Alter Ego #90 Preview

Roy Thomas’ Gift-Laden Comics Fanzine

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No.90

December 2009

Art ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

CHRISTMAS!

with KIRBY •LEE •SINNOTT

YESTERDAY’S YULETIDE YARNS

PLUS:

AYERS •LAZARUS •GERBER HIGHSMITH • EVERETT & MORE!!

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82658 27763

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Vol. 3, No. 90 / December 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 Jack KIrby

Writer/Editorial: Marvels—Alter Ego Style!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Have A Cup O’ Joe! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Joe Sinnott’s 80th, celebrated by his pal Bill Cain and some of comics’ finest talents—three years late!

Cover Colorist

The Yancy Street Gang Visits Dick & Lindy Ayers . . . . . . . . . 10

Tom Ziuko

Three of the artist’s greatest fans (including Barry Pearl) spend a day with Sgt. Fury & Ghost Rider.

With Special Thanks to: Heidi Amash Sal Amendola Pedro Angosto Ger Apeldoorn Terry Austin Dick & Lindy Ayers Clive Baldwin Bob Bailey Jack & Carole Bender Rodrigo Baeza Dominic Bongo Lee Boyette Mike Burkey Bill Cain Nick Caputo DeMotte Case Gene Colan Mike Costa Steve Darnell Teresa R. Davidson Tom DeFalco Mike DeLisa Jack DiMartino Michael Dunne Mark Evanier J. Fairfax Stuart Fischer Stephen Fischler Shane Foley Todd Franklin Ron Frenz Joe Giella Janet Gilbert Anthony Gillies Mike Grell David Hajdu Jennifer Hamerlinck Tom Heintjes Fred Hembeck Ben Herman Randy Howell George Hudson Rob Kirby Brian Saner Lamken Thomas Lammers Bob Layton Marjorie Lazarus

Contents

Stan Lee Zorikh Lequidre Marvin Levy Jim Ludwig Glenn MacKay Dan Makara Frank Motler Mark Muller Will Murray Jerry Ordway Jake Oster Laurence Parade Barry Pearl Fritz Peerenboom Joe Petrilak John G. Pierce Rubén Procopio Warren Reece Ethan Roberts John Romita Sherry Ross Steven Rowe Joe Rubinstein Paul Ryan Brian Sagar Alex Saviuk Tom Sawyer Joan Schenkar Marie Severin Erin Sinnott Joe Sinnott Mark & Belinda Sinnott Joe Staton Tim Stroup Desha Swayze Marc Swayze Jeff Taylor Dann Thomas Mike Touhey Herb Trimpe George Tuska Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. Michael Vance Dr. Michael J. Vassallo Mark Voger Hames Ware

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Leon Lazarus, Dave Simons, & Dorothy Schaffenberger

Stan Lee In The 1940s And ’50s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 The pre-Silver Age writings of the Marvel spearhead analyzed by Ger Apeldoorn—& lavishly illustrated.

Patricia Highsmith & The Golden Age Of American Comics. . 35 Biographer Joan Schenkar on the famed novelist’s stint on Black Terror and, er, Jap Buster Johnson.

Marvel Super-Heroes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Stuart Fischer’s brief overview of the first animated TV series starring Marvel’s mighty misfits.

“I Wrote Over 800 Comic Book Stories”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Golden Age scripter Leon Lazarus on Timely/Marvel and others in the late ’40s & ’50s.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! “Cain Before Comics” . . . . . . . 63 Michael Gilbert presents a 1948 rebuttal to Dr. Wertham—by a 14-year-old fan!

The Teenage Creations Of Steve Gerber. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 John G. Pierce relates how the way to Howard the Duck was lit by a Comet.

A Tribute To Dave Simons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 re: [correspondence, comments, & corrections] . . . . . . . . . 74 …And All In Color For Christmas! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Holiday greetings from some buddies (and beasties) of Alter Ego.

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America] #149 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 P.C. Hamerlinck spotlights Marc Swayze & the female Captain Marvels—and remembers Dorothy Schaffenberger.

On Our Cover: In the late 1960s a certain “California entrepreneur” licensed the rights to promote Marvel products under the name Marvelmania. Jack “King” Kirby penciled—and even inked—this threesome of heroes as one of a number of posters, most of which were never produced (according to comics historian Mark Evanier), before the promoter struck his tents, leaving behind a stack of unpaid bills. But one Kirby effort that at least served a worthy purpose was this one, done to promote Toys for Tots, the Marine Corps Reserve’s pet charity, which distributed toys to underprivileged kids at Christmas. To the best of our knowledge, this art has never before been utilized as a color cover— so it made a perfect image for our Yuletide issue! Thanks to John Morrow & the Kirby Estate. [©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.] Above: One of a Hulk-high heap of congratulatory illos done to honor joltin’ Joe Sinnott on his 80th birthday—this one by Bob Layton. See lots more, starting on page 3! [Thing TM & ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.] Alter EgoTM is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344.

Roy Thomas, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Alter Ego Editorial Offices: 32 Bluebird Trail, St. Matthews, SC 29135, USA. Fax: (803) 826-6501; e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices.

Single issues: $9 US ($11.00 Canada, $16 elsewhere). Twelve-issue subscriptions: $88 US, $140 Canada, $210 elsewhere. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © Roy Thomas. Alter Ego is a TM of Roy & Dann Thomas. FCA is a TM of P.C. Hamerlinck. Printed in Canada. ISSN: 1932-6890 FIRST PRINTING.

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Have A Cup O’ Joe! Happy 80th Birthday—Even If We’re Three Years Late— To Joltin’ JOE SINNOTT!

by Bill Cain A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Eagle-eyed readers would quickly realize, even if we hadn’t worked the fact into our subtitle directly above, that ace artist Joe Sinnott’s 80th birthday was slightly more than three years ago. We had planned to run this piece, which was written soon after the fact by his friend Bill Cain, and with art sent by Joe and his son Mark, in 2007… but somehow, things kept getting in the way. (So it’s us who’re late, not Bill!) However, it’s still an event worth remembering and celebrating… as we’re sure you’ll agree!

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ctober 16, 2006, marked a major milestone for one of the great artists of the comics genre, the legendary Joe Sinnott.

On that day, the highly respected and still working artist and inker turned 80 years young in Saugerties, New York, the same town where he was born in 1926. As one might imagine, a man as talented and friendly as Joe Sinnott has many friends, and in Joe’s case many of these friends can really draw! To prepare for the big event, Joe’s son Mark began secretly inviting many of the great legends of the comics industry to not only come to Joe’s surprise birthday bash, but to submit something special to commemorate the big day. What you see on this and the following pages comprises the outpouring of affection and respect for one of the most talented and friendly creators in the field of four color entertainment.

Mark Sinnott’s plan was to have the guests attend the surprise birthday party at the American Legion Post in Saugerties, NY. During the party, Mark would present Joe with an album containing the many drawings and written accolades printed here. Both Mark and Joe’s wife Betty planned the event for over a year. Sadly, Betty became ill and was hospitalized four days prior to the party. Due to her illness, Mark cancelled the party; and, as many readers already know, Mrs. Sinnott passed away a few weeks later, on November 1st of that year. Despite this tragic setback for Joe and his family, the personal appreciation and professional respect emanating from these cards, drawings, and letters remain clear. For fans of great comic art, it represents another example of great talent from some of the biggest names in the industry.

A brief glance through the names represented here would turn the head of any comics fan … Stan Lee, John Romita, Gene Colan, Marie

The Sinnotts And Friends The Sinnott family plus one—and Joe’s capricious visual comment on Disney’s recent acquisition of Marvel, which occurred while this feature was in preparation. [Thing TM & ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.] (Left to right in photo, standing:) Joe’s son Mark… daughter Kathy… son Joe, Jr…. and the man himself. Oh, and Jim Amash says to mention that the apparent bearded garden gnome crouching in front of the Sinnott clan is Jim, who came north last August with his wife Heidi to visit Joe and a few other friends. He talked the Sinnotts into posing for this snapshot… but they insisted on including him, as well.

Severin, Herb Trimpe, George Tuska, and Joe Giella are just the beginning of the artists and writers who took the time to send birthday congratulations to Joltin’ Joe. “The response was overwhelming,” Joe told me by telephone on New Year’s Eve. “It was a labor of love from my son Mark, and it was so wonderful to get all these amazing pieces of art from my friends and colleagues.”

[Continued on p. 6]

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Happy 80th Birthday To Joltin’ Joe Sinnott!

The Seven C’s—For “Congratulations!”

Since Bill Cain mentions Stan Lee, John Romita, Gene Colan, Marie Severin, Herb Trimpe, George Tuska, and Joe Giella—that’s all the excuse we need to run a mirthful montage of their greetings on this and the facing page. (Herb’s is the two-image one, with the artist introducing his penciled tribute.) [Nick Fury, Medusa, Invisible Woman, Crystal, Agatha Harkness, MJ, Captain America, Hulk, & Iron Man TM & ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Batman TM & ©2009 DC Comics; Mary Worth TM & ©2009 King Features Syndicate, Inc.; other elements ©2009 the respective artist and/or writer.]

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The Yancy Street Gang Visits DICK & LINDY AYERS How The Artist Of Sgt. Fury And Ghost Rider Met His Greatest Fans—And Lived To Tell The Tale!

by Barry Pearl, F.F.F.

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ne Saturday in January 2008, the Yancy Street Gang—Nick Caputo, Barry Pearl, and Mike Vassallo (“Doc V”)—visited the home of Dick and Lindy Ayers. It is in Westchester, just down the road from Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. Dick and Lindy have been living there for 50 years!

Dick Ayers had been an essential contributor to the beginning of the Marvel Age, inking many of the early stories of Fantastic Four, Avengers, and “Thor,” just to name a few. While Dick also penciled many of Marvel’s early super-heroes such as “The Human Torch” and “Giant-Man,” Dick will be most remembered for his work on the war and Western mags such as Sgt. Fury, Captain Savage, and Rawhide Kid.

