon our mutual love of artist C.C. Beck’s work, Frantz’s letters from De Fuccio, revealed again here in the final installment of this three-part article, packed more drama and encompassed a wider variety of comic book lore and facts. We left off at the end of Part II during the mid-’80s with De Fuccio and Frantz’s ongoing, information-laden correspondence—which was destined soon to come to an unfortunate halt. We pick things up with a 1986 De Fuccio letter regarding pulp artist Harry Steeger. —PCH.

Mad Man Richard Baratz drew the above caricature of Mad magazine associate editor Jerry De Fuccio for an article which appeared in Joe Brancatelli’s delightfully caustic Inside Comics #4 (1974). [©2009 respective copyright holders.]

and The Jungle Book. Borth did a nice feature on Sabu, on and off the screen; with incredibly good inking for the 1940 comic book era. Later, he did Phantom Lady, Spider Widow, and The Raven for both Feature and Police Comics. Borth was also with Treasure Chest from 19461971. He was Reed Crandall’s art school chum, roommate in New York City, and took Crandall into his family when Reed was on the skids.

Borth did some nice comics at Ziff-Davis, as well as Quality.

8/28/86: Your Robin Red and Spencer Spook #3 previews are clean and clear. Richard Hughes would envy your re-designing of Spencer. The Robin Red characters panoply is interesting, which stimulates me to do a career article on Pat Boyette for PROfiles.

Those things which now seem frivolous and slight, will be of serious consequence to you, when they have made you once ridiculous.

—Earl of Roscommon

6/30/86: I once did a Harry Steeger interview, as a follow-up to my Rafael de Soto interview in [Cartoonist] PROfiles. Steeger is a dynamic Daddy Warbucks-type, still scuba-diving in his seventies. This interview would go nicely with a folio of cover gimmicks that were literally swiped by the early comic book artists. I have a list of my favorites, selected as I scanned de Soto’s scrapbook. He did some 800 pulp covers.

You’ll have to disregard Steeger’s bitter accusations against Brookside Publications, to whom he entrusted so many paintings and now-rare pulp issues.

During this period, Jerry was going through a rough period financially.

I tried to help as much as I could. One time I sent him several hundred dollars in cash via FedEx so that he could pay for some unexpected car repairs. Although I had no particular use for it at the time, I paid Jerry for rights to publish the Steeger interview. I also bought some original artwork from Jerry by Klaus Nordling, Jack Kent, Bob Clarke, Al Jaffee, and several others. Some of it had been previously published, some not.

Some, I suspect, were Mad magazine rejects. However, it was all good stuff and I certainly didn’t mind publishing it in my various ACE Comics titles, usually as fillers. I never did publish the Steeger interview, which continues to repose in my files, awaiting some future publication.

7/13/86: I’m borrowing a True Comics in which Frank Borth did a splendid Sabu story. He was the elephant boy of such films as Drums

Daredevil vs. The Claw In Cartoonist PROfiles nos. 33 and 34, Jerry De Fuccio presented Jack Cole’s classic battle between The Claw and Daredevil. The art was re-drawn by Captain Marvel chief artist C.C. Beck, whom De Fuccio commissioned in the ’70s to recreate Cole’s story. Beck lightly added his own touch to the tale while remaining true to the spirit of the original— and, according to De Fuccio, Beck had “beefed up a lot of Cole’s pen lines and lettering.” The story was reprinted in Ron Frantz’s ACE Comics Presents #1 (May 1987). [©2009 respective copyright holders.]

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FCA (Fawcett Collectors Of America)

11/3/86: In Cartoonist PROfiles #33 and 34, we ran the sixteen-page battle between the Claw and Daredevil; a Jack Cole classic. The art was re-drawn by C.C. Beck, who beefed up a lot of Cole’s pen lines and lettering, without changing the character of the art. It was apparent that Cole had tired on some of the pages. You could pass them off as “A Tribute to Jack Cole,” without reference to Beck at all.

11/13/86: I suggest that “Fantomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle” would be a good pick-up for your purposes. A Fiction House story from an early Jungle Comics, it is very unusual and fascinating artwork by Hank Fletcher, which appeared only from 1939-1941. If you can latch onto some Fantastic Comics (Fox) we can show his “Stardust, the Super Wizard,” also. A very bizarre science-fiction feature that ran for 16 issues.

