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Vol. 3, No. 89 / October 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

Cover Artist Howard Nostrand, Joe Simon, & Jack Kirby

Cover Colorist Tom Ziuko

With Special Thanks to: Alan Harvey Heidi Amash Roger Hill Ger Apeldoorn Jonathan Ingersoll Mark Arnold Sid Jacobson Rodrigo Baeza Alex Jay Bob & Becky Bailey Bill Jonocha Jean Bails Jay Kinney John Benson Marv Levy Lee Boyette Jim Ludwig Chris Brown Don Mangus Bob Burr Bruce Mason Mike Burkey Harry Mendryk Ernie Colón Brian K. Morris Jon B. Cooke Sumner Crane (Estate) Frank Motler Dave O’Dell Teresa R. Davidson John G. Pierce Angelo De Cesare Seth Powell Michaël Dewally Greg Preston Shel Dorf Joe Rubinstein Shane Foley Brian Sagar Bill Fugate Ramon Schenk Janet Gilbert Ken Selig Marvin Giles Marc, June, & Mike Gold Desha Swayze Julia Gorton Dann Thomas Rudolph Grey Jennifer Hamerlinck Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr.

Contents Writer/Editorial: Happy Halloween From “HORROR-vy” Comics . . 2 “Silver Threads Among The Mold”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 An ominous overview of Harvey Publications’ 1950s horror comics by John Benson.

“Drawing Comic Books Is A Means To An End”. . . . . . . . . . . 13 Artist Howard Nostrand on Harvey Comics, Bob Powell, and Other Phenomena.

“You Could Get Away With Murder!”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Sid Jacobson speaks of his years as Harvey editor—and he’s proud, do you hear me—proud!

“Strange Things Went On In Those Days”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Artist Warren Kremer on Casper the Friendly Ghost and other four-color haunts.

“Come Back When You Learn How To Draw” . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Harvey artist Ken Selig talks about the company early days under the Comics Code.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! Doc Wertham’s Straight Talk About Comix! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Michael T. Gilbert annotates the juiciest quotations from Seduction of the Innocent.

A Memory Of The Early Detroit Triple Fan Fairs . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Bill Schelly spotlights Marvin Giles’ reminiscences of one of fandom’s earliest events.

FCA (Fawcett Collectors Of America) #148 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 P.C. Hamerlinck presents Marc Swayze, the Fawcett/Charlton connection, and Mr. Atom.

On Our Cover: Our special thanks to collector Roger Hill for providing a page of original art by featured artist Howard Nostrand from Black Cat Mystery #44 (June 1953)—and to our esteemed copublisher John Morrow for providing a piece of unpublished art from the unreleased Stuntman #3 (circa 1946) by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby to put it in context. [Splash page ©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest; Stuntman art ©2009 Joe Simon & Estate of Jack Kirby.]

Above: One of Warren Kremer’s most gruesome Harvey horror covers—but then, he only did a handful of covers in that genre, generally being content simply to do rough sketches from which other artists worked. But this “For Whom the Bell Tolls” masterpiece done for Witches Tales #25 (June 1954) amply demonstrates that it wasn’t because Kremer couldn’t hold his own with the best of them! Thanks to John Benson for the scan. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

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writer/editorial

2

A

Happy Halloween From “HORROR-vy” Comics! nd not past time, either!

Sure, the focus in Alter Ego is primarily on heroic comic books through the mid-1970s, which means we tend to emphasize DC, Marvel, and Fawcett—for those were three of the industry leaders during the 1940s through 1953, when the latter killed its comics line, while the other two, of course, are still the most prominent companies in the field.

And still spewing out super-heroes of one ilk or another.

Harvey Publications, on the other hand, got out of the super-hero business fairly early, after even radio’s Green Hornet failed to make much of a dent against the big boys. But, just as MLJ would become Archie Comics, with no peers in the production of teenage cartoon humor… so would Harvey emerge, beginning in the 1950s, as the main rival to Dell/Western in the genre of animation-style comics, as a multitude of titles starring Casper the Friendly Ghost and then Richie Rich helped it carve out a long-lasting niche in the field.

Along the way, however, we mustn’t forget that Harvey also excelled in a couple of other areas. One of them was producing mags featuring such newspaper comic strip biggies as Joe Palooka and Dick Tracy.

The other was horror comics.

From the early 1950s through the end of 1954, when the Comics Magazine Association of America and its Comics Code deep-sixed color horror comics for some years, Harvey Publications staked a strong claim to being what then-editor Sid Jacobson maintains it was during that period: the foremost producer of top-quality horror comics after Bill Gaines’ EC Comics.

So when John Benson, a longtime EC enthusiast and editor/publisher of the elite EC fanzine Squa Tront, offered me the chance to publish a trio of unseen interviews with key personnel of the Harvey horror era (artists Howard Nostrand and Warren Kremer and editor Jacobson), as well as an historical piece John himself had written, I jumped at the chance. He had been considering printing all that material in Squa Tront, but realized that, since he publishes the zine on an irregular schedule, it might take years to fit it all in… and would squeeze out a lot of EC coverage in the process.

And so a pact was struck between us. A Devil’s Bargain, perhaps—but one from which I think comics aficionados will benefit. And Jim Amash’s interview with artist Ken Selig, who came to work for Harvey in 1954 just as the horror comics were dying, forms a capstone (tombstone?) to the whole mehgilla….

Bestest,

PS: Oh, and thanks to Jim Ludwig, Mark Arnold, Michaël Dewally, Chris Brown, and several other kind souls who e-mailed me lots of Harvey scans when I sent out a call—right before I realized that John Benson had scanned so much art that I wasn’t able to use as much of their contributions as I’d have liked to. Thanks, guys—and I’m keeping all that luscious art on file for future issues of A/E! PPS: Our lamented letters section will return next issue.

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Part 1

The 1950s HARVEY HORROR COMICS

3

Silver Threads Among The Mold An Ominous Overview Of Harvey’s 1950s Horror Comics

by John Benson

Author’s Introduction:

“What If They Gave A Comics Convention And Nobody Came?”

T

he 1981 Pleasure Dome Convention, held in Wilmington, Delaware, was really one of the great ones. Hosts and comics store proprietors Tom Watkins and Craig Dawson had arranged for a large, wellstocked dealers room, and the hotel facilities were outstanding. The theme of the convention was 1950s Comics, and a good complement of guests was lined up, including Dick Ayers, Jay Disbrow, Dick Giordano, Don Heck, Frank McLaughlin, Denny O’Neil, and Howard Nostrand. My recollection is that all, or at least nearly all, of these luminaries showed up.

A swell little program book was prepared, with a specially done cover by Ayers, an interview with Nostrand, an article on DC “horror” comics by Robin Snyder, and one on the Harvey horror comics by yours truly.

In fact, everything about the convention was great except one thing: attendance was literally about as near zero as you can get.

It would have been ridiculous to hold formal panels, so the organizers

Which Way To The Witches?

(Left:) Dick Ayers’ cover for the program book for the 1981 Pleasure Dome Comics Convention—the publication which first printed both this essay and John Benson’s interview with Howard Nostrand that begins on p. 13. (Above:) This Jan. 1951 cover for Witches Tales #1, probably drawn by Al Avison, started the New Year (and the second half of the century) off with a bang—or maybe with a scream. Except where specified otherwise, all art accompanying the four parts of this coverage of Harvey horror was supplied by John Benson… and special thanks to Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., for sharing with us his Harvey Horror Checklist, which proved invaluable for finding issue dates and other data. [Pleasure Dome art ©2009 Dick Ayers; cover of WT #1 ©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

made an announcement over the PA system that the pros would be sitting in the lounge area of the hotel lobby, and anyone who’d like to talk with them would be welcome to join them. Two or three people took up the offer. I had a nice conversation with Nostrand. One thing I recall is that as he was idly flipping through the program book he came to a page with a sports car in it reprinted from one of his Harvey horror stories, and he said, “That’s my car.” A pause, and then: “I drove it here today.” I was amazed that he still had the same car 28 years later.

Below is my article for that program book, somewhat modified and slightly updated to eliminate some of the more glaring errors. As we indicated above, its title was…

4

An Ominous Overview Of Harvey’s 1950s Horror Comics

An Age Of Heroes The changing face of heroism at Harvey Comics.

(Clockwise from top left:) Several of its super-heroes held their own with Superman, Captain America, et al., during the World War II years, as per this vintage house ad for Green Hornet, All-New, Speed, and War Victory. Radio licensee Green Hornet, at least, would live on into the “crime comics” era, but most of the rest ran out of steam early. Scan courtesy of Bruce Mason. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

An unpublished page from a story produced by the team supreme of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby for an unproduced third issue of Stuntman Comics, circa 1946—courtesy of John Morrow. One of its figures, of course, was used on this issue’s cover. [©2009 Joe Simon & Estate of Jack Kirby.]

In May 1949, though, comic strip super-star Joe Palooka was still going strong in the 32nd issue of his own mag—and had even spun off humorous supporting characters like Little Max and Humphrey into their own Harvey titles. Max is the kid in the hat, at right center; Humphrey is the big guy wearing the cap, bottom center. Artist uncertain—but it probably wasn’t Palooka creator Ham Fisher. [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

Silver Threads Among The Mold

5

Silver Threads Among The Mold Harvey Comics was a more stable company than many of the small, fly-by-night outfits that sprang up on the crest of the horror wave in the early 1950s. The company had started up in 1941 and was one of the few companies to survive and even thrive after the coming of the Comics Code. In the ’50s, Harvey published their standard fare of licensed characters (Joe Palooka, Dick Tracy) and “little kid books” (Little Max, Little Audrey), but also published a line of ’50s genre books: a couple of war books, a couple of romance books...and four horror titles.

About nine months after EC started up their horror titles, Harvey brought out Witches Tales #1 (Jan. 1951). Six months later they converted an existing title (Blondie, according to Overstreet) to Chamber of Chills, starting with issue #21 (June 1951). As so often happened, such as with EC’s Haunt of Fear, the Post Office caught the title change and forced them to consider it a new title, and the fifth issue is numbered “5.”

Two months later, Harvey converted Black Cat Comics, which had featured the super-hero character of that name, drawn by Lee Elias, into Black Cat Mystery Comics with issue #30 (August 1951). They attempted a slightly gradual conversion, with an Elias cover featuring the Black Cat character on the first horror issue, and cats on the next two covers. Inside #30, on the contents page (all Harvey books had a contents page), The Black Cat herself introduced the new editorial policy with all the subtlety of a candy merchant enticing school-children to try marijuana: “You’ll be seeing me in stories more thrilling and more terrifying than ever before. I won’t appear in all the amazing accounts myself, but each one of them is a story I want you to share with me because I’ve found it exciting.” Actually, she doesn’t appear in any of the stories, which are all horror tales, although the stories in the first issue are milder than the horror formula that Harvey had already established. Though it has more pages of art than the typical Harvey comic, this first issue has only three longer stories, a rare deviation from the Harvey (and industry) standard of four stories per issue.

Early in 1952 horror seemed to be booming for Harvey, as it was for the whole industry. They stepped up their

All Cats Are Black In The Dark Three of Black Cat’s nine lives.

(Above:) Splash for Black Cat #22 (April 1950), the comic in which a glamorous movie star donned mask and scanty costume to battle hoodlums; thanks to Mike Burkey for the scan of the original art, from his website www.romitaman.com.

(Left:) Harvey transitioned from super-heroics to horror by featuring Black Cat on the cover of issue #30 (Aug. 1951)…

But all pretense that this was still her mag ceased when the title cut to straight-out terror with #31 (Oct. ’51). All three covers are by Lee Elias, who’s seen (on right in photo below) with co-publisher Alfred Harvey in 1947. Photo courtesy of Mark Arnold—who received it from Alan Harvey, Alfred’s eldest son. See ad for Mark’s publication The Harveyville Fun Times on p. 73. [Art ©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

three bimonthly horror titles to monthly publication for about eight months, and added a fourth title, Tomb of Terror (June 1952). This period of increased volume is, not surprisingly, the most lackluster in the run of the Harvey horror comics.

Unlike their other titles, the Harvey brothers didn’t identify the horror titles as Harvey books on the cover.

Perhaps they felt somewhat uneasy with this industry trend. They were slightly inconsistent here, though (as they were generally), because about ten issues of Black Cat Mystery do have the Harvey logo. The title also differs from the others in that the pages of the early issues are a quarter-inch wider.

It comes as no surprise that all these titles abruptly ended their horror run with the December 1954 issues.

The last two issues of all four titles are reprints of very early issues with new, toned-down covers, and Tomb of Terror was retitled Thrills of Tomorrow. But the titles didn’t die completely. Witches Tales became Witches Western Tales, with the word “Witches” in about six point-type on the cover. Black Cat reverted to reprints of the costumed heroine, then later returned to Codeapproved “suspense” material, including heavily-

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An Ominous Overview Of Harvey’s 1950s Horror Comics

It Must Be Jelly, ’Cause…

Pages from two Bob Powell-illustrated tales that featured his trademark “blob-like figures”: “The Sewer Monsters” in Witches Tales #4 (July 1951), and the aptly named “Jelly Death” in Chamber of Chills #6 (March 1952). There were others. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

censored reprints. Chamber of Chills became Chamber of Clues, and featured Kerry Drake newspaper comic strip reprints.

It’s interesting to note that, though the EC horror comics spawned the horror trend, very few of the literally hundreds of horror titles tried to imitate the basic features of the EC comics. Though the GhouLunatic tellers-of-tales are a vital ingredient of EC’s approach to horror, with their extended wisecracking introductions undercutting the grimness of the stories, the very few attempts at a “host” by other companies are perfunctory indeed. The witch that appears next to the logo on the Witches Tales covers might be considered one such attempt.

The EC stories usually take place in some semblance of the “real world,” and in many stories nothing supernatural occurs at all. The basic EC themes of human relationships (usually two or more characters who hated each other’s guts) and gruesome physical retribution were not common in other horror comics. This could have been because the other writers weren’t reading ECs, but that’s unlikely, since the other artists were certainly using EC for swipe material. More probably it was a combination of several factors. First, the EC themes took more work to plot than the standard ghosts and ghouls. Second, EC often confined its horror to the final page of the story, and other editors probably thought there should be visual excitement throughout the book. Finally, it may be that others in the industry found the EC approach distasteful and were more comfortable with fantasy, even if it was equally gruesome.

Whatever the reasons, Harvey followed the industry, not EC, in the earlier years. Their fare was the typical assortment of mummies, snakes, ghosts, shrunken heads, and avenging insects. Vampires and werewolves made their appearances. Settings were graveyards, old curiosity shops, the laboratories of mad scientists, and especially tombs and dungeons. Exotic locales such as swamps, jungles, and particularly the frozen North were also favored. Strangely, a number of stories were set in the cowboy West.

Fate, death, and especially the Devil were often personified.

Disgusting blob-like figures, usually former humans who became palewhite, corpulent, and pustular because of some misfortune such as an extended period in underground caverns, were unusually common in the early issues, a type of monstrosity rarely seen in other horror comics. Bob Powell often illustrated these stories. Prime examples are “It” (WT #10), “Last Man on Earth” (BCM #35), and “The Last Man Returns” (BCM #36).

The most distinctive recurring theme in the early issues was fire. It’s amazing how many stories had a climax where something or everything was consumed in flame. Three of the most spectacular among many, all

by Powell and appearing within a few months of one another, are “League of the Damned” (WT #7), “Pit of the Damned” (CoC #7), and “Jack of Horror” (BCM #34). Someone in the Harvey shop was obviously a secret pyromaniac.

Even though the Harvey themes were not the EC themes, EC perceived

Silver Threads Among The Mold

7

I Hereby Bestow Upon Thee All My Worldly Obsessions…

Some of the Harvey gang’s particular fascinations, as per 1952 issues of Witches Tales. (Clockwise from top left:) In “The Flaming Horror” in WT #10, penciler Joe Certa & inker John Belfi illustrated Harvey Comics’ fascination with fire.

In “League of the Damned” in WT #7, Bob Powell played with fire and the Devil—while in “Death Lies Ahead” in #13 it was Warren Kremer’s turn to toy with the same double obsession.

And, in “The Devil’s Own” in WT #14, we see the fire and the Devil and jellylike blobs all in the same panel, in a story drawn by Bob Powell & Howard Nostrand. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

8

An Ominous Overview Of Harvey’s 1950s Horror Comics

much difference between the various Harvey horror titles.

The Harvey brothers had certain Rules and Standards. They wanted the panels in orderly rows, and the panel borders ruled with a thick line.

According to Gil Kane, they liked to see the complete figure of a character within the panel. All rules are made to be broken, and Rudy Palais was one artist who broke this one constantly and spectacularly, with large figures sprawled across several panels. The Harveys also believed in consistent, good, neat lettering, somewhat smaller than the industry norm, which made the books more attractive, even when the art was less than stellar.

As to Standards, they did require that the art meet a certain professional level, even from their journeyman artists. Unlike so many companies in the ’50s, the Harveys maintained a regular staff of technically proficient (though in some cases dull) artists.

Now, another of the Rules of the Harvey brothers was that artists were not permitted to sign their names. However, this Rule was also made to be broken; Lee Elias not only frequently signed his covers, but was given a full page biography with a photo on the inside front cover of a pre-horror Black Cat. Consequently, there are artists who appeared in the horror books who remain unidentified by greater experts than I. And who are probably better off remaining that way, in most cases. The Harveys’

A Rudy Shock Rudy Palais was an artist whose work soon vanished from Harvey’s horror comics, but it had a grotesque charm all its own. From Witches Tales #15 (1952). [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

enough similarities to warn their readers that the Harvey books were imitations in the letter column of The Haunt of Fear #15 (Sept.-Oct. 1952). They mentioned the Harvey titles by name—the only horror comics they so honored—and emphasized that “they are not... repeat NOT... EC magazines!”

When Sid Jacobson took over as editor of the Harvey comics, starting with books dated early 1953, there was a definite change. Classic horror themes and rampant fantasy were moderated by a more contemporary attitude. Many of the stories evidenced a sense of humor. The stories had more realistic settings and tended to be more tightly plotted (they had to be, as the Harveys had instituted a policy that stories would be five pages long). Snap endings, whether they made much sense or not, were more common, as were swipes from classic fiction. All the artists improved, and the poorer ones disappeared.

In issues cover-dated March 1954 (BCM #49, CoC #22, ToT #14, WT #24), Harvey announced a new policy. Each title would have a theme: Black Cat Mystery would feature “real life horror;” Chamber of Chills “supernatural” horror; Tomb of Terror, science-fiction horror; and Witches Tales, funny horror! Yes, Mad’s influence was strongly felt. After this big announcement, Jacobson didn’t stick to the concept very strictly.

Tomb of Terror did feature science-fiction stories for three issues (plus a story in the issue before the big announcement), and there was a parody story in each issue of Witches Tales, but otherwise it was hard to tell

...Gone Tomorrow?

Sid Check’s splash for “Here Today” from Black Cat Mystery #50 (June 1954) shows the influence of EC star Wally Wood on his work. Alas, Check did very few stories for Harvey. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

Silver Threads Among The Mold

9

Cover-Up A montage of covers by the Harveys’ two “go-to” guys: Al Avison & Lee Elias.

(Clockwise from top left:) Al Avision – Black Cat Mystery #35 (May 1952), with its A-bomb theme… and Chamber of Chills #21 (Jan. 1951), actually the first issue. (With #5 they straightened out the numbering—at the “request” of the Post Office.)

Lee Elias – Witches Tales #24 (April 1954)… Chamber of Chills #23 (May 1954– probably on sale around Valentine’s Day!)... and Tomb of Terror #12 (Nov. 1953), no doubt one of Dr. Wertham’s personal favorites. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

guarantee of minimal professional standards didn’t prevent the books from—let’s face it—often being dull and repetitive, particularly in the high-volume middle period. Still, there were a number of interesting and/or very talented artists in these titles who raise the series far beyond the level of most ’50s horror comics.

Sid Check did just three stories for the Harvey horror titles, but they are three of his best. His “Here Today” (BCM #50), based closely on the 1952 George K. Arthur film short The Stranger Left No Card, is not only well-drawn but well-written, and both the writing and art equal—and perhaps exceed—the sinister whimsy of the original film.

The least of these may be Rudy Palais, whose work appeared in the earlier part of the run. His characters tend to look as if they are made of wax and are beginning to melt. Large beads of sweat are constantly flying from their faces for no reason at all. His work does have an appealing horrific quality, and viewed at a glance his pages have real vitality. But, when reading a whole story, one finds a lack of modulation, a certain monotony to the effects.

Manny Stallman was a regular, usually inked by John Giunta, but occasionally, it seems, by others. (The Harveys’ no-signature policy makes identification especially difficult in collaborations.) At first glance Stallman’s earliest stories are not that different from those of the nameless ones. But he was a good, solid comics artist, and the word “solid” is apt, because in his pictures everything has weight. His sense of composition is always outstanding, and in the final year of the horror titles he designed

10

An Ominous Overview Of Harvey’s 1950s Horror Comics

Thrills Of Tomb-Morrow The mag may have been called Tomb of Terror, but it sometimes featured more than a touch of science-fiction, as well—as in this splash (right) penciled by Manny Stallman and inked by John Giunta from #12 (Nov. 1953).

Maybe some nifty-’50s Nostradamus had predicted that before long the name of the mag was gonna be changed to Thrills of Tomorrow? [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

some extraordinary splash pages. Some of his best stories are “Revenge” (WT #21), “Discovery” (BCM #46), “Evolution” (ToT #12), and “Grim Years” (CoC #24). Stallman also did some very good horror stories for Timely/Atlas during the same period.

Two major Harvey horror artists, if for no reason other than that between them they did most of the covers, are Lee Elias and Al Avison. Both also did interior stories. Avison did many bizarre, off-the-wall covers in the early period that were not much admired by editor Jacobson or art editor Warren Kremer—or by some discerning fans—but I find them iconic and strangely appealing. Elias was obviously a far better artist, but rather unimaginative. In the latter part of the run, the covers he drew were designed by Kremer. It was the Harvey brothers who dictated that Elias do the covers. One wishes that artists from the interior had been given the job: Powell, Stallman, Nostrand, or Kremer himself. Nostrand did do two, and Kremer did several more, basically the only exceptions to the Avison/Elias monopoly.

Kremer From “Z” To “A” Warren Kremer splashes for the stories “Zodiac” in Witches Tales #18 (April 1953) and “Amnesia” in Chamber of Chills #17 (May 1953). [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

Silver Threads Among The Mold

11

An Entombed Gem John Benson describes “Servants of the Tomb” (left), drawn by Bob Powell and his little shop of horror artists for Witches Tales #6 (Nov. 1951), as “the kind of original, strange story that one plows through ’50s horror comics hoping to find.” The scripter, alas, is unknown… though ’50s editor Sid Jacobson has some comments on several Harvey writers who worked under him in his interview that begins on p. 24. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

The above 1950s-era photo of Powell and his talented trio of assistants was previously seen in A/E #66’s extensive coverage of that artist’s work, courtesy of his son Seth Powell. (L. to r.:) Marty Epp, George Siefringer, Bob Powell, & Howard Nostrand. You’ll hear more about all four in the Nostrand interview that commences on p. 13.

In addition to those covers, Warren Kremer illustrated about eight or nine stories. Two outstanding ones are “Zodiac” (WT #18) and “Amnesia” (CoC #17). But his contribution to these titles goes beyond that. As noted, many of the cover ideas were his, and so were the logos and splash-page designs of many stories.

Two artists of some significance who appeared frequently were Joe Certa (usually inked by John Belfi) and Jack Sparling. Sparling, a regular in the Harvey love titles, did unexpectedly good work on several sciencefiction-oriented stories, particularly “The Harder They Fall” (ToT #14).

Other artists, according to the experts, included Don Perlin, Al Gordon, Tom Hickey, and Mel Marcus. Mort Meskin did a story or two.

Of course, the artists that most people associate with the Harvey horror comics are Bob Powell and Howard Nostrand. Powell turned out many dull stories in his day, but his Harvey stories are nearly always stylish and interesting. One reason is that he had a shop of talented assistants at the time, including George Siefringer, Marvin Epp, and, of course, Nostrand. (These shop staffers had lots of fun sneaking their names into the background art whenever possible.) There are recurring themes in Powell’s early stories that suggest that he may have written some of them himself. In addition to the aforementioned blob-creatures and all-encompassing fires, these included blue-overlay ghosts, as in “Deadly Acres” (BCM #32), and cavernous interiors with arched hallways and circular staircases, such as seen in “The Sewer Monsters” (WT #4) and “Cavern of

A Sneaky Undertaking (Right:) Since Lee Elias was generally the only artist allowed to sign his work at Harvey, Howard Nostrand slipped the partial-name “Nost” onto a sign across the street, in the third panel of this story. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

12

An Ominous Overview Of Harvey’s 1950s Horror Comics

the Doomed” (ToT #3).

Powell did well over 60 stories for the Harvey horror books. None of them are clinkers, and a dozen or so are classics.

Deserving of detailed description is the Powellillustrated “Servants of the Tomb” (WT #6). This off-the-wall tale, told in a super-serious tone, mixes horror elements with the kind of ersatz heroic myth that Powell liked to deal with in his “Mister Mystic” (in the early Spirit Sunday sections) and “The Man in Black” (a series he did for Harvey). In the “Tomb” story, “somewhere in western Asia,” a group of ancient, dwarfed, bearded men have been condemned to live endlessly in a vaulted tomb, preparing the dead for burial. A wall is broken down and the body of a giant, Toro, is delivered to them. They realize Change You Can Believe In that Toro can be brought back As the horror period crept to a close, Harvey made accommodations to the supposed “grass roots” to life in full moonlight and contrive to do so. movement against such comics. Here, as John Benson notes, is a cover by Al Avison (on the right) and the With Toro, they wreak havoc on the townsfolk, rough sketch by Warren Kremer from which Avison worked for Black Cat Mystery #52 (Oct. ’54): “Note who wear 15th-century Spanish costumes. The that Kremer in his sketch drew a horrible animal face, a skeleton inside the cage, and the shadow of a White Giant of Peace (!) appears in a cloud of man in fear… but this was the next-to-last horror issue of the title… and so it was changed from a beast smoke wearing a sort of Roman-style apron, to a man, a body in the cage, and the shadow of a man with a gun able to defend himself or to capture the escaped criminal.” Conscience—or at least the looming specter of the Comic Code—doth make cowards and rescues the townspeople. The dwarves cast of us all, or anyway it did at the end of 1954. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.] long shadows as they are sent back to the tomb for eternity. This is the kind of original, strange Nostrand was undeservedly almost completely unknown for many story that one plows through ’50s horror comics hoping to find. years, due partly to his not having signed his comics work, and also to the In Witches Tales #14 (Sept. 1952), a story, “The Devil’s Own,” fact that the 35 or so stories (and numerous one-pagers) he did for these appeared, which, although it was from the Powell shop, was illustrated horror titles represent more than half of his total output for comics. Much more by Nostrand than Powell. Shortly after this, Nostrand began to of his other work is in other Harvey titles of the same period; their 3-D appear on his own. At first his work seemed unsure, with somewhat stiff books, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, and Flip, the best of the Mad comics figures and an emphasis on heavy outlines. Then, at Jacobson’s suggestion, imitations. (Powell is also well represented in the other contemporary he fell heavily under the influence of EC and Mad, patterning his layouts Harvey titles.) Nostrand also did one war story for Timely/Atlas. (Over after Harvey Kurtzman’s, and creating pictures that looked like an the years stories by other Davis imitators have been attributed to uncanny amalgam of Jack Davis and Wally Wood.

Nostrand by comics dealers and the Overstreet Price Guide, as well as one comic actually drawn by Davis himself!)

At times, he even did pastiches of particular EC stories, notably in “Ivan’s-Woe” (WT #23), which borrows more-than-heavily from Wallace Wood’s “Trial by Arms” (Two-Fisted Tales #34). When Nostrand did this, however, he never “swiped” cold, but always created completely new pictures. At other times, Nostrand would lay out a story in Eisner style. In one story a rain-soaked “Dead End” sign straight out of The Spirit fills the splash panel and serves as the story’s title (WT #21). Other Eisner-like gimmicks are seen in “Undertaker” (WT #24), where the title of the story is a reflection on the wall.

Though nearly all of Nostrand’s storytelling, drawing, and rendering techniques were closely borrowed from others, the amazing thing is that, because he loved and understood what he was borrowing and because he himself was talented, he created something that was, in its way, as good as the work of those he borrowed from. Unfortunately the scripts, while not terrible, seldom matched his great facility in the comics form.

In those early-’50s years there were more comics being published than before or since. With such volume there was a lot of dreck, and the Harvey horror titles had their share. But their best was very good indeed!

John Benson.

JOHN BENSON has been writing about comics since 1956. He was the first to do in-depth interviews with major comics artists, including Bernard Krigstein, Harvey Kurtzman, Will Eisner, Gil Kane, and John Severin. He has contributed to many comics-oriented publications and was the editor of fanzines Image (1960) and Panels (1980-84). He is currently editor of Squa Tront, a magazine focused on EC comics, and recently edited two books about the St. John romance comics, Romance without Tears and Confessions, Romances, Secrets, and Temptations, both published by Fantagraphics. He lives with his wife in New York City.

Part 2 13

The 1950s HARVEY HORROR COMICS

“Drawing Comic Books Is A Means To An End” HOWARD NOSTRAND On Harvey Comics, Bob Powell, And Other Phenomena Interviewed by Sumner Crane, Rudolph Grey, & Julia Gorton

A/E

EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview first appeared in the program book of the 1981 Pleasure Dome Convention, Wilmington, Delaware, and was retyped and reformatted for A/E by John Benson.

The particular questioner among the above trio in each instance was never identified in the original printing. Only the most minimal changes have been made to the original text, except for the addition of section headings utilizing Nostrand quotes.

“Go See The Man” QUESTION: You just got out of the hospital?

NOSTRAND: Yeah.

Q: What was wrong with you?

NOSTRAND: You know… heart trouble.

Q: Did you go to a lot of movies in the ’50s?

NOSTRAND: No, not really.

Q: Your style’s very cinematic—just the angles...

NOSTRAND: That was left over, too, from this fellow I was working for— when I was working for Bob Powell—and he had worked for Will Eisner at one point when he started, and Eisner was always impressed by Hitchcock’s things where they set the scene...

Q: The establishing shot...

NOSTRAND: Yeah. But you keep the eye level moving around so it doesn’t

Chamber Of Nostrand Howard Nostrand in his studio, circa 1980-81, at the time this interview was recorded—juxtaposed with his cover for Chamber of Chills #20 (Nov. 1953), one of only two he ever drew for Harvey’s horror mags.

According to photographer (and co-interviewer) Julia Gorton, the young lady in the photo was named Trixie, and had simply tagged along with the three of them to Nostrand’s studio. Note the copy of the 1953 Adventures in 3-D #1 lying on the artist’s table. [Art ©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest; photo ©2009 Julia Gorton.]

get too boring, like the movie Lost Weekend, where it starts out with a panoramic view of the city, and then focuses in on one window on a particular building, then it comes in close and there’s a bottle hanging out the window on a string, then it goes in the window and there’s Ray Milland in there. In a comic book where you usually had six pages… you really didn’t have too much room to fool around like that.

Q: You had to do a lot of editing.

NOSTRAND: Yeah… plus most of the writers didn’t think pictorially. You got stuck with scripts that really weren’t great.

Q: I thought this one was pretty good: “The Inside Man” [Chamber of Chills #21].

NOSTRAND: Yeah. I had forgotten that thing.

14

Howard Nostrand On Harvey Comics, Bob Powell, & Other Phenomena

“Inside” Out The splash page of the Nostrand-illustrated “The Inside Man” from Chamber of Chills #21 (Jan. 1954). This was actually the second “#21” of that series, as CoC’s first four issues were labeled “#21-24,” taking over the numbering of Blondie Comics. Thanks to Chris Brown. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

Q: How old were you when you got into comics?

NOSTRAND: When I started working for Bob Powell, I was a little less than 19 years old.

Q: How did you meet him?

NOSTRAND: My father was a school teacher, and some other teachers in the school belonged to a Badminton Club or something, and one of the guys at the Badminton Club said there was this cartoonist that needed an inker. I was sitting at home at that point, so my father said, “Go see the man.“ So I went and saw the man and brought along some crummy samples.

Q: How old was he?

NOSTRAND: Thirty-two. That was 1948. He’s expired now. He’d worked for Will Eisner before the war, then he went into the Air Force.

“The Whole [3-D] Thing Died Very Rapidly” Q: You were involved in the first 3-D comics. How did that happen?

NOSTRAND: I was working for Harvey Comics back then. Actually, three different publishers all came out with 3-D Comics at the same time.

There were 3-D movies back then, and the idea of the red-and-green glasses wasn’t particularly new, because I remember that from the World’s Fair in ’39.

Q: It says in that 3-D comic that Leonardo Di Vinci knew about it.

Apartment 3-D Nostrand’s cover for Adventures in 3-D #1 (Nov. 1953), and Al Avison’s for True 3-D #1 (Dec. ’53). Both illustrations were reprinted as full-page 3-D pinups inside, though of course not in color. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

“Drawing Comic Books Is A Means To An End”

15

talked to this one fella about this business of doing pretty girls and he said “You’ll catch onto it eventually—get the hang of it.” So I said: “OK, who draws pretty girls?” I figured Daisy Mae looks pretty good, so I started...if you look at some of the girls I used to do back then, they all looked like Daisy Mae. Q: Like her [first panel of “Jungle Drums”]?

NOSTRAND: Yeah. Looks like I used a rubber stamp on the faces. It was a trick, a certain type nose and mouth.

“Powell Had Four Guys Working For Him” Q: So what did you think when you first met Bob Powell? What was your first impression?

NOSTRAND: I thought I was gonna make $8,000,000 a week, you know, and that of course didn’t happen.