Yancy Street Hath No Fury…

Our colorful cast of kooky characters— flanking Dick (excuse us—Richard B.!)

Ayers’ great cover for Sgt. Fury #81 (Nov. 1970). (Clockwise from right:) Dick & Lindy Ayers—Nick Caputo—Dr. Michael J. Vassallo (a.k.a. “Doc V.”)—& scribe Barry Pearl. The latter trio style themselves a latter-day Yancy Street Gang—and who’s gonna say them nay? Photos by Michael J. Vassallo & Barry Pearl. [Comic art ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

The first thing we did was crowd into the bedroom to watch a DVD on the Ayerses’ TV. Nick had discovered a DVD of the 1949 CBS-TV show called Suspense, one of the many crime shows that were popular at the time; it had originally been a very popular radio series. One Suspense episode on the DVD, “The Comic Strip Murders,” had the same basic storyline as the 1965 Jack Lemmon movie How to Murder Your Wife. The plot revolved around a comic strip artist, here played by Don Briggs, who draws a daily comic strip and who may be planning to murder his spouse! In the show, several comic strips by “Briggs’” are seen, and the artist’s hands are often shown drawing. The artist who created the strips—and whose hands were filmed doing the actual drawing—was Dick Ayers!

On the TV show the artist’s assistant is played by Eva Marie Saint. Nick made Dick laugh when he asked, “Dick, how does this guy get Eva Marie Saint for an assistant, and you get Ernie Bache?“ We then discussed how few women there were in the comic book industry at that time. This was a live 30-minute broadcast, captured on film by using a kinescope, a motion picture camera that filmed the actual broadcast from a TV set. We also discussed the limitations and flaws of doing live TV; this was brought on by observing the actual cameras moving in the background. Dick and Lindy were excited to get this DVD. Dick had never seen the show. In 1949 virtually all TV was live, and there were no VCRs.

The Yancy Street Gang Visits Dick & Lindy Ayers

Leaving the bedroom, we headed towards Dick’s studio and entered a walkway filled with Dick’s original artwork. Each page has a story. For example, there is the splash page from Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos #23, a particular favorite of Dick’s. Dick told us how Stan called him one day and said, “I can’t think of a story for Sgt. Fury. We won’t have an issue unless you think of something!” A worried Dick could not sleep that night and kept Lindy awake, too. They talked about story after story until, in the middle of the night, Lindy came up with the idea of the Howlers save a nun and her young charges. Dick said, “Stan will never go for that; he wants nothing about religion. But I’ll ask him.” When Dick did, Stan said, “What a great idea, I’ll use it.” So they put together a terrific story. When Dick’s finished pages were shown to him, he saw that in the credits he was only listed as artist. He went to Stan’s office and asked if he could also be listed as co-plotter. Stan yelled, “Since when did you develop an ego? Get out of here!”

The wall also displayed splash pages of “The Human Torch” and “The Incredible Hulk,” as well as a drawing Dick drew as a child! He also showed us several pages of penciled breakdowns of Sgt. Fury.

You couldn’t help but notice the beauty of a framed 5-page story titled “And Not a Word Was Spoken,” a Western story with no narration or dialogue, originally published in Two-Gun Kid #61 (Jan. 1963). Dick explained that he not only drew it but plotted it. When he submitted his payment requisition, he felt he should be paid a little extra for writing, or for plotting, the story. So he asked to be paid for five pages of lettering!

They argued, but they paid him! We began to discuss that, in the first Sgt. Fury Masterworks Masterworks volume, Stan wrote that Percy Pinkerton, the English Howler, might be gay. I mentioned that this was unlikely.

While Percy was drawn to look like David Niven, his personality was more like Hugh Hefner. In fact, in Sgt. Fury Annual #4, which took place in “current day 1968,” Percy owned and ran a “Bunny” club. Dick said he asked Stan about this and Stan said, “You’ve got to give the fans what they want.” So Percy was ret-conned! Will war crimes never end? Dick then mentioned that he had been asked to do the introduction to the second Marvel Masterworks of Sgt. Fury.

On the subject of annuals, Dick had expressed his disappointment in seeing their stories set in the future. By showing the Howlers on D-Day and in Korea and Viet Nam, it meant they all made it through the war, removing some of the suspense and eliminating some storylines where a Howler could be in real danger. It also meant that any new Howler was in trouble! I mentioned that the only other time Marvel had done this was

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with Conan the Barbarian, where in his first issue you learned that he was destined to be king when he got older, insuring that he will live at least that long. But of course, Conan’s destiny had been set in stone by Robert E. Howard, decades before there was a Conan comic book.

There were no covers on the Ayerses’ walls. Dick said they were very hard to get and he had none, but he did have several local newspapers framed. The papers all had stories about Dick, and sported covers or characters with which he’d been involved. In our entire stay, I never heard him express a preference for a character; it was like they were all his children.

In the late 1950s, Dick said, there was some competition for jobs and assignments. Dick was disappointed when Jack Kirby got the penciling assignment on Rawhide Kid, a job Dick thought he had gotten. He was assigned the inking. Around that time, Dick mentioned he was also inking Sky Masters, the newspaper strip drawn by Kirby. For that work he said he was paid about the same as inking for Marvel, a surprise for me, because I had thought work in comic strips paid more.

Dick told a story about a publisher that influenced him throughout his career. Once, while he was drawing a strip, the publisher came over and said to him, “They have already bought today’s paper. You need to draw something to make them want to buy tomorrow’s paper.” You can see he feels the same way about his comics; he is drawing to make you want to buy the next issue!

We took a few pictures of Mike standing next to Dick in the hallway.

You can see the comic artwork on each side. The corridor ends at his studio and office, which is also filled with artwork. Dick discussed how he went to art school on the G.I. Bill after World War II, and he showed us some very beautiful pictures he drew, which looked nothing like comics.

“A small group of men at the top of their game” is how Dick described Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Don Heck, and himself at the beginning of the Marvel Era. We sat down with Dick as he nostalgically drew upon the past. We asked him if any one artist was harder than another to ink.

He said no, but some took longer to get used to than others. This was not a diplomatic response; he is just a decent guy who appreciated the efforts of others. He mentioned that Steve Ditko was one of the artists who took longer to get used to. Dick noted that Ditko’s pencils were not very tight and that, like himself, he probably did most of the finished work in the inking stage. That showed how Dick, as a fellow artist, understood what Ditko did and how he worked. Nick noted that Dick was an important contributor to the Marvel Age of Comics, who brought a solidity of form and sharp brush work to the pencils of Jack Kirby. Those early stories of Fantastic Four, “Incredible Hulk,” “Thor,” “AntMan”/”Giant-Man,” The Avengers, and “The Human Torch” all showcased the distinctive inking of Dick Ayers. His inking was absolutely perfect for Kirby’s rough-and-tumble style. The team was a startling contrast to the plain and placid DC comics, giving the early Marvel issues a visual identity of their own. Not only was Dick a thorough professional who got the assignment in on time; he also added personality to every job.

And Then There Were Nun The Howlers meet Sister Theresa (yes!) and her young charges in Sgt. Fury #23 (Oct. 1965). Script by Stan Lee; pencils

by Dick Ayers; inks by Frank Giacoia (as “Frank Ray”). We’ll let Dick and Stan argue it out about how to distribute the writing credit. [©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

I felt that Dick Ayers was always a master of “minimalistic detail,” a term that sounds contradictory.

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STAN LEE In The 1940s And ’50s The Pre-Silver Age Writing Style Of The Marvel Spearhead

by Ger Apeldoorn

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n his 2002 biography Excelsior!, Stan Lee tells of being inspired at an early age by a schoolboy two years his senior, who used to come into class to sell subscriptions to The New York Times. This boy would “speak for ten full minutes, looking his audience straight in the eye, never once fumbling or losing the attention of the class.”

Stan says he decided then and there that he wanted to be able to speak that way and hold the attention of an audience. And, indeed, all through his career as a writer and editor and representative of Marvel in Hollywood, that has been his driving force—to be able to be the center of attention by being as entertaining as he can be.

To do this, he has a bag of “party tricks” he developed through the years. I call them “tricks,” but I could use instead the words “stylistic traits.” They are a product of his own sense of humor and of the way he keeps his stories in the here and now. In a deeper sense, they may even be a reflection of the way his mind processes information. I know that’s a big statement, but let me tell you how I came to it.

Follow Me In his 1960 autobiographic Mark It and Strike It, Steve Allen gives an analysis of his own brand of humor. Allen was a many-faceted showman (actor, author, songwriter, etc.) with more than a few similarities to Stan Lee. In Mark It Allen describes how he used the literal meaning of words and expressions to turn a normal conversation into nonsense. When doing

What’s A Couple Of Decades Between Friends?

Stan Lee mugs for the camera in an early-1970s issue of Crazy magazine, after he’d become Marvel’s publisher—a gag photo overlooking his first printed comics work (the text story in May 1941’s Captain America Comics #3) and the cover of Fantastic Four #1 (Oct. 1961). Ger Apeldoorn’s article studies Stan’s writing over the two decades between those epochmaking events... both of which, by coincidence, were largely illustrated

by Jack Kirby. [©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Stan Lee In The 1940s And ’50s

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in the winter of 1942. He’d started out as an office boy under editor Joe Simon in 1941. His first writing assignment had been a two-page text story in Captain America Comics #3 (May ’41), and he was soon was writing “real” comic book stories. Thanks to the new series of Marvel Masterworks reprints from this era, we can finally see for ourselves what Lee wrote in those days.

Off To See The Whizzer

Separated At Birth?

(Left:) Stan Lee (as drawn by Ken Bald for the former’s 1947 book Secrets behind the Comics).