I have sent Michael Delle-Femine [the editor at Cracked magazine] some whimsical material, which may go over if John Severin illustrates it. I’ve asked Bill Emerson to look for the poster of Skyman by Ogden Whitney, as Delle-Femine tells me he‘ll be writing it for you.

11/25/86: I dropped Marie Severin a note, regarding John Severin’s unlisted phone number. I recall that John did the Yellow Claw for Timely, at the time of Joe Maneely’s death. Matter of fact, the E.C. terminated and out-of-work Al Feldstein wrote that issue of Yellow Claw. I think I’d have Severin do the Daredevil Battles the Claw cover. We need mood and impact, contrasting with Jack Cole’s flat work inside. Perhaps the lettering should be done on an overlay. Severin was never into lettering. Gaspar Saladino has created logos for me. He lettered your “Super Heroes Convention” by Al Jaffee. Also, “Parable,“ by J. Severin and me. I’m convinced we need Severin on the Cole cover!

1/3/87: Maybe it’s time for you to phone John Severin? I would like to deliver the Hughes scripts and the Jack Cole photographs simultaneously, in one package. That Skyman drawing didn’t turn up in Emerson’s vault.

Ron Goulart must have it.

If comics historian (and sf and mystery writer) Goulart had the Skyman drawing, he apparently had no intention of digging it out. My thought at the time was that he planned to use it himself at some later date. This attitude upset Jerry. I will admit that it irritated me a little, too, although I suspect that Goulart didn’t lose any sleep worrying about it.

[A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: On the other hand, it was only Jerry D.’s intuition that Ron Goulart had the art—and he may not have.]

Ditko In For Severin The cover to ACE Comics Presents #1 (May 1987), featuring C.C. Beck’s re-creation of Jack Cole’s Golden Age classic “Daredevil Battles The Claw” story. Jerry De Fuccio practically pleaded with ACE publisher Ron Frantz to hire John Severin to draw the cover, but Frantz instead passed the assignment over to Steve Ditko … with outstanding results. [©2009 Ron Frantz.]

At Jerry’s suggestion, I gave John Severin a phone call. Severin seemed friendly and was willing to do the job. The only problem was that he expected a fee comparable to what he was paid to illustrate covers for Cracked. This figure was about three times more than I had ever paid for a cover. The profit margin was too narrow for me to justify the expense.

Severin must have had all the work he could handle, as there was no room for negotiation. I thanked him for his time and hung up the phone. I ended up passing the assignment along to Steve Ditko, who produced a magnificent cover. Jerry, however, who didn’t care much for Ditko’s art, thought I should have used Severin, no matter what the cost. Oh, well. If I have learned any one thing of lasting consequence in this life, it is that you can’t please everyone.

I immediately called Jerry to tell him what had happened. For some reason, the situation worried him. Jerry virtually pleaded with me to pay Bernhardt and keep it quiet as possible. This had something to do with the story having been published earlier in Cartoonist PROfiles. I think the bottom line is that Jerry feared it might affect his standing with PROfiles publisher Jud Hurd if he were called to testify in court.

It was a good thing I didn’t spend the extra money on Severin. Shortly after the issue was published, I got a phone call from a fellow named Arthur Bernhardt, who claimed to own the copyright on the “Daredevil Battles The Claw” story. Bernhardt had been co-owner of New Friday Publications (1941-42), before selling his share of the business to Lev Gleason. Bernhardt’s claim of ownership was nonsense. The story was clearly in the public domain, because the original copyright had not been renewed. In my mind, the whole thing smacked of extortion. Bernhardt demanded an absurd amount of money for restitution; otherwise he

Sure enough, I got a phone call from some attorney representing Bernhardt a few days later. To hear him talk, I was facing doom itself unless I agreed to pay the blood money. His threat didn’t bother me, and I gave him my attorney’s phone number. My attorney called a day or two later, telling me that I had stirred up a real hornet’s nest. He seemed to think that Bernhardt was serious about going to court and suggested that it would be less expensive to settle for a token amount than to go through all the time and expense of defending myself in a civil action. It has been my experience that lawyers are a lot like doctors. If you are not going to

threatened to sue. When I told him that I had no intention of paying him one red cent, he turned belligerent and said I would be hearing from his attorney.