Q: He impressed you as a money-maker?

NOSTRAND: Well, he was that. When I started working for Bob, I was making $25 a week.

Daisy Mae Does Africa Splash of “Jungle Drum” from Adventures in 3-D #1, which Nostrand felt illustrated the way he based many of his female characters on Daisy Mae, Li’l Abner’s longtime girlfriend in Al Capp’s classic comic strip (seen at top right in the daily strip for 9/18/49). In the print edition of this issue of A/E, 3-D comics’ red-and-green line art will reproduce as two slightly different art images, one slightly darker than the others; readers purchasing the digital edition will see one image in red, one in green (plus a 3-D version, if they happen to have a pair of red-and-green specs handy).

[Harvey art ©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest; Daisy Mae art ©2009 Capp Enterprises, Inc.]

Q: What did he look like?

NOSTRAND: Uh, heh heh. Oh, I shouldn’t be mean to the guy. He looked a lot like some of his characters.

Q: Some of the less handsome ones?

NOSTRAND: He wore glasses and had kind of a round face. He looked like the eyeglass-maker in “Colorama” [Black Cat Mystery #45]. I wouldn’t say he was fat, necessarily; he was a little overweight for his size.

Q: So he was a money-maker?

Q: You didn’t sign it.

NOSTRAND: Yeah, there were three of us working for him—George Siefringer, Marty Epp, and myself. Marty and I got $25 a week and George got $35 a week, so he was paying less than a hundred a week in salaries and we were doing about $1000 a week back then. So Bob did all right.

We were doing about 30 pages, maybe a little bit more sometimes, and— Harveys, they paid the best rates—Bob was getting $35 a page from Harveys. We were also doing The Shadow, Doc Savage, and Nick Carter for Street & Smith, and the rates were kind of chintzey. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: See a photo of Bob Powell and his three artistic assistants on p.

11.]

NOSTRAND: Nobody signed their work for Harvey except Lee Elias.

Q: What did you do?

Q: Did you ink it?

NOSTRAND: When you look at things like this, seeing as it was 3-D, it was always trying to get something in the foreground against something in the background. I mean, that’s why you have all these close-up things here.

NOSTRAND: The inking. Bob would pencil the thing, I would ink the figures and George inked the backgrounds and Marty would work along with George and me on the backgrounds and Powell put the faces in.

‘Cause, actually, when you look at a picture, you look at the face first and the rest is kind of incidental. Look at some of Caniff s work, for example.

[Nostrand takes a Caniff comic strip out of his drawer] The inking is kind of sloppy, actually; you tend to look at the faces instead. I mean, some of this stuff [indicates the clothes] is just crude... like this. I mean, what kind of folds are these?

Q: Did you write the stories in that issue?

Q: It’s sloppy.

NOSTRAND: No. They had a bunch of writers.

NOSTRAND: I worked for Caniff for a little while after Bat Masterson [comic strip] died. I did the figures and he put in the faces. After a little while it turned out to be a little drudgery.

NOSTRAND: Yeah. So Leon Harvey had something to do with it. But anyway, DC had theirs. I forget. There were about three different outfits doing this thing, each one claiming they originated it. But it all went for naught, because the whole thing died very rapidly.

Q: [shows Adventures in 3-D #1, “Jungle Drum” and “The Hidden Depths”] Is this your work?

NOSTRAND: Yes.

NOSTRAND: Yes. That’s some of my “Jack Davis” stuff. [laughs] Q: However, it is not Jack Davis. You’re mentioning it; I wouldn’t.

Q: Did Powell?

NOSTRAND: Sometimes. Powell used to do love stories. I never could do love stories. I couldn’t draw pretty girls worth a tweet back then...so I

Q: When you’re inking someone else’s work, how rigid would you be?

NOSTRAND: I tried to put in my own style, actually, but it doesn’t seem

16

Howard Nostrand On Harvey Comics, Bob Powell, & Other Phenomena

Q: Who did the coloring on John Targitt?

NOSTRAND: I don’t know—that’s some colorblind oaf there.

Q: You didn’t have any say in the coloring?

NOSTRAND: Nah. I tried to tell ‘em, “Let me do the color job,” because they can really wreck it. I mean, here comes a guy [indicates a panel] who whips a pistol out of his jeans, and they colored it in solid blue and you can’t tell what it is at all.

Q: So why didn’t they let you color it?

NOSTRAND: “Nah, you don’t know how to do that; you just do the drawing!”

Q: They didn’t think you were capable of coloring?

NOSTRAND: Well, the editor was a fast 21 or 22 years old, you know.

The guy was kind of an oaf. He just said things and... “Aw, the heck with it!”

“I Left Powell In March Of ’52” Q: What else did you do in comics after you branched out on your own?

NOSTRAND: I worked for a type of humorous magazine called Flip.

Q: Why did you leave Powell?

Color Me Powell A page from the Bob Powell-drawn story “Colorama.” Nostrand says Powell looked somewhat like the eyeglasses salesman in this story. Script by Sid Jacobson; learn more about this colorful classic in the Jacobson interview that follows. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

to make all that much difference, because most people don’t know Powell had four guys working for him. So it was still his pencils, his layouts, and he put the faces in, too. So unless you were really looking for it, you wouldn’t know.

“[The Colorist Was] Some Colorblind Oaf” Q: Did you ever work with Jack Kirby?

NOSTRAND: No, I never worked with any of those characters.

Q: What do you think of recent comics?

NOSTRAND: Well, there are some good artists, like Neal Adams, then there’s a bunch of kids who really don’t know how to draw very well.

There were some bum artists back then, too... but I don’t think [the art has] improved—except for a guy like Adams. [Nostrand produces a page of original comic art] Here he is... John Targitt, Man-Stalker!

Q: Is that your inking?

NOSTRAND: Yeah. Pencils, whatnot.

Q: It’s very tight and crisp, your inking. It’s perfect for comics.

NOSTRAND: That’s the way it is.

Casting Shadows This Powell splash page of Street & Smith’s Shadow Comics, Vol. 8, #6 (Sept.

1948) shows the influence of Will Eisner, for whom Spirit Comic Weekly Powell had drawn “Mr. Mystic.” Nostrand began assisting Powell in ’48, but whether he, Marty Epp, and/or George Siefringer also worked on this story is not known. Thanks to Chris Brown for the scan. [©2009 Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

“Drawing Comic Books Is A Means To An End”

17

Target: Targitt Neither Rodrigo Baeza nor Jim Ludwig, who sent scans from issues of Atlas-Seaboard’s Targitt, could locate a panel in which “a guy…whips a pistol out of his jeans,” with gun and pants rendered the same “solid blue” by an insensitive colorist. This panel from #1 (March 1975) shows the not-yet-costumed crime-stopper grabbing a knife strapped to his ankle, with the pants colored blue and the weapon a sort of bluish-grey. [©2009 Atlas/Seaboard.]

NOSTRAND: Well, because he was paying me some sort of a salary that didn’t really mean very much, and I figured there was more money to be made by myself than working for Powell the rest of my life. First thing I thought I’d do was pull the same thing he did: hire an assistant and really crank the old stuff out. But the comic book business started to go downhill at a very rapid rate right about the time I quit Bob, so there was a lot of sitting around, waiting for something good to happen. I hired a kid, but he was only good at sweeping up. I had put an advertisement in Newsday to get someone to work for me, and I had some of the God-awfulest samples of people’s work—I mean, really strange. Some guy, like 53 years old, and he traced a picture of Donald Duck and he left the feet off ‘cause he didn’t leave room for them on the page... just one of those things! Then I got this kid, who was nice enough and all that, but.... So we painted the studio.

Q: Any particular reason?

NOSTRAND: They had Powell, I guess, and he didn’t want me stealing his clients. It was the same way with Harvey. When I went to Harvey to see if I could get work, the editor, a fellow named Sid Jacobson, had known Powell for a number of years and didn’t want to offend him in any way. The fact that here’s this former employee trying to get work... Bob said it was OK with him as long as I didn’t get the same pay rate as he did.

It was real sweet of Bob as far as I was concerned; that’s why we used to call him “Sweet Old Bob”...or sometimes just the initials. He was getting $35 a page and I think I started at twenty-seven fifty and finally worked my way up to thirty-two fifty, which really didn’t mean an awful lot, but it kept Powell happy. Certainly I wasn’t about to put him out of business or anything, but it was a question of ego or something with Bob. Q: Well, what did he think of himself?

Q: When was that?

NOSTRAND: I left Powell in March of ’52. At first I was doing all right, working all the time. I even did one job for ME [Magazine Enterprises]. It had to do with an airplane, some bomber, and the crew gets all shot up and it flies over the target area and drops its bombs anyway, I don’t know how. Bob Powell was supposed to have done it, but he gave the whole job to me—and then again he stuck the faces in and so it was a “Bob Powell job.” But I never did work for ME [on my own].

It’s In The Blood!

Vampin’ It Nostrand’s splash for a very Wally Wood/EC-style story in Harvey’s Flip #1.

You’ll learn far more about the two excellent issues of Flip in A/E #91, which will complete Ger Apeldoorn’s study of the four-color Mad wannabes of the mid-1950s. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

Above is a page from what John Benson reports is Nostrand’s earliest solo story, which saw print in Chamber of Chills #13 (Oct. 1952). This kind of tale, common in science-fiction for decades, would eventually become known as the “Fantastic Voyage” type of story, after the 1966 film starring Raquel Welch and several male actors whose names we can’t quite recall. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

18

Howard Nostrand On Harvey Comics, Bob Powell, & Other Phenomena

NOSTRAND: I don’t know if he was all that introspective. He was a good comic book artist and he never had any illusions about doing anything else. That’s what he knew how to do best, so he did it and he was very successful at it. [Ever] since I knew the guy, he was always trying to get a syndicated strip. He had a thing called Slewfoot Jones that he worked on for years and years. About every two years he’d father it off on some syndicate, but he’d keep getting it back with disgusting regularity; you know: “No, thank you.” It was a baseball thing—Bob was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. I mean, I think baseball is a seasonal thing; what do you do with Slewfoot in the wintertime when nobody’s playing baseball? I guess that never occurred to him. He came out with some very nice-looking samples to try to sell it, but it sort-of never happened.

“Mostly Horror And War Stories” Q: What kind of stories did you illustrate?

NOSTRAND: Mostly horror and war stories. When I left Bob I was going on 23 and I really wasn’t all that good. I look at some of the stuff I did

when I started working for Harvey and I wince.

Q: Not this, though [indicates art in Chamber of Chills #21].

NOSTRAND: No, no. You know, lots of technique but not an awful lot of drawing. I’d done some penciling for Bob, but not really very much.

Q: What was Harvey’s relation to EC? NOSTRAND: I guess you could say that EC was the new wave as far as comics were concerned. Because they were doing some pretty pedestrian stuff with love stories and whatnot, and then Harvey Kurtzman got in with EC and started doing Two-Fisted Tales, Frontline Combat, and all the horror books [sic]. When you get that plus all the really sharpshooter artists that they had, Davis and Wood, Reed Crandall, and all that crowd—really the best artists around were working for EC—and Harvey’s influence from Two-Fisted Tales and whatnot was very important. When Harvey turned out a horror comic, it wasn’t quite as horrible as EC stuff— because some of that stuff was pretty gross. And then in the same way, Mad comics was out for two years before Harvey turned out a funny

“Horror And War” A pair of examples of the “horror and war stories” drawn by Nostrand.

(Left:) The splash of one of his best stories, “The Rift of the Maggis,” from Tomb of Terror #11 (Sept. 1953). [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

(Right:) A page from “The Red Horde” in Timely/Atlas’ Battlefront #15 (Jan. 1954). John Benson writes: “Though [the story’s script is] uncredited, numerous stylistic indicators virtually guarantee than Hank Chapman wrote this Nostrand-illustrated story. If there was one person in comics in the ’50s who was more enamored of [Harvey] Kurtzman’s narrative techniques than Nostrand, it was Chapman. Here is a typical Kurtzman-style progressive close-up triptych at the bottom of the page. The top two tiers feature a favorite Chapman technique, ‘the catalogue.’ Was it just an accident that these two talented Kurtzmanemulators were paired together on what is probably Nostrand’s only Atlas/Timely story?” [©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.)

“Drawing Comic Books Is A Means To An End”

19

Q: This cover [Adventures in 3-D #1] is really incredible.

How were you able to draw such a realistic leopard?

NOSTRAND: I still have the swipe from my file, I think. It was from an advertisement for Canadian Club—a leopard was jumping at some guy who drinks Canadian Club, which keeps his teeth white and makes him able to fight with tigers.

I reversed it and gave it more muscles. When I was working for Powell... he certainly knew his anatomy as far as animals are concerned. Powell said the muscles on people and animals are pretty much the same, the shoulder muscles and all that.

You know, just draw that as though it was Superman and put claws on it.

“When You Think Of All The Guys That Try And Fail In [The Comic Book] Business...”

Q: Do you think the attitude towards comics has changed over the years since you first started?

NOSTRAND: Well, there’s all this business of fans and one thing and another. There wasn’t any of that nonsense going on back then.

Q: Did Powell or anybody else think that they were equal to people like Picasso, etc.?

NOSTRAND: Oh yeah, Bob Kane thought that. Bob Kane had an ego like nobody’s business. And the same thing with Ham Fisher, who did Joe Palooka. Ham Fisher was convinced that nobody could do Joe Palooka like he could... and you know, his heads were done with a rubber stamp. But Bob Kane... one day we were talking about fine art— Rembrandt and Da Vinci or whatever—and Kane says: “Yeah, but could he do ‘Batman’?“ So, you know, you wonder: what kind of a head does this guy have? DaVinci could probably do “Batman” with his brush stuffed up his nostril and one eye shut.

Q: As far as comics were concerned, what was the thing you’re most pleased with you’ve done?

NOSTRAND: There was a little thing called “8:30 P.M.” [Witches Tales #25] –that was one, and “Ivan’s-Woe” [Witches Tales #23] was another. ’Cause usually I’d try to accomplish “Pony Express,” in True 3-D #1, is a sterling example of EC artist Jack Davis’ influence on something and if it turns out well, hooray! Even today, Nostrand’s solo comics work. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.] working on Cracked magazine, some of the stuff is just comic book—they weren’t much for experimenting. If it’s a proven format, drudgery, and other times you get something that’s kind-of a challenge.

“Hooray we’ll do it!” They were mostly doing reprints of Dick Tracy, Joe Q: Do you have any projects of your own that you’ve yet to realize?

Palooka, and that sort of nonsense. Now they’re doing Little Audrey.

Pony Up!

Q: And they used to do Chamber of Chills.

NOSTRAND: Yeah. I was gonna do a calendar with automobiles in it. I started on the thing.

NOSTRAND: Yeah. Every once in a while somebody says, “Why don’t you resurrect some of that old crap and do some reprints?” Some of that stuff is pretty good.

Q: If somebody offered you $50,000 to do whatever kind of project you wanted, what would you do?

Q: How many stories did you do between ’52 and ’54?

NOSTRAND: After the vacation?

NOSTRAND: I would say I did a little less than one a week. Usually I’d do a page a day, and with a 6-page story, there we are. The 3-D stuff took longer. We worked on two acetate cells, plus the background, and then we’d have to turn it over and white out the foreground so the background wouldn’t show through a hand in front of it. So there were two or three extra steps in there. But they paid twice the rates, which made me very happy.

Q: Right.

NOSTRAND: I don’t know...um...

Q: Would it be in comic books?

NOSTRAND: Oh, I guess I’m not that dedicated, you know.

Q: You’d give up? You wouldn’t draw anymore?

[Continued on p. 22]

20

Howard Nostrand On Harvey Comics, Bob Powell, & Other Phenomena

Best Witches Howard Nostrand in his studio c. 1981—juxtaposed with panels from “8:30” (from Witches Tales #25, June 1954) and “Ivan’s-Woe” (WT #23, Feb. 1954)—which Howard Nostrand listed as two of the art jobs of which he was proudest. [Art ©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest; photo ©2009 Julia Gorton.]

“Drawing Comic Books Is A Means To An End”

21

American—But Not At All Weakly (Left & above:) Two illustrations Nostrand drew to accompany a short story printed in American Weekly Sunday supplement magazine in the late 1950s. With thanks to Ger Apeldoorn. [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

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A Salesman Needs His Samples…

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

We picked up this Nostrand “sample page” from the Golden Age Comic Book Stories website, to which we were clued in by Jim Engel and Mike Gold. Check out the site’s array of goodies at http://goldenagecomicbookstories.blogspot.com/. Now, to whom or for what Nostrand was submitting this alleged but exquisite example of his comic art, we have no idea. [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

22

Author Topline

[Continued from p. 19] NOSTRAND: The business of drawing comic books is a means to an end, you know: it’s better than diggin’ holes in the ground.

like to work on stuff that is a little more challenging than the crap that I’m doing now.

Q: But don’t you like to draw?

Q: Do you like the story format of comics as opposed to single pictures?

NOSTRAND: Yeah, but I’d prefer to do other things.

NOSTRAND: Well, working with a good writer is one thing. Most of the time I’m not working with good writers.

Q: Really?

Q: You’ve written stories yourself.

NOSTRAND: Yeah, that’s right. If somebody would pay me to drive my Ferrari it’d be nice.

Q: So, if you were rich you’d stop drawing?

NOSTRAND: I did some of that, too. But then, what I’d think was good the editor might not.

Q: No, I mean if you were in a position to do whatever you wanted...

NOSTRAND: No, I mean you’ve got to keep doing something or else you go crazy. When I was in the hospital I never thought I’d say “I wish I was back home working.” Who needs it! But anything to keep busy. I would

NOSTRAND: Sure, I think maybe I might get together with a few other people that think the same way I do and, OK, we’d turn out our own comic book. You know, “Hooray for our side!” When you think of all the

There Are Many Kinds Of Lynchings…

The Comics Code cast a long shadow over the industry starting with the turn of 1955, as witness these two versions of a splash page drawn by Nostrand. The original version, titled “Lynch Mob,” shown at left, appeared in Black Cat Mystery #45 (Aug. 1953). Of the much-altered reprint version (above right) that appeared in BCM #61, John Benson writes: “This January 1958 post-Code issue reprint was heavily censored on almost every page, but the same color plates were used, so the black and white had to work with the existing color wherever possible. In this story the entire plot was rewritten so that an innocent man thought guilty was in fact guilty. On this page, note extensive rewriting of text, that the dead body and the lynch-rope have been blacked out (they couldn’t be whited out because of the color plates)—the woman’s bustline has been reduced (though the red color still follows the original contours, her low-cut dress has been blacked in up to the neck)—all of Nostrand’s faces have been softened by eliminating most of his modulation—and the eyelids have been dropped to avoid bulging eyes in the last panel.” And of course the title was changed—not to mention that noose-style lettering. But other than that, how did you like the story, Judge Murphy? [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

“Drawing Comic Books Is A Means To An End”

23

Dead Reckoning Howard Nostrand may have seen the comics biz as primarily a stopgap… but that didn’t prevent his doing fine work in it, as per this Eisneresque splash for Witches Tales #24 (April 1954)—and the second of his two “horror” covers, done for Thrills of Tomorrow #17 (Oct. ’54). The latter was actually the retitled next-to-last issue of the mag that had been Tomb of Terror, with a cover featuring relatively innocuous subject matter and reprinting the contents of Witches Tales #7 inside. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

guys that try and fail in that business—Harvey Kurtzman had a lot of projects—I guess you have to have the distribution. I mean, he did this magazine Humbug, and it lasted three issues [sic]—they all seem to expire somehow. Even Martin Goodman, with all of his money, started Seaboard Publications, and it was just a flat-out imitation of Marvel Comics with super-heroes and the rest of that garbage. I mean, how many super-heroes do you need, with all that stuff turned out by Marvel? The whole place was run by kids who knew nothing about the business, and it must have cost him a bundle, but it didn’t work.

The Folks Behind The Microphone (Left to right in photos:) Rudolph Grey, Sumner Crane, & Julia Gorton. Julia took the photo of the guys at the time of the interview, and supplied us with the later one of herself. Julia writes that she met Howard Nostrand while working at The National Lampoon, where he was the “go-to” man who could draw absolutely anything. She had worked during the summer as Tom Watkins' personal assistant at Apocalyptic Productions in Wilmington, Delaware. She met Sumner Crane (of the band Mars) and Rudolph Grey as a result of her photo work documenting the late-’70s music scene in downtown New York.

[Photos ©2009 Julia Gorton.]

A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: In the late 1970s Sumner Crane became a member of the notorious punk rock band Mars; he died in 2003, at age 57.

Rudolph Grey wrote Nightmare of Ecstacy, the biography on which the 1994 Tim Burton film Ed Wood was based. Julia Gorton’s bio information appears in the caption at left.

24

Part 3 24

The 1950s HARVEY HORROR COMICS

“You Could Get Away With Murder!”

SID JACOBSON On His Time As Harvey Editor Interview Conducted & Transcribed by John Benson

I

NTERVIEWER’S INTRO: My conversations with Howard Nostrand at the 1981 Pleasure Dome Convention and afterwards led me to talk with Sid Jacobson. I had amassed a complete set of the Harvey horror comics even before I met Nostrand, and was eager to make the acquaintance of the man who had edited the books. The interview took place on Nov. 13, 1984, at Marvel Comics, where he was then editing that company line of kiddie titles, known as Star Comics.

“I Really Think We Got Better” JOHN BENSON: This setup here at Marvel must be completely different from the way the Harvey outfit was, right? That was just a little joint, right?

JACOBSON: Well, yeah, they all were, for a long time. This is unusual for anything in comics.

Triad Of Terror Sid Jacobson in a recent photo—overlooking artwork rendered by the two key Harvey horror artists interviewed by John Benson. (Above:) Howard Nostrand splash page from Black Cat Mystery #44 (June 1953), partly viewed on our cover. Repro’d from scan of original art, courtesy of Roger Hill. (Left:) Comic Book Artist #19 (2002) attributed the cover of Tomb of Terror #15 (May 1954) to Warren Kremer; editor Jon B. Cooke noted that: “Stephen Sennitt's final horror comics survey, Ghastly Terror, calls [it] the fourth most gratuitous pre-Code horror comic cover ever.” Ulp! We think we'll pass on checking out the three that beat it out! Photo courtesy of Sid Jacobson. [Art ©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

“You Could Get Away With Murder!”

25

JB: Were you the editor at Harvey?

JACOBSON: Yeah. For most of...

JB: What was your relationship with the Harvey brothers?

JACOBSON: I worked for them. My sister had worked for them years before, when they did the Fun Parade and Buddies magazines. Those were the things that they started with. Army and Navy gag panel cartoons.

That was really their start. So when my sister went to college, she did gags for them, she and some friends of hers. As a kid I got all those early Harvey comic books.

JB: When did you start with them?

JACOBSON: 1952. 1953?

Getting A Toehold At Harvey Jacobson identifies Chamber of Chills #16 (March 1953) as one of the first Harvey horror comics which he edited. The Nostrand work to which he refers must be his story therein, “Curse of the Black Panther,” since its cover is signed by Lee Elias. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

JB: Were you in charge of all of them?

JACOBSON: All of them. Well, first I did all the weird and the war, and [Joe] Palooka. And then when all that changed, I did all the younger line, the “Casper,” the “Richie Rich,” etc.

JB: What did Warren Kremer do?

Local Color Splash page of “Colorama,” the story from Black Cat Mystery #45 (Aug. 1953) which was scripted by the comic’s editor, Sid Jacobson. Thanks to Mark Arnold. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

Chris Brown, who wrote an essay about “Colorama” that unfortunately could not be squeezed into this issue, notes that Harvey reprinted the story (somewhat “censored” by the Comics Code) in Black Cat Mystic #61 (Jan. 1958)—then reprinted the reprint in Shocking Tales Digest in 1981. “The preCode version,” he reminds us, “was printed in black-&-white, one-quarterpage size in the Summer 1974 Graphic Story Magazine #16, and then again in black-&-white in the Spring 1991 comic Tales Too Terrible to Tell #2,” while “The Best of Horror and Science Fiction Comics from 1987 reprints the post-Code version in color. Sadly, the only way to own a color copy of the pre-Code version is to obtain a copy of Black Cat Mystery #45.” [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

JACOBSON: Same thing; we worked together. Warren had been there before I was. And he worked in the adventure, war, horror [genres]. And he had worked on Joe Palooka and Little Max, also. And I think he did some work on Humphrey.

JB: There was a lot of good stuff in their horror comics.

JACOBSON: Yeah, yeah! They were good. I did the good ones.

JB: Why was [Lee] Elias permitted to sign his name and nobody else was?

JACOBSON: Well, because they thought he was that important and that good, and he had a following. And he was good. I mean, [Al] Avison was there.... The first people they worked with were Avison, I believe Elias, and Joe Simon & Jack Kirby. So, there was really a special relationship they had. [he looks through the horror comics] Warren Kremer did some covers. And some stories. I didn’t do any of these early issues. I did “Transformation” [Witches Tales #14, Sept. 1952]. Or did I do that? No.

26

Sid Jacobson On His Times As Harvey Editor

Cobwebbed Curtain Going Up… A montage of Harvey horror by a cornucopia of artists, all from issues of Chamber of Chills (clockwise from top left:) A Rudy Palais splash from #10 (July 1952)…

“Dungeon of Doom” by the little-known Vic Donohue from #6 (March 1952)…

“The Skeptic” by Joe Certa (pencils) & John Belfi (inks) in #22 (March 1954), repro’d from a scan of the original art…

Al Avison must’ve avoided the dungeon of doom only to wander into a “Cave of Doom” in #10. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

“You Could Get Away With Murder!”

27

JB: Did you write any stories?

JACOBSON: No. Yeah, well, I did “Colorama” [Black Cat Mystery #45, Aug. 1953]. I did none of these earlier books. Mine all came afterwards. I really think we got better.

“I Looked At EC, And I Said, ‘Oh, My God!’” JB: I do, too. In the middle of 1953 there seemed to be...

JACOBSON: [looks through titles in date order] Let’s see. This begins to look familiar. OK, I think I worked on this book [Chamber of Chills #16, March 1953]. Yeah, this is where I started. I think I worked on this cover; I’m not sure I worked on the insides. Because this is Nostrand, too.

Nostrand first worked for me. I think I might have done some of these, too, where I was just beginning. I was revising scripts, but around this time is where I started.

JB: Who were the writers?

JACOBSON: A fellow named Dick Kahn. He was really a kind of big writer in a lot of places. A fellow named Nat Barnett, who was very good; he wrote some very good things.

JB: Nostrand mentioned him.

JACOBSON: A lot of his stories Howard did. A guy named Ted Senitsky did several of these, and Senitsky later became Ted Sennett, who writes a whole batch of movie books, film books today. He did a lot of stories for me. Some very good people who went into television.... Art Wallace was another guy; he did a lot of television and film things. Howie did quite a few himself; Howard Nostrand did some.

JB: He told me he didn’t.

JACOBSON: He did some. When we did 3-D, he did some.

JB: He wrote some of the 3-Ds?

…And The Other Guy Just Blinked!

JACOBSON: Yeah. And he did some for Flip.

JB: He said he did one story that was published, and the third issue that wasn’t published.

JACOBSON: I think he did more. I think he did more.

JB: Flip was a terrific book.

JACOBSON: Thank you. I did that, and I did the 3-D books, too.

And they were terrific. Really, I think they were the best 3-D books that were out. It was my idea to go in and do adventure. We had something called “Three D Blinkie,” which

Harvey’s “Three D Blinkeys” were a series of one-page stories with two alternate endings. In this one from True 3-D #1, drawn by Howard Nostrand, if you covered one lens of your 3-D specs, the Earthmen greeted the approaching Martian armada in peace—and got wiped out by the aliens’ treacherous attack. If you covered the other lens, the Earthmen assaulted and destroyed the arriving Martians—and learned from the dying aliens that they had come “to bring peace…to tell you the great secrets of the universe.” Sometimes you can’t win for losing! [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

was a cute thing. I did Believe It or Not, also. [looking through comics] This is Nostrand—“Curse of the Black Panther” [Chamber of Chills #16, March 1953]. That might have been his first one. [His stuff] was like Powell, it was like Eisner, that kind of feel. Yeah. I was the one who told him to draw like Jack Davis. This is Rudy Palais [pronounces it “Palay”].

That’s Nostrand, and that I believe it’s a Barnett story [“The Search,” Tomb of Terror #8, March 1953]. “Zodiac” [Witches Tales #18, April 1953]— that’s Warren Kremer. It’s a great story. This is Warren again [“Devil Drums,” Black Cat Mystery #43, April 1953]. He could draw any style.

Ah, I love this [“Amnesia,” Chamber of Chills #17, May 1953]. That’s Kremer. You can see that’s his lettering.

JB: Did the artists do their own headlines [title logos]?

JACOBSON: No, Warren did everything. He’s just so good. This is his wife’s lettering. She did the lettering. He did the pencils and inking. The

Flip Flop Howard Nostrand’s cover for Flip #1 (April 1954)—of all the mid-1950s imitators of the original color Mad, the closest in quality and style, according to John Benson and other aficionados. Yet it lasted a mere two issues. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

28

Sid Jacobson On His Times As Harvey Editor

Up And “Atom” Many of the art jobs lauded in this piece by Jacobson have been sampled in the course of the preceding two interviewed, but here are two that weren’t: “Devil Drums” by Warren Kremer from Black Cat Mystery #43 (April 1953) and “Atom” penciled by Joe Certa and inked by John Belfi, from Chamber of Chills #18 (July 1953). [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

At right center is a photo of what Sid Jacobson calls “a young Joe Certa.”

At right is a late-1979 photo of John Belfi and his wife Val, a Brit by birth. It was taken, provider Bob Bailey informs us, “when he had decided to leave [his teaching position at] the Kubert school (and New Jersey) for health reasons.” Bob says Belfi told him that, though Lee Elias wouldn’t admit it, he (Belfi) had inked a number of “Black Cat” stories Elias had penciled.

“John really loved Milton Caniff. He was very proud of his Steve Canyon Sunday,” seen in this pic. Amazingly, Bob had his wife Becky e-mail us this note and photo scan while he was recuperating from a heart attack—which he’s done nicely, we’re overjoyed to say!

“Colorama” cover is a self-portrait of Warren Kremer, the twisted face.

What he did was draw himself and then go like that [crumples a piece of paper] and throw it on the floor and then he drew it. Here’s “Atom” and “Friend” [Chamber of Chills #18, July 1953]. And “The House.” I love one word titles... as you can see. And we did a good job.

JB: There certainly seemed to be a change in the books when you arrived. They had more imaginative splash pages, and the art became better. All the artists became better, particularly Manny Stallman.

JACOBSON: Yeah, Manny Stallman did some sensational things.

Absolutely. I think they just became inspired. I think that, before then, everyone knew they were doing hack things, and then I came in, new to

the whole business, and I looked at EC and I said, “Oh, my God!“ I mean, no one else knew anything, except they. And I said, “Why don’t we strive to do this?” This is really what it was. And we did, I think, with some degree of success.

JB: I want to ask about “Low Noon” [Black Cat Mystery #47, Dec. 1953]. It parodied a current movie, it had caricatures done in that Davis-Wood style, it parodied the soundtrack, and it did all of these things before Kurtzman did in Mad. I asked Nostrand about it, because I knew he was a big fan of Kurtzman, and he said no, he had nothing to do with the idea or the script. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: For more about “Low Noon,” see upcoming issue #91.]

“You Could Get Away With Murder!”

29

JACOBSON: That was Nat Barnett. We did “Boo of the Month” and “Tales from the Silver Scream.” I think that was the latter. And then there were also things like “Mother Mongoose.” These were my ideas, where we were trying to bring in some kind of humor, the take-offs. Barnett did most of those, I think. My recollection is that he did. Because he worked in the office with me, too.

JB: You were obviously more influenced by Kurtzman than by Feldstein.

JACOBSON: Oh, yeah. Oh, sure. Without question. Yeah. And you know, these were just good vehicles to play with, to give some substance and variety to a book. And I think it worked. I think we just came too late in the whole run of things, where we weren’t able to really build high, because it came to an ending very soon afterwards. But for maybe a year and a half, I guess, at best, it was good fun. You know, I think we were doing some exciting things. And of course I was influenced by Will Eisner. And it was great working with people, Nostrand and Powell, who sort-of came, really, out of that whole factory. So that was nice. And Manny Stallman was a very creative guy, certainly, in those days. And so was Warren. Warren was ready to really try.

JB: Of course, Stallman worked for Eisner, too.

JACOBSON: Did he? I didn’t even know that. Of course, Manny and I have an interesting history, because his brother became a writing partner of mine. I met him through Manny, and we wrote songs for long periods of time. Yeah. We were record producers and hit song writers. Lou Stallman, whom I met through Manny. We still stay in touch to this day.

“It Was Terrible… That Was Wonderful” JB: How much did the people who worked on the books come into the office?

JACOBSON: Very often.

JB: Did you have conferences with the writers?

JACOBSON: Oh yeah, oh sure. All of them came in the office. The only one who rarely came in was Elias, so we used to discuss these things over the phone, and he’d send them in. He’d send in cover sketches, we’d discuss it. Then there was some period of time where Warren even began to draw the cover sketches and we used to send them out to Elias to do.

There were several that Warren did.

JB: Did the artists show pencils?

JACOBSON: Oh sure. Oh, in some cases we used different inkers.

JB: Did you assign the inkers...

JACOBSON: I did.

JB: ...or did they work as a team?

JACOBSON: Ah, it varied, come to think of it. A lot of them did their own, now that I think of it. It was interesting, there’s a guy working here who used to work for me in those days for a while named Don Perlin, and he used to have a partner then. I don’t remember who did what. I’m trying to remember his name. There were several teams—Certa and Belfi.

And then they decided they wanted to both split and do their own thing, and Belfi wanted to do pencils, [but] he wasn’t that good a penciler.