(Right:) Steve Allen. [Art ©2009 Stan Lee.]

his famous Q&A audience interviews, he turned his subjects’ answers on their heads by deliberately misunderstanding them—often by taking them too literally. When an audience member said she couldn’t follow him, he responded with a literal interpretation of that phrase: “Well, somebody’s been following me for the past five days... a short dark man in a grey sweater.” Allen also applied this trick to the implied social meaning of certain phrases people commonly use. When a lady in the audience spelled out her name for him (“I’m Mrs. Holt. H-O-L-T.“), he took it as a clue for some unknown social rule and replied: “Very well. W-E-L-L.” These are examples of what I would call a “literal mind”—someone who has the ability to hear the words in a phrase apart from their context.

What’s In A Signature?

To see these tendencies in Stan Lee’s work, we have to take a broader view of his writing career than just his work as a super-hero scripter. After all, when The Fantastic Four #1 was published in mid-1961, he was already 38 years old and had been writing and editing comics for half his life.

How much he has written isn’t 100% clear. He signed some stories he wrote and didn’t sign others. And since he also devoted a considerable portion of his time to being the editor of Timely/Atlas/Marvel (even if at times he had other editors such as Don Rico, Vince Fago, and Al Jaffee working under him), and Timely was the most prolific comics company of much of the ’40s and ’50s until the ’57 collapse, it is clear that he wrote no more than a fraction of the company’s output.

That first Lee text story, “The Traitor’s Revenge,” seen in the two hardcover reprintings of Captain America Comics #1 (March 1941), is nothing special, as you can easily check for yourself—but the lone illustration may well be by Jack Kirby, which would make it the first Lee-Kirby “collaboration.” Stan’s second signed text story seems to be the one in All Winners Comics #1 (Summer ’41). In it Stan introduces a comics fan called Johnny Blake, who wishes he could meet his Marvel heroes Torch and Toro, Sub-Mariner, The Angel, Black Marvel, Captain America and Bucky—who also just happen to be the stars of All Winners. One by one they turn up in his bedroom (see Vol. 1 of Marvel Masterworks: Golden Age All Winners). Finally Johnny wakes up and realizes it was all a dream.

Stan Lee then pulls it all together with a little twist, using the literal meaning of the title of the story: “Gee, I wonder who did win the contest, though. But what am I saying? Nobody could have won, because Cap, the Marvel, the Torch, the Angel and the Sub-Mariner are all winners! Yes sir, ALL WINNERS!” There’s a similar text story by Lee in All Winners #2, reprinted in the same hardcover volume. It ends with the other heroes learning that the super-fast Whizzer—now featured in the comic—has been in the room with them all the time, simply moving too quickly to be seen. In Les Daniels’ 1991 history Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics, Lee says of The Whizzer: “I don’t remember if I made that up, but I remember writing it, because I wrote them all.” Whatever that means, precisely.

Around the same time, Lee also wrote a text story introducing a number of new heroes to the reader in U.S.A. Comics #2 (Nov. 1941), which has likewise been reprinted in the Marvel Masterworks: Golden Age series. At a meeting of the mag’s heroes, Captain Terror proposes they “award a prize for the best story of the month,” with the best one to be announced in the following issue. But, apparently the editor (by then Stan

In fact, over at the Timely-Atlas-Comics list on Yahoo, where all things Goodman are discussed, Dr. Michael J. Vassallo has stated that any story that wasn’t signed by Stan Lee (or one of his early-’40s pseudonyms) probably wasn’t written by him. If so, that would yield a lot of bylined horror stories, a couple of science-fiction tales, numerous Westerns, Snafu, and a lot of dumb-blonde and funny-animal comics, but virtually no crime books, a genre he does claim to have written in the late ’40s.

Doc V. also throws out all stories which have a job number with the prefix “SL.” By the time Lee got out of the US Army, Timely had begun using job numbers for every story, as a way of tracking payment. The earliest job numbers have an “R” prefix, which means they were handled

by Don Rico. Soon after Stan was discharged on Sept. 29, 1945, and returned to the company, job numbers with an “SL” prefix begin appearing. But since that prefix also appears in the job numbers of Harvey Kurtzman-written “Hey Look!” pages, the simple appearance of his initials doesn’t imply authorship. In this instance, I agree totally with Doc. I am less certain about the work done before Lee went into the Army

Hey Look! A Stan Lee Job Number!

“SL-163” is handwritten in this final panel of Harvey Kurtzman’s very first “Hey Look!” one-page gag, which appeared in Jeanie #17 (Jan. 1948)... but there’s no doubt that artist Kurtzman, not Stan Lee, wrote it. Doubtless the prefix was for the purpose of editorial trafficking. Reprinted from the Hey Look! collection published in 1992 by Kitchen Sink Press. [©2009 Estate of Harvey Kurtzman.]

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Patricia Highsmith & The Golden Age Of American Comics

by Joan Schenkar This article was written especially for Alter Ego by Ms. Schenkar, author of the new biography The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith, and is ©2009 by Joan Schenkar; all rights reserved. See ad on p. 40.

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n the early 1970s, when the late, great comics historian Jerry Bails was still sending out queries to anyone who had ever been associated with the making of early comic books, he mailed a questionnaire to a woman living in a house by a quiet canal an hour’s

Highsmith & High Times Noted novelist Patricia Highsmith, on the cover of Joan Schenkar’s new bio—juxtaposed with “The Destroyer” splash panel from U.S.A. Comics #14 (Fall 1944). Highsmith reportedly wrote a number of “Destroyer” stories during her seven-year sojourn in comics, but it’s not known if this is one of them; even the artist is unidentified. Both scans supplied by Joan Schenkar.

[Book cover ©2009 the respective copyright holders; Destroyer art ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

train ride outside of Paris, France. The woman to whom Bails addressed his query was a well-known American expatriate novelist. Most of her books had been made into films and European critics liked to talk about her as a kind of American Dostoyevsky.

Bails’ questionnaire seems to have arrived in the form of a list—which is probably the reason why Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995), the Dark Lady of American Letters and author of such masterpieces as Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley, wrote back to Bails. There was nothing Pat Highsmith liked better than filling in a nice, orderly little list.

As was her habit, she also used Bails’ query to establish a few misdirections: she gave the names of only a few of the many comics titles she’d actually worked on: “Black Terror” and “Sergeant Bill King” for the Sangor-Pines shop (Better/Cinema/Pines/Standard/Nedor); “Crisco and Jasper” for Fawcett; and some unidentified material for Dell Comics.1 But the truth of Pat Highsmith’s comics career was seven years longer and much stranger than the cursory answers she set down for Jerry Bails.

Given her feelings for her long freelance career during the Golden Age of American Comics, the real miracle was that Highsmith chose to write anything at all on the subject.

Like many people who wrote for the comics in New York City, Pat Highsmith was ashamed of her work. A couple of years before Bails contacted her, Vince Fago, who had been her wartime editor at Timely Author's Note: Jim Amash was my generous and extremely well informed guide to the Golden Age of American Comics—and Patricia Highsmith's secret comics career couldn't have been retrieved without him. Jim and the many members of the comics community who contributed to my research are acknowledged in The Talented Miss Highsmith.

1 Jerry Bails' listings of Highsmith's comics and non-comics work are incomplete, and Highsmith's novels are, in some cases, inaccurately represented and misattributed in his otherwise invaluable work.

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Notes From A New Biography

What I uncovered about Highsmith’s relationship to the comics was so extensive and so surprising that I ended up devoting a quarter of her biography to the subject. This article is just a small indication of what I found: the lengthy, complicated, and much more specific history of Patricia Highsmith’s involvement in the Golden Age of American Comics is fully recounted in The Talented Miss Highsmith.

Talented Strangers Patricia Highsmith’s best-known novels are Strangers on a Train (1950) and The Amazing Mr. Ripley (1955) — both for their own virtues, and because they were made into noteworthy films.

(Above:) Farley Granger and Robert Walker starred in director Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951), in which two young men meet by chance and strike a devilish bargain to murder each other’s nemeses.

Timely artist Allen Bellman has said that he always felt that Stan Lee (whom Vince Fago tried to fix up with a date with Highsmith) resembled Walker. The screenplay was by Philip Marlowe creator Raymond Chandler & Czenzi Ormonde.

(Right:) Matt Damon starred in the 1999 cinematic version of The Talented Mr. Ripley, about a truly exceptional murderer. [Film materials ©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

Comics and had once tried to fix her up on a date with Stan Lee, also wrote to her in France. Vince was hoping to publish a book of his “hundred best comics” and, well aware of Pat’s celebrity, he was also hoping for her cooperation. Vince remembered Pat as very beautiful (which she had certainly been) and totally professional (she was always professional). Pat had come to Vince in the Timely office in the Empire State Building in late 1943 asking for work as a freelance writer, and she wrote many scenarios for Timely right up through 1946. One of the characters she wrote for was the same character Mickey Spillane had also worked on: the US Navy’s war-time human killing machine, Doug “Jap Buster Johnson.” Another was the super-hero “The Destroyer.” But the kind of cooperation Vince Fago needed from Pat for the book he had in mind would have forced her to reveal the length of her involvement in the comics and, although Timely had always been her favorite “outfit,” she wrote Vince back from her house in Moncourt to say she just didn’t have time for the comics now.

In a long life of interesting secrets, the one secret Pat Highsmith didn’t reveal was the fact that she had been the most frequently employed female scriptwriter during the Golden Age of American Comics. But like her birthday twin Edgar Allan Poe and his purloined letter, Highsmith kept her secret hidden in plain sight. And that’s where I found it fifty years later when I began to research and write The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith.

Remember Pearl Harbor?

“Jap Buster Johnson” splash from U.S.A. Comics #14 (Fall 1944). Again, while Highsmith wrote for this dubiously titled wartime series, there is no certainty that she wrote this particular story; nor has the artist been identified. Scan supplied by Joan Schenkar. [©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

In December of 1942, Pat Highsmith, a 1942 graduate from Barnard College desperate for work, answered an ad for a “research/rewrite job” at the SangorPines comics shop at 10 W. 45th Street in Manhattan. It was something like the ad sixteen-yearold Everett Ray Kinstler would answer six months later when he was hired as a penciler for Cinema Comics at the same shop. Ray Kinstler, now a prominent portrait painter, had a “heavy teenage crush” on Pat and he remembered her very well. She looked, he said, “a bit like Katherine Hepburn. An American College Girl Type. I could have pictured her at Smith College.” He also remembered her drive for perfection:

Patricia Highsmith & The Golden Age Of American Comics

What Was Patricia Highsmith Like In Real Life?

Three comic book stories specifically identified as having been written by Patricia Highsmith are the biographical “Catherine the Great” from Pines/Better/Standard’s Real Life Comics #18 (July 1944)... welterweight boxing champ “Barney Ross” (RLC #13, Sept. ’43)... and Capt. “Eddie Rickenbacker,” World War I flying ace (RLC #14, Nov. ’43). Art by August Froehlich (probably), Maurice Gutwirth, & Leo Morey, respectively. Thanks to Steven Rowe for his original assistance to Joan Schenkar, and to Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., for these scans. [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

Pat Highsmith, said Kinstler, insisted on always having “the best.”

The writer Highsmith was hired to replace at Cinema Comics was Stanley Kauffmann—who went on to become one of America’s most prominent theatre critics. And the man who hired Pat for the job at Sangor-Pines was Richard E. Hughes, Ned Pines’ son-in-law and the creator of “Black Terror,” Sangor-Pines’ most popular super-hero. Hughes first employed Pat to research and write “real-life comics”—stories of Barney Ross, the Jewish welterweight boxing champion; Catherine the Great, Russia’s most advanced ruler; and the World War 1 flying ace, Eddie Rickenbacker—which she worked on during the year she had a fulltime job in the Sangor shop. Eventually she began to write for “Black Terror,” “Fighting Yank,” “Sergeant Bill King,” and a host of other characters battling the tidal wave of crime and foreign enemies that seemed to wash over so many comic book heroes during the Golden Age. Pat once told a lover that life “didn’t make any sense without a crime in it.” Writing for the crime-themed, criminally-inclined comic book industry of the 1940s—the only long-term “job” she ever had—must have seemed to her like compounding a felony.

Bob Oksner, cartoonist and art director at Sangor-Pines in the 1940s, remembers seeing Pat at work on her scripts in the Sangor-Pines’ writers’

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41

Marvel Super-Heroes A Brief Overview Of The First Animated (More Or Less) TV Series Starring The Mighty Marvel Misfits

by Stuart Fischer

T

he 1960s were a most complex decade in just about every field and endeavor. Politically, socially, culturally and more, they were a decade of change. A decade, also, that introduced some very innovative and challenging concepts, especially in the realm of music, movies, television, theatre, books—and comics.

Comics, just like books, theatre, movies, television, and music, are a reflection of their times, and the comic book medium was changing in the 1960s, just as so much else was. Comics are a reflection of ourselves, and Marvel gradually made its way to the front of American popular culture during the ’60s. Kids were reading Marvel’s comic books such as Fantastic Four and The Amazing Spider-Man, and soon, images of Marvel’s characters began to appear on T-shirts, board games, action figures, and toys.

The TV networks noticed this, and so did that medium’s advertisers— with the result that, only after a few years after Marvel had re-invented itself from the old Timely and Atlas days, its comic book heroes who had broken new ground found themselves on television and thus in the cultural mainstream, as a result of having attracted such a strong following as comics heroes. The 1960s saw many colorful novelties and personalities that arose from music. Set against a pop culture filled with the likes of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Muhammed Ali, James Bond, and Star Trek, Marvel contributed an element that kids and even adults could relate to.

What separated Marvel Comics under Stan Lee from other comics publishers of the day was something very special. Marvel’s super-heroes had powers that made them different from ordinary people and wore colorful costumes and led double lives to protect their true identities; however, they were seen not only as hyper-powered do-gooders, but also as people you might pass on the street in real life, people you would never suspect as being anything other than what they appear to be.

All of this story material not only made (and still makes) for good comic books, but it also made for good television programs and movies, and producers and screenwriters were savvy enough to realize this.

Marvel’s first foray into television was a 1966 syndicated package of cartoons which ran on local television stations and consisted of five Marvel Super-Heroes: Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, and Sub-Mariner. (Fantastic Four and Spider-Man would follow, on ABC-TV, in 1967.)

Marvel Super-Heroes was programmed Monday through Friday and was aired in the early evening, where it became a hit, behind its colorful

Okay, Mr. Nielsen—Here We Come!

The above ad for the Marvel Super Heroes show appeared in all Marvel comics with a November 1966 cover date opposite this Bullpen Bulletins paragraph written by Stan: “It won’t be long now before our swingin’ super-heroes make their star-studded debut on TV, appearing five nights a week—that’s right, five—count ’em—five nights a week, for a half-hour each night! So, you’ve just got time to make sure your set’s in good working order—check your local paper for time and station—and prepare to have a ball!” If this seems a relatively soft sell for Super-Salesman Stan, it’s partly because the full-page ad was on the facing page—and besides, he’d written a similar but longer notice the month before as an “official scoop.” Thanks to Barry Pearl. [©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

theme songs—the most memorable of which, surely, began: “When Captain America throws his mighty shield….” The series started in ’66 and ran for a few years in the syndication market (off-network). It was the result of a collaboration between Marvel and two television production companies: Krantz Films and Grantray-Lawrence.

Krantz Films had been founded by Steve Krantz (1923-2007), whose full name was Stephen Falk Krantz, husband of bestselling author Judith Krantz. Born in Brooklyn, NY, Krantz had graduated from Columbia University.

Something of a pioneer animation production company when it first started producing TV cartoons in the 1960s, Krantz Films provided shows to both the major networks and to the first-run syndication market. The firm’s first big successes were Marvel Super-Heroes and, a year later, Spider-Man.

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The First Animated Series Starring The Mighty Marvel Misfits

“WATCH MARVEL SUPER-HEROES ON TV” (Right:) Appearing at the bottom of a number of story pages in all Marvel issues cover-dated Nov. & Dec. ’66 and in some (but not all) dated Oct. ’66 and Jan. ’67 were alternately red or green elongated boxes sporting the above exhortation. Ye Editor recalls being told at the time that the arrows next to them were left blank so that the call letters/numbers of a TV station in a given area that carried the series could be added at the printers, keyed to the geographical area to which a particular batch of copies was to be sent. All the arrows in Roy’s own bound volumes (see top sample) are devoid of text—he presumed, because the copies shipped to the Marvel offices weren’t keyed to any specific region. But he had never checked to see if there was relevant data printed in those arrows in copies that people bought off the stands—and, informally asking about, he didn’t run into anyone who had a comic whose arrow featured station information— —until the intrepid Barry Pearl set himself the task of scouring through a four-month run of his own collection. Initially he found nothing but blank arrows, then suddenly discovered that some of his Dec. 1966 comics had exactly the kind of info Roy remembered.

The second scan at right is from the final story page of Barry’s copy of The Avengers #35, and features the call letters (“WOR-TV”) and channel number (“9”) of one of New York’s largest nonnetwork stations. Since then, Barry’s fellow Yancy Street Ganger Nick Caputo has found WOR-TV mentions in his own Oct.-to-Dec. copies of Journey into Mystery (starring “Thor”), but nowhere else—while Mike Costa reports finding one listing for Detroit’s CKLW-TV, channel 9—and Tim Stroup’s own copy of Avengers #35 contained a reference to “WGN-TV…9” and “Chicago,” with an earlier one in #33 (Oct.). Thanks a heap, guys! Roy was beginning to think he’d dreamed the whole thing about the arrows’ original intention—which clearly proved too difficult to implement fully. [©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Krantz Films was the business end of the shows that it produced.

The actual production work for Marvel Super-Heroes (and later for Spider-Man) was provided by a small West Coast animation company called Grantray-Lawrence. It consisted of three men, who were artists and animators: Grant Simmons, Ray Patterson, and Robert Lawrence. The shows they produced were all done for Krantz Films, and they had a talent for keeping production costs low.

In the late ’60s the two companies together would also produce Rocket Robin Hood (a futuristic look at Robin Hood and his Merry Men) and Max, the 2000-Year-Old Mouse, an off-network show which was a combination of comedy and education, starring a rodent who provided plenty of information for those who hung around long enough to listen. They would also do Professor Kitzel, another syndicated effort that blended humor with a bit of educational material.

But it all started with…

Marvel Super-Heroes (Monday – Friday, 7:00-7:30 PM, WOR-TV, NY) Producer: Krantz Films in association with Grantray-Lawrence Animation,Inc. Distributor: ARP Films Debut:

9/2/66 (first debut in US) 9/19/66 (on WOR-TV, NY)

Component Series: Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, The Mighty Thor, Sub-Mariner This animated series, Marvel Comics’ first foray into television, was actually five different animated series under one umbrella title. Each super-hero was on in a half-hour time-slot on a different day of the week… and each had its own distinctive theme song.

This show was probably the most faithful of any other-media versions of Marvel characters, because each episode was actually adapted from the

Grantray-Lawrence went out of business at the end of the 1960s.

While Krantz Films later produced live-action movies such as The Weakest Sex in 1968 and Strange Paradise in 1969, the company’s greatest success came when in 1972 it produced the groundbreaking animated feature Fritz the Cat, directed by Ralph Bakshi and bringing to life the underground cartoons of Robert Crumb; it was the first X-rated animated film in history, and succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

Don’t Touch That Dial—Or Thor Will Cream You With His Hammer!