Certa’s inks were not a good as Belfi’s inks, but you know, they weren’t bad. And then Manny Stallman used to have like a little factory. He had several people who worked for him, [John] Giunta being one. And then Giunta did some alone. Giunta was very good. Oh, this is something to see... [notes gruesome, oversized last panel of “Happy Anniversary” in Chamber of Chills #19, Sept. 1953].

JB: Who decided how horrible to get, or was that a concern of yours at all?

Man O Manny!

John Benson considers this one of Manny Stallman’s finest stories. It appeared in Black Cat Mystery #46 (Oct. 1953), and was inked by John Giunta. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

JACOBSON: In those days, no! Hell, I mean, shamefully, you could get away with murder! You could get away with decapitation! It was, you know, really, it was terrible. “The Rift of the Maggis” [Tomb of Terror #11, Sept. 1953]. That was wonderful. I think that was again Nat Barnett.

Barnett had a wonderful sense of humor. I’m pretty sure it was either him or Dick Kahn.

JB: Nostrand said you gave quite a bit of freedom for him to modify the script or eliminate passages, switch things around.

JACOBSON: I think I did it with almost anyone. You know, feel free, and then we’d discuss it. He was really so good. If he’d continued, he would have been immense. He was his own worst enemy. Which was a sad thing, which is why he died so early. But he was an incredible talent, absolutely incredible talent. Um, a little less ego would have gone a long, long way. I mean, really. Tragic. Truly tragic. He died of cancer of the brain; that’s what I was told. He couldn’t have been any more than about 53. He was a boy wonder. He was so good at such a young age, he was about 21, 22, 23 about this time. He married—I remember his first wife, Joan, exquisite.

An heiress from St. James, and I remember when they got married, the whole world was at their feet. They lived on her mother’s estate in St. James. And he with his cars at that time. I guess he was into drinking very, very heavily. And he just got into one crack-up after another. And, sadly, they separated. The mother-in-law had a whole thing against him, too, which probably she had [laughs] good reason for.

30

Sid Jacobson On His Times As Harvey Editor

JB: When I met him about five years ago, he said he was still driving the same MG that he had drawn into one of these stories.

JACOBSON: Really? Oh, he was a great-looking guy. When he was young, he was gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. They were an amazing-looking couple. They were really Mr. and Mrs. Wasp in every way, perfect, perfect.

Amazing. And the whole world was theirs. She died young, too, absolutely. She must have died in her thirties of cancer. I don’t know how many children they had; several daughters, I think. And I met his second wife only a few times. Lovely, lovely. And then he went into advertising.

He had a terrible drinking problem.

JB: Maybe that’s why he was a friend of Graham Ingels.

JACOBSON: Yeah. I mean, there were periods of time when, really, I ducked him. And I don’t know if he knew it. It’s interesting—about seven years ago, I forget how it started, I think I had gotten a call from Nostrand when we were still at Harvey, Warren Kremer and I, and we decided, gee, let’s have a reunion! With Nat Barnett, Howie Nostrand, Warren Kremer, and myself. And we had a luncheon and it was horrible. It was horrible. I mean, poor Nat Barnett was really almost a bum on the streets at that time. He had a real leftist background, was involved in a lot of the Harlem riots and stuff, his wife was— JB: Was he black?

This Car’ll Last You Forever!

Howard Nostrand told John Benson that the car on these panels from “Bridge of Death” from Witches Tales #17 (Feb. 1953) was Nostrand’s own car. “Not so unusual,” John relates, “except that he was still driving it 28 years later when he went to the 1981 Pleasure Dome convention.” Ye Editor's friend Bob Burr, an avid collector and restorer of classic automobiles, says it “looks to me to be an MG TD (approximately 1951/1952 vintage).” This, incidentally, was one of Nostrand’s first solo stories. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

JACOBSON: No, a white Jewish kid from Brooklyn, whom I adored. I was very close to him. But he really was totally involved in the leftist movement. And he had been dumped because he was too old, see. And the new guys had come along, and he had nothing. And at one point I said, “Come on, try and write comics,” and he was superb. And he would always look to try to get some kind of Communist propaganda into the stories, you know, years ago, and I’d always have to look out for it. You know, comments from Mao Tse Tung, and you didn’t know about Mao Tse Tung so much in those days. [laughter] But he lived in one of the lousy hotels in the village. He was just a step above... Oh, and Howie was bombed out of his mind. And poor Warren and I said, what do we do... you can’t go back. But they were really great productive days. Barnett was sensational, really. I think he wrote that “Low Noon.” I have a sense that he wrote all the really super scripts. He wrote a good deal of them. I think Dick Kahn wrote many, but I think that Nat wrote really the better ones.

Those with a real sense of humor, because he had a terrific sense of humor, strange as it may seem.

“There’s A Funny Story…”

JB: Did Powell write any of his material?

JACOBSON: Not here; he probably did some for Flip. And he did some for 3-D, I think.

JB: I wonder if he wrote some of the earlier ones.

JACOBSON: I don’t know. He might have, but I don’t know. I adored Powell.

JB: Do you know if Edd Cartier worked for Powell?

Here’s Looking At You, Sid! The gruesome final page of “Happy Anniversary,” drawn by Bob Powell for Chamber of Chills #19 (Sept. 1953)—used by Sid Jacobson as an example of “getting away with murder.” [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

JACOBSON: Don’t know the name at all. Marty Epp was part of that group. And Howard and George something…

“You Could Get Away With Murder!”

31

Maybe They All Had Tough Deadlines!

Warren Kremer’s rough sketch for the cover of Chamber of Chills #21 (Jan. 1954)—and the finished cover by Lee Elias, as printed. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

JB: Siefringer. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: See photo of Powell and his assistants on p. 11.]

JACOBSON: That sounds right, yeah. Those were the three who worked for Powell when he was working for us. Powell was also a kind of a great wonderful outgoing character, with a lot of dash.

JB: He and Nostrand didn’t get along very well.

JACOBSON: Well, I think Nostrand has made much more of it than should have been. Nostrand was always accusing Powell of anti-Semitism and stuff, and I really think Howard was looking in the mirror. There’s a funny story, at the first Christmas party I ever went to at Harvey... there were all these people, and they used to pour in—it’s very much like it is at Marvel, it really was. I mean, it was a small staff, but there might have been at that point three, maybe four editors, a large art department, again, comparatively speaking, probably five or six people which was big for an art department in those days. Don Heck was part of that art department.

And one guy comes in, it’s Dick Kahn. I remember Nostrand was drunk, as most people were. He says to Kahn, “You’re the guy who goes into the Jewish firms and tells them you’re Jewish, and goes to the Christian firms and tells them you’re Christian. [laughter] And Dick Kahn says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And he walks away, and it stuck in my head. And I said to myself, he’s telling the truth, right? And somewhere along the line the controller at Harvey said to me, “Why is it that Dick Kahn signs the back of his checks ‘K. Ignatius, same name’?” [laughter]

And I say, you know, I don’t know.

And I remember once he took me up to his mother’s apartment in Washington Heights, and it was right across the street from Yeshiva University. And he was telling me how she had made chicken the night before, boiled chicken, and she had chicken soup and chicken. It was a Saturday. And I never bothered to ask anything. And then, when the whole business ended, he did a very valiant thing, Kahn. He must have been about 32, 33, and he went to med school. He had made an awful lot of money writing for comics, an awful lot of money. And in those days, I’m talking about early to mid-’50s, he was making about $18 a page, so you could make a lot of money. I mean, Lee Elias made $60 a page then.

Warren made $40. It was funny, Warren found all the rate sheets recently, and he brought them in and we were going over it. So anyhow, he [Kahn] goes to med school. And he went to Canada and he was writing these letters.

And then I had lived in New Jersey and I hadn’t heard from him for a long time. And I went to some kind of art show in New Jersey, and there was the name “Ignatius.” There was a big Armenian population in Leonia, New Jersey, and these people came from Leonia. I see this name “Ignatius,” and I said to myself, gee, the only other time I heard the name was Dick Kahn, so I went over to this person, and they were related to a friend of my daughter’s, and they said, yeah, they were Armenian Catholics. And I said, “Do you know the name Dick Kahn?” He said, “Oh, yeah, my cousin, Connie Ignatius, who goes under the name Dick Kahn.”

32

Sid Jacobson On His Times As Harvey Editor

[laughs] And then I met him on the street years later, and he’s a doctor, and, he says “Sid!” and we embraced each other, and finally he says, “Jesus, Sid, take my card, you gotta give me a call.” He gives me a card, and there it is: “Dr. Richard Ignatius”! Then he suddenly realizes, and he says, “Oh, you know, people don’t like Jewish doctors, so I changed my name.” [laughter] I thought it was wonderful! Howard Nostrand was right!

JB: Did Nostrand know that, or ever find out?

JACOBSON: I don’t know. I don’t know if I ever even mentioned it to him. But I never forgot it. I said, you know, he’s right. And Kahn’s a major doctor today, I forget what he does. I haven’t talked to him. He’s in a totally different world.

“We Tried To Take A Step Forward” JB: Did Bernard Baily...

JACOBSON: I never worked with Bernard Baily.

JB: Mort Meskin?

JACOBSON: No, him, neither. They worked before.

JB: Howie Post?

JACOBSON: Sure, Howie Post works for me here. And he worked for me at Harvey—not in the horror books, not in these. He started with “Wendy,” “Hot Stuff,” “Spooky”...

JB: Mel Marcus?

JACOBSON: Don’t know the name.

JB: He must have been in the earlier books. Did you have anything to do with the romance books?

JACOBSON: No, a woman named Louise Hill did all of those. She also did Dick Tracy.

JB: That’s a great combination.

JACOBSON: She was good, she was a good editor. A very good editor.

And she left as soon as they stopped.

JB: What about the war books?

JACOBSON: I did those. They weren’t very good, I don’t think.

JB: There were a few Nostrand and a few Powell stories.

JACOBSON: Yeah, but as a whole. I didn’t have really the feel for it, or the care.

JB: There’s a story here that mentions your name.

JACOBSON: Probably Manny Stallman. Yes, that’s Manny Stallman [“Huckster,” Witches Tales #23, Feb. 1954]. Yeah, this was a great story.

This was wonderful. I remember that. “A Sid J. Kobson production.” He was good, I tell ya. He had a real wonderful crude style. “Ivan’s-Woe” was in the same issue. That’s a pretty famous story; Nostrand did a Wally Wood. That was another good one. They were sexy, they were good stories. They had great design, great graphics. I was really proud of a lot of what we did. We tried to take a step forward.

JB: I don’t know if you remember this censorship in the last days [“Punch & Rudy,” Black Cat #51, Aug. 1954, with the last panel blank].

JACOBSON: Oh, yeah. I remember very well. I forget who did this story.

He was a good artist but I forget who it was. I forget what this must have shown, the [decapitated] head there. I don’t know. Was it ever printed complete? This was the first and only printing of it? Because they changed

Give Me Moe When John Benson asked Sid Jacobson about “Mel Marcus,” he must’ve meant the gent credited in various places as “Moe Marcus.” This splash page is from Tomb of Terror #6 (Nov. 1952). Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

a lot of them later [under the Code]. I don’t know, he wanted to do it, and he’d been paid for it already, so he did it.

JB: How about Sid Check?

JACOBSON: Yeah! Yeah, he did some. I remember he did a story about a huckster that comes to town. I don’t remember any of his others. He came sort-of later on. There was like a nucleus of a group, and he was one of the later people. He was very good. They were all interesting, they were bright men. They were creative. They tried to do a lot of interesting things. It’s too bad we never did super-heroes. It might have been interesting. This is “The Man Germ” [Chamber of Chills #13, Oct. 1952], one of Nostrand’s early efforts; that was by Nat Barnett.

Oh, I remember this. I loved this, this is a classy story. “Undertaker” [Witches Tales #24, April 1954]; this is really nifty drawing. That’s Nostrand. I mean, this is real Eisner stuff. Another classic, “8:30 PM” [Witches Tales #25, June 1954].

JB: Who did the coloring?

JACOBSON: I don’t remember. Oh, probably Joe Coleman. He did most of the Harvey things.

JB: It’s too bad that some of these other artists didn’t do covers.

JACOBSON: Yeah, the Harveys were very strong on Elias or Avison, and

“You Could Get Away With Murder!”

my preference was Elias if I had to deal with either of them. I didn’t love Avison’s work. The Harveys really do get stuck in terms of a single artists they like for their covers, as Warren did.

JB: So some of these better cover ideas might have been Kremer’s?

JACOBSON: Well. usually. Warren would make little sketches, almost thumbnail sketches, and then we’d work on it together. Elias didn’t come up with ideas. Usually it was myself with Elias or myself with Kremer.

There became a whole period of time where Warren and I, we’d sit and work them together. We still do here. And for my money Warren Kremer has been the best artist in comics for the last 30 years. Really, his ability is amazing.

33

this original feature Planet Terry… Royal Roy… he’s doing The Ewoks and he’s doing Heathcliff. And he’s doing Top Dog… all different. And he’s going to do The Care Bears. He’s amazing, absolutely amazing, and he knows storytelling. He did, really, so many of these, the ideas for the [horror] covers.

JB: Well, that explains a lot.

JACOBSON: Elias was not an idea man in terms of covers. He followed, really, what we told him to do.

“I Think We Came Closest To [EC]” JB: Did you talk very much about EC and Kurtzman?

JB: What did he do after the Harvey horror?

JACOBSON: After this? He did all the Harvey stuff; he did “Richie Rich.”

He did “Casper.” He created all that stuff. He did all this here [waves at wall of Marvel office]. This is Warren, this is Warren. I remember at the time [of the horror comics], Warren was also doing the inking for Sad Sack for George Baker; George Baker only wanted him. When John Prentice got Rip Kirby, he pleaded with Warren to work with him on that.

And Ham Fisher would allow only Warren Kremer to draw the head of Joe Palooka, no one else, anywhere. Just to show you how amazing he is in anything that he does, his ability to capture style. And he’s doing that here,

JACOBSON: Oh, sure. Oh, sure. That’s what we were trying to emulate.

At that time no one else was doing anything worthwhile. The stuff wasn’t good here [at Marvel], the stuff wasn’t good at DC. There was nothing at any of the other companies. And EC was superb. And that’s what you try to do. And I think we came closest to it.

JB: Especially with Flip. It captured the spirit of strangeness.

JACOBSON: Thank you. But the thing that killed it was, they wouldn’t let us.... We were doing a lot of work with King Features and with the News

Getting Ahead In The World At the end of “Punch and Judy” in Black Cat Mystery #51 (Aug. 1954), ace artist Mort Meskin (whose name Sid Jacobson forgets in the interview) drew a panel which someone deemed so objectionable that apparently there was no way to salvage it—so it was printed as per the version at left. The uncensored version at right appeared in the reprint comic Silver Scream #2 (1991). [©2009 Lorne-Harvey, Inc.]

34

Sid Jacobson On His Times As Harvey Editor

C’mon In—The Water’s Fine!

Another before-and-after juxtaposition: Kremer’s rough sketch, and Lee Elias’ published cover, for Tomb of Terror #16 (July 1954). [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

Syndicate, so [the Harveys] wouldn’t let us do take-offs on actual comic strips. So none of that stuff was... it was all generic. That was the problem.

They wouldn’t let us do it.

JB: What about films?

JACOBSON: Again, they didn’t want to; they were afraid of lawsuits, or whatever. And it’s too bad, because I think we would have made an important mark. And we were killed right to begin with.

story and letting you understand what was going on. So if it becomes translated to “we don’t want a lot of closeups,” it means that you’re not going to know what the hell’s going on; if you get just a lot of closeups and can’t see fully what’s going on. And that’s what we learned. I think our books were always very visual. And you could tell what a story was, what was part of, you know. Alfred Harvey’s old teaching was, take away the balloons and you must [still] know the story. And that’s what we tried to do.

JB: Nostrand said he wrote all the third issue.

JACOBSON: It’s possible. You know, it’s very possible, because he was doing a good job.

JB: What other kind of limitations did the Harveys impose? I know that Gil Kane said that the Harveys liked to have a full scene in a panel, no closeups, nothing sticking out of the panel.

JACOBSON: No. I’ll tell you this. I think that the kind of training that both Warren and I got out of the Harveys... I mean, at one time, there was sanity there. You’ve got to understand that. It’s been a long time, but there was sanity there. Alfred Harvey knew what he was doing. He had good sense of comics, and of graphics, and of storytelling. And we learned, really, the importance of storytelling, and when Gil’ll say something in terms of not being allowed to fall out of the panel, full shots, he’s talking at a time when he was dealing with Leon Harvey and, I think, Joe Simon, and not really of what went on before. [speaks emphatically] There was a good sense of telling a

He Ain’t Heavy—He’s Harvey—And He’s My Brother The Harvey brothers—Alfred on the left, Leon on the right. If we understand a-right, they were twins. The studio portrait of Alfred was sent by Mark Arnold, who originally received it from his son Alan Harvey… while the pic of Leon appeared in the CMAA [Comic Magazine Association of America] Newsletter #34 (May 1971) and was provided by Frank Motler. [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

“You Could Get Away With Murder!”

35

JB: That’s terrific.

JACOBSON: Yeah. But that’s what we’ve always aimed to do. You must visually tell the story that way. A lot of these kids can’t read. And if you’re doing it in this form, the balloon should not have to tell you where you are and what is happening. The picture should. [speaks emphatically] If you’re doing a story that’s for comics, it should be a story that’s conceived to be a visual story, not in groups of conversations, you know, or building to one battle scene. That’s not what comics is; it should be every step of the way. For me, the best depicter of that was Will Eisner. His were the best and most visual stories ever written in comics, to my mind, and the most creative.

JB: You were well familiar with The Spirit?

JACOBSON: Very much.

JB: Where did you see The Spirit?

JACOBSON: I knew The Spirit when it was in newspapers. It used to be a fold-out in one of the Philadelphia papers.

JB: It didn’t appear in New York for very long.

JACOBSON: It appeared in a paper I worked at as a copy boy.

No Business Like Snow Business This splash panel from Tomb of Terror #6 (Nov. 1952), drawn by Abe Simon, has the look of the earlier Feldstein- and Kamen-drawn stories in EC’s horror and sf/horror comics—not to mention in ACG’s pioneering Adventures into the Unknown. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

JB: PM. JACOBSON: It wasn’t PM any more, it was The Compass. And that’s how I first became familiar with The Spirit. I knew there were fans of it on that newspaper, and they seemed to have known of it for a long time. And then when I came to Harveys and I found that Bob Powell had worked for Will Eisner. I said, wow. I was totally taken by that. And then when Harvey published The Spirit comics, I did it. And I worked with Eisner, to a degree, and I made the selection of the stories, and I knew all the stories.

So that was great fun. To me, that’s the highlight of comic books. That’s what you should aim for. I think too often they don’t, and it’s not. That’s what I’m trying to do with these books, in a way, and look to take the step of creativity in any given form. And that’s the big step, taking all of this, and then being creative. And I think in a lot of these [horror titles] it was done then. And EC knew what they were doing—by God, did they!

“Kurtzman Was The Great One There [At EC]” JB: You’re talking about Kurtzman more than Feldstein?

JACOBSON: Well, I think Feldstein to a—I mean, certainly I think Kurtzman was the great one there, without a doubt. But they crossed over.

I’m not sure... if memory serves...

JB: If there was ever a set of comics where you couldn’t tell what was going on without reading the words, it was...

JACOBSON: It was Feldstein? Then I’m not... Two-Fisted Tales was Kurtzman? That was certainly great. But the other things of EC, Crypt of Terror, whatever, I don’t know which was Feldstein’s and which was…

JB: The horror and the science-fiction were Feldstein’s.

Pest Master Jack Sparling’s artful splash for a story in Black Cat Mystery #48 (Feb. 1954). The scripter is, alas, unknown—as in 99+% of the Harvey stories. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

JACOBSON: Well, they were good.

JB: They were very good, but they weren’t visual. For the most part.

Feldstein agrees with that assessment, that they’re not visual.

36

Sid Jacobson On His Times As Harvey Editor

Two In 3-D Splashes by Bob Powell (left) and Howard Nostrand (right) from True 3-D #1, flanking the inside-frontcover instructions on “How to Use Your Magic 3-D Specs.” The latter still used the cover of Adventures in 3-D #1 as an example. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

JACOBSON: Then I’m not remembering correctly. I had a sense that to a good degree they were. And I remember hearing at the time that the way they were put together was that they did break it down visually in the script.

JB: Kurtzman gave the artist tissue overlays.

Feldstein gave them lettered pages where the text was so complete that he didn’t even have to give them anything else.

JACOBSON: Is that right? Oh, I didn’t know that.

That’s all new to me. Then I’m talking strictly the way Kurtzman did it. I mean, we fell in very early, as soon as we started in doing the animation books, into dealing with a visual script. And now I pretty much always and only deal with a visual script. And when we did 3-D material we’d use the visual script, of many colors. In other words, it was done on planes: plane 1, 2, 3, 4, a color for each one. It was in the script.

JB: The writer actually developed the planes? And thought of the story in terms of planes?

JACOBSON: Yeah, they were good. I swear they were the best ever done in 3-D in that period of time. Our sales were astronomical to begin with, and then they went crazy at Harvey. And Warren and I tried to stop them. They hired like 20 people working day and night to put out 3-D books. Why they’d think it would continue, I don’t know.

JB: You could see the trend ending?

JACOBSON: Oh sure, because you couldn’t read it.

That was the point, and if you could see what we did was to purposely use a lot of captions, because we knew as soon as the planes went back it became difficult to read. And it looked silly putting all the balloons on the first plane. And we had the true 3-D, which no one else did, and that was really good.

JB: You mean the angled images...

JACOBSON: Yeah, it went into it, it wasn’t just a group of flats.

JB: How did you do that?

JACOBSON: There was a guy who came in and did it, I don’t know. [laughter] Really, in every issue, there were about 7 or 8 things where that took

“You Could Get Away With Murder!”

37

place. Something going between the planes. I didn’t know how he did it.

He was the genius of his day. That’s the way it’s all done today, I think. You can only do it with one object. I don’t know, but we had to wait to produce books because he didn’t do enough of them. And we were always waiting, “Let’s get him; let’s do it.”

JB: I remember you made a big thing about that in the books.

JACOBSON: But it was good.

“It Was A Short Period, Really” JB: When I look at a story like this, I have to believe that Powell wrote it.

JACOBSON: Possibly, I don’t know. I didn’t work on this story. I have a sense, with a lot of this, they were really gore for the sake of gore. I wasn’t in love with these stories. [notes an early story reprinted in one of the last issues] And I wouldn’t know who wrote it.

JB: When you came they must have been at their peak of production volume.

JACOBSON: Oh, yes.

JB: These were all monthly books for about an eight-month period, then they dropped back to bimonthly.

The Ruling Giunta John Giunta worked as both an inker and a full artist. Above is a wellcrafted Giunta splash from Chamber of Chills #22 (March 1954). Thanks to Dave O’Dell. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

JACOBSON: I think when I was there they were monthly, no?

JB: Probably when you started, but then they dropped back to bimonthly, and that’s when they got better.

JACOBSON: All during that period those were my books. I dropped writers left and right. Changed... Nat Barnett had never worked for anyone before. Kahn did. And then, as I say, I don’t remember most of the others... Wallace, Ted Senitsky. I don’t remember. It was a short period, really. But they were fun. And that was an interesting book [refers to Believe It or Not]…

JB: Nostrand did stories for it.

JACOBSON: Did he? I don’t remember. What we tried to do was to recreate the effect of the [newspaper] panel and yet do continuity around it.

JB: You used the special board.

JACOBSON: Yeah. And I think that was an interesting effect.

Believe It Or Else!

In Believe It or Not #4 (March 1954), the final issue, Nostrand used grease-pencil approach for the story “The Man Who Was a Tiger,” to make the page look more like a newspaper panel. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

JB: Did the syndicate have any input at all?

JACOBSON: No, this was taken from shows, from radio shows, as I recall.

I think Al Avison did several of these. Yeah, we did it on the boards. We

38

Sid Jacobson On His Times As Harvey Editor

worked with Doug Storer, that’s who we worked with.

JB: Who? JACOBSON: He was the president of [the Ripley company]. He may still be alive, I don’t know. [looks through comic] Yeah, that’s Nostrand. That’s Avison. This, I think. was reprints [from the syndicate].

JB: Why did you limit the stories to five pages?

JACOBSON: That’s an old Harvey trick. All Harvey stories are five pages.

Because it was broken down to leave you advertising. The advertising flats were on one and two, I think it is.

JB: You get all the advertising on the same flat?

JACOBSON: And it was always that and always remained that way.

JB: The earlier issues didn’t do that.

JACOBSON: No, no. At one point, pretty much about when I came, it was an Alfred Harvey decision to do that. And 31, 32 and 15, 16, 17 and 18. And [counts] flat 8 and 9 were held out, too.

JB: There were some fillers on those pages.

JACOBSON: Promotions or filler material, that was the scheme.

Well, At Least They Kept The Initials!

As detailed in John Benson’s opening essay, Tomb of Terror turned into a magazine of “science-fiction horror” for a few issues, such as #13 (Jan. 1954), before changing its name to Thrills of Tomorrow with #17.

Cover by Lee Elias, splash by Bob Powell, both from #13. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

“We Cared, That Was The Point” JB: Well, this interview explains a lot to me, because I always felt someone was behind the improvement of the Harvey line, and I always wondered who it was that made those books good.

JACOBSON: Thank you. I mean, we cared, that was the point. I think what happened, what I could do there is make them care. And make them feel, you know, you can do better. You can do new ideas, new thinking.

JB: Nostrand or Powell might do good work anywhere, but when you see a whole range of artists doing better things.... Did you try to get them interested in the other artists’ work?

JACOBSON: I think we all looked at EC, and tried to say, what are they doing that’s so interesting? And certainly Jack Davis. I became totally enamored with Jack Davis. And Wally Wood. Those were the foremost, and I think Jack Davis was also part of the Will Eisner tradition.

Different, but it was the visual strength; he had style, he had style, and so many artists looked so much alike. But here he had style and realism. And that’s what I tried to say, “Look at these people and see....“ JB: I mean, did you try to get the artists at Harvey to look at the other artists at Harvey, to develop some...

JACOBSON: Oh, absolutely. Oh, yeah. Oh, I think this was taking place, where people really did begin to either compete or help each other. There became a camaraderie of artists there. Certainly Nostrand, Kremer, and Powell in a way. I mean, don’t believe all of Nostrand’s stories about Powell. It’s nonsense. You know, he’s made this whole thing on how the price was kept low. I mean, this was the entry price. And whether it was the kind of a thing where Bob might have called up one of the Harvey brothers and said, you know, don’t give him, coming right out of my plant, the same money as I, I don’t know, but.... He got basically what was a starting price in those days, that was all. He had never drawn outside of

“You Could Get Away With Murder!”

39

The Many Faces Of “Comic Books” Writer Sid Jacobson (center) and artist Ernie Colón (left) produced The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation, which became a bestseller in 2004 and was nominated for a National Book Award; see panels at left. The adapters are seen above in a photo with Joe Simon, co-creator (with Jack Kirby) of Stuntman, Harvey’s postwar super-hero, pictured below. In between these two extremes came the darksome world of Harvey horror comics—represented at bottom left

by Lee Elias’ cover for Witches Tales #19 (June 1953). Thanks to Harry Mendryk for the photo, and to TwoMorrows’ own John Morrow for the Simon & Kirby Stuntman figure, repro’d from the original art. [Stuntman art ©2009 Joe Simon & Estate of Jack Kirby; 9/11 art ©2009 Sid Jacobson & Ernie Colón; Witches Tales cover ©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

times. He was treated, really, very differently than anyone else. But Avison came in. And there were a lot of good artists in romance, as I think of it.

JB: Sparling did a lot, and Elias, actually.

JACOBSON: Prentice. Bill Draut.

The guy who does Orphan Annie...

Leonard Starr, he did a lot. Warren Kremer did some romance.

Howard Nostrand did some romance. Manny Stallman did some romance.

JB: I haven’t seen any Nostrand.

JACOBSON: I think so.

JB: There was one Powell story I saw that was very much in the style of the horror books, with a very strong, stylized splash panel. that. And it was not unfair, and he was getting basically a good price for what people were doing then.

JB: Stallman did some of the best stuff that he ever did.

JACOBSON: Right! Oh, I think so. Because he was inspired by what was going on, and they paid attention to each other. I think Jack Sparling did some good work, beyond what was his usual thing. And Lee Elias, even.

JB: Did they have an opportunity to meet and talk?

JACOBSON: Yeah, Powell did a lot. [Louise Hill’s] books were very well edited. I felt that. She cared a lot. She probably gave a lot of herself to it. I thought she was good. Nice woman. The artists crossed over a lot.

JB: What about the writers?

JACOBSON: Yeah. Dick Kahn wrote a lot. Dick Kahn was the most prolific writer in all of comics. That’s why he was able to send himself through med school. He made fortunes, true fortunes. In those days, he had to be making $1,200 a week, which, figure three or four times that today. And that was without royalties. He just turned them out, turned them out.

JACOBSON: Oh, sure. Oh, yeah. Oh, they’d come in a lot. Oh, absolutely.

Very active. Very, very much so.

JB: Did you say the writing rate was $18 a page?

JB: There was a board at the office? Did they ever work there?

JACOBSON: Kahn, I think, made something like that. Some of the others... I think the starting rate was about $12 or $13.

JACOBSON: I don’t remember. They probably made corrections and changes in the art department. They didn’t work there. A lot of them, they worked at home. But they came in and they delivered pages, got pages and got scripts. They came to the office a lot. And met each other there. The only one who didn’t come in much was Lee Elias. But he’d come in several

JB: That’s very good.

JACOBSON: Yeah!

JB: I think the EC rate was $9.

40

Sid Jacobson On His Times As Harvey Editor

In The Gato John Benson ran across the Spanish-language cover of Black Cat Mystery #47 (Oct. 1953) on eBay. He notes that “the Spanish lettering very carefully preserves the style of the English, and the coloring is the same, which suggests that the Spanish version may have been produced in the Harvey shop.” Art by Lee Elias. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

JACOBSON: Harvey rates at one time were very good! They changed when they went into animation. It was a whole different structure. I don’t know what the artist rates there were, but I believe Elias got $60, Avison got $50, Warren got $40, Powell got $35, Sparling got $40. Powell got $35 because everyone knew that he had a factory, so that’s why that was $35.

JB: [laughs] But his factory produced the best...

JACOBSON: What can I tell you? You know, I didn’t make rates. But I don’t know if he got any more anywhere else.

He did an awful lot for Harvey. But the rate, pencils and inks, was I think $35 for Certa/Belfi. $35 was a good rate, $35, $40.

And the $50 and $60, no one else got that [but] Avison and Elias. There were a lot of people that got $40.

JB: Avison got it [$60 a page] for loyalty?

JACOBSON: Yeah, and he did a lot of other things; he’d do Dick Tracy, he’d do Humphrey. He was a very close friend of theirs, still is. [mutters] I think he’s their one last friend in the world.

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Part 4 41

The 1950s HARVEY HORROR COMICS

“Strange Things Went On In Those Days” WARREN KREMER On Casper The Friendly Ghost And Other Haunts

I

Interview Conducted & Transcribed by John Benson

NTERVIEWER’S INTRODUCTION: It was through Sid Jacobson that I met Warren Kremer. In fact, while I was interviewing Jacobson, he phoned Kremer and told him I would be contacting him. I visited Kremer at his home on April 1, 1985, and recorded the following interview. I had some idea that it might eventually be published (though I didn’t know it would be nearly 25 years later!), but my primary interest was to learn more about Kremer and his work on the Harvey horror comics. I had brought the entire set with me, and during the afternoon I asked Kremer to go over them and try to identify the artists. He also pulled out and showed me a great deal of the work that he had done over the years. (Unfortunately, I did not have the foresight to get copies of most of it.) Most of the casual discussion while we were looking over my comics has been eliminated from this transcript, but some has been retained because it describes the early work in his career or includes interesting comments on the horror comics.

Kremer Vs. Kremer (Above:) Warren Kremer and his wife Grace in 2002, the year before the artist passed away— juxtaposed with two primo specimens of very different styles of his comic art. (Far left:) One of his few finished horror covers, for Tomb of Terror #1 (June 1952). (Left:) A Kremer sketch of Richie Rich and Casper the Friendly Ghost, both of whom he drew for Harvey with phenomenal success in the 1950s and beyond. Thanks to Mark Arnold for sending the photo and the RR/Casper art; thanks also to photographer Bill Janocha and editor Jon C. Cooke for permission to use the photo, which appeared in JBC’s Comic Book Artist [Vol. 1] #19 a few years back. [Richie Rich & Casper TM & ©2009 Harvey Entertainment, Inc.; BCM cover ©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

“In Those Days Industrial Schools Were For The Dummies” JOHN BENSON: What was your first job?

WARREN KREMER: I worked for the [New York] Journal-American [newspaper]. When I was in high school, the School of Industrial Arts... well, prior to that I was in the School of Music and Art, and that was for the fine arts, and that’s not what I wanted. I was a kid, what did I know?

When they started Music and Art I was one of the first students. What

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Warren Kremer On Casper The Friendly Ghost And Other Haunts

they did was, they went around the city to all the schools and picked out students that were artistically inclined, and I was one of them, and they made up the student body of the High School of Music and Art that way. I stayed there one year, and I’ll never forget the principal, Dworkin. She was a woman, she was so upset, why did I want to leave, and all the opportunity in the world? It was a beautiful school. What it was, was a teacher’s training school and they turned it into Music and Art, and it was just beautiful. It had elevators, it had marble floors. I mean I was a kid, never in a school like that. So anyway, I told her that it wasn’t what I wanted, and I wanted to go to this other school that I heard of, the School of Industrial Arts. She said, “Ohhh...”

In those days industrial schools were for the dummies. Not that I was so brilliant. So, she couldn’t stop me, of course, but she tried to make me stay there, because the school was beautiful. And all the kids had their own sets of anvils and hammers in the crafts class, and we had our own easels, you know. So here I go, I shift over to the School of Industrial Arts, and it was in a little, rinkydink building down at 40th Street between Eighth and Seventh Avenues that was rebuilt in 1860—the building was rebuilt, so you know what kind of building it was—it was awful. Kind-of a little dinky auditorium, and the supplies were nil, and it was such a vast difference, but nevertheless, you know, I learned layout and advertising stuff.

remains there, where they sell cars. So the first thing you know I was working steady up there. I’d go up there weekends, anything. And he paid me out of his own pocket 15 or 20 dollars a week, and I used to work on layouts, I helped him on—see, he was in the promotion department, Charlie Knickerbocker, and that section of the Journal-American. In those days they did a lot of promotion for the salesmen to sell ads, and I used to help. It was good experience.

So the first thing you know, through him I met a fellow called Lester Lonergan, who was an actor. He played in pictures like All Quiet on the Western Front, he had like eight parts in there; he played a doctor, he played a soldier, a guy in the street, that kind of thing. And Lester came up one day and said to Seaman, “You think Warren would be interested?

There’s a job at Ace Magazines; they’re looking for an artist.” So he told me and I said, “Yeah.” Of course, he lost me, but... I went over there and I got the job in the art department, lettering and doing layouts.

And I worked there for 8 years at Ace magazines. That’s where I met my wife. They put out Rotogravure books, Secrets, Revealing Romances, that kind of thing. They had a photography book, they had an aviation book called Flying Aces. This was all in Rotogravure; they were called slicks. And then they had a string of pulp magazines, Westerns, detectives, sports. And then they went into comics. But they went into comics with

JB: When you were at Music and Art, did you know any of the guys there who were later comic artists?

KREMER: Alex Kotsky was in my class.

JB: Al Feldstein?

KREMER: I don’t recall him. He wasn’t in my class. See, I’m talking 193637. I graduated in ‘39. There was another guy, Bernie Gillen [or Giller?]. I don’t know whatever happened to Bernie—if he stuck to art. A lot of guys that I knew in those days that went to the art school. The war came along, and before you knew it they were working in war plants making a lot of money. I was making a lousy $25 a week and they were making 60, 70, 80 dollars a week. They were all with cars, and... you know, they were all big shots. But I stayed with my art, and some of these guys are not in art today. But that was the beginning.

Well, prior to this, too, I used to work with my father in sign-painting, used to work in the Statler, lettering signs on buildings. I lettered trucks and I lettered fences, and all that kind of stuff. I did a lot of sign-painting, I did show cards, paper signs, tin signs, swing signs, you name it. I did that for a couple of years with my father, while I was going to school. See, there was a thing in the Industrial Arts High School that if you did artwork that you got paid for, it could go as a credit. So I used to bring paper signs into the school, and tack them on the board in sign painting class, and letter “Merry Christmas from the boys,” whatever. I would get a couple of dollars for the sign, and the teachers would let me do it! Because what’s the sense of me doing student work when I can really do work that was going to pay? So they allowed that and that was just great. I’ll never forget one time the teacher was looking over my shoulder and I was lettering the word “Christmas.” And he says [tough voice] “How do you spell Christmas?” [feigns panic, as if checking the spelling]. And it was right, you know, and I looked around, and he’s laughing. That was one of the sign-painting teacher’s jokes.

So one day this teacher at the School of Industrial Arts, Bob Seaman, asked me, was I doing anything after school, did I want to come up to his studio. I said yeah. And I went up and he had a studio...before they put up the Gulf & Western building [now the Trump building], there was a little clap-trap triangle building there, and it was owned by Hearst, and it was very cathedral-style in its architecture, and even the halls had cathedral ceilings that arched. But it was only a two-story building, it only had a loft, and below it were all these big stores that sold automobiles, Oldsmobiles...that whole area up on Fifty-ninth Street, some of it still

Keep ’Im Flying!

Some of the earliest Kremer comics work that Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., has come across is this aviation fact page in Ace Magazines’ Our Flag Comics #2 (Dec. 1941)—dated the same month as the attack on Pearl Harbor, but probably on sale at least a month or two earlier. Note Kremer’s signature.

Whether or not he also wrote the feature is unknown. [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

“Strange Things Went On In Those Days”

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Aces In The Hole Some early Kremer work, scans courtesy of Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. (Above left:) Though Kremer doesn’t touch on it in the interview, he apparently did a spot of work for the expiring Centaur Comics Group—in its C-M-O Comics #12 (Dec. 17, 1942). “C-M-O” stood for “Chicago Mail Order Company.”

(Above right:) Warren even got into the “heroic comics” game on occasion, drawing the cover of Four Favorites #26 (Nov. 1946), featuring The Unknown.

(Left:) As “crime comics” moved to the fore, Kremer could be found drawing such fare as this story from Ace’s Crime Must Pay the Penalty #2 (June 1948).

(Below:) And when horror superseded crime as the coming genre, he contributed this cover to Ace’s The Beyond (#2, Jan. 1951). [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

Warren Kremer On Casper The Friendly Ghost And Other Haunts

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Hazardous Materials A Kremer cover done for Ace Magazines’ Hap Hazard #16 (Sept.

1947). Hap was clearly one of Archie Andrews’ cousins, complete with red hair, but was deemed popular enough to appear in two comics.

Scripter unknown.

Thanks to Jim V. [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

This is another oddball story. A guy calls me up on the phone and says he’s So-and-So—I can’t even remember his name. I could look up the bills, if I have them from those years. And he says, “I understand you imitate other characters pretty good.” I say, “I’ve done it.” And he says, “I’ll tell you what, I’m going to send you a script for ‘Ozzie and Babs.’

Show me what you can do.” I can’t remember how much it was, $25 a page, I think. And he sent me a script. So he said, “Here’s my office; I won’t be there, but slip it under the door and I’ll mail you a check.” I slipped it under the door, and couple of days later in the mail would come a check and another script! And I’d do this, and I’d put it in a package and I’d slip it under the door. This went on for I don’t know how long. Never met the guy! Never laid eyes on him once; I talked to him on the phone many times, did the work for him, kept slipping it under the door, I’d get the check in the mail, and that’s the way it went. [laughs] All of a sudden that ended, for what reason I can’t remember, but it stopped. And to this day I never met the guy!

Strange things went on in those days. And I failed to mention, too, that when I worked at Ace I worked under a couple of pseudonyms.

And the reason for that was, my immediate boss, who was Fred Gardener, was like the head of the art department in production, for everything. He knew I was working nights, but he didn’t want the big boss to know. And the reason why he didn’t want him to know was, if I was staying up to 10, 11, 12 o’clock working, I’d come in tired the next day, and I wouldn’t do my job properly in the office. And he wasn’t too far off, because I used to get tired. But anyway, in order for the big boss not to know, I took pen names, and one name was Roger Grey and another name was Raymond Hall. That went on for I don’t know how long. I drew comics under those names and I drew pulp illustrations and wash illustrations and things like that. And I signed another name, “Doc,” that was my nickname from school. We happened to hire a girl once that was from my class, her name was Leah Fay, and she called me Doc like she did in school. And the boss came in one day and said, “What is this Doc business?” And I said, “Oh, that was my nickname.” So everybody in

one hand behind their back. It was just because everybody was going into it, and they said, “Well, we’ll put a few books out,” so they put three or four books out. I don’t know what the most was that they ever put out.

But I started to work on them, and [one of] the first characters I ever did for them was “Hap Hazard.” I drew that and my wife Heroes With lettered. And then I got so enthralled in drawing that I wanted to A Certain, become an illustrator, and I left Ace. Oh, no, what I did was, I Er, took a lot of illustrations from their aviation book and the pulp Attraction magazines… the originals, I happened to get it back before they Kremer drew threw it out. And I did that for a lot of years.

And then of course the war ended and the whole thing collapsed, and people started to drop books, and aviation books weren’t on the top of the heap anymore because now the government wasn’t issuing pictures of planes, and you had to airbrush out the radar and all to keep the secrets, you know? And it all died, and the illustration stopped, so what was I to do?

So I went into comics full-time. Finally I went into the boss one day and I told him I wanted to quit. And, oh jeez, he didn’t want me to quit. This was in ’46, I think, or ’47. Anyway, what I did was I asked for a ridiculously high raise, I said I wanted $25 dollars a week [more]. In those days you got $2 a week raise. $5 a week was a big raise. He got it for me. “You better not leave,” he says, “I went out on a limb, I got the raise for you.” So I had to stay. I never thought I would get it. About a year later I came into his office and he looked at me and he says, “I know, you want to leave.” So I left. I mean, we parted on good terms and all. And I still worked for him doing comics and covers and things like that.

“I Finally Came To Harveys” JB: This was all Ace? KREMER: This was all Ace. And then all of a sudden I started to get other accounts, like St. John, Harveys, Fawcett. I did stuff for Fawcett.

the cover of Ace’s SuperMystery Comics Vol. 5, #5 (March 1946). Magno and Davey were the magnetic heroes featured.

Thanks to Jim V. [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

“Strange Things Went On In Those Days”

45

the place called me Doc. So then I used to use it as a signature in my work.

There was this other fellow there, Hy Vigoda. He’s the brother of Abe Vigoda, the actor. Along with another Vigoda—Bill Vigoda?—that used to work for Archie for years. And I used to be very close to Hy. As a matter of fact... [sketching] this is the art department—my desk was here, my wife’s was there, somebody else was there, and Hy Vigoda worked over there, in the art department, but he was a comic editor, and I’d hear him at the typewriter, “Dear Roger”—he was writing to Roger Grey—“When the hell are we going to get together, you keep sending the work in and I never see you, blah-blah.” And this went on for months and months, and I couldn’t tell him. And the boss would come in and hear him writing the letter, and, you know, he knew.

JB: He’d write it out loud?

KREMER: Yeah, he’d be saying, “Goddammit,” and he’d be talking out loud, “When the hell am I going to see you?“ And I knew everything that was in the letter. So after a couple days my sister would call up and say, “There’s a letter for you.” Because she lived in Jersey City, and I used that address for the names Roger Grey and Raymond Hall. And I’d say, “Yeah, I know all about the letter.” I’d get the letter and I’d read it, you know, but I knew what was in it and I’d throw it away. And finally when the whole thing ended, when it was all over, I told him. He hit the ceiling! I mean, he wasn’t mad, but he said, “You mean to tell me that you were sitting over there all the time and I was over here typing and you knew and you

This Ozzie Obviously Never Met Harriet!

Another Archie type that Kremer drew—this time for Fawcett. The youngster had started out in Wow Comics behind Mary Marvel, but had soon graduated to his own mag. Warren says he “never met the guy” for whom he was ghost-drawing “Ozzie and Babs” stories—let alone learned the name of the writer. Thanks to Jim V. [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

didn’t tell me....“ It was really funny, it was one of those funny experiences. What could I do, it was one of those things.

So after all of that Ace business was over, after the eight years, I freelanced, in ’48, and I think in June ’48 I quit the job and then I started to work for St. John and Fawcett and different companies, and I finally came to Harveys. And Alfred Harvey in those days was a dynamo, you know; he was really OK. His brother Leon was a nice guy, but he was a man with no ideas. In other words, when Alfred went to war, in the Army, Leon stayed home and minded the store, as it were. He didn’t expand anything, he never came up with any ideas, no new books or anything, he just minded the store. When Alfred came back, then things started to move. And I started to do more and more and more for Harvey. He used to say to me, “Why don’t you dump all these [others] and just work for me?“ I was a freelance artist and I was a little bit wary of that. I didn’t want to put all my eggs in one basket, but he kept after me, he kept after me, and he gave me more, more, more work until finally I was so busy with them that I had to drop other people. So finally I stayed all with Harvey.

“I Didn’t Work With Them, But I Knew Them” What’s Up, Doc? Note Warren Kremer’s “Doc” byline on this story from Four Favorites #22 (March 1946). Scripter unknown. Thanks to Jim V. [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

JB: [looks through Ace stories] So how did you come to sign this story with your own name?

KREMER: What’s the date on that?

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Warren Kremer On Casper The Friendly Ghost And Other Haunts

Taking Risks Kremer’s covers for Ace’s Mr. Risk #2 (Dec. 1950) and Indian Braves #1 (March 1951). By now, with the bloom well off the super-hero rose, Mr. R. no longer wore a costume, but still couldn’t make the grade— while by its fifth issue Indian Braves would metamorphose into the horror comic Baffling Mysteries. (Even when it came to coining horrific titles, Ace just couldn’t seem to make the grade.)

Thanks to Jim V. [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

JB: August 1948.

JB: And Nadine French?

KREMER: Well, I can’t remember now, but I think I quit Ace in June ’48.

I don’t know whether I was still at Ace or whether I had just left, or what, but for whatever reason I signed one “Warren Kremer” and the other “R. Grey.”

KREMER: Oh, Nadine French, I knew her from way back. I knew Nadine when she used to go out with Joe Blair. She married Joe Blair. I’m telling tales out of school now. When she first came here, she was going out with a guy named Sammy Singer. He was an animator from Disney Studios.

Sammy was a con artist, for want of a better word. He was sharp. He had a game leg. I don’t know how he got it, but he would walk like this. [does brief imitation] But that never hindered him in any way. He was dapper, he dressed sharp, he got his fancy haircuts, and every time he took his money out he had a roll of bills that would choke a horse. He used to call it a Jewish bankroll—the first time I ever heard the expression. I never knew what it meant. It would be, you know, a twenty on the top and all the singles in the middle. That was his joke with me. But he was a sharp character. Somewhere I might have pieces of his work in magazines, but when I think about it now, he was very careless with his stuff; he really didn’t do good work.

JB: That’s a nice job.

KREMER: Well, I was learning. If you look at this stuff, this was a rub-off of the pulp illustrations I did. If you’ll look at my pulp illustrations, you’ll see a lot of that stuff in there. I did a lot of aeroplane work in those days.

“Mr. Risk”—he was like a Thin Man, with his wife, the husband-and-wife team. My wife lettered those. Lettering has come a long way. I mean, I’m so surprised to see how we split words and things. We never do that anymore, but it was all acceptable in those days. Look here: you don’t see that now.

JB: I never really thought about that. More rules.

KREMER: Oh, yeah! Everything today, it’s as clear as it can be for a kid, you know.

JB: Could you comment on this list of [artists’] names [sent by] Jim Vadeboncoeur?

KREMER: Well, I didn’t work with them, but I knew them. I knew Rudy Palais, I knew Louis Ferstadt. I knew Sid Greene—he went to school with me. I knew Ken Battefield [he pronounces the middle “e”]. George Grey is familiar. And Nina Albright, that’s familiar, too, I can’t place it. Rudy Palais I was very close to.

JB: Did you meet or work with Matt Baker?

KREMER: No. I met fellows like Warren King, who did a lot of work for St. John.

JB: He was an artist?

KREMER: Yeah. He was an animator. He used to do “Nutty Squirrel”.

[ED. NOTE: There was a DC character called “Nutsy Squirrel.” Same one?] He was careless and slipshod. And Gardener, what did Ace know, they bought his stuff. And Nadine was with him. And then the first thing you know he brought in a writer to write some of the stuff for him, and it was Joe Blair. And Joe Blair was a boozer. When he went on a tear, you didn’t see him for days, a week. “Where the hell is Joe Blair? He’s supposed to have that script.” He’d be boozing it up in some hotel room with some broad. Anyway, he and Nadine hooked up. And Nadine was only about 18, whatever—she was a very young girl, and very pretty, very attractive. And she married Joe. And of course it didn’t last. After I left Ace magazines, I didn’t see them anymore, and I would only hear things, and then I knew she had a job up at St. John. And there she met Warren King. But she was divorced from Joe Blair. And she married Warren King.

“Strange Things Went On In Those Days”

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He just died a couple of years ago. Didn’t Sid [Jacobson] tell you about the dinners he used to go to with Warren King and Nadine French, and what’s-his-name would be there...

into the horror stuff and the war stuff and the love stuff. You see, I couldn’t do as much of that as I wanted to because I was doing a lot of the covers. I was doing all the cover ideas, and I did a lot of covers.

JB: Leonard Starr?

And then all of a sudden in 1953 the animation came in. St. John lost Casper and Little Audrey and the rest of them. And Harvey got them from Paramount. And Alfred Harvey, along with the right to do the books, got an option from Paramount that if Paramount ever wanted to sell the cartoons and the rights to the characters, Harvey had the first option. And that’s what happened, ’54 or whenever it was—Paramount wanted to sell off all their cartoons and Harvey bought them. And that was the smartest deal he ever did. It was a million-dollar deal, but it paid off.

KREMER: Leonard Starr, yeah, and Prentice and—the guy that did “Spacehawk.” I never had anything to do with Warren King socially, but I knew Leonard Starr. He used to do work for us at Harvey. I used to edit his stuff. Harvey hired me to come in a couple of days a week, or even a whole week, to go over other artists’ work, to make sure that the punch lines were there, the storytelling was there, and if I felt that there were any changes to be made, I’d get hold of the artist and say, “Look, this doesn’t come across,” you know, and I’d make a sketch of how it should be, and then he could interpret it his own way. He could do whatever he wanted, but make it clear. And these guys, John Prentice and Leonard Starr, are pretty good. So I didn’t have...

“All Of A Sudden In 1953 The Animation Came In” JB: So reviewing other artists’ material, is that how you started at Harvey?

KREMER: Oh no, no. When I started there, they needed an inker. They needed somebody to ink Joe Palooka and Humphrey and Little Max. And I was a good inker, I used to ink like crazy. So they had me ink, and they liked my stuff, and then they’d give me [whole] stories to do. Like I did The Green Hornet in the very beginning. Pencils, and somebody else would ink it, and then [later] I would ink it, and little by little they started to give me more stuff. They gave me Little Max to do, and they started to give me Humphrey, because Al Avison used to do those things in the beginning, and then first thing you know I was into straight stuff—I got

Sid was the editor of Casper, and he, along with me and the writers, we started to develop the character—we started to change it from what it was in the movies and what St. John had done with it. See, Casper in the very beginning used to come out of a grave—they had a tombstone with a gaslight coming out of the tombstone, and Casper would go down, invisible, into the ground, and he’d come up. We did away with all that business. We put him in a haunted house. He lived in a house. We had nothing to do with him being dead, nothing to do with being transparent or wispy, because in the beginning Casper used to float, and his legs disappeared, and they were just wavy, like a bedsheet, you know? We did away with all of that, and we concentrated on making him cute, and living in what you might say was a fantasy world but a real world, too. It was nothing for him to go into the enchanted forest, and anything could happen, but by the same token he could go into the city and meet ordinary people, see. Of course, the very fact that he was white made him a ghost, that’s all, and people would be afraid of him. And it took a good many years before we really got Casper down to what we have now. If you look at some of my early stuff, it wasn’t too good. My mentor was Steve Muffatti; he was an animator from the Fleischer studios, from Famous Studios. And he worked on the original Casper films. Joe Oriolo wrote the first Casper films. As a matter of fact, Joe says he’s the creator of Casper.

JB: How do you spell his name?

The Spook And The Sweethearts While Kremer didn’t “create” Casper, he is considered the ultimate Casper artist. Jerry Beck’s introduction to the 2007 Dark Horse trade paperback Harvey Comics Classics, Volume One – Casper the Friendly Ghost printed the above drawings Kremer did of the smiling specter, noting that “the tricky spatial relationships between Casper’s facial features and his bulbous head are expressed beautifully in this quintessential model chart by Warren Kremer circa 1962.”

On the same page was reproduced the panel at right from a 1956 issue of Harvey’s Hi-School Romance, to illustrate that “the best draftsmen in the cartoon-style are usually those who have already achieved a measure of mastery in realism.” [©2009 Harvey Entertainment, Inc.]

KREMER: [with prompting from his wife] O-R-I-O-L-O. Joseph Oriolo. He owns “Felix the Cat” now; he has a lot of merchandising stuff with “Felix.” I did a lot of stuff for him a few years ago. He’s a fascinating man—and he could tell you a lot about the animation business, and a lot about the artists that were in it, all deadbeats.

Anyway, Muffatti was a very good animator. And I knew nothing about animation, I knew nothing about drawing little animals and Casper and bunnies and all that kind of stuff. So I used to use Steve Muffatti’s stuff, copy it, practice looking like his stuff, until finally by combining what I knew from straight stuff, realistic stuff, and animation, I developed a style the way I do my stuff now. And Sid always said it was a little unique in the field, because animators never quite drew that way and straight guys never quite drew that way, either. When you got a straight artist and he tried to do funny cartoon stuff, it never quite made it, and when you got an animator and you asked him to do a little bit serious, their men were soft and their women were... it never quite reached it. So, I don’t know, I’ve been told I sort-of reached that happy medium in between the two—and that was Richie Rich and Casper and all those characters all those years. It wasn’t animation and it wasn’t realistic, it was somewhere in between. So that’s how that started.

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Warren Kremer On Casper The Friendly Ghost And Other Haunts

And then finally the boss felt that he was becoming popular, and he finally put him out in his own book, and then of course he took off. And that character was my idea. Now you’re going to talk to different people in the field, and you’re going to hear different stories, this happens to everybody. Like if I say that Oriolo says he created Casper, somebody else will say, “I created Casper!”

And they all get their finger in the pie, you know what I mean? And after 25, 30 years you really don’t know who to believe, but I’m telling you this—that in the ’50s there used to be a show on television called The Millionaire…

JB: Right. A guy gives out a million dollars each week.

You Look Like A Million Dollars!

(Above right:) On the late-1950s TV dramatic series The Millionaire, actor Marvin Miller played Michael Anthony, associate of billionaire John Beresford Tipton, who each week would give some lucky person a check for $1,000,000. The rest of the show would follow the recipient to see how it impinged upon his life—often in unexpected ways. Warren Kremer says that program was the inspiration for “Richie Rich.” [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

In New York City in January of 2009, A/E reader Mark Arnold met cartoonist Angelo De Cesare, who kindly gifted him with the above sketch sheet that contains drawings by himself and—in the upper right-hand corner—Warren Kremer. Thanks for sharing it with us, Mark! As mentioned in this 1985 interview, De Cesare was then drawing The Katzenjammer Kids, which Kremer had also done. [Characters TM & ©2009 Harvey Entertainment, Inc.]

“Richie [Rich] Was Not A Big Character In The Beginning” JB: In the period ’50-’53, you had the title Art Director at Harvey?

KREMER: Art Editor they called me, yeah.

JB: And that was designing the covers?

KREMER: Yeah, I worked on all the covers. See, when I started there in ’48, ’49 and ’50, once those years came around and I was in solid with them, then they started to have me do everything; there was nothing I didn’t do. I even wrote scripts. I wrote a “Casper” story. I don’t know if you remember the “Casper” story on King Kong, it was called “Ging Gong.” I wrote that. I thought it was good. And in order to get secondclass entry in the comics, you couldn’t have a comic book with all one character, you had to mix it up with a couple of characters and you had to put in like a two page text. So if we had Casper, we had to have another character to offset it in the back, and that became Spooky. If we had Little Dot, we had to get a character in the back; that became Richie. Richie was not a big character in the beginning; he was a little five-pager that padded the book for Little Dot.

KREMER: Right, the guy would sit in a chair and the camera... you never saw the millionaire, but he’d call in his top aide and he’d say, here’s the envelope for the next millionaire, and this guy Marvin Miller, I think, became famous for being the guy that [handed] out the money. All right, you know the story. So when Harvey asked us to think up new characters, I saw this show and I said, hey, how about a little rich kid, a little kid who’s the son of a millionaire—unlimited wealth—could have anything he wants, he’s rich. My own son, my first-born, is named Richard. So I said I’ll call him Richie... Rich. Now, you know that a lot of artists name characters that they created after their children. [tone suggests John Benson may argue the point]. Right? We all do it. I mean, I would be drawing a rowboat and I’d put her name [gestures toward his wife] on the back, Gracie, or something. All artists do that. All artists draw their children in their strips. I mean, I’ve drawn my daughter in it, I’ve drawn my son in it. So it was nothing for me to take the name Richard and try to get a character called Richard. And it just so happened that the kid was a rich kid and Richie Rich became euphonious, and it fit.

Six months this character sat on the boss’s desk and he didn’t do anything with it. And finally he said OK, we’ll take this and we’ll put it in Little Dot. And then the rest is history. It took off and it became so popular that he had like 25 different titles out on the damn character.

Enormous. And that character sold on the top of the line. The sales were phenomenal. And we never did any promotion on it, never spent money, we never pushed it, never took ads out on it, never did anything on it.

Everything “Richie Rich” became, it became on its own merit, story content, art content, cover, coloring, whatever. Because, now that I’m working at Marvel, I see the money that’s spent on ads, promotions, everything to push their product. If Harvey had ever done that, Richie Rich would have maybe sold twice as much, I don’t know.

I find out now from Marvel that “Richie Rich” and “Casper” were so popular—I never found this out at Harvey. Harvey had a habit of withholding all things from the employees for fear that they were going to hit them up for raises. Hence we couldn’t sign our work, we knew nothing about sales figures; we were kept in the dark on all these things. Usually we didn’t see any fan mail, since it couldn’t be addressed directly to us.

When we got to Marvel, we started getting letters from people who had recognized our style at Harvey. And when we got to Marvel, we found out how well the Harvey books had been selling! I never knew that Casper and Richie and Hot Stuff were that popular in Europe. They loved them in Europe, Marvel tells us. And Marvel would say, God damn it, we gotta get a character like Richie Rich, we have to get that kind of book in our line, because we can’t get that kind of advertising. I mean, Marvel can go crazy with advertising, but they can’t get it with those kind of characters, with their Fantastic Four and Conan and all that... stuff. They can’t get that kind of advertising. But if they have books like Richie Rich or Casper or Planet Terry, they can get that kind of advertising.

I never knew any of that when I was at Harvey. We always did the best we could; we always put out what we thought were good stories, and good

“Strange Things Went On In Those Days”

49

artwork. And it’s paid off. I find that out now from my peers and from kids that write letters and all, now that they know that I’m at Marvel. God, the stuff that they say, it’s unbelievable, the years that they loved Richie and they loved Casper. I never knew it. Had no way of knowing it.

Because first of all they didn’t know who drew it and they didn’t know who to write to, so if they wrote a letter it was just to the Harvey company, and half of the time you never saw them. I don’t know who the hell got them. In the end there, we started to get them. Sid used to get them.

Things all changed at Harveys at the end. Very bad. It’s very nice to be at Marvel and be able to do all the ideas we have. Sid and I used to take all sorts of ideas to the Harveys and they just didn’t want to listen. We had the idea of producing a giant map of Richie Rich’s estate. You know, the stories would happen all over the estate, and the kids would have loved to seen all these places, the oil wells and what-not on a pictorial map. They nixed that. Finally we stopped making suggestions.

“EC Was The Best, But I Think We Were The Second Best” JB: Could we talk about Flip? It was my favorite book.

KREMER: Oh, really? We were getting into it, you know. I think EC was the best, but I think we were the second best, when it came to Flip and Mad. See, the boss would never really let us go whole hog. If we wanted to do a take-off on The Katzenjammer Kids, he wouldn’t do it. He was afraid of getting sued. And I know that Mad was sued by a lot of people. I know they stepped on a lot of toes. In those days they used to buy a lot of the EC books and look at them and see what was being done and throw them on the shelf.

And all of a sudden about 20 years later I realized that I had them all up there and they were all in mint condition, because they only looked at them once or twice and threw them on the shelf. So I ran out and bought a bunch of glassine bags and put them all in there. I discovered I had from #1 to 25 or something of Mad. And #1 is worth something like a couple of hundred dollars. And I have all the original Flash Gordons from the newspaper from 1934 on, although I don’t have them from the beginning.

I don’t know what they’re worth, but when I was a kid, when Flash Gordon came out, I was like 12 years old, in 1934, and I just saved them.

Even as a 12-year-old, I recognized that Alex Raymond was a top man, and I used to save them every Sunday. And then when Milton Caniff [Terry and the Pirates] came out, I saved him, so I have ten years of Flash Gordon, ten years of Milton Caniff, I have all of Prince Valiant—you know, Sunday stuff.

JB: Who did “Ulysses” in Flip?

KREMER: That’s mine. Like I said earlier, when the fellow at Fawcett said, “I hear you can imitate other artists—can you draw ‘Ozzie’?,” I never met the artist that drew “Ozzie,” but I imitated him. So, here I was imitating Jack Davis. It isn’t a Jack Davis by any stretch of the imagination, but that’s what I was trying to do. [shows various Harvey books] See, here, Dotty Dripple, that’s all stuff that I do—Dick Tracy, so I imitated his style. Sad Sack. Incidentally I did Sunday Sad Sacks with George Baker for a couple of years. I used to ink them. Here’s Maggie and Jiggs [Bringing Up Father]. These are all my ideas and I drew them up.

JB: You mean you did the complete art?

KREMER: Everything. I mean, I did the idea, and then I drew it. I even did it with a thin pen to keep [artist McManus’] style. See, now this one I did with a brush. Then I did The Katzenjammer Kids; and I know the fellow that’s doing it now, Angelo De Cesare. [shows more material] These are sketches; these are all [cover] roughs I did for Ace magazines: Beyond, “Mr. Risk,” creepy stories. This is a “Palooka” job, Joe and Knobby, that I did for Harvey, and for some reason or other Ham Fisher didn’t want it. So Harvey called me in and told me to change the heads and put different heads on, so I changed the heads on the two characters,

The Odd, Y’See! “Ulysses” was a filler feature drawn by Kremer for Harvey’s Flip #2. This is one of two “Ulysses” one-pagers in that issue. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

but it’s still about a fighter and his manager.

I penciled and inked this. I did love stuff; that was my Stan Drake period. My Alex Raymond period. This horror story, “The Eyeless Ones” [Tomb of Terror #7], is one of the first horror stories I did for Harvey.

And the ending of this story is [the same as] the ending of Planet of the Apes. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the guys that wrote Planet of the Apes might have had an old comic book, or, you know, remembered this and said, hey, this is a good ending. But we had this all the way back in the ’50s. I did some war stories...

JB: A story about a Jeep...

KREMER: Yeah, that’s the one I’m thinking of. Here it is. “Next Stop Seoul.” Yeah, that’s mine. I look at this stuff, oh my God, the work. [points to toy at edge of drawing board] Here’s the model Jeep I had that I bought way back then to...

JB: ...to do this story?

KREMER: Well, not to do...but just to remind me, you know. [points to another toy] This is the same thing, you know, Richie Rich’s automobile.

But it’s not really the same; I changed it.

“I’d Make A Little Sketch, And Harvey’d OK It” JB: Is that cover yours, Witches Tales #25? [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: See contents page.]

50

Warren Kremer On Casper The Friendly Ghost And Other Haunts

He has a lettering book out. I don’t know if you know that I worked on the openings and closings of the Casper animation shows. This was a rough storyboard that I did for the Sunday Funnies—remember Mattel’s Funday Funnies? This is the way that I did it, and then they used this to make the film. And it worked! I didn’t know anything about timing or anything, but it worked. This is the closing, see. These are openings and closings for another show. I even got rougher here. And the darn thing came on the screen and it worked! Then of course you know we did a syndicated Richie Rich strip. You know that.

JB: No, I didn’t know that.

KREMER: Oh, you didn’t know that? [laughs] We did it for six months.

This is a brochure McNaught put out on it. You know, Len Herman wrote all of Richie Rich. I mean, we had other writers, but he was the best.

Funny, funny guy. But they didn’t push [the strip]. It never did much. Len died a year ago.

JB: Did Carl Wessler...

KREMER: Carl Wessler, yeah, he wrote. I drew a lot of his stuff.

JB: Now who did that [indicates horror comics cover]?

Planet Of The Precursors Kremer points out that the ending of “The Eyeless Ones,” the story he drew for Tomb of Terror #7 (Jan. 1953), with its ruined Statue of Liberty amid a dying world, closely foreshadows the denouement of the 1968 film version of Planet of the Apes (a scene not in Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel, which did not turn out to be taking place on a far-future Earth). Alas, the identity of the tale’s scripter who thought up the image is not known. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

KREMER: Yeah. This was... Lee Elias did a job and they didn’t like the way it came out, and I did it over. And I sort-of imitated his thing. [shows small rough color sketches of covers] See, this is what I used to do a lot, this little sketch, and then I would do the color.

JB: They would use this as a color guide also, then?

KREMER: Well, yeah, or I colored a Xerox for them, a Stat [=Photostat] in those days. I’d make a little sketch, and Harvey’d OK it. Look at this one; I used to draw some horrible stuff in those days. This doesn’t look so bad in black-&-white, but when you get it in color with all the red and all the flesh and the whole schmeer... [pulls out book dust jackets with no art] These are all book jackets I did when I worked at Ace Magazines, hardcover books. I did the ideas, the lettering; my wife worked on some of them. You worked for a place like Ace, you had the opportunity to do those things. This is a promotion piece I did for Flying Aces during the war. This appeared in the Sunday Times. These are all ads, things I worked on.

I’ll show you something else. This is the first Palette, number 1, of the School of Industrial Arts. I worked on it; I did this. And Eagleisen [?] was the force behind this, he did this lettering, he cut this out, the silkscreen.

Seoul Survivor John Benson writes: “In his interview, Kremer showed a toy jeep on his drawing board that he had referred to when he did this story. This scan is from Warfront #27 (July-Sept. 1956). The art appears to have been done earlier. Roger Hill says it isn’t in any earlier issues of the Harvey war comics, but suggests that they ran war stories in Humphrey and it might have appeared there.” [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

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51

KREMER: Lee Elias did that one. I used to do a lot of the cover ideas. I’d work up a little sketch and send it to him, because he rarely came in to the office. Sid and I and Nat Barnett, we used to sit down and say, “How about this, how about that?” and then [we’d show it to Harvey] and he’d OK it and then I’d ink it, and color it, you know. I’ll show you, I have a lot of them. [looking through his Harvey horror cover roughs] Very interesting, aren’t they? And the interesting part was that I drew them so small, I couldn’t be bothered with drawing them big, you know. But I could get what I wanted in [a small] area, without having to...