You had to turn the comic sideways to read it, but this full-page ad for MSH faced the Bullpen Bulletins page in all Marvel mags cover-dated Dec. 1966. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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I Wrote Over 800 Comic Book Stories” LEON LAZARUS (And His Wife MARJORIE) On Timely/Marvel In The Late Golden Age

I

Conducted and Transcribed by Jim Amash

NTERVIEWER’S INTRO: Leon Lazarus [1919- 2008] was an assistant editor for Timely Comics from 1947 until 1950, working primarily on their humor and teenage books. In addition, he wrote a fair number of features [“Kid Colt Outlaw,” “Black Rider,” Millie the Model,” “Tessie the Typist,” “Patsy Walker,” “Hedy De Vine,” etc.] during that time, continuing on until 1957. He also wrote for ACG, Joe Simon & Jack Kirby, Ziff-Davis [“G.I. Joe” and “Kid Cowboy”]. When the comics work dried up, Leon turned to writing for Martin Goodman’s Magazine Management for many years, returning to the newly christened Marvel Comics for a single “Giant-Man” story in 1964.

Leon was part of a family of comic book professionals. His wife Marjorie also wrote text pages for Timely in the 1950s, and was of great help in this interview, remembering some things that Leon didn’t, and supplying us with photos. His brothers Harry and Sid wrote and drew for several companies.

In addition to that, Harry holds a number of patents on various inventions.

I wish Leon had lived to see this interview printed, but his memories of his times live on and, thankfully, we are able to share them with you now. —Jim.

Lazarus Times Two Leon & Marjorie Lazarus in 2005—above art from two stories Leon wrote for Martin Goodman’s publications in the mid-1960s. Photo courtesy of the Lazaruses; forwarded by Jim Amash & Teresa R. Davidson.

(Left:) Splash page from Tales to Astonish #64 (Feb. ’65). Art by Carl Burgos & Paul Reinman; repro’d from Essential Astonishing Ant-Man, Vol. 1—although by then Hank Pym had added two letters to his name and thirty feet to his height, to become Giant-Man. (Above:) A double-page title spread from Stag, Vol. 15, #7 (July ’64), with art

by Bob Schulz; thanks to Rodrigo Baeza. [Stag art ©2009 the respective copyright holders; “Giant-Man” splash ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“I Wrote Over 800 Comic Book Stories”

The Way We Were Marjorie writes: “The picture of Leon was taken in 1946, age 27, and the one of me in 1945, age 23.” This is how the happy couple looked as they entered married bliss and the postwar world.

“I Was Always Interested In Writing” LEON LAZARUS: I was born in the Bronx, Aug. 22, 1919. Sid was the oldest brother (born March 12, 1912), then Harry came along (Feb. 22, 1917), and I was the youngest. Sid passed away in 1973, I believe.

I was always interested in writing. I loved to read, even as a four-yearold child. Sid encouraged me to read. I asked him to help me learn how to read, which he did, before I entered the first grade. In the fifth or sixth grade, I won an essay-writing contest and won a box of hard candy. That was a great incentive and gave me the idea to become a writer. I used to go to the library every day and read books in the reference room where the high schoolers were, even though I was much younger than they were.

My brother Sid was working for Parents Magazine [company] on a feature called “Marco Polar Bear.” He also worked for DC. This was before the war. Sid had a family and wasn’t drafted, but I was unmarried and the sole support for my parents, who were already in their 60s. I wanted to get into the service. My friends were in, and I wasn’t patriotic-crazy, but I felt I could serve. I wasn’t there the first day the war started, but I went when I was called. In 1942, I was drafted into the Army. It was there that I decided I was going to make writing my career. I was in the radar department, which was a highly secret department during the Second World War. The Signal Corps wanted to do a film on radar, and I was asked to write about the importance of radar. I was in Italy at the time, training people how to use radar. A Signal Corps colonel told me that they were happy with what I did and would put my name on the film, which I never did get to see. Right after that, I was honorably discharged from the Army; this was 1945.

JIM AMASH: What did you do when you came home?

MARJORIE LAZARUS: He married me [in May 1946]! [laughter] Not to take away from Leon, but he wrote some articles when he got home, one of which was for The New Yorker.

“Timely Had Trouble With Their Proofreaders” LEON: It was about soldiers returning home from the war. They didn’t publish it, though, because they only wanted factual stories and I had

47

written fiction. They asked me to write something else, but that didn’t get published, either. As it turned out, I didn’t get into the magazine field until after I left comics.

My older brothers were artists and were doing comic books for a living. I had to make a living, and my friend Bob Landers was working at Timely as an inker. I had good penmanship and decided to give lettering a try. I had done some jobs lettering on blueprints, so Bob said, “If you can do that, you can letter comics.” He gave me advice on doing samples, I did them, and got a staff job at $40 a week. Then I starting thinking, “I can write this stuff.”

Dave Berg was an editor there at the time, and he was also a good cartoonist. He was handling the teenage books, and he wrote and drew stories, too. He had a good sense of humor. I was only there about three weeks when I asked if I could submit a writing sample to him. He said, “Okay, kid, but remember, this may look easy, but it isn’t easy.” I wrote a story outline. Dave liked it and said, “Go take a crack at it.” I wrote it and they bought it. I don’t remember the character, but it was a teenage feature. Then they took me out of the lettering department, and made me the associate editor to Don Rico. I was making $60 a week now, not including my writing, so I was making about a $100 a week total. That was good money then. All the freelance writers, no matter who they were, got the same page rate. I know this for sure because I made out the vouchers when I was an associate editor. The rate was about $7 a page.

JA: Who hired you to be a letterer?

LEON: Gary Keller. He was in charge of the production department; gray haired... he was an old guy. Timely had trouble with their proofreaders, so I was made an associate editor in order to look over their shoulders and check out their work. Don Rico was working with Stan Lee and Ernie Hart. Rico had drawn features like “The Sub-Mariner.” He may have written some of it, too; I can’t be sure now. Ernie Hart had done a book on German police dogs, and could draw as well as write. He was a nice guy, very slick-looking, with a good sense of humor. He was smart.

We were on the 14th floor of the Empire State Building. The letterers were gathered together in the production room, away from the artists. In that room with me were many people, most of whom I don’t remember now. Mario Aquaviva was in charge of the letterers, but Artie Simek was over him. Artie was a tall, skinny guy, very nice and quiet, with a big Adam’s apple. He never pushed anyone around. He didn’t letter stories; he did logos.

Don Rico and Ernie Hart divided up a number of titles. Ernie edited the crime books and Rico did the “Sub-Mariner.” I knew Rico because he was a friend of my brother Sid. They had worked on WPA art projects together. I was like a kid brother to Rico, who talked to Stan Lee about putting me in charge of the women who were proofreading.

When I started writing, Dave Berg and Ernie Hart were my editors.

But right after I became a writer, Dave Berg stopped editing. I think Al Jaffee replaced Dave Berg. Jim Miele was an editor there, too, but I don’t remember what books he did. There was a time when super-heroes fell out of favor with the buying public and more “realistic” comics became popular. Westerns and romance comics were big by this time. [A/E

48

Leon & Marjorie Lazarus On Timely & Marvel In The Late Golden Age

What About Bob? Bob Landers in 2002; photo courtesy of Mr. & Mrs. Lazarus. P.S.: Because DC’s records list him as “Bob Lander” (no “s”), his credits are listed under that name in the online Who’s Who of American Comic Books (1928-1999); but Jim Amash notes that the Lazaruses and fellow Timely artist Allen Bellman always used the name “Landers.” Thanks to Steven Rowe for bringing the disparity to our attention.

At right: a splash page from the radio/TV-licensed Big Town #14 (March-April 1952), inked by Lander(s) over pencils by John Lehti. From a black-&-white Australian reprint, sent by Mark Muller. [©2009 DC Comics.]

EDITOR’S NOTE: Caricatures and photos of a number of Timely humor Bullpenners were seen in A/E #35, accompanying Jim Amash’s in-depth interview with Al Jaffee. It’s still available from TwoMorrows, so check it out—’cause we didn’t have room to repeat them here! End of plug.]

JA: Do you remember the names of the proofreaders?

LEON: Polly Schwartz was there. She must have been in her 60s, and was like the big “mother” in the room. Sometimes the guys would curse and she’d say, “Quit that, you boys.” She had a very good education, I think.

A woman named Adele was there, too. [NOTE: Adele Hasan later married Harvey Kurtzman. —Jim.] I do remember Harvey, who was very good at what he did. I didn’t get to know him, since he wasn’t a staffer. I only did this for a short period of time. I started writing stories and they liked what I did, so I became an assistant editor to both Hart and Rico. I did some assistant editing for Al Sulman, too. I helped edit

When Super-Heroes Were Hot (Left:) Don Rico drew—and sometimes scripted—tales of Timely’s “Big Three” super-heroes (Captain America, Human Torch, & Sub-Mariner) in the postWWII years. It’s not certain when he did this color illustration of the original Torch, which was retrieved from the Heritage Comics Archives by Dominic Bongo; it was probably drawn in his later years.

(Above:) Ernie Hart was the original writer/artist/creator of “Super Rabbit,” a feature which soon won its own mag. These panels are from his first exploit, in Comedy Comics #14 (March 1943); for this story’s splash, see A/E #35. [©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt

Introduction

by Michael T. Gilbert

D

uring the Golden Age, many parents believed that comic books were a corrosive influence on their children. Critical articles by Dr. Fredric Wertham and other “experts” blamed them for every ill from juvenile delinquency to pimples. But comic books still had their defenders, even then. David Hajdu’s excellent book The Ten-Cent Plague referenced one such voice: David Wigransky, a teenage comic book fan who, outraged by Wertham’s claims, stood up and fought back. Young David wrote a very powerful letter in the July 24, 1948, issue of The Saturday Review defending his favorite reading material. This was in response to two articles that had appeared in the magazine, one by Wertham and a second by John Mason Brown.

David’s rebuttal is remarkably powerful—mixing common sense and a passion for our medium to which Alter Ego readers can easily relate. We begin with an introductory note from the editors of The Saturday Review.