Mel Graff. He used to do a lot of ads and things. And then there was the problem that I had on this cover [Black Cat #51]. I did a lot of sketches to try to get across this idea. You know, I kept doing it, I kept doing it. The whole mill is all lost. It was a good idea. It was a little bit off the beaten track.

JB: I like your cover roughs better than Lee Elias’ final art. Too bad you didn’t do the actual covers.

JB: I thought it worked. How about this artist here?

KREMER: Some of them I did do. But Elias was good man; Harvey liked him [and so he did a lot of the covers]. That’s the way Harvey was if he liked you. That’s why Sid and I were there for so many years. Lee, he was the one guy that was allowed to sign his work. Why, I don’t know; prestige, I think. He was a big wheel there. He had a strip, syndicated, Beyond Mars. Well, his stuff was very much like Milton Caniff.

JB: Very much like Milton Caniff!

KREMER: A second Milton Caniff. I knew [Ray] Bailey, too. You know, he [Bailey] used to do stuff for Milton Caniff; he had a technique like Milton Caniff. I think the closest guy that ever came to Milton Caniff was

“I Faked A Lot Of Stuff— What The Hell Did I Know?”

KREMER: That’s Al Avison. He was a good man and all, but I was never enamored with his stuff. I have stuff that I wanted to show you from the pulp magazines, before I ever went into comics, old pulp illustrations that I did. Some of it is better than others, you know. I faked a lot of stuff— what the hell did I know? The title would go up here, and the copy. You had to make some kind of a two-page spread, and leave enough room for the title and copy. And it was all of this dry-brush style. [To draw the guns] I even bought this, way back, in an antique store, so I’d have [reference]. It doesn’t work, but it was good enough for me to get an idea of what pistols looked like, you know? I had good concepts, but my drawing wasn’t that great.

This is really a... a thing of the past, in the sense that a pulp magazine

“Between The Emotion And The Response”…

Kremer’s cover sketch for Witches Tales #20 (June 1954)—and Lee Elias’ finished cover. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

52

Warren Kremer On Casper The Friendly Ghost And Other Haunts

doesn’t exist anymore. There aren’t any such things. And pulp artists, I don’t know where any of them are. But these guys that drew this stuff, they were really, they were good. [shows more material] See, in those days I wanted to be an illustrator. This is all during the war. These are little spots for different stories. A bomb stuck in a bomb rack, and a guy went out in his bare feet, you know, and opened bomb bays, trying to loosen the bomb. Don’t ask me where I got the... I always liked this one.

This was 247s bombing the Japanese. Lightning passed through his armor, or something, I can’t remember the story. These were just illustrations for articles. There was a dummy field, and when a plane tried to land there were all poles and spikes, you know... he pulled up in time. This is another one of those heroic things where the wheel is stuck, and he’s....

Remember? Now, here, I did “Algernon,” and this is mine, “Ozzie and the Sad Case.” See, this was the guy that drew it originally. So I had to imitate... Phew, it was a long time ago. [points to a closet stacked floor to ceiling with comics] I had to have something in every one of those books.

For instance, the Huey books—I didn’t draw Huey, but I did the covers.

So, in other words, I had something to do with every book that Harvey put out. Either the covers or something inside. There were some books that I did completely.

And then I had to do something in a light vein, you know. And this was an article on the bombers going to Germany and coming back. South Pacific. Here’s a piece of lettering... who did this, hon? That was bombing tactics or whatever. These were before Idlewild [now JFK Airport] was built [in 1943]; these were ideas of airports, with bays for the flying boats and all that kind of stuff. I have a big one of Idlewild I’ll show you that I did.

KREMER: Yeah, I was with them. I was with them in ’48. June of ’48, but I had little to do with these, because they had me on Humphrey and Little Max and Joe Palooka.

This is the Battle of Midway. This is a guy that landed in the Pacific.

These were all planes of the future. And this is the airport of the future.

This was like 1945, or whatever. You know, it was a diagrammatic kind of thing. But that’s the kind of thing that I did. This is one of the last jobs, the last wash illustration that I ever did. Like I said, the whole bottom dropped out, and then I didn’t do any more. But I did hundreds, I don’t know how many planes I drew for this guy, his name was Dave Cook. He put out aviation books, and man, I think if that guy put out one book, he put out 50 of them, and I did illustrations for them, and he would he would pick up and reuse them. And for years I was getting checks from this guy, and I didn’t even know that they were being reused, but he was honest about it, and every time he reused them he’d send me a check for a couple of dollars for each drawing.

Now, that was like an editorial cartoon. This was another thing that I did, like a two-page spread, going from England over Germany, you know, the thousand bombs a day thing. So I had to draw B-17s, B-36s, B-24s, Lancasters, 25s, 17s, that’s a 26. I put them all in.

And all the magazines I ever worked on are all here. I have a bunch of merchandising stuff. All kinds of stuff. And then I did enumerable coloring books. In other words, I wasn’t just drawing comics, you know? Oh, here’s some early covers I did for Ace [Monkyshines #16, Hap Hazard #16]. I did a lot more than that. Now these are the Fawcett books, Ozzie and Babs #12, 13.

“Let Me Rattle Off Some Names…”

JB: Were you with them when the first horror books were coming out?

JB: Could you identify the artists?

KREMER: I wasn’t aware of who the artists were, or even that the damn books were being put out, until I got there on a permanent basis, and then I began to realize who was who. See, I wouldn’t know who some of these guys were. I’m not sure Sid would, either.

This is Rudy Palais. He did this stuff for Harvey at the beginning. He didn’t do much. They didn’t care for his stuff, for some reason or other. I mean, Rudy had a great style, and he handled blacks nicely, you know. But I don’t know, his artwork was...

I have a list... Sid had a list of the artists from those days. Here it is; let me rattle off some names, all right? Kim Asmot [stumbles over name, probably means writer Kim “Aamodt”], Alfred Acquina, Ray Bailey, John Belfi, Lars Born, Joe Certa, Sidney Check Jerry Coleman, Joe Coleman, Lee Donahue, Bill Draut, Lee Elias, Alfred Gabriel, Sidney Gers, Tom Guilden, John Giunta, Tom Hickey, Bill Hudson, Howie Nostrand, Irving Nieman, Jim Neely, William MacDonald. These were all people that were there way back.

Paul McCarthey, Bill Everson, Steve Kirkel, Jack Kirby, Richard Kahn...

JB: He was a writer.

KREMER: Yeah. You know what he is today? He’s a gynecologist. Jack Oleck, Bob Powell, John Prentice, Morrie Redden, Larry Riley, Joe Rosen, Sam Rosen, Ted Rosen, Norman Sachs, Arthur Serbie, Zeke I don’t know what, Al Sharp, Joe Simon, Arthur... [unfortunately, the tape runs out at this point and there is a delay in starting the next reel] JB: Let me see if you can recognize this….

JB: What did you do here?

KREMER: I did “Algernon.” No, I did “Ozzie” [too].

JB: You did most of the material in these books?

Down Under The Old Mill Stream

KREMER: No, no, just one story, whatever. This is the work I did for the guy where I slipped it under the door.

In this interview, Kremer talks about how hard the cover of Black Cat Mystery #51 (Aug. 1954) was to design. The finished cover, here, is by Lee Elias; unfortunately, Kremer’s cover sketch, which attempted to show more of the mill in the background, may no longer exist. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

KREMER: You know, I have a feeling about something like this, that one person penciled it and somebody else inked it, and that throws it off. You see when I have somebody inking my stuff, they add their own little touches. And you don’t want them to add their own

“Strange Things Went On In Those Days”

53

little touches. You want them to sort-of do what you would do. But how do you get that across? And the job changes completely.

logotypes to all upper-case. I think the result is terrible; there’s no life or style to the current logotypes. All the letters are the same thickness, and it’s ugly.

JB: This is a strange-looking Powell story.

JB: Did you do this [story] logo?

KREMER: That doesn’t look like mine.

That wasn’t my type of thing.

KREMER: You know, I think in the beginning, too, there was a guy who worked for Powell, a blond guy. He used to do stuff once in a while, not much.

His name was, oh... Walter Danks. And Nostrand did a lot...

JB: It’s in a Ben Oda style. Do you know if Oda was actually lettering for them?

KREMER: No, I think this was all Joe Rosen. See, we were copying EC.

JB: I don’t think Nostrand had anything to do with that story.

KREMER: You see, no, you have to understand one thing. The way you’re familiar with Nostrand, his “Ivan’s-Woe” stories and that kind of thing, he [originally] never drew like that. When he came with us his inking was just like Powell’s inking. And Sid said to him, “Look, we’re trying to do what EC does,” he says. “Look at this guy Jack Davis, he’s got a terrific technique, why don’t you style your stuff after him?” And Nostrand went home and imitated Jack Davis. He did all the wrinkles and the lines, and then he kept on drawing like Jack Davis. He had those little bubbles in the ground, all of that. [looks at cover of Witches Tales #27] Look what they did, they pasted a new head over. They took the horror head off that I had, the ghoul. This is my drawing and somebody...

JB: I wondered who did this cover, because the head being by someone else makes it hard to tell.

JB: I was wondering if maybe Nostrand tried to do that and did it himself.

KREMER: Mmmm. But I think it’s Joe’s stuff.

JB: Now here’s that cover where your sketch had a cat-man or something [Black Cat Mystery #52]?

KREMER: Yeah, that’s been changed.

You can see that head’s been put on [later]. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: See cover & sketch on p. 12.]

JB: Who did the cover?

KREMER: It’s Avison, yeah.

Facelift

JB: Do you think he did the face?

John Benson reports that this is a Kremer cover, “except [the] face, which is probably Avison, as discussed in the interview. Kremer drew a horrible face, but this was the next-to-last horror issue of the title [#37, Oct. 1954], and they had Avision draw a new face. Also, the previous [topline] ‘Weird Yarns of Unseen Terrors’ has been replaced by ‘Thrilling Yarns of Suspense,’ and ‘Eerie Tales of Supernatural Horror’ has been replaced by ‘Eerie Tales from Out of This World.’” [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

KREMER: Yeah! Sure. I mean they changed my sketch completely. See, because there was a time when, well, you know, where the Kefauver committee was after us.

KREMER: Yeah, the head is different.

The head was done by Avison, I think. That’s an Avison face. This is all my lettering.

“There Was A Time When… The Kefauver Committee Was After Us” JB: How many of the [story] headlines did you do? All of them?

KREMER: Oh, I used to do a lot of them, yeah. This, this….

JB: Who would do the rest of them? The artist?

KREMER: Yeah. I would lay out some title pages, you know, or the guy would leave a blank space and I would put the lettering in. These are all my lettering [interior story logos].

JB: I think title logos are very important. They really define the look and feel of a comic or a whole line.

KREMER: I’m glad you mentioned that. “Richie Rich” originally had an upper and lower case logotype that I thought was very appealing.

However, Harvey had a son who’s slightly dyslexic. Apparently he had serious trouble reading, but could read all caps better than caps and lower-case. On the strength of this fact, they made us change the

JB: You did “Murder at Moro Castle” [Chamber of Chills #12]?

KREMER: [giggles] I forgot about it! Oh, my God. I would never have known. I just completely forget these things. I look at it and I see, I know it’s mine.

JB: This must have taken forever, this story “Zodiac” [Witches Tales #18].

KREMER: I remember when I used to do that horror stuff, I used to pencil and ink. I think I did two pages a day, was all I could do.

JB: You have a real nice story in here [“Amnesia,” Chamber of Chills #17].

KREMER: Oh yeah. I remember. It’s about the guy and the Devil. You devil, you. [laughs] Oh, here’s the barber chair one [Chamber of Chills #18]. They changed [my rough sketch]. Eh, it’s still a barber chair. You see now, now this is definitely [Joe] Certa [“Atom,” in Chamber of Chills #18].

Certa used to get mad at me because I used to have him make changes.

Now that’s mine [Tomb of Terror #1 cover]. And the head was supposed to be so horrible that they told me to draw it up behind the logotype.

JB: [laughs] How can the back of the head be horrible?

KREMER: Well, they weren’t taking any chances. I did the coloring. I did

54

Warren Kremer On Casper The Friendly Ghost And Other Haunts

Warren Remembrance Sooner or later, it seems, everybody works with the legendary Joe Simon!

The above photo of Warren Kremer (seated) with Joe, the co-creator of Captain America, The Boy Commandos, True Romance, Fighting American, Sick magazine, et al., was taken circa 1972 in the Harvey offices, for whom Simon & Kirby did fine work on Stuntman, Captain 3-D, et al. Following the end of their partnership, Jack Kirby still drew such S&K-style Harvey covers as that of the Code-approved Black Cat Mystic #60 (Nov. 1957). Thanks to Mark Arnold & Alan Harvey for the photo—and to Mike Burkey for the BCM art scan.

But this has been a Warren Kremer interview, after all—so let’s close with one of Kremer’s handful of finished horror covers, for Black Cat Mystery #36 (June 1952)—and his cover for the 5th issue of 1970s “Harvey World”/Tempo Books paperbacks featuring Casper, Richie Rich, and friends, as showcased in Comic Book Artist V1#19. [Cover art ©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

“Strange Things Went On In Those Days”

55

longer sign checks. Leon signed all the checks. There were terrible cliques.

People were either in Leon’s camp or Alfred’s camp. If you were friendly to Leon, Alfred would be very mad at you. It wasn’t so bad the other way; Leon didn’t care so much.

At one point, Alfred claimed that he invented Richie Rich. [As I mentioned before, Richie] was something I invented completely. He was named after my son Richard. But Alfred had some story about how Buddy Rich lived next door to him, and he got the name from him or something.

His wife was very mad at me; she said she had proof, papers that proved that Alfred created Richie Rich. I said I could produce papers, too. After that Alfred was pretty cool towards me, I dealt with Leon more.

Speaking Of Spooks…

Alfred Harvey some years back, promoting Casper to a live audience— utilizing a pic of the Friendly Ghost quite possibly drawn by Warren Kremer.

Thanks to Mark Arnold, who received the photo some time back from Alan Harvey for his use in his magazine The Harveyville Fun Times.

But I will say that I worked for over 30 years with the Harveys freelance and never had a day without work. Other freelancers would come to me and say, you know, such-and-such company is cutting back for the summer or something, do you have any work for me? I always felt lucky, because that never happened to me and some of the other inner circle Harvey staff. They would always have me keep producing material even if there was a cutback and they didn’t immediately need it. In fact, when they suspended publication, I was still producing stuff for them for quite a period after that.

a lot of coloring on these covers. I mean, there was a time...all the “Richie Rich” covers I took over completely. I did everything. I wouldn’t let anybody else do it.

JB: Did you work on the 3-D books?

KREMER: Oh, yeah! Well, what I did on the 3-D books was a lot of behind the scenes stuff, you know. I did [roughs of] covers for them, and like that. This is my cover sketch [Adventures in 3-D #2]. Nostrand did the cover. So costly to put these things out. Now, this is Avison. You know, he’s dead. He died a couple of months ago. I got a call from Mrs. Harvey, crying on the phone, telling me all about it. Here they are, suing me... [laughs]

“People Were Either In Leon’s Camp Or Alfred’s Camp” JB: Why are they suing you?

KREMER: They’re suing... maybe I shouldn’t tell you this until the thing is settled.

JB: Oh, OK. What was it like to work for the Harveys?

KREMER: You know, in the ’50s, Alfred had a heart attack. Eventually he recovered, but his speech was aphasic. That is, he would leave out words or be garbled, and not be aware of it. I used to tell people who went in to discuss a job with him, “If you don’t understand something, be sure to ask and to get it clear.” They’d come out, “What does he want me to do?” I’d say, “I told you to ask!” And they’d say, “Well, I couldn’t.” After you worked with him regularly, you could usually understand what he meant.

Sid Jacobson got very adept at understanding him.

But after a while, Alfred began to spend money without any restraint.

On one job we were doing, a promotional publication for some sport, he kept sending it back and back for changes. And this thing was a giveaway!

It was going to be given out to the fans, and it had a fixed purchase price from the agency that was buying it. It was the most expensive publication of that kind that ever came out, because of his changes. So finally, various longstanding employees went to Leon and said that Alfred was going to bankrupt the company. He didn’t want to do anything about it for a long time, but finally he could see that it was true, so they had a board of directors meeting, and voted Alfred out as President, and voted in Leon.

Alfred still ran the company, made the business decisions, but he could no

About Face!

On p. 28, vintage Harvey editor Sid Jacobson mentions how Kremer designed the face on this cover for the oft-reprinted “Colorama” by crumpling up a self-caricature and drawing the way it then looked to him. In fact, that story from Black Cat Mystery #45 (Aug. 1953) is discussed in each of the four “Harvey Horror” pieces in this issue! Thanks to Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., for the scan. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

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“Come Back When You Learn How To Draw” Artist KEN SELIG Talks About Harvey’s Early Comics Code Days Conducted by Jim Amash

Transcribed by Brian K. Morris

K

en Selig has had a long career, dating back to 1954, when he started at Harvey Publications as a production man, before becoming an inker and art director. After his Harvey days, Ken began inking for Archie Comics, where his work continues to appear in many Archie digests. From our private conversations, I know Ken is proud of having spent his life doing fun, wholesome comics for a young audience, not to mention the adults who also need a good laugh now and then. Since this month’s Alter Ego concentrates on Harvey Publications, I thought it was time to give credit to this dedicated cartoonist who has always been too modest to say much about himself.

And since he is that way, we spent most of our time discussing some of the people he knew at Harvey, and in the process, learn a little bit about Ken, too. Special thanks goes to my good buddy Don Mangus for his diligent research, and to Ken for taking the time to share good memories of a good company, now gone, but certainly not forgotten. —Jim.

I Ink, Therefore I Am (Above:) Ken Selig working on an “Archie” page at a Holiday Inn while traveling in 2008. Incidentally, Teresa R. Davidson, who helped out her friend Jim Amash by forwarding this photo to us, says that she lettered the story he’s working on. Note that his makeshift drawing board is propped up by an ironing board. Thanks to Ken for all photos accompanying this article—and to Jim Amash & Teresa R. Davidson for forwarding them.

(Left:) A page from Archie Double Digest #199 (Aug. 2009) that features Selig’s inks. Unfortunately, these publications don’t give credits, and Ken Is uncertain of the penciler, or when the story may have originally run. Jim Amash believes the page was penciled either by Pat Kennedy or his brother Jim. [©2009 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

“A Board Man” JIM AMASH: Let’s start with Alfred Harvey.

KEN SELIG: Well, the biggest impression that Alfred Harvey made on me was with my youthful orientation, such as it was. Newspapers, more than comic books, meant everything to me. I didn’t come aboard Harvey Publications until 1954, although I did have an experience where I was turned away from Harvey in 1948, when I was in the High School of Music and Art in New York. During a brief vacation, I went up to Harvey, and was seen by a female editor who was really a rough sort, but I did have an impression from her that there was an honesty to it. What she had said to me was not too kindly: “Come back when you learn how to draw.”

JA: There were two women editors there. One was Ann Barrett and the other was Louise Hill, who I think was who you were talking to. Do you remember anything about her?

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A Little White-Out For “Little Audrey” A “Little Audrey” half-page filler drawn for Archie by artist Steve Mufatti in 1951. Ken says, “These would come into the art department needing white-out in Audrey’s hair”—and it was Selig’s job as a production artist to apply it. Little Audrey had begun life as a series of Paramount cartoons between 1947 & 1959. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

SELIG: I wouldn’t be able to put a name to her. She was something like a female in that Dick Powell movie, Murder, My Sweet, [chuckles] meaning that she was an arm-twister. But what I picked up from her was an aspiration that I had a respect for, meaning that she was telling it the way it was. And a guy like myself who was seeing himself as something like a hotshot who was going to burst on the scene and immediately write the next Great American Comic Strip... it obviously—just from her manner with me—was not going to happen. What she did was that she put me in my place.

She was not there when I came back in 1954. That’s when I began to see the editors, Alfred Harvey per se. My first impression was because I was interviewed by the art director, Otto Pirkola, and then he called in Leon Harvey. Leon Harvey was the man who really gave me a grilling. Later on, his brother Alfred came in, a real big guy and very impressive. I was also introduced to Robert [Harvey] at the same time. I was a student at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School, where I’d gotten a recommendation from Silas Rhodes to go to Harvey. All three of them represented newspapermen to me, and that was, to me, all-important. I really wasn’t into comic books, I was into newspapers, but I needed work badly. I gathered from Otto Pirkola that the job was mine if I wanted it, and I would be replacing a fellow by the name of Don Heck. I got a job as a board man.

“They Were Twins, You Know” JA: What a terrible thought: “unnecessary cleavage.” Okay, who actually hired you?

SELIG: Leon Harvey and Otto Pirkola.

JA: Describe each person’s function, beginning with Alfred.

SELIG: Alfred, being the president since 1940, was the man who originated the company, but he had brought in his brothers, Leon and then Robert. He started the company with Pocket Comics. Alfred wasn’t that self-evident. There was some kind of an agreement between Alfred and Leon— they were twins, you know—where the art department was Leon’s domain, and the editorial department was Alfred’s. Sid Jacobson was the chief editor, even though he may not have been called that.

He sat in the room that was just bordering on Alfred’s office, so he had a lot more to do with Alfred than I did.

JA: Describe what a “board man” is for readers who may not know that term.

SELIG: For the most part, a retoucher.

When the end product came in from the cartoonists and the writer, it occasionally needed touching up or reviewing, and a board man’s job was to make corrections.

When I signed on at Harvey, I was given a very difficult assignment: to adjust bust lines of the female characters in our comics.

This was after Dr. Wertham and the Senate hearings about crime comics. The Harveys had to toe the line, and the unnecessary cleavage had to be eliminated.

Hittin’ ‘Em With Their Pocket Book Pocket Comics #1 (Aug. 1941) was Harvey’s first comic book— and was, as the name implies, “pocket-size,“ though with 100 pages. The art has been (very tentatively) credited to Bob Powell by the Grand Comic-Book Database. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

I was very impressed by Leon’s very polite manner. Alfred was a little more flamboyant. Alfred was what I called an ex-newspaperman. Harvey Comics at that time dealt with the newspaper syndicates.

This is one of the reasons why I wanted to work there. I thought if I couldn’t get onto a newspaper, which I tried very hard for, I could get as close to a newspaper as possible. It was this company, Harvey Comics, which in 1945 started publishing Terry and the Pirates comics. That meant to me that they had some kind of affiliation with the Chicago Tribune, New York News, and I had an idea I could fit in there somehow.

JA: Harvey was publishing a lot of newspaper strips as comic books, like Dick Tracy, Kerry Drake, and Steve Canyon.

SELIG: Yes, and Alfred was what you might call the editorial director, but their functions seemed to overlap. By their own

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calling, they each had a division that they seemed to supervise. In my case, it was the art department with Leon, who had no real art credentials at all. He was not a cartoonist, but he had a very strong design sense. He was an extremely good letterer, by the way. While I was there, he took classes at Pratt Art Institute in New York to learn lettering. The brothers had class and the respect of newspaper people. That’s why they had so many newspaper strips come into their bin. Robert Harvey, who was very much on the quiet side, was a former Financial Editor for The Brooklyn Eagle. He handled the financial part of the business.

Otto Pirkola, whom he hired as the art director, was a master of logos.

Otto was largely responsible for the logo look of Harvey Comics. Otto came aboard about 1949 from McFadden Publications. Otto was an unsung hero at Harvey, because I always considered the comic book as a poster. He gave the comic books a posterish look with his logos, and that’s the first thing you saw. You didn’t see the body of the cover when you looked at the usual newsstand or candy store where you bought your comics. You saw the logo first, so it had to stand out. Otto had a very friendly nature, meaning that when he saw me, he sort-of realized that I was a young fellow who was pretty much like himself. I had to be instructed by Otto in how to peel a piece of masking tape. He saw me fumbling with this double-backed masking tape, and I said to him, “I don’t think you really want me here. I don’t know how to handle this stuff,” because I’d not been in an art department before then.

We had a very good office manager, Florence Buckley. Her husband was involved in newspapers, too, so she was full of stories that always enchanted me. You’ve got to realize, while I was at Harvey, I was constantly trying to sell the Great American Comic Strip, taking it around to syndicates, getting plenty of rejections, then actually having a meeting with Mike Esposito, who happened to come from my neighborhood, Ridgeway, Queens. Mike graduated from the High School of Music and Art, and his parents owned the local fruit and vegetable store. In my mother’s purchasing of things at Mike’s emporium, I got to know Mike.

Mike was six years older than me, and he was already in the comic book business. He was working for Fox Features Syndicate. We’re talking now about what took me into Harvey, and what propelled me into the comic business. It was a guy like Mike Esposito, whom I had a great respect for.

He was damn good at doing comics.

JA: Pirkola was in charge of the art department, and Leon was in charge of Otto. Who gave you your assignments? Who would say, “Ken, I want you to clean up these pages?”

SELIG: Sid would bring the pages in, and would consult with Alfred or

whoever he had to. Sometimes it was the advertising personnel, who happened to be Vicki Lorne. That would be Alfred’s future wife (at that time she was not). Alfred was then married to Lyla. Sid was actually the man who ordered the pages from the artists and the writers.

JA: Right, because he was the editor. So he’d bring the pages into Alfred.

SELIG: And they would go back to Sid, who would bring them in and tell me what was needed to be done on them. Actually, Otto was overseeing this. Otto kept a close ear on anything that came into the art department.

He wouldn’t necessarily hear all of the instructions. It’s really a matter of everything being so blasted friendly that I don’t think anybody told anybody what to do. It’s just that we knew what had to be done. I had to do the erasing or retouching. Occasionally, as the years went by, I seemed to do a lot more inking than I did at the beginning. Sid was always on my side. Everybody seemed to try to give me an angle into the more creative parts of being a board man. Inking was one of the more creative parts of it. I did ink, but mostly on promotional material, never on the regular books.

JA: Then the art department was loose enough that either Sid or Otto or Leon might have told you what to do. It didn’t sound like there was a rigid structure there.

SELIG: In truth, the man who I had to sort-of cater to, if there was anyone, was Leon. Otto was accountable to Leon and I was accountable to Otto, who was accountable not so much to Sid, but to the principals.

JA: And Robert was the business and accounting end.

SELIG: Yes, he served as the head of the financial part of Harvey Comics all the years that I knew him. He had a very stately nature. He dressed very well... he always looked like he belonged more at a racetrack, I think, than behind a desk. [mutual chuckling] Robert Harvey was a really nice guy. Each of them was. They had their own peculiarities that sometimes could exasperate you, but everybody has sides to them.

JA: Well, the brothers themselves didn’t get along all the time, either.

SELIG: That’s what everybody says, but they got along well enough so that they would never argue with anybody else but themselves. That says a lot about bloodlines, meaning that you can talk to your relatives in a different way than from the rest of the world. I think that even though they were at it hammer and tongs, in all the time that I’ve known them, I think they actually had a genuine respect for each other. I know Robert did. Robert was that kind of a person. The whole Harvey Comics was very family-oriented. I think that the reason I was hired at Harvey was because I think they viewed me as family. And quite frankly, I came to view them as family, too.

I was very fond of so many of the younger people who have really helped me out over my 39 years with the Harvey company. So those young people who came on the scene: Alan Harvey and Russell Harvey; and from Leon’s side, it was his son Gerald, and daughter Adrienne. She had a lot of charm. Then with Robert’s own crew, he had three boys and a very nice gal, Alice.

“A One-Way Ticket To Palookaville” Ham Fisher drew this self-portrait for Martin Sheridan’s classic 1944 book Comics and Their Creators: Life Stories of American Cartoonists. Fisher’s heavyweight boxer creation Joe Palooka (seen in bkgd.) was for decades one of the most popular comic strips in America, and starred in many a Harvey comic book, also leading to such spinoffs as Humphrey and Little Max. [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

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“A Whole Enclave Of Harvey Comic Books” JA: Do you have any personal anecdotes about the Harvey brothers?

SELIG: They had a lot of visitors who came in from the newspaper world.

Alfred Harvey was really good friends with Ham Fisher. Ham Fisher could be very pushy, very demanding. And here I was, a 24-year-old hotshot. They called me that because that’s how I viewed myself. That’s why I feel bad about this story that I’m going to tell you. Ham Fisher and Alfred Harvey were going over some future Joe Palooka books. Ham Fisher had shoved a whole group of pencils at me and said, “Sharpen my pencils.” I didn’t like how that was done, because it was too much of an insult to my delicate constitution. I started to give the pencils back to Ham Fisher, and I said to him, “I only sharpen my own pencils.” But Otto Pirkola, who was standing right at the next desk from me, interjected because he knew I was kind-of proud. He took the pencils and sharpened them for Ham Fisher. He said to me, “All right, you can go back to what you were doing.” It was just a few months later that Ham Fisher committed suicide.

JA: What were the offices like?

SELIG: We’re talking now about 1860 Broadway at 61st Street, one block

Give My Regards to 1860 Broadway Ken reports that this photo was taken in July of 1969 in the Harvey art department, when the company was located at 1860 Broadway in Manhattan. Artist Howard Post is seen (standing) with Ken Selig, who adds: “Howard was probably expounding on the virtue of Mexican cigars while I pushed ‘Punch’ [another brand].“ The empty desk behind Ken he calls Otto Pirkola’s “vacation desk.”

away from Central Park, on the 15th floor. When you got off of the elevator, you were just outside of the sliding door reception area. You’re seeing the two walls as you go into the officer proper; you’re seeing a whole enclave of Harvey Comic books mounted on peg boards. At that time, there were so many titles that we published that those boards were full up. When you got inside, the reception area/switchboard was to your left and just behind the switchboard, in the next office over, was the accounting department, which was mastered by Ruth Henenfeld, who eventually became the comptroller of Harvey Publications. Ruth was more than just an accountant. At that time, she was friends with the Harvey women. Just behind Ruth’s office, of course, was Robert Harvey’s office—a very grand one, too. Each of the Harveys had a grand office.

JA: Were their offices next to each other?

SELIG: No, Bob was at the very front, and behind the accounting department. You next walked into the long corridor which led down to the advertising department on the right-hand side, which was a large office and that was held by, at that time, Vicki Lorne, Alfred’s future wife.

That was after the switchboard which was at the very front of the office.

Anybody who came in was stopped at the switchboard, and from there was led to the so-called conference room, which was down this corridor I mentioned. That’s where I was interviewed for my employment at Harvey

by Leon Harvey and Otto Pirkola, and anybody else who needed privacy was led there. One of the interesting facts, though, is that it seemed like everybody wound up in the art department, which was past the corridor room on the right hand side. The art department was a fairly large room with an obvious Photostat machine and four desks.

JA: Who was working there when you started?

SELIG: It was just Otto and myself when I started. In back of the art department was the editorial department, and that was Sid Jacobson’s office. Behind Sid was Alfred Harvey’s office. There was always a pretense of coming into the art department for one reason or another, because it made for a lot of amiable conversation. The art department became the center point for all kinds of talk, scuttlebutt, whatnot.

“The Man From The World Of ‘D’” The first of the three splash pages in Captain 3-D #1-and-only (Dec. 1953), produced by the team of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby, apparently with some aid from veteran Mort Meskin and newcomer Steve Ditko. Harvey’s mags contained some of the best 3-D effects on the market, but the fad didn’t last long. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

JA: There was another editor, but he may have been gone by the time you got there.

SELIG: Perry Antoshak—but he was not present on the scene when I was there.

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Artist Ken Selig Talks About Harvey’s Early Comics Code Days

JA: He married Warren Kremer’s wife’s sister. He edited horror and adventure.

SELIG: I did not know that. When I started at Harvey, that was the end of the sordid excursion that Harvey took into horror, which I’m happy to say they got rid of. From there, they went on to another unfortunate fiasco, the 3-D comics. Leon Harvey sort-of took care of the 3-D comics, and he was intrigued with 3-D. He really thought that it had something going for it. They only did two [sic] 3-D issues: Captain 3-D [packaged by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby] and a Little Dot 3-D. They didn’t work out. At that point, Alfred Harvey had not bought the Paramount Pictures characters. I think it was ’56 when they purchased the Paramount package. That’s when things came alive. That’s when Warren Kremer came into his own, I thought. He came in on select days, but most of his work was done at home in New Jersey.

“Jim Miele [And] Hot Stuff” JA: Did you know Jim Miele, who was a writer?

SELIG: Jim Miele was a very good friend. He was doing stories that he would funnel to Sid. To my knowledge, he never had direct contact with the Harveys, except when Hot Stuff came on the scene.

JA: Did he create the Hot Stuff character?

SELIG: That’s an area of dispute by many people. Jim Miele would come into the art department, and he was a talkative person, always with a pretext of being there on business. But really, why he was there was because he wanted to talk and spin anecdotes.

me was because the Harveys happened to be Lutheran, and he was testing it out on Otto and me. Otto was also a Scandinavian Protestant. Miele was testing it out on us to see what we thought of it, religious-wise. Both Otto and I liked it; and frankly, I thought it was great. It wasn’t even mentioned that this would be a future character by itself. When I saw the final character sketches that Warren drew, it knocked me out, they were so good. A lot has to be said for the fact that Warren had the ability to translate something which was basically crude, because Jim Miele was not an artist—not at all. Although I should add this: Jim Miele, once again, was one of the newspapermen that I always keep saying were so important. He had a strip that ran only at Christmastime.

JA: It was The Snowman’s First Christmas, done by Miele and Herb Rogoff, and the artist was Marv Levy. [See Alter Ego #42 & #75.]

SELIG: That’s the one. Miele did so many covers; he was a great gag man.