Cain Before Comics EDITOR’S NOTE: Of the numerous replies we have received to Dr. Fredric Wertham’s article, “The Comics… Very Funny!” (SRL, May 29), and John Mason Brown’s “The Case Against the Comics” (SRL, March 20), one of the most interesting is that written by fourteen-year-old David Pace Wigransky of Washington, D.C. Young Mr. Wigransky, who has just completed the tenth grade at the Calvin Coolidge Senior High School, is a devoted reader and collector of comic books. He tells us that he now owns 5,212 such books and “intends to make drawing them for his profession and life’s work.”

“Unlike other critics of comics,” Mr. Wigransky writes, “I possess a first-hand knowledge of them, and unlike even those critics who argue in their favor, I can say that I was once an average, normal comic-book fan

David Pace Wigransky In this photo that accompanied the Saturday Review article, David is reading an issue of Funnyman, the comic book which Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created for Vin Sullivan’s Magazine Enterprises after they lost their Superman lawsuit in the late 1940s.

and reader, during the war and before it. Therefore I feel that I am more qualified that people like John Mason Brown and Dr. Wertham in criticizing them.”

Although sections of Mr. Wigransky’s letter have been omitted for considerations of space, his copy has not been edited.

Sir: And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him.

The brothers Cain and Abel lived in a world of ideal tranquility, a world that had never before known violence or crime, a world completely devoid of comic books. How then does Dr. Fredric Wertham account for this brutal fratricide told within the pages of the Bible, the only book in the history of man more widely read and more widely attacked than American comic books?

Or, if Cain’s slaying of Abel seems far off and far fetched, let us take the Leopold-Loeb case, which took place in early 1924, just five years before publication of the first independently produced comic book.

Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, eighteen and seventeen years old respectively, were accused of brutally murdering fourteen-year-old Robert Franks, thereby committing what has been acknowledged by some as the most brutal crime in United States history. Both boys were of well-to-do and cultured families and were readers of “good” books. How then could Dr. Wertham possibly account for even the remotest thought of murder or violence entering the minds of either?

Raising Cain This image of Cain slaying Abel was printed in The Saturday Review, July 24, 1948. The original source of the panel is AA/DC’s Picture Stories from the Bible – Old Testament #3 (Spring 1943). Art by Don Cameron. [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

Dr. Wertham cites some two dozen gruesome and horrible cases of juvenile delinquency from his files. These crimes were committed recently by weak-minded children and adolescents who, Dr. Wertham implies, would never have considered crime had not they been comic book readers. In none of these cases was it proved that reading comic books was the cause of the delinquency. A good many of the delinquents mentions happened to be readers of comic

Cain Before Comics

65

ignorance of anything and everything except the innocuous and sterile world that the Dr. Werthams of the world prefer to keep them prisoner within from birth to maturity. The net result of all this, however, is that when they have to someday grow up, they will be thrust into an entirely different kind of world, a world of violence and cruelty, a world of force and competition, an impersonal world in which they will have to fight their own battles, afraid, insecure, helpless.

Darrow For The Defense Famed attorney Clarence Darrow (center) with Leopold and Loeb in 1924.

magazines, just as are 69,999,975 perfectly healthy, happy, normal American boys and girls, men and women, who also read the comics.

It is just as ridiculous to suppose that the 69,999,975 people are lawabiding citizens just because they are comic book readers as it is to suppose that twenty-five others are depraved criminals due to the same reading habits.

Capable as Dr. Wertham may be in his psychoanalyzation of adults, I certainly do not believe him able to deal equally well with children, due to his fanatic hatred and prejudice toward comic books. From reading his article I get the impression that this feeling colors all of his investigations and reports. It appears that his $64 question to a child being psychoanalyzed is, “Do you read COMIC BOOKS, my little man?” Of course the juvenile delinquent being a normal child in at least that way, will answer, “Yes.” “Ah ha,” says Dr. Wertham. “This child is a juvenile delinquent. This child reads comic books. Therefore it is because he reads comic books that he is a juvenile delinquent.”

This is enough for Dr. Wertham.

I seriously doubt if the children and adolescents interviewed by Dr. Wertham would even bring up the subject of comic books at all if he did not first bring it up himself. Being a psychiatrist, he must be able to do an expert job of leading them on, mixing them up, getting them excited, and generally unnerving them. He stirs them up over the subject of comic books just as he has the ability to do on any subject, and then records their nervously blurted-out remarks to use in his attacks on comic books.

The whole argument over comic magazines is very silly and needless. The kids know what they want. They are individuals with minds of their own, and very definite tastes in everything. Just because they happen to disagree with him, Dr. Wertham says that they do not know how to discriminate. It is time that society woke up to the fact that children are human beings with opinions of their own, instead of brainless robots to be ordered hither and yon without even so much as asking them their ideas about anything. To be a child psychiatrist, one should be able to look at things through the eyes of a child. If a child is told not to read a comic book, he will break his neck to do it. This is not willful stubbornness, but a perfectly normal revolt against a world of giants who seem to be doing nothing but what they please. He wants to be like them, and at the same time he hates and resents them for their high-handed superiority.

The comic book publishers know what the kids want and try to give it to them. This is not only democratic policy but good business sense.

A child looks upon crime and violence as ideal adventure and excitement. He has no desire to experience these things in actual form, and knows them only as fun, and not in their true ugliness. The adult, on the other hand, has had actual experiences along this line, and looks upon fighting and violent action as loathsome and horrid. A typical example of all this is the soldier who longs for home and his kid brother who would give his right arm to be out there fighting along side him.

The child, having never been an adult, cannot be expected to understand the adult point of view. The adult, on the other hand, was once a child, and should therefore realize that this craving for horror is not for actual physical violence, but for imaginary violence in the form of comics, radio, movies, or a good game of “Cops ‘n’ Robbers,” the last of which I am sure was enjoyed many years before the other three had even been thought of. If all the Dr. Werthams in the world would realize this, the greatest barrier between parent-child mutual understanding would be automatically removed.

If let alone by the Dr. Werthams and John Mason Browns, I think This crusade against comics is nothing new. It all began back in the comic-reading kids will turn out all right, as did the present gener1896 with the conception of “The Yellow Kid,” after whom was named “yellow journalism,” so christened by preachers and clergy who preached entire sermons against the little Chinese boy who had leaped from the pen of Richard Felton Outcault. This criticism grew and grew until it seemed that it could grow no more. Then came the comic book, the newer and greater offspring of the comic strip. This opened up a new field to the critics. They began ignoring the quieter newspaper strip to transfer their opposition to the magazines. This unwarranted and vicious attack is now at its height, led by such fanatics as Dr. Wertham and John Mason Brown. The defenders of comic books occasionally write a good-natured article in answer to the deadly serious and bitter articles written against them. It is high time that we who are on the defensive become as serious as are our attackers. We didn’t ask for this fight, but we are in it to the finish. The fate of millions of children hangs in the balance. We owe it to them to continue to give them the reading matter which they have When You’re Defending come to know and love.

Comic Books, Don’t Turn Dr. Wertham seems to believe that adults should have the perfect right to read anything they please, no matter how vulgar, how vicious, or how depraving, simply because they are adults. Children, on the other hand, should be kept in utter and complete

Yellow!

David knew his comic book history! Here’s a panel from Richard Outcault’s comic strip The Yellow Kid. [©2009 the respective copyright holders.]

69

The Comic Fandom Archive Presents...

The Teenage Creations Of Steve Gerber A Comet Lights The Way To Howard The Duck

by John G. Pierce CFA EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: In the past 10 years, the CFA has covered many fans and fanzine publishers from fandom’s Golden Age, but somehow—we don’t know how— we’d failed to chronicle the activities of one of the earliest comics fanzine publishers of all, Steve Gerber. For this issue and the next two, we welcome guest columnist John G. Pierce, who has rectified our omission. He became aware of comic book fandom very early, after a copy of Alter-Ego #1 was sent to him by Jerry Bails (who got his address from a Flash letters column), and has been involved ever since. In the 1970s he wrote for the British fanzine Fantasy Unlimited, which led to his own Fawcett-centered zine, The Whiz Kids. Readers of this current incarnation of A/E will have noticed his name appearing often in the FCA section. Thus, we happily yield the floor of the Comic Fandom Archive to John for this, the first of three parts of his history of Steve Gerber in early fandom. Steve left us last year—but his sensational stories and ever-inventive concepts remained behind to entertain future generations. —Bill Schelly.

S

teve Gerber would have to rank as one of the more unusual comics scripters to enter the field in the 1970s. Already somewhat controversial by the time he presented Howard the Duck, Gerber would go on to become even more notorious as he lashed out against Marvel in his frustration at (so he alleged) having been robbed of his creation. In addition to writing some rather unusual fare for DC, including some “Doctor Fate” stories and a rather bizarre (for its time) Phantom Zone mini-series, along with work for Saturday morning TV and doing Destroyer Duck for Eclipse, he would finally return to Marvel, this time as a generator of even greater controversy as the writer of Void Indigo.

But long before all of that, back in the early ’60s, Steve was, like so many other comics creators, a fan. And like so many other fans, Steve practiced the plying of what would be his future craft by inventing his own creations and writing stories about them. On rather flimsy paper, Steve created his own homemade comics, which were passed around among his friends in his University City, Missouri, neighborhood, as well as, occasionally, among those of us who were his correspondents.

Steve didn’t just write these comics; he also drew them. His style can safely be described as exaggerated and cartoony. He himself would call it “nutty.” Clearly, writing, not art, was his forte, yet even his acknowledgement of that did not deter him from drawing his own stories.

Deadline For Headline Steve Gerber at the 1974 New York Comic Art Convention—looking back on the cover of his 1962 fanzine Headline #1, as drawn by his friend and co-editor Paul Seydor.

Though that zine would be dated “Winter 1962,” it’s rubber-stamped “June 1, 1962”; that’s dating pretty far ahead, even for comics! Below is the cover for FOOM Magazine #15 (Sept. 1976) by Gene Colan & Steve Leialoha, featuring a co-creation of Steve’s; the photo of SG first appeared in FOOM Magazine #2 (Fall 1974). All art for this article was provided either by John G. Pierce & Bill Schelly, or by Ye Editor.