He was one of Sid’s favorites, and justifiably so, although Sid had many gag writers. Jim Miele’s covers had kind-of like a Gulliver’s Travels innocence about them, that could have been accrued from him serving so much time at the Fleischer studios [producers of Gulliver’s Travels].

There must be hundreds of funny stories about Jim Miele, but it gets into an area where you cannot print things. Many a martini I had with Jim Miele; and Jim, unfortunately, went overboard on the martinis. Well, he had been divorced, and he had a very strong friendship with Steve Muffatti , who also worked at the Fleischer Studios. They were drinking companions too. I believe Steve, unfortunately, had a drinking problem,

JA: So Miele had done a one-pager with a devil character, and Alfred Harvey didn’t like it....

SELIG: It’s not that he didn’t like it. It’s just that he was suspicious whether we should print it, because we were very much concerned about the Bible Belt being one of our principal areas of sales.

JA: Then two weeks later…

SELIG: It could be three, it could be four, it could be eight weeks, but it seemed to me like “Hot Stuff “ became very important to Harvey.

Obviously, by this time, what must have happened was that Alfred saw that it still had a potential in spite of him being nervous about it. He must have asked Warren Kremer to make some character sketches of it.

JA: Who did the drawing on the one-pager that Jim Miele had done?

SELIG: That was Warren Kremer, I would guess, because I’m thinking now about the main character of that one-pager, and that was “Marie,” a very nice-looking blonde fairy. I can remember that being Warren Kremer’s style.

JA: Who had the idea to put the Devil in there? Was it Miele?

SELIG: That would be Miele. It was Miele’s one-pager, but he did a lot of stories through Sid. Sid was Jim Miele’s overseer.

JA: It sounds like Jim Miele and Warren Kremer created the visual.

SELIG: Yes, but add this to it: The character that I was shown, why Jim was there at all, was he was trying to get the feel of our reaction to this character. I can remember saying, “I like it.” The reason why he gave it to

Gag Me With A Spook!

According to Selig, this montage used as the cover of a Harveyville Fun Times compilation contains “some of [writer] Jim Miele’s cover gags, [including] one by me (Casper unhooking bait). Note the finely honed Otto Pirkola logos.” Miele is seen at left, in a photo originally supplied by artist Marv Levy. [©2009 Harvey Entertainment, Inc.]

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Hogarth, but beyond that, people who were even more important to me were Jerry Robinson and Lee Elias, who at that time, were both newspapermen of some sort—Lee Elias more of a magazine illustrator for Life magazine. Actually, while I was in Lee Elias’ class, he was doing a story that he’d taken over for Noel Sickles, illustrating some aspect of the Second World War, regarding ships. I liked Lee Elias very much.

I should mention there is something that is mighty odd about all of the vast friendships that I did develop in those years. Actually, every one of them emerged from a common interest in music, either classical music or jazz or swing. Lee Elias was a first-rate violinist with a very large classical repertoire. Well, you had a question about Pirkola, didn’t you?

“People Like Irving Manheimer Kept Harvey Alive” JA: Yes, we were talking about Pirkola.

SELIG: Right. Otto Pirkola introduced me to Leon Harvey because he liked my work. His father was a carpenter who actually built his own house in Montauk, Long Island. Otto was a first-rate carpenter himself and a car enthusiast. Whenever anybody came into the art department, it seemed to me that with Otto there, they only spoke about two things: building houses and fixing cars. [One guy] who was big on that was Bob Powell, who would talk with Otto at length about cars.

Cat On A Hot Tin Press Lee Elias splash page for Black Cat #27 (Feb. 1951). Repro’d from a scan of the original art, with thanks to Mike Burkey. [©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

too. That’s an unfair thing to say. Everybody drank in those days. There was only one distinction that had to be made: Were you a happy drinker or a nasty drinker? I’m glad to say that Jim certainly was far from being a nasty drinker. He had a lovable nature. Jim lived in a one-room apartment on upper Broadway, 22nd Street, and his big time out was on Sunday nights when he would go to foreign films. He was nuts about foreign films, and he, being Italian, got a great kick out of things that were coming out at that time. I’m talking now about 1955 to 1960, Divorce Italian Style, things like that.

He was always coming in with some anecdote he would find in the newspaper. He would bring that in and he would elaborate on it. There was one foot up on the chair while I was at the drawing board, and, “Yes, Jim. Yes, Jim. Keep going, Jim.” And he kept going nonstop until Leon would come into the art department, and then abruptly Jim would be looking up and very diligently trying to give the pose of a man earnestly at work, looking for an idea from my loose-leaf binder of our covers, so it was all a bluff. But typical of Leon, he never made a big deal of it. He knew that Jim was just wasting Harvey time. And from Jim’s standpoint, he wasn’t wasting time, but he was feeding himself as writers have to feed themselves. He got along with Otto, too, very well. There isn’t a person who didn’t get along with Otto. He’s got to be mentioned more than he is.

The fact is that he is the one who had gone to the Cartoonists and Illustrators School, and had seen my work that was posted. This was the same way as when George Wunder knew about me from some work that was in the annual exhibit at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School. In my case, I had been selected by Wunder to assist on Terry and the Pirates.

That was my big break and I thought, “Well, life has really gone great for me now.” And just one week later, I got my draft notice for Korea. That nipped that in the bud because, two and a quarter years later, when I came out, the job was obviously no longer there.

When I got out of the Army, I went back to the school with the G.I. Bill for six months. It was like a crash course in cartooning, because I found myself in contact with [artist and fabled art teacher] Burne

Otto had not married, but for a very good reason. He did have a nice love, a 26-year-old lady, and Otto was probably 35. She passed away.

Apparently, that was the plight of his life, so he elected to stay home with his mother and father. He had once worked for McFadden Publications.

Florence Buckley asked Otto to come over from—I think it was Redbook.

So he was hired about 1948 or ’9, and retired around 1970.

When I arrived at Harvey, Marty Epp was there, but he was sort-of like a freelancer, on staff only for a very few weeks’ time. Marty Epp and Otto Pirkola both came from the same area of Long Island, Freeport. Marty was a diabetic at that time, constantly eating oranges. He went on to become a darn good inker at Archie Comics.

JA: Did you know Irving Manheimer?

SELIG: Yes, but only casually. Somehow it had gotten through to Irving Manheimer that I was not quite the ordinary person that you would find in the art department. As a consequence, I talked a lot with Irving Manheimer, but I didn’t know what I was talking about, because he was the President of the PDC [Publisher Distributor Company].

It seemed to me that people like Irving Manheimer kept Harvey alive. I think Sid Jacobson might back me up on this. Harvey owed a lot of money to the engravers. Inevitably, it was a hand-to-mouth existence in comics in those days. You had your good season and, inevitably, you’d have your bad season. It seems like we did our best during recession times. We had one time where, unfortunately, Robert Harvey very embarrassedly came to everybody in the office, then very touchingly came to me to say that he knew how badly I needed the money at that time, because I was the sole support for my mother and sister. He said, “We can’t make payroll for this week. Could you just stay with us until we get it sorted out?” Which, of course, was all right with me. I took them at their word.

If they said they were having a tough time, I believed them.

That was the great thing about Harvey. I trusted them and they trusted me, too. I’m going to jump to 25 years later, when the Harvey warehouse was sold off. I had access to all of the original art by myself. I was given the assignment by Sally Harvey to oversee the sell-off of all of the warehouse material. I had access to all of the Milton Caniff strips that had not been sent back to the Tribune Syndicate. As enticing as all of that was, I never took one piece of artwork from that warehouse.

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Demonizing Draut

JA: You mentioned Lee Elias.

Didn’t you help him on a couple of Beyond Mars strips?

SELIG: Actually, it was two Beyond Mars that I inked, and then I put in panel borders in on something that he had brought in while he was my instructor at the School. He was a very gentile, quiet kind of a man, reserved in his way. Despite all of that adventuresome Black Cat that he drew, you would not take him for a cartoonist. Quite frankly, by his own standards, he was not a cartoonist, he was a violinist. He loved his music.

JA: He seemed to be one of the favorite artists of the non-humor stuff at Harvey.

SELIG: Yes, because he was the kind of a man the Harveys liked to deal with. He underplayed his personality, and they seemed to like that kind of person. For all I know, I may be like that, too. It made for a very firm friendship from them to him. Lee was in dispute with his wife at the time, where he did all this work of his own choosing. He lived in the garage at the back of the house that they owned. That’s where he had his studio and played his violin.

JA: Did he perform in public, or was that just private?

SELIG: I do know of one occasion where he performed in public. I don’t know if it was for charity or what, but he did perform publicly because he was good enough to do that.

Incidentally, now that we’re on the subject—it’s your own fault for bringing these things up—[one person] who was also part of the Harvey family was Evelyn Johnson, Alfred Harvey’s personal secretary, who was married to Thruston Johnson, a first-rate performer of classical music. I have a sneaking suspicion that either Evelyn Johnson found Lee Elias to

Bill Draut, with bowtied boss-man Joe Simon, in a detail from a circa-1949 photo of the Simon & Kirby studio personnel. Framing it are a Draut “Red Demon” splash (curiously, with the word “Red” absent from the logo)—and the “Jack Quick Frost“ splash from Harvey’s Unearthly Spectaculars #3 (March 1967). Selig says Draut drew “Tiger Man,” but that feature in #1 & #2, actually titled “Tiger Boy,” was drawn by Doug Wildey and Gil Kane, respectively.

“JQF” script probably by Otto Binder. The late-1940s “Red Demon” story is repro’d from its reprinting in Vintage Comic Classics #1 (1990), from LorneHarvey Publications, Inc., which also reissued much of the Elias Black Cat and Harvey horror material; all of Lorne-Harvey’s dozen-plus issues are well worth having—if you can find them! Thanks to Jonathan Ingersoll for the “JQF” scan.

[Red Demon art ©2009 Lorne-Harvey Publications, Inc.; JQF art ©2009 Harvey Publications or successors in interest.]

bring into Harvey, or Lee Elias found Evelyn Johnson. What is really great about our comics scene is that all of us seem to dip into more serious areas of life, to feed our comics aspirations. I know so many jazz musicians who were so important to me. All of us seem to live with either music or theatre. Ernie Colón was fascinated with theatre, and was also a performer.

“Hiya, Joe” JA: In the mid-’50s, Joe Simon started editing for Harvey again, doing Western Tales, among other books. Did you see much of Joe at that time?

SELIG: Yes. He’s like one of the guys who would drift in through the door.

He would plant his feet down and you’d have to unglue him from the floor that he was speaking from.

JA: [chuckles] Was Jack Kirby with him, or was Joe solo?

SELIG: No, always Joe by himself. Leon had strict rules about who should be brought into the office. If anybody was brought into the office, you can be sure that they took a special place in the likings of Alfred, Leon, and Robert. Otherwise, you didn’t get past the conference room. So yes, there were plenty of guys I wished I’d had met, and Joe would tell me about them, but he never really brought them into the art department. Like Bill Draut, the man who did “The Red Demon.” “The Red Demon” was a backup in Terry and the Pirates. Draut was not an accomplished Caniff scenarist, but he had a quality to his work that I greatly respected. One of the great bonuses that I got was to work on Bill Draut’s stuff that Joe

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Simon packaged for the Harvey Thriller line.

JA: That was in the ’60s. There was “Tiger Man” [sic], and Warfront.

One Picture Is Worth, Etc. (Left:) Ken Selig hard at work, circa 1965.

(Below:) A gaggle of talented cartoonists at a birthday party for fellow artist Warren Kremer. From left to right are: Ernie Colón, Howard Post, Ken Selig, Angelo De Cesare, Warren Kremer. Date unknown.

SELIG: That’s what Bill Draut had done that was brought into the art department by Joe Simon, and needed some retouching. I had to do a logo for them.

Joe and I shared a common liking for cigars. Back then we smoked six a day. Now I’m down to three a day, and I understand Joe is, too. Joe always thought I was strapped for money, and that’s the truth. I was strapped most of the time. I didn’t make that grand an amount of money, obviously. It would be a matter of, “Hiya, Joe.” Just by the way I would say “Hiya, Joe,” he could guess, “How many cigars do you want?

[Jim laughs] Come on over.” I would go over there, of course, and he got a little bit health-conscious at that point, and he started to make his own food. Of course, we had been accustomed to going out to a little Broadway diner.

JA: What time period are you talking about here?

SELIG: I’m talking about the late ’70s, early ’80s, and into the early ’90s. I stopped seeing Joe when I had my leg taken. I couldn’t get up there as well as I could before because we were both walkers. We walked everyplace. I did a few advertising jobs for Joe. He had a client down on 23rd Street, and from his place, which was on 56th Street, we would walk down there and back, stopping along the way, sometimes, for a train. But then we’d stop in the Sunlight Restaurant. I used to take my lunch hours at four o’clock in the afternoon, which meant Martini Time, really. Joe would join me in that.

JA: Did you know Bob Powell?

SELIG: Not very well, but I knew the surrounding environment that Bob had around him: Howard Post, John Prentice, and Howard Nostrand, who all lived in that Long Island area where Bob Powell came from. Howard Post was the one who stood out in my mind. I personally rank in my own list of the best ten comic strips of all time, his The Dropouts newspaper

strip. I can’t say enough about Howard Post’s talent.

We haven’t really touched on Ernie Colón yet. Ernie is also one of the great happenings at Harvey. He came aboard in the art department one year after I did. He was brought to Harvey Publications by Vicki Lorne, who happened to be going to the Art Students League, which was just across the way from the Harvey offices. She and Ernie took a night class.

He was given a job in the art department as a board man for a year. We could talk about anything to each other, from religion to sex. This is all going on with Otto sitting at the back desk, listening. At any rate, here we are with Ernie Colón doing the same job I’m doing, but with this one big difference, Jim. There’s an obvious talent sitting in front of me. I had the best desk of all because I had the window. That always made me feel better when Ernie did better than me. I had the window at least. [mutual chuckling] Ernie would be plodding away on retouching pages, but he wanted to break out and do his own art. Leon had a real aversion to giving work to anybody who was on staff because he wanted everyone to arrive fresh the next day for work. He had told me that personally. It’s one of the reasons he didn’t give me any outside work. I didn’t do any inking until Warren Kremer requested that I do the inking for that Casper cover. That would be the one with the rocket on it, around the time of the Apollo space missions.

I had good friends at Harvey who knew my predicament. Jim Miele would feed me stories that he didn’t want to handle, mostly one-pagers for Sad Sack. I would give them to Jim, who turned them in as his own work.

JA: Since Jim Miele was not an artist, who penciled them?

Tune In, Turn On—Dropout!

A pair of 1978 dailies from Howard Post’s The Dropouts, which Ken rates as being on his “Top 10” list of newspaper comic strips. [©2009 United Features Syndicate, Inc.]

SELIG: Jim Miele was a writer, but I’m talking about the penciling. You see, our scripts were always done as very loose storyboards.

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Artist Ken Selig Talks About Harvey’s Early Comics Code Days

“The Wrong Character For The Bible Belt” JA: So the writers did little storyboards like the Archie writers today do. So when he’d hand you pages, what did you do with the pages?

SELIG: When I wrote the story, it was a onepager. Jim said, “You need some money, just do some writing,” so I drew the script/storyboard for the artist. I’m a pretty good writer, Jim. In fact, even Victor Gorelick [current Archie Comics editor] has asked me to do some writing for him. I just never got around to it because I figured I’d better do what I do best, and that’s inking. Anyway, many one-pagers went in there without my name on them. Miele paid me out of his own pocket. And quite frankly, many times, he couldn’t get it, and I would just forget about it. “Pay me when you can,” that kind of thing.

ation with movies. Ernie had an ability to make the stories just a touch more realistic without going too far. That was where the differences in the interpretation between Warren and Ernie came in. Warren’s was very much a Walt Disney type; he drew very lovable characters. Ernie’s work had a bit more sophistication than Warren’s. I would call Ernie the sophisticated interpreter of Casper. Could there be such a thing, because basically, the characters are just constructed on three ovals. Oddly enough, of those three ovals, Ernie added a sophistication. I think that’s a pretty fair statement because it doesn’t belittle Warren. In his area, Warren was really the king.

But what did I get more personal satisfaction from inking? A lot of times, it would be from Ernie’s work, rather than Warren’s. A lot of that work was promotional art. I did a lot of inking for promotions like Hot Stuff, the Little Devil. I mean the interpretation that came close to the Jim Miele version of Hot Stuff. He had hooves, rather than toes on his feet. That’s the first promotions I’m talking about now. Those are the ones that I inked.

Give Me Some Hot Stuff I guess you’d want to get back to Ernie Colón now. Let’s round out what I’ve been saying. With The cover of Hot Stuff, The Little Devil #1.

Art by Warren Kremer? [©2009 Harvey Ernie, Leon went against his own dictum. Ernie JA: Why the change from hooves to feet?

Entertainment, Inc.] had done a sample page of Casper, and did it so well that it was impossible for Leon to turn SELIG: Because of Alfred Harvey. And very wisely, I down his request to go freelance. I have a great liking for Ernie’s personthink, too. Or it could have been because of Warren? They were trying to ality and also for his drawing ability, especially if he can short-circuit his downplay the “little devil” appellation. By putting the hooves on him, you tendency to become an illustrator, rather than a cartoonist. I used to say had a character that might be the wrong character for the Bible Belt. to Ernie, “Your work is more illustrative. It should be more cartoony.”

JA: In regard to the first “Hot Stuff ” one-pager, I have a note stating that Those are the areas where we’d have a possible disagreement. His graphic Steve Muffatti drew that page, and not Warren Kremer. Apparently, novels today might go back to his illustrating days, but I have seen his Miele and Muffatti did a Hot Stuff prototype in an issue of Casper, interpretations of Casper where he’s one step ahead of Warren Kremer. according to my source.

That’s how good Ernie was. He brought a motion picture approach to the story. Any Colón story that you saw at that time, you could almost SELIG: I honestly don’t remember seeing Muffatti drawing any of the identify with a particular movie. There were characters who would fantasy characters. If I’m wrong, I want you to correct me. I only know emerge that you could pick out. There would be a Franklin Pangborn or a what happened to the extent that Jim Miele brought in a piece of paper in Groucho Marx in there someplace—some character that had an associhis hand that had six panels on it. The third panel happened to have a character who was what he called “a little devil.” It was ever so small a character, an incidental thing to the end of this one-page story. Now what happened to it after that, who it was assigned to for that page to be drawn by, I’d be surprised to hear that it was Steve Muffatti, because I don’t think Steve was doing anything at that time. Give Warren his credit. Warren is a man who really gave a presence to Hot Stuff.

“Everything I Do, I Owe To Steve Muffatti” JA: I’ve heard that Steve Muffatti created the original design of Richie Rich. Is that true?

SELIG: How did you get that idea?

JA: Don Mangus did some research for me for this interview. That was what he came up with. He also said that Steve Muffatti was Warren Kremer’s mentor.

SELIG: Warren said that himself many times to Otto and myself, when he’d come into the art department. Warren would plant his feet on a chair, usually Joe Rosen’s lettering chair. [laughs] And he would expound upon how “everything I do, I owe to Steve Muffatti.” Warren really was a

Rich As The Devil Ernie Colón drew this three-part “Atoman” adventure in Richie Rich #57 (May 1967), of which this is the second chapter. The whole story—and many more beside—is on view in the 2007 trade paperback Harvey Comics Classics, Volume Two - Richie Rich, the Poor Little Rich Boy. [©2009 Harvey Entertainment, Inc.]

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SELIG: Yes, the covers were all from George Baker. We had to do a lot of retouching on his covers because there was brutality shown in some of George Baker’s work. The character’s faces were always superbly drawn.

He used a Japanese and a pen; he got a particular kind of line out of that Japanese quill.

Who Ghost There?

According to the Dave Karlen Original Art Blog, this early “Casper” art is the work of artist Steve Muffatti, previously a top-of-the-line animator at the Fleischer Studios—including on the famous early-’40s Superman cartoons. [©2009 Harvey Entertainment, Inc.]

George had a lot of class. I viewed George Baker as not a comic book man, but a newspaperman. That’s probably why I had such respect for him. I liked George, and he liked me. He made his yearly visits, which meant he’d be in town for a week or more. Obviously, he must have been hitting the syndicate, too. They were still doing the newspaper strip, I think, at that time. King Features was right across the street from us.

That’s where Warren Kremer worked, by the way. He worked on Sad Sack. That’s how Warren came to know George Baker from way back. At one point, Warren was given the cover assignment on Sad Sack. I inked the cover, which was a passable imitation of George Baker. But Warren’s penciling was unusual to the extent that he had never been used before on Sad Sack. I liked George an awful lot, and felt like I was stealing something out of his bag, and I would never want to do that to him.

JA: Did you know Carl Wessler, who was a writer?

very compassionate man with a Catholic upbringing . He obviously knew that Muffatti was going through tough times, as was Jim Miele to a certain degree, as Jim was fighting his way out of that divorce that he was still paying heavily for. But how does that relate to Steve Muffatti creating the Richie Rich design?

JA: Apparently, he drew the earliest “Richie Rich” and “Little Dot” stories during the 1950s.

SELIG: You know, there might be something there, because “Richie Rich” did appear in the early ’50s, didn’t he? But not in his own title, of course.

It’s a strong possibility that Muffatti did the original stories.

JA: I heard that Jim Miele died at his desk.

SELIG: Yes, he did, and that happened at the Harvey offices. I saw him slump at his desk. There was nothing that anyone could do, poor man. He was a good guy.

JA: Let me ask you about George Baker.

SELIG: George Baker was one of the Harvey elite, meaning that he came out of Alfred Harvey’s bag from the Second World War. So George Baker meant an awful lot to Alfred personally, and to Vicki, also. She loved the guy. He was the godfather of Russell Harvey. He worked out of the West Coast. He lived with, I think it was aunts. He had a house and he had three, maybe two aunts that he lived with all of the time that I knew him.

When he came into New York, it was a banner event at Harvey. Alfred would wine and dine him.

JA: Baker created Sad Sack in the Army. Did he have any ownership of that character?

SELIG: He must have had, because he actually converted the character to a civilian capacity in the late ’40s. Bell Syndicate was handling Sad Sack, and I was not there in the late ’40s. But when I came aboard in 1954, Sad Sack was, at that point, going quite strong. At that point, also, Fred Rhoades was about to be thrown into the Sad Sack circle. Rhoades was a good fellow, too.

JA: Rhoades drew a lot of Sad Sack. [Ken agrees] Did Baker really draw the covers?

Forged In War George Baker’s Sad Sack was one of the most successful comic strips (and characters) to come out of World War II. According to the online Wikipedia and other sources, Baker said that the 1944 ink portrait at left “was done by a very good friend, Sergeant Gregor Duncan, of the European Stars and Stripes, a short time before he was killed in the Allied advance on Rome.” [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

The sequence at right was reprinted in 1991 in Lorne-Harvey’s The Original Sad Sack #1. [©2009 Sad Sack, Inc.]

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Artist Ken Selig Talks About Harvey’s Early Comics Code Days

This Time It’s Personal (Above:) A 2008 photo of Ken Selig and his lovely wife Helen.

(Right:) This montage, Ken says, was the result of “a Bill Janocha request for a brief bio for the National Cartoonists Society annual.”

[Art ©2009 Ken Selig.]

SELIG: No, but Lenny Herman, Stan Kaye... they were two people who I consider top writers. They were brought aboard by that remarkable man, Sid Jacobson. He had a fast friendship with both of them. Stan Kaye was out of King Features. Lenny Herman was somebody that I especially liked. That man had the purest kind of humor that I think I’ve ever seen in my lifetime in comics, aside from Howard Post, who I thought was remarkable for the purity of his humor. Lenny and Sid Jacobson were very close. Lenny wrote for Sid on Marvel’s Star Comics line in the 1980s.

Lenny was an ex-newspaper man himself. Virtually everybody I knew

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

A quarter of a million records, covering the careers of people who have contributed to original comic books in the US. Shane Foley homage to a Lee Elias panel from Tomb of Terror #8 (March 1953), featuring our “maskot” Alter Ego. [Alter Ego TM & ©2009 Roy & Dann Thomas.]

seems to have been involved in newspapers.

JA: Did you know Ben Brown?

SELIG: Ben Brown, a wonderful man from Great Barrington, Massachusetts, or originally from New York. But yes, I know Ben Brown and I loved Ben Brown. That’s a man who should still be with us. He had a stroke about eight years ago. I had the habit of going up to Vermont, which is about the only place I go. My compass only points north, and Vermont is a place we’d go every summer, up there to Great Barrington where Ben and his wife fell in love, and made their home. He actually became a sheriff of Great Barrington. Ben Brown also served as an art director for Harvey Publications when I left that job, which I had taken over from Otto. When Ben left that job after a year or so, I came back as the art director.

JA: We haven’t talked about Sid Couchey.

SELIG: Sid Couchey was a virtual unknown to me because he lived in New Hampshire, and seldom came to New York. But he was friends with Sid Jacobson. He did a lot of work, but he had a very limited drawing style. When he drew Little Lotta, it was somewhat too exaggerated, and I never really cared for it that much. But I stand ready to be corrected only for this reason: so many people like Sid Couchey’s version of Little Lotta and Little Dot, so there must be something there that I don’t relate to. But, for the most part, I liked the people who worked at Harvey, and the work they did. We all did our best to make good, clean humor comics for kids.

KEN SELIG Checklist [NOTE: The following brief Checklist is adapted from information in the online Who’s Who of American Comic Books (1928-1999), established

by Jerry G. Bails; see website ad. Names of features which appeared both in magazines with that title and in other publications, as well, are not italicized below. Key: (a) = art; (p) = pencil; (i) = ink.]

Name: Ken Selig (b. 1932) (artist; production; art director; editor; colorist) MAINSTREAM U.S. COMIC BOOKS:

Archie Comic Publications, Inc.: various, mid-1980s to present Harvey Comics: cartoon/funny animals (p)(i) 1954- ; Casper (p)(i) 1954- ; Richie Rich (p)(i) 1954- ; support (art director) 197083; support (assistant art director) 1945-69, under Otto Pirkola; support (managing editor) 1985- ; support (production manager) 1984-85

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

books she liked and was told ‘corpsies.’ This baffled the researcher (that name would fit so many!). It finally developed when she produced the book that she meant ‘Kewpies.’ It was one of the very few artistic comic books [but]… what was impressed on this child’s mind… were the ‘corpsies’ she had seen in the crime comic books of her friends.” Corpsies? Yipes! Get that poor kid some Xanax®, Doc!

Introduction

by Michael T. Gilbert

M

ost comic fans are familiar with Seduction of the Innocent, Dr. Fredric Wertham’s comicskewering bestseller from 1954. But, truth be told, how many of you have actually read it? I blush to admit that I hadn’t, despite getting a copy in a trade some years ago. Well, I finally cracked it open—and found a steaming heap of, uh, “knowledge” to wade through!

It’s also filled with unintentionally hilarious, jawdropping statements. As a public service, we at Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt have gone through all 297 pages and tossed out all that boring “educational” stuff willynilly, and collected the stupid stuff. In the local parlance, it’s called “shooting fish in a barrel.” Your humble host has also taken the opportunity to insert a few snarky comments where appropriate.

***

Wertham illo from Ladies Home Journal (Nov. 1953). [©2009 Ladies Home Journal.]

P. 229: Wertham related this amusing exchange between a nine-year-old boy and his teacher. She asked him which comic he liked best and, according to Wertham, “… he answered without hesitation: ‘Human Torture.’ You mean ‘Human Torch,’ don’t you? ‘No,’ he said positively, ‘Human Torture.’” Hmmm! Did the kid read the panel from Atlas’ Combat Casey that’s printed on the facing page? *** P. 36: Wertham writes that David Dempsey of The New York Times quoted a Julius Caesar comic book: “‘Our

We at Alter Ego hope you appreciate our efforts.

Doc Wertham’s Straight Talk About Comix!

by Michael T. Gilbert P. 89: ”I have known many adults who have treasured throughout their lives some of the books they read as children. I have never come across any adult nor adolescent who had outgrown comic-book reading who would ever dream of keeping any of these ‘books’ for any sentimental or other reasons.” Uh, Doc, I hate to break it to you, but… *** P. 255: “Moreover, the old or returned comic books continue to be sold, shipped abroad, traded secondhand, borrowed and studied, as long as they hold together.

Old comic books never die; they just trade away.”

Shades of Gen. MacArthur! Speaking of trades, I’ll give you this Classics Illustrated comic for that old Action #1, Doc! *** P. 33: “Blood flows freely, bosoms are half-bared, girls’ buttocks are drawn with careful attention.” And your point is…? *** P. 35: “One Lafargue researcher asked a little sixyear-old girl what comic

Corpsies BAD! Kewpies GOOD! Got It, Kid? Bill Everett’s “Zombie” from Atlas’s Menace #5 (July 1953). [“Menace” splash ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.; cover of Rose O’Neill’s Kewpies #1 (Spring 1949) ©2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

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course will seem too bloody to cut the head off and then hack the limbs…’ says Brutus, in language that sounds like Captain Marvel.”

Holy Moley! Yep, sounds exactly like the Big Red Cheese…. *** P. 88: A boy talks with Wertham about the reading habits of young kids: “I don’t think they should read Captain Marvel. Look at this one with all the pictures of a man without a head! The boy downstairs is six years old. Whenever he sees any monsters he always starts crying. He thinks it’s real.” Captain Marvel, a horror comic?

Sheesh! What’s next, Donald Duck of Doom?? *** P. 35: “Of course there are also super-animal magazines like Super Duck. In one of them the duck yells: ‘No! I kill the parents [of the rabbits]. I am a hard guy and my heart is made of stone!’ The scene shows a rabbit crying and begging for mercy, the duck poised to kill him with a baseball bat.” Grrrr! That @%$#%$% Super-Duck! And you thought those rotten Corpsies were bad, Doc!

Human Torch?

Or Human Torture?

Panel from Combat Casey #7 (March 1952). [©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

*** P. 80: “It has often happened that when I ask a child in the presence of his mother he replies promptly that the comics he prefers are ‘Donald Panel from Fawcett’s Captain Marvel Adventures #119 (April 1951); art by C.C. Duck, animal comics and jokey Beck. [©2009 DC Comics.] books.’ But if I see this child alone on a subsequent occasion he corrects his previous statement, ‘What I really like are the murder ones!’” Uh, say, Doc, didn’t you just say those cute duck comics WERE the murder ones? *** P. 174: “A small boy who had made ample use of the reading and entertainment we provide so plentifully for children was once asked what he wanted to be when he grew up. His instant reply was enthusiastic: ‘I want to be a sex maniac!’” Who says kids today have no ambition? *** P. 187: “There are quite a number of obscure stores where children congregate, often in back rooms, to read and buy secondhand comic books. The proprietors usually permit the children to spend a lot of time in their establishments and to pore over the comic books. In some parts of the cities, men hang around these stores which sometimes are foci of childhood prostitution. Evidently comic books prepare the little girls well.” Yeah, Katy Keene comics will do that, Doc. *** P. 189: “Several years ago a California psychiatrist pointed out that the Batman stories are psychologically homosexual. Our researches confirm this entirely.” Case closed, Doc! *** P. 33: “The Superman group of comic books is super endorsed. A random sample shows on the inside cover the endorsement of two psychi-

Archie’s Super Duck.

Anger Management Problems, Or Demented Psycho Killer?

Cover of Super Duck #74 (June 1957). [©2009 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

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entirely absent from the book, save for a chapter footnote listing some pro-comics experts. Nonetheless, Wertham did have some definite opinions about her work. The following quotes from Seduction of the Innocent are ©1954 Rinehart & Company. Take it away, Doc! One conclusion of the experts that has been widely accepted is that, as one of them put it, comic books “are really the folklore of today,” or that what is in them “is the folklore of the times, spontaneously given to and received by children….” This seems to be a disarming argument. But is it true?

Panel from Batman #84 (June 1954). [©2009 DC Comics.]

atrists, one educator, one English professor, and a child-study consultant. On the page facing this array is depicted a man dressed as a boy shooting a policeman in the mouth.” And again, your point is…? *** P. 268: “I have sometimes indulged in the fantasy that I am at the gates of Heaven. St. Peter questions me about what good I have done on earth. I reply proudly that I have read and analyzed thousands of comic books—a horrible task and really a labor of love. ‘That counts for nothing,’ says St. Peter. ‘Millions of children read these comic books.’ ‘Well, ‘ I reply, ‘I have also read all the articles and speeches and press releases by the experts for the defense.’ ‘Okay,’ says St. Peter.

‘Come in! You deserve it.’” Which leads us to…

Dr. Wertham vs.

Dr. Bender!

by Michael T. Gilbert Okay, gang, we’ve had some fun with Dr. Wertham, but let’s be serious for a minute. Over the previous two issues we reprinted ”The Effect of Comic Books On The Ideology of Children,” a 1941 article by Dr. Lauretta Bender, written shortly before DC hired her as an editorial advisor.

Dr. Bender’s article suggested that comic books could have a positive therapeutic effect on children.

Thirteen years later, Dr. Wertham ridiculed the idea in a chapter of Seduction of the Innocent titled “The Experts For The Defense.” In it Wertham quotes Bender’s article without specifically naming her or her co-author Reginald S. Lourie. In fact, Bender’s name is Wonder Woman proves she can “throw the bull” as well as any man. Or any psychiatrist, for that matter! From Wonder Woman #1 (Summer 1942). [©2009 DC Comics.]

What is folklore? The term was introduced over a hundred years ago by the British scientist W.G. Thoms. It is now used in many other languages. Authorities seem to agree on the definition of folklore as “the oral poetic creations of broad masses of people.” Folklore has intimate connections with other arts, from dances to folk plays and songs. In the history of mankind, folklore has played an important role.

It is one of the foundations of wisdom and of literature. Many writers—among them the greatest, such as Shakespeare and Goethe— have drawn on it. It does not require much thought to realize that comic books are just the opposite. They are not poetic, not literary,

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have no relationship to any art, have as little to do with the American people as alcohol, heroin or marihuana, although many people take them, too. They are not authentic creations of the people, but are planned and concocted. They do not express the genuine conflicts and aspirations of the people, but are made according to a cheap formula. Can you imagine a future great writer looking for a figure like Prometheus, Helena or Dr. Faustus among the stock comic-book figures like Superman, Wonder Woman, or Jo-Jo the Congo King? When children act out comic stories, the results are destructive. But children’s real nature comes to the fore when they are given the chance to act out stories from genuine folklore and children’s folk tales. Frances C. Bowen has shown this in her wonderful Children’s Educational Theater at Johns Hopkins University. “Overly exuberant children,” she found, ”learn to be co-operative and find a wholesome outlet for their energies.”

Another statement by a comic-book expert that has gained wide currency is that comic books contain “a strikingly advanced concept of femininity and masculinity.” In further “Even when Wonder Woman adopts a girl there are Lesbian overtones.” Well, OK. You got explanation of this statement it is said: ”Women in the stories us there, Doc! Wonder Woman’s alter ego, Diana Prince, and her pal Etta Candy, from are placed on an equal footing with men and indulge in the Wonder Woman #1. [©2009 DC Comics.] same type of activities. They are generally aggressive and have positions which carry responsibility. Male heroes predominate but to a large extent even these are essentially unsexed and to live with a girl rather than with a superheroic he-man. One creatures. The men and women have secondary sexual mannerisms, team-expert has himself admitted that among the three comic-book but in their relationship to each other they are de-sexed.” characters “most widely disapproved” by adults are Superman and Batman—the prototypes of this ”advanced concept of masculinity.”

If a normal person looks at comic books in the light of this Evidently the healthy normal adult rejects them. statement he soon realizes that the “advanced concept of femininity and masculinity” is really a regressive formula of perversity. Let’s As to the ”advanced femininity,” what are the activities in comic compare this statement with the facts. One of the many comics books which women “indulge in on an equal footing with men”? They endorsed by this child psychiatrist has the typical Batman story, the do not work. They are not homemakers. They do not bring up a family. muscular superman who lives blissfully with an adolescent. Is it so Mother-love is entirely absent. Even when Wonder Woman adopts a advanced to suggest, stimulate or reinforce such fantasies? The normal girl there are Lesbian overtones. They are either superwomen flying concept for a boy is to become a man, not a superman, through the air, scantily dressed or uniformed, outsmarting hostile natives, animals or wicked men, functioning like Wonder Woman in a fascistic-futurist setting, or they are molls or prizes to be pushed around and sadistically abused. In no other literature for children has the image of womanhood been so degraded. Where in any other childhood literature except children’s comics do you find a woman called (and treated as) a ”fat slut”? The activities which women share with men are mostly related to force and violence. I admit they often use language—“advanced,” I suppose—which is not usually associated with women. Dr. Richmond Barbour mentions an example: ”Try this in ya belly, ya louse,“ the young lady says as she shoots the uniformed policeman in his midsection. Scantily dressed, thigh and breasts exposed, she is leading three similar gun-girls. One has been shot, and she is falling. Another girl shoots at the police with a revolver and mutters, ”Here’s one fer luck!”

The prototype of the super-she with “advanced femininity” is Wonder Woman, also endorsed by this same expert. Wonder Woman is not the natural daughter of a natural mother, nor was she born like Athena from the head of Zeus. She was concocted on a sales formula.

Her originator, a psychologist retained by the industry, has described it: ”Who wants to be a girl? And that’s the point. Not even girls want to be girls…. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman…. Give (men) an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to and they’ll Wonder be proud to become her willing slaves.” Neither folklore Woman and her nor normal sexuality, nor books for children, come about main squeeze, this way. If it were possible to translate a cardboard figure Captain Steve like Wonder Woman into life, every normal-minded young Trevor. [©2009 man would know there is something wrong with her.”

DC Comics.]

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

“Concocted on a sales formula?” Actually, creator Charles Mouton came up with a different origin for Wonder Woman for WW #1. As related in her premier issue, baby Diana was sculpted by her mother, Hippolyte, and brought to life by Aphrodite, the goddess of love! [©2009 DC Comics.]

By the bye, perhaps Dr. Wertham should have studied his comics a little more thoroughly. Wonder Woman’s alter ego, Diana Prince, was gainfully employed by the military. She was also a doting daughter to her mother on Paradise Island. Lois Lane, another DC heroine, was an ace reporter at The Daily Planet. Lois, quite conventionally, dreamed of someday raising a bunch of super-kids with Superman. And let’s not forget Shiera (Hawkgirl) Sanders, who eventually married Hawkman!

As you may have guessed, the above-mentioned psychologist was Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston. It’s also interesting to note that Wertham took the trouble to refute Dr. Bender’s article, written almost a decade and a half earlier. Perhaps it rankled Wertham more than he might admit.

That’s it for now. More surprises next ish!

Till next time…

Previously Unpublished Pencil Art by Frank Brunner

ATTENTION: FRANK BRUNNER ART FANS! Also, your ideas for NEW art are welcome!

Art can be pencils only, inked or full-color (painted) creation!

Contact Frank directly for details and prices.

(Minimum order: $150)

Visit my NEW website at: http://www.frankbrunner.net/index2.htm

Voodoo TM & ©2009 Wildstorm Comics

Frank is now accepting art commissions for covers, splash panels, or pin-up re-creations!

Author ToplineArchive Comic Fandom

74

A Memory Of The Early Detroit Triple Fan Fairs And Some Who Were There I

by Marvin Giles letter to Roy which accompanied this piece, he wrote: “Through telephone communication with my long-time friend Shel Dorf [whose article on the first Detroit Triple Fan Fair appeared in A/E #31], I learned that you plan to have [articles] in Alter Ego relating to the earliest comic conventions. So at Shel’s behest, I am sending to you my own recollections of those days when we were all younger – but with little foreknowledge of the exciting times yet to come. It is my hope that you will be able to use this account that I have ‘jotted down’ in your fine magazine.”

NTRODUCTION BY BILL SCHELLY, CFA EDITOR: One of the great, largely untapped resources when it comes to the documenting of fandom’s early years is what must be a vast pool of memories stored in the heads of Those Who Were There. Matters of fact are available to anyone tenacious enough to do the research, but memories are one-of-akind. We are fortunate indeed, then, when fans share their unique remembrances with us.

In this instance, the Comic Fandom Archive and Alter Ego are delighted to offer the memories of Marvin Giles, stalwart of comic fandom (and other fandoms’ too) as he casts his mind back to the mid-1960s. In Marvin’s

Speaking for Roy and all the A/E gang, Marvin, we are thrilled that you felt moved to submit the following evocation of the early Detroit Triple Fan Fairs, the first of which was held in July 1965, the weekend before the second New York City comics convention (which I like to refer to as the first “full-service” comicon). They were as important to fans in the Midwest as the early New York cons were to those in the Northeast, and are fascinating in their own way, for they were a little different in their multi-fandoms scope. We’ve had it on the shelf for quite a while now… and it’s high time we shared it with A/E’s readers… as Marvin takes center stage....

I

t was an age when we thought that we were alone, or nearly so, in our great love of the comics—represented in both comic books and newspapers, an integral part of illustrative art in totality. It was a time, too, when one might, as I did, haunt secondhand bookstores with the hope and expectation that he or she might find items of his or her longing—things that had for the eyes and the mind an intrinsic beauty—not given or many others to know, or so we thought.

The Fan And The Fair Marvin Giles at a 1960s comicon (photo courtesy of Jean Bails, from the Jerry Bails collection)—and the first official announcement of The Detroit Triple Fan Fair, as typed and printed on a spirit duplicator by Jerry G. Bails, founder of Alter Ego—and a co-founder of comics fandom itself. Note that “Comic Art” is listed third, after “Fantasy Literature” and “Films,” among the three principal themes of the convention/gathering. And notice the squib along the bottom, alerting fans to the upcoming article on fandom then about to appear in Newsweek magazine. Said article duly appeared in the Feb. 15, 1965, issue—and was reprinted as an item of comicshistorical interest in A/E #12, which is still available from TwoMorrows. [Art ©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

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I had come up from North Carolina only a few years before and had gone around to the bookstores in Detroit that specialized in older material and had broached the question to all: “What do you do with comic books, Big Little Books, pulp magazines, newspaper comics, and such items when they are brought to you?”

And all of the answers were something like, “We have no market for that stuff. We trash it.”

I made one proposal to these dealers: “I’ll make it worth your while to save these things for me.”

And suddenly a new business was born for them, at least on a minute scale….

Soon afterward, I met Bob Brosch, a teenage youth, and his sister, and they had the same collecting instinct for this “glorious junk” (to use Jules Feiffer’s phrase) that I did.

A little later still, Bob told me that he was taking a part in forming a convention in our Detroit city for those others who had interests similar to our own: this love of comics and related fields such as movies, radio, TV in its infancy, pulps, etc.

I took absolutely no part in the planning for this one-day affair of July 24-25, 1965, though I did ask if I might deliver a talk on the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs. My offer was accepted as part of the planned program.

Came the day and there I was with my wife, Burda—and there were others, then of destiny unknown, but whose impact in comic-future would range from small to huge, and we were shaking hands with them, and it was our first day of meeting with some whose span of friendship for us reaches into this very hour.

I shall not attempt to categorize them or their future fame, for really we were as one in our love of the comics.

But: there was Shel Dorf, he of physical largeness. He looked like the football player that Milton Caniff would one day pattern after him in the strip Steve Canyon and name “Thud Shelly”—and he had a smile and a mind and a love to match. I did not know just how he and Bob and perhaps others had put it all together in brief ad hoc fashion, but one thing was certain—Shel was the first among equals.

And there was Howard DeVore, mailman and noted science-fiction collector and a friend of writers in that field—whose roots in that genre I

In The Beginning Was The Logo The tripartite logo for the Triple Fan Fair, seen above, was designed by Shel Dorf (seen above left in a grainy 1965 photo)— while the program book for the ’65 con was designed by Carl Lundgren. [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

In his article Marvin gives Shel Dorf full credit for christening “The Detroit Triple Fan Fair.” Roy Thomas notes that, back in the day, fellow Detroiter Jerry Bails told him he believed he himself had coined that term… but Jerry was reluctant to contradict others in print, since he didn’t feel proprietary about it. Well, whoever came up it with—it was a great name!

do believe stretch back to what is lovingly remembered as “First Fandom.”

And also Eugene Seger, who has sometimes been referred to by the appellation “Mr. Buck Rogers” for his love and knowledge of that early comic strip adventurer into the known and unknown.

And there were about one hundred others, and we were seated, and I was giving my talk and trying to configure Tarzan in their minds as he was in mine with his wild ululation in dark jungle, and a beautiful young woman sat their amidst the listeners, her eyes locked intensely upon mine, and I spoke with her briefly afterwards and learned her name—Ramona Much; and years later, when I joined the Burroughs Bibliophiles, I learned that she was a great Burroughs fan.

And Shel named our con “The Detroit Triple Fan Fair” and designed its logo, which expressed our love of comics, science-fantasy, and movies.

And the day was over, and it seemed that money had not been lost in the undertaking, and another gathering would come.

And between times, on a winter day with snow blowing, Shel and Eugene Seger and Carl Lundgren and I (and there might have been another one or two) gathered at the home of Prof. Jerry Bails to be interviewed by a reporter from (was it Newsweek magazine?).

He recorded our words about comics, and I tried to be philosophical about it all—but no dice; such was not deemed interesting to national readers.

And the hours deepened into cold gloom outside, and Jerry was kind enough to lend me several items from his valuable collection for private and pleasurable reading in my home. He was already clothed in a kind of fame strange to those who do not know its beauty—and now Jerry’s son, Kirk, is a good and generous friend to us.

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And on another evening, Shel, who seemed to know every artist and comic fan in the city and beyond, stood at my door with Jack Promo.

They wanted me to go with them to see the film Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe at Oakland University some miles away. This was my first meeting with Jack, and there soon came the realization as long twilight shadows began to fall among the stately buildings of the University that these two men were going to be among the very dearest of my friends— and that they have been.

And now there was wider participation in the planning for future cons and our meetings were in the basement of Tom Altshuler’s store, which by the emptying out of countless attics and cellars and garages of our beloved stories and pictures in Hamtramck and Detroit would produce for us and many others across the entire country access to a cornucopia of fantastic delights to broaden our collections, indeed to match our every desire; it was a place whose name rang with a kind of magic for its connotation: Ableman’s.

arisen. Shel, as staff artist at the Detroit Free Press plus duties with the family business—which was the manufacture of fine candies—no longer had the time to participate fully in convention-making. I cannot speak for Bob, but he, too, seemed very much involved in other matters. There would be no convention unless, as they looked at me, I accepted the chairmanship. I had a job, as well, but I could find more time. Very generously, they agreed to stay on with advice and to give any other aid that they might.

And now the regular meetings in preparation for the next con were in my home, and young men came who seemed to regard me in an avuncular way— perhaps even as a mentor—due in part to the quarter century of time that separated our births; and high talent, even genius, touched them.

One of them was Rich Buckler, who would do the convention’s artwork and who would go on to illustrate many of our favorite comic books—and people would tell me he was their favorite artist; and in recent times I’ve seen the signature of Rich Buckler, Jr., also revealing fine artwork.

And one day at one of our meetings at Ableman’s, we learned that a crisis had

And there was Carl Lundgren, earlier

At Marvel They Called Him “Rich ‘Swash’ Buckler” (Top:) Rich Buckler (with long hair) in 1970, with fellow Detroiter (and DTFF veteran) Jerry G. Bails, not long before Rich turned pro. Photo courtesy of Bill Schelly.

(Directly above:) One of Buckler’s most famous art assignments was the “Superman vs. Shazam!” story in the tabloid-size All-New Collectors’ Edition #C-58 in 1978. Inks by Dick Giordano; script by Gerry Conway. Repro’d from a photocopy of a two-page centerspread, with thanks to dealer Mike Burkey; visit his website at www.romitaman.com. [©2009 DC Comics.]

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tree, and comic fandom—which includes us all—would lose a valued friend.

Life is not always happy.

Our first guest of honor on my first tour of duty, in 1967, was Roger Zelazny—he who had written the famous “Amber” series, which many have considered to be one of the finest undertakings in the field of science-fantasy.

And Roger said in his talk, “One might write a million words in describing this room, but the trick is to say it all in just a few words.”

And that ability exemplifies in large part good writing.

We had decided we wanted to give our guest of honor, for that day and after, something beautiful, and Jack Promo designed it—an eternal pen (or quill) with exploding stars and portrait embossed on fine dark wood, and I named it the Nova.

And Roger was its first recipient.

Before the con I had inserted in science-fiction magazines, even in Britain, free notices of what we were up to, without really expecting much from them—so as I wandered about the floor, Burda came up to me and said, “There’s a young woman here from London who wants to meet you.”

And as I went to see her, my heart thrilled with the excitement of the thought, “What have we started?”

She was beautiful, with red hair that seemed like flame—and she was there, and she was surely the first form a foreign land.

Triple Threats (Left to right:) Marvin Giles, Mrs. Roger Zelazny, and scribe Roger himself (the first winner of the Nova award given out by his fellow Science Fiction Writers of America), at the 1967 Detroit Triple Fan Fair. Roger passed away a few years ago.

mentioned at Jerry’s place; as a painter of the fantastic he would one day move into the artistic heights where dwells the great Frank Frazetta.

And Greg Theakston: his destiny was to be a publisher, and could he have dreamed on those summer days that he would eventually search for and find that pinup-goddess of the wondrous 1950s, Bettie Page, who had walked away into oblivion long years before? Such a quest must have seemed at its beginning worthy of Sherlock Holmes himself.

And there were others: for the times of my chairmanship we called upon a longtime friend for aid in giving out tickets and doing any number of jobs with Burda, while I palled around with the convention attendees.

This lovely woman was Doris Amerman, and she, like Burda, gave great pleasure to the eyes of beholders. For years to come, people would inquire of me, “Whatever happened to the beautiful blonde lady who helped you at those conventions?”

Well, Doris is still our beautiful friend.

And let us never forget Edwin Aprill. He was a teacher of art, and a great collector of comic art, but what drew him most immediately to our attention was that he was also a publisher of reprint newspaper strip. It had been many years since we had seen the likes of newspaper reprints in comic books, with but few efforts directed toward such, and Edwin pretty much started it again—and proved once more than comic fans were out there.

At critical financial times he and Jack Promo would each lend the convention $100.

And one day, years later, Edwin’s car would skid on winter ice into a

And on that day I met Rick Dey and his beautiful wife Mary Anne, and he wrote of the con for the newspaper of which he was a reporter. Rick was, and is, a person of multiple talents in classical fields—an authority on literature ranging from Donald Duck to Melville, or should that be reversed? And Mary Anne was a poetess whose words touched our spiritual depths.

And they, too, would become dear friends to my wife and me, and in time we would join them for fresh-made cookies and other delicacies on the cold nights of winter holiday. (Their home, like mine and Burda’s, was one of vast collections.)

And a few years back Mary Anne would pass from the land of the living, and we during that sad time saw pictures of her in young womanhood standing in a radiant, flowing field, remindful of those seen in the tortured vision of Van Gogh—but which only accentuated her beauty and goodness.

As I’ve said before, life is not always happy.

For the next convention, in 1968, of which I was still chairman, we had as guest and the winner of the second Nova, the redoubtable Harlan Ellison. His fame as a writer, and for his life that has given us a thousand stories equally good to tell, needs no further embellishment from me. And with him our con had its first banquet.

And in one of its evenings I met a young African-American artist who carried the wonderful name of Grass Green. At the same time there was also Mike Friedrich, storyteller and publisher.

And a young man from Paris whose name was Henry Vieux (sp?) had come and had brought me as a gift all of the issues of the French comic newspaper Choo Choo, explaining that by then it was rare even in Paris.

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And with the preparations for these cons, I had become quite busy.

The phone was ringing constantly, and I had to answer it, and my steak was cold and the ice cream was warm—and Burda asked me to leave further conventions to others.

So I did, and Hal Shapiro of the Misfits, of which I was also a member, took over. I was retained as vice-chairman—actually more as an advisor.

We had as our guest Al Williamson, and no artist of the heroic tale has ever been greater, and he and I struck up a friendship that has spanned the long years since. Our other guests were Edmond Hamilton, known in science-fiction as the “Universe Destroyer,” who had also written some of the greatest “Superman” stories, and his wife Leigh Brackett. I had read her stories at the age of sixteen, and she was not much older than myself, and on meeting her and escorting her to the convention floor (Edmond was not feeling well), I realized that as a human being she was “a work of art.”

At the next convention, I was still remembered but losing power. And as guest of honor we had Lin Carter, who in his writings should have gained as much as any other the mantles of Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Rick Yaeger, who had drawn some wonderful Buck Rogers stories.

And there were more conventions, and I had pleasant conversations with Majel Barrett, the wife of Gene Roddenberry, who played Nurse Chappell in the Star Trek TV programs and movies. And there were pleasant words with Russ Heath, whose art (especially his Westerns) I thought superb. And, lastly, there was the great Jim Steranko, and he and I seemed to agree on everything.

And after a long time I was gone, and perhaps forgotten. Shel Dorf, too, had departed much earlier. His destiny would ultimately be San Diego, where he would make a great, great contribution to comics fandom in co-founding the San Diego Comic-Con. And it had all been much fun, and yes, yes, we truly had started something.

The Thrill Of Victory Marvin Giles at the ’67 Triple Fan Fair, hunkered down with a copy of Hillman’s Victory Comics #1 (Aug. 1941). The picture was originally published in the Detroit Free Press.

[Art by Bill Fugate. Mr. Atom TM & ©2009 DC Comics.]

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“that love stuff,” those scripts featuring passion and heartbreak did not provide much in the way of human activity. People… talking, talking, talking. The result: uninteresting, inert comic book panels. In my esteem it was a problem…that rested in the lap of… the artist!

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 top-selling line of romance comics, including Sweethearts and Life Story. After the company ceased publishing comics, Marc moved over to Charlton Publications, where he ended his comics career in the mid-’50s. Marc’s ongoing professional memoirs have been a vital part of FCA since his first column appeared in FCA #54, 1996. Last time, Marc told about the “phasing out” of the racially stereotyped character Steamboat from Captain Marvel stories in the 1940s. This time, he writes of the romance stories he illustrated for Fawcett after the demise of the Phantom Eagle in Wow Comics. —PCH.]

It was a serious matter. There had to be some sort of motion…of life… in those comic book panels… love stuff or not! A new study, a new interest was begun, completely private… a study of people… how they moved as they spoke. The result… the physical action of the body and limbs that people take to emphasize or clarify their spoke words… the gesture!

That was the answer I sought. I began close observations in which I had not the slightest interest other than how those folks moved. It was interesting.

S

omebody wanted to know which of the Fawcett features that came from my drawing board had provided the most creative satisfaction. If the artsy term refers to a certain feeling of gratification that is occasionally experienced upon completion of a project, surely the likely considerations would be Captain Marvel, Mary, and the Phantom Eagle.

An accurate answer to the question, though, would be… the romance comics.

Generally referred to around the office as

We Can Resist Anything But “Temptation” Marc writes: “A heavy assignment of Fawcett romance art led to a mad scramble for... activity... ways to keep these characters moving... those panels and pages alive!” Swayze-drawn splash page from Sweethearts #93 (Nov. 1950).[©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

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Sketch As Sketch Can Marc’s added comments: (Left:) “The GESTURE. Those instinctive moves that peole make in expressing their spoken words.” Rough preparatory sketch for story in Sweethearts #93 (Nov. 1950). (Right:) “The REHEARSAL. Numerous rough drawings in the Swayze sketchbook are indicative of a continued interest in oil painting.

Art created originally for Fawcett comic books often found its way to the canvas.

A case in point: the sketch for a painting of musician friends.” [©2009 Marc Swayze.]

I never wrote a romance story. I illustrated stories in Sweethearts, Life Story, True Confidences, Cowboy Love, True Stories of Romance, Romantic Secrets, Romantic Story, Exciting Romances, True Sweetheart Secrets, and Sweetheart Diary… a total in excess of 80 stories, usually in the lead position.

COMICS’ GOLDEN AGE LIVES AGAIN! SPY SMASHER BLACK TERROR • AVENGER PHANTOM LADY • CAT-MAN DAREDEVIL • CRIMEBUSTER CAPTAIN FLASH MR. SCARLET • MINUTE MAN SKYMAN • STUNTMAN THE OWL • BULLETMAN COMMANDO YANK PYROMAN • GREEN LAMA THE EAGLE • IBIS

Art ©2009 AC Comics.

The above is just a partial list of characters that have appeared in AC Comics’ reprint titles such as MEN OF MYSTERY, GOLDEN AGE GREATS, and AMERICA’S GREATEST COMICS. Virtually all issues published to date are available at $6.95 each. To find over 100 quality Golden Age reprints, go to the AC Comics website at <accomics.com>.

AC COMICS Box 521216 Longwood FL 32752 Please add $1.50 postage & handling per order.

And you know what? I believe I detective some creative satisfaction along the way. Quite a bit!

Marc Swayze will return next issue with more memories of the Golden Age of Comics.

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Hey, Who Took That?!

An Addendum On The Fawcett/Charlton Connection

by Ramon Schenk Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck

A

As related by Frank Motler in his meticulously researched article, “… And Then There Were None!” (Alter Ego Vol. 3, #s 39, 40, 42, & 43), Charlton acquired licenses, the rights to characters, and in many cases stock material from a host of small publishers eager to get out of comics or to get their hands on some cash to solve their solvency problems. Among these small outfits—which included Toby, Mainline, Fox, Superior, Comic Media, and Prize—was one giant that stood well above them all: Fawcett Publications.

By the end of 1953, after Fawcett had dropped their entire comic book line, they still held in their hands a large stack of ready-to-print material which represented an enormous investment. Charlton probably paid pennies to the dollar for them, but perhaps Fawcett used the loss as a tax write-off and felt they came out the better.

Thus, a whole slew of Fawcett titles and characters were sold off to Charlton. Perhaps most prominent among them were the Western titles: Lash LaRue, Tom Mix, Six-Gun Heroes, Rocky Lane, and others.

Then followed the romance titles: Romantic Story, Sweethearts, and one issue of Negro Romances.

Humor titles included Funny Animals (formerly Fawcett’s Funny Animals), which featured “Hoppy the Marvel Bunny” (renamed “Hoppy the Magic Bunny”

by Charlton, although not too consistently), and TV Teens (published by Fawcett as Ozzie and Babs). The adventure genre was also represented by, among others, Nyoka the Jungle Girl (also appearing in Zoo Funnies) and Don Winslow of the Navy.

But the characters that were not a part of Charlton’s deal with Fawcett were the mystery men… the super-heroes. Fawcett would hang on to those, perhaps hoping to re-enter the comic book market again one day—or perhaps fearing that use of the characters by another company would rekindle DC’s lawyers’ appetite for new claims against them. Fawcett kept the rights, and its successors in ownership ultimately leased and then sold the rights to the Marvel Family characters and several others to (O irony!) DC. Therefore, Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., Mary Marvel, and other heroes were destined to be published only by Fawcett, and then, decades later, DC. Or were they?

The material that Charlton acquired from Fawcett must have been a bit of a mess: Photostats of published stories… original art of unpublished pages… photographs usable to design photo covers.

Why do I say this stack of inventory material was most likely in disarray? Well, if it had been carefully

A Puzzling Page The Marvel Family, thought to be dead after Fawcett’s cancellation of their comics line in 1953, popped up in Charlton’s Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #1 (Aug. 1956) in a C.C. Beck-illustrated “Marvel Family” puzzle page. Naturally, the Marvels are not named, and note that Mary’s costume received a minor alteration from the Charlton editors—presumably so they could claim she wasn’t really Mary Marvel but just your typical girl who happened to wear a lightning bolt symbol on her blouse and great big goggles on her head! Wisely, the head shots of Cap and Cap Jr. have been turned into helmeted spacemen. See article for more about this doubtless leftover page.

[Shazam! heroes TM & ©2009 DC Comics.]

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Thar’s Gold In Them Thar Arrows!

The splash and a later page from a “Golden Arrow” story produced especially for Charlton, with art by Dick Giordano & Vince Alascia. Scripter unknown.

From Cowboy Western #49 (May-June 1954). [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

arranged, Fawcett would never have allowed Charlton to get their hands on their super-heroes. Yes—Charlton published a “Marvel Family” page!

In the first issue of its Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds (Aug. 1956), Charlton printed one (slightly altered) C.C. Beck-illustrated “Marvel Family” puzzle page that featured the Big Red Cheese’s little sister Mary Marvel, as well as small head shots of Cap and Cap Jr.—now disguised as spacemen!

But wait, there’s more. Other continuing Fawcett characters appeared at Charlton that may or may not have originally been part of the deal.

How about “Western super-hero” Golden Arrow? I refer to him as a semisuper-hero because he was a contemporary of Captain Marvel in Whiz Comics, having once even teamed up with Cap, Ibis, and Spy Smasher in “Captain Marvel Battles Sabotage at the Printing Plant” (Whiz Comics #43, Aug. 1943). Golden Arrow appeared in not one story at Charlton, but at least seven—in Cowboy Western #48-51 & 57, Tex Ritter Western #27, and Range Busters #10. Fawcett must have considered him strictly a Western character—and Charlton didn’t seem to care either way.

Another semi-super-hero would be Crime Smasher, who ran briefly in post-World War II issues of Whiz Comics and in one issue of his own series. The character had been known as Spy Smasher during World War II, when he was definitely a union card-carrying long-underwear

character. Years later, at DC, he would return to his Spy Smasher guise; but at Charlton, at least for one story, in Crime and Justice #23, he was still busting criminals as Crime Smasher.

The most-obvious mistake on Fawcett’s part was releasing one story to Charlton that featured Ibis the Invincible – “The Viking Horde”—which appeared in Danger and Adventure #22 (Feb. 1955). Charlton even turned the splash page into the issue’s cover (see next page)! Either it was just a gratuitous story, or else Fawcett immediately notified Charlton that its inclusion with the material was in error and that they hadn’t bought the rights to the character, for Charlton never published another “Ibis” adventure. (Fawcett, of course, later sold the character to DC.) Who knows how many more Fawcett stories still lurk hidden in the pages of Charlton’s comics? Among all the major publishers of the postComics Code, Charlton is still the least explored. Perhaps there’s even a hidden Billy Batson story in there somewhere!

Ramon Schenk is a teacher at an asylum for the criminally insane by day and a restless comic book historian by night … a contributing editor for Charlton Spotlight Magazine (www.charltonspotlight.com) … and senior editor at the Grand Comic-Book Database (www.comics.org).

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Hey, Who Took That!

Dangerous Adventurers (Far left:) During her stay at Charlton—in both her own title and in Zoo Funnies—former Fawcett jungle girl Nyoka eventually morphed into a blonde on covers and in newly-produced stories (Zoo Funnies #9, 1955 cover by Dick Giordano).

(Near left:) Charlton’s onetime publishing of an “Ibis the Invincible” story (“The Viking Horde” in Danger and Adventure #22, Feb. 1955). Charlton turned the splash page into the issue’s cover, but, as detailed in the article, he never reappeared in a Charlton mag. P.C. Hamerlinck suspects “the story just got accidentally mixed in with the Fawcett material Charlton obtained.”

[Ibis the Invincible ©2009 DC Comics; Jungle Girl TM & ©2009 AC Comics.]

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85

The Half-Life And Times Of Mr. Atom Captain Marvel’s NuclearPowered Foe

by John Pierce Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck

F

or those of us now living, the world changed on September 11, 2001. However, those of an earlier generation will remember another such day when the world underwent a change—one that was perhaps even greater than that engendered by 9-11.

I speak of August 6, 1945, when a US B-29 Superfortress, the Enola Gay, dropped the first atomic bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy,” on Hiroshima, Japan. A subsequent A-bomb targeted on Nagasaki, Japan,

soon led to the country’s surrender and to the end of World War II (itself a momentous, world-changing event). But, more than that, the dropping of these two bombs ushered in the Atomic Age, an era characterized by great scientific progress accompanied by tremendous paranoia and fear.

Before the development and unveiling of the atomic bomb, the word “atom” (derived from the Greek word “atomos,” referring to something so small it cannot be divided) was rarely used in speech. But confining our consideration to its usage in the comics, we find that there were at least two characters who had been utilizing the word in their names for several years. One, of course, was “The Atom,” who debuted in All-American Comics #19 (Oct. 1940) and was essentially a short-stature strongman.

Another that same year was Fawcett Publications’ own “Atom Blake,” who premiered in Wow Comics #1.

After 1945, however, characters with atomic names, and powers, would become far more numerous. To cite a few: Spark Publications’ 1946debuting Atoman; Regor’s 1946 Atomic Thunderbolt; Prize’s 1945 “Atomic Man”; and, among others, a 1948 French hero, “Atomas.” Oh, and we shouldn’t forget Lex Luthor’s adoption of an alter ego in the 1950 Columbia serial, Atom-Man vs. Superman (the name “Atom-Man” had been picked up from a circa-1946 story on the Adventures of Superman radio series). The list keeps going. And even the original Atom at DC underwent a change in 1947, with a re-designed costume, the addition of the now-familiar atomic emblem, and an increase from weightlifter strength to super-strength (excuse me—“atomic” strength); some years

Upping The Atom (Top:) The cover to Captain Marvel Adventures #78 (Nov. 1947). The issue marked one of three Mr. Atom adventures from the Fawcett era.

Art by C.C. Beck.

(Left:) Opening page of the first Mr. Atom story, from CMA #78, which the villain himself narrates. Script by William Woolfolk; art By C.C. Beck, with an assist by Pete Costanza. Mr. Atom is featured in gigantic proportions in the splash panel for visual effect only; he was actually just an 8-to-10-foot tall robot ... but modern-age writers have made him skyscraper height. [©2009 DC Comics.]

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The Half-Life And Times Of Mr. Atom!

energy to activate his brain, an explosion destroys Langley’s house. As Mr. Atom crawls out from under the wreckage, he becomes aware of his power.

Meanwhile, Billy Batson, having heard about the explosion, changes to Captain Marvel and goes to investigate. A barely-living Langley is pulled from the wreckage and flown to the nearest hospital, while Mr. Atom roams about, demonstrating his power, and contemplating his future.

Finally he concludes that “I was not destined for an inglorious serfdom! I am not weak like ordinary mortals! To rule over men … Yes! That is my destiny!”

Meanwhile, at the hospital, Langley comes to enough to tell Captain Marvel about his robot, but a search of the wreckage turns up nothing, leading Marvel to conclude that the robot must have been blown up.

“In Your Death, The World Shall Read Its Doom!”

Strong words fly as Mr. Atom and Captain Marvel battle in their first meeting—a panel from CMA #78. [©2009 DC Comics.]

later, in 1961, a new Atom was introduced in Showcase #34. 1960 saw the debut of Charlton’s ”Captain Atom,” an Air Force captain who was destroyed in an explosion, but who returned with an amazing array of nuclear capabilities, including the power to detonate himself and re-form his body elsewhere. It came in handy against alien invasions and the like.

It isn’t long before he realizes his mistake, as he is forced to confront Mr. Atom, who brazenly goes to the UN to proclaim his superiority to all of their armies and navies. Marvel appears to be defeated at first, but soon returns. Later, in response to Mr. Atom’s warning, Billy Batson, “on behalf of Captain Marvel,” issues his own warning to the rebellious robot.

Marvel and Atom meet again in a slugfest, the exact results of which are not shown. But since Mr. Atom is narrating the story, we know he must have survived, and indeed the final panels of the story show him in an underground, thick-walled lead prison, broadcasting by microphone.

(Exactly why anyone would give him such a forum is unknown.) It’s obvious that neither Cap nor the readers have seen the last of Mr. Atom.