[Headline art ©2009 Paul Seydor; characters © & TM Estate of Steve Gerber; FOOM cover ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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The Teenage Creations Of Steve Gerber

On, Comet…

A drawing by Steve G. of the cast his “Comet” series. [©2009 Estate of Steve Gerber.]

Steve’s line of comics incorporated some characters initially created by his younger brother Mike, but which Steve himself crafted in his own mold as time went on. One of these, The Comet (no relation to the old MLJ hero of the same name, nor to any of the other heroes who used that moniker), would become a sort of mainstay of Steve’s line of homespun comics, a figure whom Steve would later describe as “one of my best creations.” (Mike’s early version of The Comet had evidently been substantially different). “How could it miss?” asked Steve rhetorically. “I combined Superman, Spider-Man, and Green Lantern into one character,” which was a very generous description on his part, inasmuch as The Comet preceded Spider-Man by a year!

Steve provided a description of the origin and background of The Comet in his fanzine Headline (which will be discussed at greater length in Part II): “While playing baseball, Bill Wilson, ace outfielder for the Silver City Orphanage Team, trips over a rock on the field, falls and hits his head hard against a piece of crystalline material. He is rushed to the hospital where it is learned that he has a skill fracture, and only hours to live. The crystal which injured Bill sits on a table next to his bed.

(Although the story actually showed no reason for the crystal to be there, we can assume that the doctor had examined it and just left it there.) As life begins to fade from him, Bill reaches out, gasping for breath, and his hand falls on the crystal. Suddenly, he regains full consciousness... and finds himself floating above his bed! Dropping to the floor, Bill runs to the door to call the doctor, but as he opens it, he crushes the doorknob in his bare hand. A nurse finds Bill and he is rushed to a fluoroscope. The skull fracture had disappeared! It is not until later that Bill realizes that it’s the crystal that gives him his amazing powers of defying gravity, superstrength, and distance x-ray vision. He establishes his base of operations in Secluded Valley and decides to become ‘the Comet,‘ a name he chose from thin air, to fight evil and injustice. The story closes as Bill dons his costume for the first time.

“A later story revealed the origin and properties of the crystal.” At this point, Steve interrupted himself with an “editor’s note,” hardly necessary given that he was both writer of this piece and editor of Headline, but the practice was so common in the Weisinger and especially the Schwartz comics of the era, that it is not too surprising that Steve decided to use it here. Anyway, Steve, as editor, pointed out that Green Lantern “was the vogue in comics when Comet was created, and Comet bears some resemblance to him, as you will note.” So what is perhaps the main influence is openly acknowledged. Resuming: “The crystal once belonged to a group of men living on the planet Olba, who were known as the Caretakers. A

hundred in number, each had two agents who patrolled a specific sector of space. The Caretakers are identified by numbers, according to the number of each one’s own particular section of space. Comet’s Caretaker is known as Number 81. The Caretakers, however, unlike GL’s Guardians, play a major part in many of the Comet’s adventures. In one story, No. 81 actually got into the action. They are more human and seem less almighty than the Guardians.”

He went on to describe the fantastic villains The Comet met up with, such as: “H-H-F, the renegade scientist who chose those initials for his name for some unknown purpose. A master of rays, H-H-F has used his weapons to alter Comet’s body, send him on journeys into the past and future, and send him into other dimensions.

“Niba-Rus, the space pirate, who Comet met in his first encounter with the Caretakers. Since that time Niba-Rus has teamed up with other evildoers such as Pluto, God of the Underworld.

“Both H-H-F and Niba-Rus appeared in the Comet’s best adventure – a book-lengther entitled ‘Secret of the Stolen ALL-STARS!,’ which costarred ye editor, Jerry Bails and Roy Thomas.

“Another villain (?) appearing in the strip is Sibyl Mae Alcotts, the cousin of Comet’s girlfriend... While she’s not out for blood, Sibyl uses diabolical traps and schemes to get Comet to marry her!

“Fortunately, Comet’s friends outnumber his enemies. There’s Doris Alcotts, his beautiful brunette girlfriend. His aide, Comet-Girl (June Marten on Earth), is in reality Caretaker 81’s daughter. The Three Nitwits, Clyde, Clarence, and Joe, provide a comedy relief.

“Perhaps the most unusual of his friends, however, is Comet-Nut, the Comet from the distant planet Nutson. It’s nothing like the Bizarro World –nothing is backwards. However, everyone there is a duplicate of an Earth person, except that they’re shaped like Nutsonians...i.e., they have a beak attached to a perfectly global skull, a tiny neck, a ball-belly, pipe-cleaner legs, and no arms. But they are generally duplicates.”

The foregoing description certainly shows that Gerber was not above the use of heavy derivation from existing comics and other sources. Need I point out that Niba-Rus is simply Abin-Sur spelled backwards? Abin Sur, being, of course, the alien who passed on the Power Ring and Power Battery (a.k.a., the green lantern) to Hal Jordan. Steve openly acknowl-

77

…And All In Color For CHRISTMAS!

by Ye Editor

R

emember last year’s cavortin’ collection of comics pros’ Christmas cards in Alter Ego? Or the year before’s? Well, of course you don’t—because I totally forgot about doing holiday sections for those issues till it was too late! But I wasn’t going to let a third Yuletide rush by without sharing with you at least a handful of season’s greetings from some folks who are very special to A/E—and quite possibly to you, as well! So…

JOE SINNOTT Greetings from your friendly neighborhood SantaMan were sent to Roy & Dann in 2008 by one of the greatest comic book inkers ever—just to prove that he can still sharpen a mean pencil, to boot!

[Spider-Man TM & ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

DICK & LINDY AYERS This Christmas card was sent by the Ayerses to Keif Simon, who takes many of the New York comicon photos that pop up in Alter Ego. So, since Dick & Lindy are the focus of an article (and a home invasion!) this issue…! [Thing, Ghost Rider, Spider-Man, Sgt. Fury, & Dum-Dum Dugan TM & ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Superman TM & ©2009 DC Comics.]

78

...And All In Color For Christmas!

JACK & CAROLE BENDER It would take a whole page of drawings of Alley Oop (not that that’s a bad thing!) to print all the great cards sent to Roy & Dann these past few years by the artist-andwriter team who now helm V.T. Hamlin’s cavortin’ caveman. The one is from 2005.

[Alley Oop TM & © 2009 Newspaper Enterprises Association.]

MICHAEL T. & JANET GILBERT The keeper of Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt and his equally talented wife were musing over some of their recent work (the graphic novel Mann and Superman) and a Japanese Disney comic on this 2004 card.

ROY & DANN THOMAS We couldn’t decide between our Christmas cards featuring our beloved trumpeter hornbill Barbra (guess who she’s named after!)—or our capricious capybaras, the magnificent Marguerita and the effervescent Evita.

Not that we can tell “The Girls” apart, even by looking at their webbed toes, which would give Esther Williams a run for her money!

Happy Holidays!

[Art by RubÊn Procopio (maskedavenger.com & maskedavengerstudios.blogspot.com); Shazam! heroes TM & Š2009 DC Comics.]

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

The Beat Goes On [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 issue, Marc spoke of the creative satisfaction he had from illustrating romance comics for Fawcett. This issue, he examines the art of depicting sound. —P.C. Hamerlinck.]

E

ver try to draw a sound? The “pows” and “bams” and “eeks” of those very early comic strip creators come to mind at the thought ... and are remembered as valiant drawing board efforts to handle the subject. And they were usually accompanied by pictured action to suggest various degrees of volume.

Nice try by the old-timers, but the question remains ... draw sound?

Back in the 1940s and ’50s, at my table there was a persistence to create something based upon a favored avocation ... music. It was an activity begun in the school years and continued ... professionally, though not in the full sense ... sort of a semi-career ... that brought about events and

people that A panel from Marc Swayze’s “Melody of Hate,” a story utilizing were never one of his old characters, Neal Valentine, in Charlton’s Strange to be Suspense Stories #27 (Oct. 1955. Say, Marc, is that C.C. Beck forgotten. you drew in the background playing the stand-up bass?

High time [©2009 the respective copyright holders.] now, thought I, to delve into that store of memories, in the hopes that some of it might be retold ... in comic strip format.

The art style would be as it had developed over the years with Captain Marvel, Mary, the Phantom Eagle, and Flyin’ Jenny, dependent upon three trustworthy implements: the pointed watercolor brush, the Spencerian #2 writing pen, and the highly flexible, split-nib, Joseph Gillotte #290 drawing pen.

My character would be a piano player who composed popular songs and might be seen performing in various places ... from concert halls to roadside barrooms. I called him Neal, and pulled together a story about how he and a new friend, Jill, go looking for a missing musician. It was prepared as newspaper daily strips and submitted to various syndicates for approval.

I think Neal made a good impression wherever I took him. Eventually, though, the story was revised and sold to Charlton Publications, where it appeared in Strange Suspense Stories #27. That issue, by the way, should you have a copy, might have some value as a collectors’ item. Its date, Oct. 1955, is that of the flash flood of the Naughatuck River that washed out the Charlton facilities and the extent of its effect on the production is mysterious.

There was a panel in one of those strips that came pretty close to drawing sound. Neal has handed his publisher a song and a close shot of it shows it to be titled “All I Want.” That was a number I had composed and dedicated to my wife, June.

About as close to “drawing sound,” I guess, as you can get!

“All I Want” (Above:) A panel from one of Swayze’s Neal Valentine strips, in which Neal handed his publisher a song titled “All I Want”— a number that Marc, being a musician, had composed himself and dedicated to his wife June. (Left:) A snapshot of the Swayzes on July 17, 2009—Marc’s 96th birthday. [Art ©2009 Marc Swayze.]