But let’s return to November 1947 for a look at an atompowered villain, viz., the notable Captain Marvel foe, Mr. Atom, who first appeared in Captain Marvel Adventures #78.

Mr. Atom himself—a tall silver, black, and yellow figure—is the narrator of his own first adventure, as he tells of his creation by a Dr. Charles Langley, who considers himself “the first man in history to create life by artificial means.” (Perhaps Dr. Victor Frankenstein did not exist in that particular universe.)

But as the lifeless, robotic Mr. Atom is flooded with atomic

“The Most Powerful Villain Of All Time” Clockwise from far left: The second appearance of Mr. Atom also brought him his second CMA cover spot, on issue #81 (Feb. 1948)—the Comet Men as willing participants— and the blow given to Captain Marvel by Mr. Atom which marked, according to the story in CMA #81, “the first time in his career [that] mighty Captain Marvel is nearly knocked out.”

Maybe, maybe not; but it still made for a great follow-up tale. Art by C.C. Beck. [©2009 DC Comics.]

Fawcett Collectors Of America

87

Earth city “as a warning to the others.” (Shades of Hiroshima!) Meanwhile, Billy is sure that the “socalled comet fragment that landed in San Dorado was really a space ship,“ an idea dismissed by an astronomer in “the world’s largest observatory.” As Billy returns to station WHIZ, Mr. Atom broadcasts a warning that the city (the alwaysunnamed city in which Billy lived and operated) will be destroyed.

Captain Marvel once again confronts Mr. Atom, who is engineering explosions on the south side of the city. The aliens’ “dissolving-ray” has no effect on Marvel, so they beat a hasty retreat to their ship.

As the ship makes its escapes into space to the aliens’ home world—a comet—it explodes. (Yes, we know that a comet is just a bunch of gas and ice particles, which no life form could exist on, but apparently these guys didn’t.) The leader despairs: “What good will it do for me to conquer the Earth now?” But Mr. Atom takes umbrage at the remark. “You do not conquer the Earth! It is I!” (At least Dr. Langley built correct English grammar into that artificial brain.)

This leads to a fight between the two, ending with the exploding of the ship. A pursuing Captain Marvel concludes that Mr. Atom must have been destroyed in the blast. As Billy Batson reports to his audience at the end, “The Comet Men tried to gain power through Mr. Atom and found disaster. It is grimly true that—he who lives by he atom, dies by the atom!” (An interesting paraphrase of Jesus’ words in Matthew 26:52: “... for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.”)

“Three Strikes And…” (Left:) The third and final Fawcett Mr. Atom story took place in the year 2053—and in Captain Marvel Adventures #90 (Nov. ’48). (Right:) The death of Mr. Atom—a panel from CMA #90. Art by Beck. [©2009 DC Comics.]

Surely enough, just three issues later, Mr. Atom makes his return in Captain Marvel Adventures #81 (Feb. 1948). A group of aliens, the Comet Men, appear on the scene, wanting to colonize Earth, but needing someone on the planet itself to work with them. Any guesses as to who that might be?

“I see he’s now a prisoner,” states the leader of the invading force.

“Good! We shall free him to work for us. He can be destroyed when his usefulness is ended!” (A common villain philosophy!)

Hearing about a comet fragment which has landed “on the desert outside San Dorado,” Billy Batson wants to go see it for himself. (“San Dorado” is a typical fictitiously-named Spanish locale. It would literally mean “Saint Gilded One.”) True to their word, the aliens free Mr. Atom, and consequently, Captain Marvel arrives just in time to resume their battle, while the aliens stand by, watching in awe. Exactly how they knew about Mr. Atom but not about Captain Marvel isn’t revealed (maybe they picked up his earlier broadcast?), but they determine they must aid their recruit. Two aliens fly to attack Marvel, giving Atom the chance to strike him from behind. “And for the first time in his career, mighty Captain Marvel is nearly knocked out.” (That’s probably not exactly true, as in his earliest stories Cap was not nearly as powerful as he would later become, but let’s take the statement at face value for now.) This gives the Comet Men and Mr. Atom a chance to flee in the space ship.

On board the ship, the alien leader goads Mr. Atom on to attack an

But was Mr. Atom actually finished? Nine months later, in Captain Marvel Adventures #90 (Nov. 1948), exactly one year after his debut, readers would learn the answer: a resounding “No!” The story recaps the two panels from the second tale in which Captain Marvel views the explosion, and then flies back toward Earth, convinced that “The world will never hear from Mr. Atom again.”

As a caption informs the readers, however, “It’s true that Mr. Atom did not return to the world of 1948.” As the story progresses, we see that Mr. Atom had been flung into year 2053. (That’s 105 years into the future— but a lot closer for us now! Exactly why the author picked that particular year is not known, but it’s a refreshing change from all those tales in which events seem to happen exactly 100 or 1000 or 5000 or whatever number years into the future. Why shouldn’t Mr. Atom be blown 105 years into the future, rather than a round number?) Anyway, from a local inhabitant, Mr. Atom soon learns just where (i.e., when) he is, and that everything is powered from one central atomic storehouse.

Meanwhile, back in 1948, Billy is awakened from his sleep by a nocturnal vision of old Shazam, who tells him that “There is grave danger facing the world in the year 2053. Only you can save them!” So off Marvel flies to the Rock of Eternity, to make his way into the future. (Where, by the way, he is recognized right away, something which isn’t always true even in his own era.)

All power, including the lights, is out, because the central storehouse has ceased to operate. Marvel prevents some atomic cars from crashing into each other, then helps a passenger airship, and finally figures out what is going on when the ever-bragging Mr. Atom broadcasts a notice that he has taken over the control of the storehouse.

Captain Marvel’s arrival shocks Mr. Atom, and once again they engage

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The Half-Life And Times Of Mr. Atom!

Mr. Atom’s World Panel from the third Mr. Atom story—CMA #90. Art by Beck, script

by William Woolfolk (who scripted all the interior panels depicted with this article). [©2009 DC Comics.]

in a battle for a few panels. (Not the page after page of fighting that would become the norm years later in comics.)

However, Mr. Atom holds the trump card: he threatens to create a short-circuit if Cap approaches him.

So Captain Marvel departs, and soon confers with world leaders, who are ready to cave in. Marvel persuades them to let him go along as a member of a peace delegation, disguised as a white-haired man with a long beard. At the right moment, Cap sheds his disguise and confronts Mr. Atom. “Hitting you is a pleasure. I can really let go! With ordinary men, I’m always afraid I’ll kill them!”

POSTSCRIPT:

Creating Mr. Atom

By P.C. Hamerlinck Created by man—but far from content to be a slave to man, and standing as a uneasy parable of the daunting dangers during the dawning age of atomic energy and warfare—Mr. Atom reflected Fawcett’s frequent cautionary themes and emphasis on world peace.

The Captain Marvel foe was created by writer William Woolfolk and designed by Captain Marvel co-creator C.C. Beck, all under the steady guiding hands of editor Wendell Crowley.

Captain Marvel’s blow knocks Mr. Atom into the machinery which produces all the world’s energy, at just the moment when the supervisor of the storehouse has started up the engines again. Thus, ironically, as Cap states, “Atomic energy gave him birth, and killed him, too!”

The story ends with Billy Batson’s assurance to his audience that “We need never fear his malign power again!” And thus it was, for the rest of the Captain Marvel’s Fawcett run. (Mr. Atom would later return in the 1970s and beyond, courtesy of DC Comics.)

The writers of the Golden Age Captain Marvel were noted for delving into various social and moral issues of the day, not in ham-handed fashion (as in, for instance, the so-called “era of relevancy” of Green Lantern/Green Arrow), but rather in a somewhat more subtle, gentle manner. And yet, the message from the Mr. Atom trilogy was unmistakable. The power of the atom is fearsome, and it has been unleashed on mankind. On the other hand, these stories weren’t necessarily advocating nuclear pacifism; rather, they stand as a cautionary statement about potential dangers. Mr. Atom symbolized all of that. But his three stories stand as a testament to a problem which has changed in form, perhaps, but has never really gone away.

had fewer hands involved in illustrating the adventures. The World’s Mightiest Mortal’s artwork had tightened up considerably in the post-WWII years, with Beck often running solo or in unison with Pete Costanza (who inked the Mr. Atom stories) until the end of Cap’s run— with both artistic partners capable of trading off on penciling layouts and inking. Beck’s masterful economy of line style cartooning lent itself well to Mr. Atom’s sharp and simplistic design.

Woolfolk, one of the highest-paid writers during the Golden Age, was a highly The Art Of The Atom versatile, adaptable go-to man (Left:) 1948 photo of Bill Woolfolk. (Right:) simultaneously writing for Artist Charles Clarence Beck draws Mr. Atom several comic book publishers. during a Saturday night “chalk talk” session at While he never could claim to the 1972 Phoenix Con, held at one of the dormitories on the campus of Arizona State have created any of the major Editor Wendell Crowley University in Tempe, AZ. The convention was super-heroes he worked on over ensured that Captain Marvel put together by PFAN (The Phoenix Fans of Art the years, he nevertheless added Adventures consistently and Nostalgia), which included such luminaries much to their respective personencompassed a varied line-up as Bruce Hamilton, Don Newton, and John Clark. alities and mythos in a wide of stories each issue, keeping Beck photo courtesy of Alex Jay. range of thematic stories. the title fresh, popular, and Woolfolk did, however, selling well, right up until Fawcett decided it was best for them to leave personally lay claim to creating the field of comics. two of Fawcett’s most notorious villains: Captain Nazi … and, later on, Dr. Charles Langley may have created the atomic-powered robot in the Mr. Atom. But ultimately the writer preferred scripting more lighthearted comics, but it was Fawcett’s competent and imaginative “Captain Marvel” stories, particularly those featuring Cap’s arch protagteam which made Mr. Atom’s trilogy of terror during onist, Dr. Sivana. comics’ Golden Age a memorable one.

During the era of Mr. Atom, the “Captain Marvel” story art, thankfully,

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(80-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 US • Ships December 2009

(84-page tabloid magazine) $10.95 US Ships November 2009

TwoMorrows Publishing 2009 Update WINTER/SPRING

Supplement to the 2008 TwoMorrows Preview Catalog

ORDER AT: www.twomorrows.com

SAVE

BATCAVE COMPANION

All characters TM & ©2009 their respective owners.

IT’S FINALLY HERE! The writer/editor of the critically acclaimed KRYPTON COMPANION and the designer of the eye-popping SPIES, VIXENS, AND MASTERS OF KUNG FU: THE ART OF PAUL GULACY team up to explore the Silver and Bronze Ages of Batman comic books in THE BATCAVE COMPANION! Two distinct sections of this book examine the Dark Knight’s progression from his campy “New Look” of the mid-1960s to his “creature of the night” reinvention of the 1970s. Features include issue-byissue indexes, interviews with CARMINE INFANTINO, JOE GIELLA, DENNIS O’NEIL, and NEAL ADAMS, and guest essays by MIKE W. BARR and WILL MURRAY. Contributors include SHELDON MOLDOFF, LEN WEIN, STEVE ENGLEHART, and TERRY AUSTIN, with a special tribute to the late MARSHALL ROGERS. With its incisive introduction by DENNIS O’NEIL and its iconic cover painting by NEAL ADAMS, THE BATCAVE COMPANION is a must-have for every comics fan! By MICHAEL EURY and MICHAEL KRONENBERG.

15

WHE % N YO ORD U ONL ER INE!

(224-page trade paperback) $26.95 US • ISBN: 9781893905788 • Diamond Order Code: NOV068368 • Now shipping!

COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION Comic book podcasts have taken the Internet by storm, and now TwoMorrows offers you the chance to go behind the scenes of ten of today's top comic book podcasts via all-new interviews with the casts of AROUND COMICS, WORD BALLOON, QUIET! PANELOLOGISTS AT WORK, COMIC BOOK QUEERS, iFANBOY, THE CRANKCAST, THE COLLECTED COMICS LIBRARY, THE PIPELINE PODCAST, COMIC GEEK SPEAK, and TwoMorrows’ own TUNE-IN PODCAST! Also featured are new interviews about podcasting and comics on the Internet with creators MATT FRACTION, TIM SEELEY, and GENE COLAN. You'll also find a handy guide of what you’ll need to start your own podcast, an index of more than thirty great comic book podcasts, numerous photos of your favorite podcasters, and original art from COLAN, SEELEY, DC's MIKE NORTON, and many more! By ERIC HOUSTON, with a spectacular new cover by MIKE MANLEY. (128-page trade paperback) $15.95 • ISBN: 9781605490182 • Now shipping!

ALL-STAR COMPANION Volume 4 The epic series of ALL-STAR COMPANIONS goes out with a bang, featuring: Colossal coverage of the Golden Age ALL-STAR COMICS! Sensational secrets of the JUNIOR JUSTICE SOCIETY! An index of the complete solo adventures of all 18 original JSAers in their own features, from 1940 to 1951! The JSA's earliest imitators (Seven Soldiers of Victory, All Winners Squad, Marvel Family, and International Crime Patrol)! INFINITY, INC. on Earth-Two and after! And the 1980s SECRET ORIGINS series! With rare art by ALEX ROSS, TODD McFARLANE, JERRY ORDWAY, CARMINE INFANTINO, JOE KUBERT, ALEX TOTH, GIL KANE, MURPHY ANDERSON, IRWIN HASEN, MORT MESKIN, GENE COLAN, WAYNE BORING, GEORGE TUSKA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, GEORGE FREEMAN, DON NEWTON, JACK BURNLEY, MIKE MACHLAN, HOWARD CHAYKIN, DICK DILLIN, and others. Edited by ROY THOMAS.

CAPTAIN ACTION: THE ORIGINAL SUPERHERO ACTION FIGURE

(240-page trade paperback) $27.95 US • ISBN: 9781605490045 Now shipping!

(Hardcover 2nd Edition)

CAPTAIN ACTION was introduced in 1966 in the wake of the Batman TV show craze, and later received his own DC comic book with art by WALLY WOOD and GIL KANE. Able to assume the identities of 13 famous super-heroes, his initial career was short-lived, but continuing interest in the hero has led to two different returns to toy-store shelves. Lavishly illustrated with over 200 toy photos, this FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER SECOND EDITION chronicles the history of this quick-changing champion, including photos of virtually EVERY CAPTAIN ACTION PRODUCT ever released, spotlights on his allies ACTION BOY and the SUPER QUEENS and his arch enemy DR. EVIL, an examination of his comic-book appearances, and “Action facts” that even the most diehard Captain Action fan won’t know! The original softcover edition has been sold out for years, but this revised, full-color hardcover second edition includes behind-the-scenes coverage of CAPTAIN ACTION’S TRIUMPHANT 2008 RETURN to comics shelves in his new series from Moonstone Books, and spotlights the new wave of Captain Action collectibles. Written by MICHAEL EURY. (176-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 US • ISBN: 9781605490175 • Now shipping!

MARVEL COMICS IN THE 1960s: An Issue-By-Issue Field Guide

The comic book industry experienced an unexpected flowering in the early 1960s, compliments of Marvel Comics, and this book presents a step-by-step look at how a company that had the reputation of being one of the least creative in a generally moribund industry, emerged as one of the most dynamic, slightly irreverent and downright original contributions to an era when pop-culture emerged as the dominant force in the artistic life of America. In scores of handy, easy to reference entries, MARVEL COMICS IN THE 1960s takes the reader from the legendary company’s first fumbling beginnings as helmed by savvy editor/writer STAN LEE (aided by such artists as JACK KIRBY and STEVE DITKO), to the full maturity of its wild, colorful, offbeat grandiosity.

With the history of Marvel Comics in the 1960s divided into four distinct phases, author PIERRE COMTOIS explains just how Lee, Kirby, Ditko, and others created a line of comic books that, while grounded in the traditional elements of panel-to-panel storytelling, broke through the juvenile mindset of a low brow industry and provided a tapestry of full blown pop culture icons.

(224-page trade paperback) $27.95 US • ISBN: 9781605490168 • Ships August 2009

GRAILPAGES:

Original Comic Book Art And The Collectors GRAILPAGES brings to light the burgeoning hobby of collecting the original, hand-drawn art that is used to create comic books! Beginning more as a novelty, the hobby of collecting original comic art has expanded to a point where some of the seminal pages commonly run more than $10,000 each. Author STEVEN ALAN PAYNE lets you meet collectors from around the globe and hear their passion in their own words, as they detail collections ranging from a few key pages, to broad, encompassing collections of literally hundreds of pages of original comic art by such artists as JACK KIRBY, JOHN ROMITA SR., and others! Balancing out the narratives are incisive interviews with industry pros, including writers GERRY CONWAY, STEVE ENGLEHART, and ROY THOMAS, and exclusive perspectives from Silver Age artists DICK GIORDANO, BOB McLEOD, ERNIE CHAN, TONY DeZUNIGA, and the unparalleled great, GENE COLAN! Completing the book is a diverse sampling of breathtakingly beautiful original comic art, some lavishly presented in full-page spreads, including pages not seen publicly for decades. Fans of comic art, comic books, and pop culture will find in GRAILPAGES an appreciation for a uniquely American form of art!

(128-page trade paperback) $15.95 US • ISBN: 9781605490151 Diamond Order Code: JAN094470 • Now shipping!

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

2007 EISNER AWARD WINNER Best Comics-Related Periodical

Go online for an ULTIMATE BUNDLE, with all the issues at HALF-PRICE!

DIEGDITITIOANL ONLY!

ALTER EGO #1

ALTER EGO #2

ALTER EGO #3

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

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

GIL KANE and JACK BURNLEY flip-covers!

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

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

(100-page magazine) $5.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95

DIEGDITITIOANL ONLY!

ALTER EGO #4

ALTER EGO #5

ALTER EGO #6

ALTER EGO #7

ALTER EGO #8

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

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

by CARMINE INFANTINO and JERRY ORDWAY!

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

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

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

(100-page magazine) $5.95

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

(100-page magazine) $5.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95

ALTER EGO #9

ALTER EGO #10

ALTER EGO #11

ALTER EGO #12

ALTER EGO #13

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

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

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

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

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

(100-page magazine) $5.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95

ALTER EGO #14

ALTER EGO #15

ALTER EGO #16

ALTER EGO #17

ALTER EGO #18

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

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

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

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

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

(100-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

ALTER EGO #19

ALTER EGO #20

ALTER EGO #21

ALTER EGO #22

ALTER EGO #23

Spotlight on DICK SPRANG (profile and interview) with unseen art, rare Batman art

by BOB KANE, CHARLES PARIS, SHELLY MOLDOFF, MAX ALLAN COLLINS, JIM MOONEY, CARMINE INFANTINO, and ALEX TOTH, JERRY ROBINSON interviewed about Tomahawk and 1940s cover artist FRED RAY, FCA, and MR. MONSTER on WALLY WOOD’s Flash Gordon, Part 2!

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

BILL EVERETT and JOE KUBERT interviewed

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

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

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

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

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

ALTER EGO #24

ALTER EGO #25

ALTER EGO #26

ALTER EGO #27

ALTER EGO #28

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

JACK COLE remembered by ALEX TOTH, interview with brother DICK COLE and his PLAYBOY colleagues, CHRIS CLAREMONT on the X-Men (with more never-seen art

by DAVE COCKRUM), ROY THOMAS on All-Star Squadron #1 and its ’40s roots (with art by ORDWAY, BUCKLER, MESKIN and MOLDOFF), FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more! Covers by TOTH and SCHELLY!

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

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

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

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

ALTER EGO #29

ALTER EGO #30

ALTER EGO #31

ALTER EGO #32

ALTER EGO #33

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

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

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

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

Covers by DICK GIORDANO and GIL KANE!

Symposium on MIKE SEKOWSKY by MARK EVANIER, SCOTT SHAW!, et al., with art

by ANDERSON, INFANTINO, and others, PAT (MRS. MIKE) SEKOWSKY and inker VALERIE BARCLAY interviewed, FCA, 1950s Captain Marvel parody by ANDRU and ESPOSITO, ALEX TOTH, BILL SCHELLY, MR. MONSTER, and more! Covers by FRENZ/SINNOTT and FRENZ/BUSCEMA!

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

ALTER EGO #34

ALTER EGO #35

ALTER EGO #36

ALTER EGO #37

ALTER EGO #38

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

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

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

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

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

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

ALTER EGO #39

ALTER EGO #40

ALTER EGO #41

ALTER EGO #42

ALTER EGO #43

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

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

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

Covers by WRIGHTSON & MARC SWAYZE!

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

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

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95

ALTER EGO #44

ALTER EGO #45

ALTER EGO #46

ALTER EGO #47

ALTER EGO #48

JSA/All-Star Squadron/Infinity Inc. special!

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

Interviews with Sandman artist CREIG FLESSEL and ’40s creator BERT CHRISTMAN, MICHAEL CHABON on researching his Pulitzer-winning novel Kavalier & Clay, art

by EISNER, KANE, KIRBY, and AYERS, FCA with MARC SWAYZE and C.C. BECK, OTTO BINDER’s “lost” Jon Jarl story, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY on comics fandom, and ALEX TOTH! CREIG FLESSEL cover!

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

Cover by EVERETT and MARIE SEVERIN!

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

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

(100-page magazine) $5.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95

ALTER EGO #49

ALTER EGO #50

ALTER EGO #51

ALTER EGO #52

ALTER EGO #53

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

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

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

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

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

(100-page magazine) $5.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95

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(100-page magazine) $6.95

ALTER EGO #54

ALTER EGO #55

ALTER EGO #56

ALTER EGO #57

ALTER EGO #58

MIKE ESPOSITO on DC and Marvel, ROBERT KANIGHER on the creation of Metal Men and Sgt. Rock (with comments

by JOE KUBERT and BOB HANEY), art by ANDRU, INFANTINO, KIRBY, SEVERIN, WINDSOR-SMITH, ROMITA, BUSCEMA, TRIMPE, GIL KANE, and others, plus FCA, ALEX TOTH, BILL SCHELLY, MR. MONSTER, and more! ESPOSITO cover!

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

ALEX ROSS and ALEX WRIGHT covers!

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

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

by JACK KIRBY and PETE VON SHOLLY!

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

(100-page magazine) $6.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95

ALTER EGO #59

ALTER EGO #60

ALTER EGO #61

ALTER EGO #62

ALTER EGO #63

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

Celebrates 50 years since SHOWCASE #4!

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

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

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

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

(100-page magazine) $6.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95

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ALTER EGO #64

ALTER EGO #65

ALTER EGO #66

ALTER EGO #67

ALTER EGO #68

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

NICK CARDY interviewed on his Golden & Silver Age work (with CARDY art), plus art

by WILL EISNER, NEAL ADAMS, CARMINE INFANTINO, JIM APARO, RAMONA FRADON, CURT SWAN, MIKE SEKOWSKY, and others, tributes to ERNIE SCHROEDER and DAVE COCKRUM, FCA with MARC SWAYZE, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER, new CARDY COVER, and more!

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

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

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

(100-page magazine) $6.95

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

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

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

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

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ALTER EGO #69

ALTER EGO #70

ALTER EGO #71

ALTER EGO #72

ALTER EGO #73

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

Cover painted by JOHN WATSON, from a breathtaking illo by RAMONA FRADON!

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

Represents THE GREAT CANADIAN COMIC BOOKS, the long out-of-print 1970s book

by MICHAEL HIRSH and PATRICK LOUBERT, with rare art of such heroes as Mr. Monster, Nelvana, Thunderfist, and others, plus new INVADERS art by JOHN BYRNE, MIKE GRELL, RON LIM, and more, plus a new cover by GEORGE FREEMAN, from a layout by JACK KIRBY!

SCOTT SHAW! and ROY THOMAS on the creation of Captain Carrot, art & artifacts

by RICK HOBERG, STAN GOLDBERG, MIKE SEKOWSKY, JOHN COSTANZA, E. NELSON BRIDWELL, CAROL LAY, and others, interview with DICK ROCKWELL, Golden Age artist and 36-year ghost artist on MILTON CANIFF’s Steve Canyon! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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ALTER EGO #74

ALTER EGO #75

ALTER EGO #76

ALTER EGO #77

ALTER EGO #78

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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ALTER EGO #79

ALTER EGO #80

ALTER EGO #81

ALTER EGO #82

ALTER EGO #83

SUPERMAN & HIS CREATORS! New cover

by MICHAEL GOLDEN, exclusive and revealing interview with JOE SHUSTER’s sister, JEAN SHUSTER PEAVEY—MIKE W. BARR on Superman the detective— DWIGHT DECKER on the Man of Steel & Hitler’s Third Reich—plus art by WAYNE BORING, CURT SWAN, NEAL ADAMS, GIL KANE, and others!

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

New cover by RAFAEL KAYANAN!

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

MLJ ISSUE! Golden Age MLJ index illustrated with vintage images of The Shield, Hangman, Mr. Justice, Black Hood,

by IRV NOVICK, JACK COLE, CHARLES BIRO, MORT MESKIN, GIL KANE, & others—behind a marvelous MLJ-heroes cover

by BOB McLEOD! Plus interviews with IRV NOVICK and JOE EDWARDS, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

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

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

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

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ALTER EGO #84

ALTER EGO #85

ALTER EGO #86

ALTER EGO #87

ALTER EGO #88

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

Captain Marvel and Superman’s battles explored (in cosmic space, candy stories, and in court, with art by WALLY WOOD, CURT SWAN, and GIL KANE), an in-depth interview with Golden Age great LILY RENÉE, overview of CENTAUR COMICS (home of BILL EVERETT’s Amazing-Man and others), FCA, MR. MONSTER, new RICH BUCKLER cover, and more!

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

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

First-ever in-depth look at National/DC’s founder MAJOR MALCOLM WHEELERNICHOLSON, and early editors WHITNEY ELLSWORTH, VIN SULLIVAN, and MORT WEISINGER, with rare art and artifacts by SIEGEL & SHUSTER, BOB KANE, CREIG FLESSEL, FRED GUARDINEER, GARDNER FOX, SHELDON MOLDOFF, and others, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

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

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

TITANIC TOMES FROM TWOMORROWS!

“Monsters!” Frankenstein in Comics timeline and a look at BERNIE WRIGHTSON’s and Marvel’s versions, histories of Vampirella and Morbius, ISABELLA and AYERS discuss It the Living Colossus, REDONDO’s Swamp Thing, Man-Bat, monster art gallery, interview with TONY DeZUNIGA, art and commentary from ARTHUR ADAMS, COLÓN, KALUTA, NEBRES, PLOOG, SUTTON, VEITCH, and a painted cover by EARL NOREM!

BACK ISSUE #36

DRAW! #18

KIRBY COLLECTOR #54

Features an in-depth interview and demo

by R.M. GUERA (the artist of Vertigo’s Scalped), behind-the-scenes in the Batcave with Cartoon Network’s JAMES TUCKER on the new hit show “Batman: The Brave and the Bold,” plus product reviews by JAMAR NICHOLAS, and Comic Book Boot Camp’s “Anatomy: Part 2” by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Now shipping!

(80-page magazine with COLOR) $6.95 US Ships October 2009

STAN & JACK PART TWO! More on the co-creators of the Marvel Universe, plus a new interview (and back cover inks) by Bullpenner GEORGE TUSKA, differences between KIRBY and DITKO’S approaches, WILL MURRAY on the origin of the FF, the mystery of Marvel cover dates, plus MARK EVANIER’s regular column, a Kirby pencil art gallery, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, and more, behind a color Kirby cover inked by JOE SINNOTT!

ALL-STAR COMPANION Vol. 4

SAL BUSCEMA: COMICS’ FAST & FURIOUS ARTIST

MARVEL COMICS IN THE 1960s

Features: Colossal coverage of the Golden Age ALL-STAR COMICS! Sensational secrets of the JUNIOR JUSTICE SOCIETY! An index of the complete solo adventures of all 18 original JSAers in their own features, from 1940 to 1951! The JSA's earliest imitators (Seven Soldiers of Victory, All Winners Squad, Marvel Family, and Intl. Crime Patrol)! INFINITY, INC. on Earth-Two and after! And the 1980s SECRET ORIGINS series! With rare art by ALEX ROSS, TODD McFARLANE, JERRY ORDWAY, CARMINE INFANTINO, JOE KUBERT, ALEX TOTH, GIL KANE, MURPHY ANDERSON, IRWIN HASEN, MORT MESKIN, GENE COLAN, WAYNE BORING, GEORGE TUSKA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, GEORGE FREEMAN, DON NEWTON, JACK BURNLEY, MIKE MACHLAN, HOWARD CHAYKIN, DICK DILLIN, and others. Edited by ROY THOMAS.

In 1968, SAL BUSCEMA joined Marvel Comics and quickly became one of their top artists, penciling such storylines as the original AVENGERS/DEFENDERS WAR and CAPTAIN AMERICA, as well as a tenyear run on THE HULK and 100 consecutive issues of SPECTACULAR SPIDERMAN. This new book by Alter Ego’s JIM AMASH with Modern Masters’ ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON explores Sal’s life and career through an exhaustive interview with the artist, complete with extensive examples of his art, including a deluxe color section, and a gallery of work from Sal’s personal files! Ships Nov. 2009!

This issue-by-issue field guide presents a step-by-step look at how Marvel Comics went from being one of the least creative publishers in a generally moribund industry, to its most dynamic and original in an era when pop-culture emerged as the dominant force in the artistic life of America. In scores of handy, easy to reference entries, follow the company’s first fumbling beginnings as helmed by savvy editor/writer STAN LEE (aided by such artists as JACK KIRBY and STEVE DITKO), to the full maturity of its wild, colorful, offbeat grandiosity. With the history of Marvel Comics in the 1960s divided into four distinct phases, author PIERRE COMTOIS explains just how Lee, Kirby, Ditko, and others created a line of comic books that, while grounded in the traditional elements of panel-to-panel storytelling, broke through the juvenile mindset of a low brow industry and provided a tapestry of full blown pop culture icons.

(240-page trade paperback) $27.95 US ISBN: 9781605490045 Diamond Order Code: APR091002 Now shipping!

(176-page paperback w/16 color pages) $26.95 US • ISBN: 9781605490212 (192-page HARDCOVER with 32 color pages, dust jacket, and illo’d endleaves) $46.95 US • ISBN: 9781605490229 ULTRA-LIMITED HARDCOVER EDITION (52-copy numbered edition with a custom pencil portrait of one of Sal’s characters) $100 US • ONLY FROM TWOMORROWS!

Go to www.twomorrows.com for FULL-COLOR downloadable PDF versions of our magazines for only $2.95-3.95! Print subscribers get the digital edition FREE, weeks before it hits stores!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $10.95 US Ships November 2009

(224-page trade paperback) $27.95 US Diamond Order Code: MAY091042 ISBN: 9781605490168 • Now shipping!

2009 SUBSCRIPTION RATES: (with FREE Digital Editions)

Media Mail

BRICKJOURNAL #7

Focuses on LEGO ARCHITECTURE, with new sets designed by ADAM REED TUCKER, interviews with architectural builders SPENCER REZHALLA and JASON BURIK, a look at a LEGO BATTLESHIP that’s over 20 feet long, event reports from BRICKWORLD in Chicago and other events worldwide! PLUS: Indispensable building tips and instructions, and more!

(80-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 US • Now shipping!

BRICKJOURNAL COMPENDIUM 3

Compiles the digital-only issues #6-7 (Vol. 1) of BRICKJOURNAL for the first time in printed form! Interviews with builders and LEGO Group CEO JØRGEN VIG KNUDSTORP, features on LEGO FAN CONVENTIONS, reviews and behind the scenes reports on two LEGO sets, how to create custom minifigures, instructions and techniques, and more!

(224-page FULL-COLOR trade paperback) $34.95 US • ISBN: 9781605490069 Diamond Order Code: JAN094469 • Now shipping!

CAPTAIN ACTION: THE ORIGINAL SUPERHERO ACTION FIGURE REVISED 2nd EDITION! CAPTAIN ACTION was introduced in 1966 in the wake of the Batman TV show craze, and later received his own DC comic book with art

by WALLY WOOD and GIL KANE. Able to assume the identities of 13 famous super-heroes, continuing interest in the hero has led to two different returns to toy-store shelves. Lavishly illustrated with over 200 toy photos, this FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER SECOND EDITION chronicles the history of this quick-changing champion, including photos of virtually EVERY CAPTAIN ACTION PRODUCT ever released, spotlights on his allies ACTION BOY and the SUPER QUEENS and his arch enemy DR. EVIL, an examination of his comic-book appearances, and more, including his recent return to comics shelves and the new wave of Captain Action collectibles. By MICHAEL EURY.

VOLUME 22: MARK BUCKINGHAM (128-page trade paperback) $14.95 ISBN: 9781605490144 Diamond Order Code: FEB094473 Ships October 2009

VOLUME 23: DARWYN COOKE

by Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $15.95 ISBN: 9781605490205 Ships November 2009 Each features an extensive, career-spanning interview lavishly illustrated with rare art from the artist’s files, plus huge sketchbook section, including unseen and unused art!

(176-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 US • ISBN: 9781605490175 • Diamond Order Code: APR091003 Now shipping!

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JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR (4 issues)

$50

$60

$60

$84

$136

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BACK ISSUE! (6 issues)

$44

$60

$70

$105

$115

$17.70

DRAW! (4 issues)

$30

$40

$47

$70

$77

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ALTER EGO (12 issues) Six-issues is half-price!

$88

$120

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$210

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BRICKJOURNAL (4 issues)

$38

$48

$55

$78

$85

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TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of LEGO & Comics.

TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

A plea from the publisher of this fine digital periodical: TwoMorrows, we’re on the Honor System with our Digital Editions. We don’t add Digital Rights Management features to them to stop piracy; they’re clunky and cumbersome, and make readers jump through hoops to view content they’ve paid for. And studies show such features don’t do much to stop piracy anyway. So we don’t include DRM in our downloads.

At

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