83

The Female Captain Marvels Marvel & DC’s Gender Adjustments Of A Fawcett Legacy

by Zorikh Lequidre

T

here have been many different characters named “Captain Marvel” over the years, so it should come as no surprise that some of them have been female. Chronologically listed by the time they were known as “Captain Marvel,” they are: Monica Rambeau (a.k.a. Captain Marvel, Photon, Pulsar); Mary Batson/Bromfield (a.k.a. Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, Black Mary); Phyla-Vell (a.k.a. Captain Marvel, Quasar, Martyr); and Carol Danvers (a.k.a. Ms. Marvel, Binary, Warbird, Captain Marvel). Only one of them—Monica Rambeau—was not related in some way to any other Captain Marvel.

I. Monica Rambeau In 1982 Jim Starlin had just completed his graphic novel The Death of Captain Marvel, which killed off the hero who starting in 1967 had secured the trademark of the name “Captain Marvel” for Marvel Comics.

The issue as to why Marvel needed to have a character named “Captain Marvel” would fill another article, but writer Roger Stern, in an interview with Kurt Anthony Krug found on Mania.com, said that he “offered to come up with a new character to fill the bill.”

Up to that time, most of the popular super-hero characters were white males.

As “glass ceilings” were shattered over the years, a series of “firsts” and “pioneers” paved the way for a world in which the color or sex of a person would not limit their opportunities.

Stern says that his wife pointed out to him that “Captain Marvel” was a genderneutral name, so he set forth to create a female Captain Marvel. On Sterntalk.com, he states that he “wanted to create a well-rounded female superhero—one who didn’t fit into any of the then-current clichés, and who could hold her own against the toughest opponents.”

So he decided to make the next Captain Marvel an African-American woman.

Though he had edited Marvel’s previous Captain Marvel, he made no connection between that character and his new creation: she was not a relative, nor were her powers derived from the previous CM; in fact, she had never even heard of him. With the civilian name Monica Rambeau, she started out as a New Orleans Harbor Patrol lieutenant who was often up against the aforementioned glass ceiling, in the person of her sexist superior officer (who happened to be black man, thereby making it clear that it was gender, not race, at issue).

Monica/CM was introduced in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #16 (1982),

with John Romita, Jr., as artist. In Modern Masters, Vol. 18: John Romita, Jr. (still available from TwoMorrows Publishing), the artist revealed about this new CM that he “just took some reference on [actress] Pam Grier, because I always loved her, and at the last moment somebody said that, ‘well, we need to use this woman, here (a different model),’ because they thought maybe Pam Grier wasn’t as good-looking as the model they found.” But, in her first appearance, the new CM even caused Peter Parker to turn his head as she passed by him.

In the course of the adventure that gave her the ability to transform herself into “any form of electromagnetic energy,” she was referred to as “Mon Capitain” by Professor Andre LeClaire, an old friend of her grandfather’s who had discovered the extra-dimensional energy from which she obtained her powers. Clad in garments pilfered from a Mardi Gras costume warehouse (which conveniently included a mask, and coincidentally bore a black 16-pointed star, much like Captain Mar-Vell’s!), she rescued LeClaire and saved an oil rig from destruction. A South American soldier overheard LeClaire call her “Mon Capitain” and, realizing she had saved them all, started repeating, “Capitan est Maravilla.” When the story hit the newspapers, the headline read: “WHO IS CAPTAIN MARVEL?” At LeClaire’s urging, Monica decided to accept the opportunity to become a super-hero, and left her job with the Harbor Patrol. He even got a costume made for her—in that most practical of Marvel Universe fabrics: unstable molecules.

A few weeks later she was in New York City, fighting off muggers and running into first Spider-Man, then The Thing, who was the first to inform her there had been an earlier Captain Marvel.

She wound up going to The Avengers and was soon inducted as the first-ever “Avenger-in-training.” The very first thing she did was look up the records of Captain Mar-Vell.

Conveniently, Stern was also writer of The Avengers at the time. Though it had been his hope that the new CM would have her own ongoing series, it never happened, and it would be in the pages of The Avengers that Monica Rambeau lived her life.

All In Color… For Six Dimes The Monica Rambeau-Captain Marvel strutted her stuff for the first time in Avengers #227, Jan. 1983. Cover art by Brett Breeding. [©2009 Marvel Comics.]

Monica gained full-member status in Avengers #231 (May 1983), and spent the next 50-odd issues developing her powers and gaining confidence as a super-hero. She was able to create holographic images and to could convert herself into everything from radio waves to cosmic rays to gamma rays to X-rays

84

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

to a laser beam; she proved herself of sound tactical mind in battle and highly capable at hand-to-hand combat. She thoroughly perused The Avengers’ data banks, thus being informed of all her new teammates’ abilities and prepared for any of their regular adversaries. She traveled to other galaxies and played key roles in cosmic wars. Her appearance even stymied an attack of Lava Men (yes, really), who believed her to be their legendary Lady-ofLight.

But connections with the previous Captain Marvel did occur. Monica felt discomfort around Mar-Vell’s old friend Eros (Starfox), until he acknowledged her worthiness to bear the name. In a brief appearance, General Bridges, the “Old Man” from Cape Canaveral in Mar-Vell’s early stories, stammered when he met this new “Captain... ah...

Marvel,” but he turned out to actually be a Dire Wraith who had killed the original “Old Man” and taken his memories.

A Photon By Any Other Name…

The passing of the mantle of “Captain Marvel,” and the introduction of one of the less impressive super-hero names—Photon—in Avengers Unplugged #5 (June 1996). Story by Glenn Herdling; art by M.C. Wyman, Sandu Florea, & Tom Palmer. [©2009 Marvel Comics.]

By Avengers #278 (April 1987) Monica had been with The Avengers for over four dozen issues (nearly five years as the crow flies, though only reckoned as a few months in Marvel Universe time), and had seen Yellowjacket, Hawkeye, Thor, She-Hulk, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Sub-Mariner, Starfox, Hercules, Marrina, the Black Knight, and Dr. Druid come and/or go from the team. When the Wasp stepped down as the team’s chairperson, Captain America nominated Monica and she accepted the position.

All through her time with The Avengers, Monica/CM enjoyed considerable support among published fan mail, applauding her fascinating powers and independence, as well as her being the only African-American female super-hero. She was also unique in not being part of the trend of using the word “Black” as part of her name (as per Marvel’s Black Goliath and Black Panther and DC’s Black Lightning); she was not a “street” hero like Luke Cage, nor an African nobility or “deity” like Black Panther or Storm; she was not a variant of a Caucasian character (Black Goliath) or a sidekick like The Falcon; nor was she paired in a “salt & pepper” team (Captain America and The Falcon).

As a female character she was also unique in that she did not originate as a partner or relative (like the Wasp to Ant-Man, Scarlet Witch to Quicksilver, or Invisible Girl to The Human Torch). Nor was she a female version or spin-off of a male hero as were the Wasp, Ms. Marvel, and SheHulk. In short, Monica Rambeau filled a role and served several demographics that were lacking in comics at the time.

II. Genis-Vell But drastic changes were in store for The Avengers. Stern stated that senior editor Mark Gruenwald wanted to replace Captain Marvel (Monica) as leader with Captain America. In the Krug interview, Stern says that he responded to Gruenwald’s stated preferences and “sent editorial a memo pointing out that dumping Captain Marvel at that time would look both racist and sexist. I suggested that we rethink that particular idea. Instead, I received a message that I was fired.” Gruenwald commented in Avengers #288 that “I was not interested in doing any injustice to any characters, either, but I also believed that the story line could be done without hurting any characters…we had irreconcilable differences… I informed Roger that I wanted to proceed with the agreedupon storyline and thus I would hire another writer.”

According to the listed credits, the next few issues were produced from Stern’s plots, with Ralph Macchio scripting. Walter Simonson soon took over as writer; it was under his watch that the ambitious machinations of

Dr. Druid undermined Monica’s leadership of The Avengers. In the course of a battle with a sea monster that had once been Prince Namor’s wife Marrina, Monica transformed into a bolt of lightning and, upon contact with the water, dissipated across the sea. She was able to pull herself together (so to speak), but only as a wasted, withered, powerless husk. At that point, Druid’s mind-controlling abilities influenced her to step down as the team’s leader.

Monica slowly regained her full powers, but by then the world of comics had changed again: the early-’90s speculators’ boom was full-on as Marvel introduced new characters in all their ’93 annuals—one of them being Genis-Vell, the cloned son of Captain Mar-Vell. Though the hero name was initially “Legacy,” the trademark name Captain Marvel was used for his short-lived series. It was not until the second issue of that series (Jan. 1996) that there was any acknowledgment of Ms. Rambeau, and then only as a caller into a TV show (“Monica from New Orleans”) whose face was never shown.

The Captain Marvel name issue was finally settled when, in Avengers Unplugged #5 (June 1996), Monica and Genis met in a battle involving Mar-Vell’s old adversary, The Collector. Monica outshone Genis, who was even willing to cede her the CM name; but she instead chose to be called “Photon.” As such, she continued to be a seldom-used Marvel character.

Years later Genis “died” and came back (as super-heroes are wont to do) with different powers and called himself Photon—at which time Monica decided to go with the name “Pulsar.” And still, Marvel Comics hasn’t done much with her. (Monica currently resides in a mini-series, Marvel Divas, which is essentially Sex in the City with super-heroes.)

III. Mary Bromfield/Batson As Genis-Vell was coming on the scene, DC Comics had given Jerry Ordway the green light on The Power of Shazam!, re-booting Captain Marvel/Billy Batson and his extended family, including Billy’s sister adopted by the Bromfield family, who also gained the power to transform into a super-hero by saying the name of the ancient wizard, “Shazam!”

In the Golden Age Fawcett stories and in the early continuation with DC comics, Mary was Billy’s twin sister, and her super-hero identity was “Mary Marvel.” Mary looked exactly the same in both identities and had powers based on six goddesses of antiquity. In Ordway’s version, however, Mary was Billy’s younger sister, transformed into a grown-up version of