Alter Ego #95 by TwoMorrows Publishing

Roy Thomas’ Merry Marble Comics Fanzine

WHO SAYS A COMIC BOOK HAS TO BE GOOD? NOT MIRTHFUL MARIE SEVERIN — AND

NOT BRAND ECHH!

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No.95 July 2010

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

2007 EISNER AWARD WINNER Best Comics-Related Periodical

Other issues available, & an ULTIMATE BUNDLE with all issues at HALF-PRICE!

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

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

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

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

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

Captain Marvel and Superman’s battles explored (in cosmic space, candy stories, and in court, with art by WALLY WOOD, CURT SWAN, and GIL KANE), an in-depth interview with Golden Age great LILY RENÉE, overview of CENTAUR COMICS (home of BILL EVERETT’s Amazing-Man and others), FCA, MR. MONSTER, new RICH BUCKLER cover, and more!

Spotlighting the Frantic Four-Color MAD WANNABES of 1953-55 that copied HARVEY KURTZMAN’S EC smash (see Captain Marble, Mighty Moose, Drag-ula, Prince Scallion, and more) with art by SIMON & KIRBY, KUBERT & MAURER, ANDRU & ESPOSITO, EVERETT, COLAN, and many others, plus Part 1 of a talk with Golden/ Silver Age artist FRANK BOLLE, and more!

The sensational 1954-1963 saga of Great Britain’s MARVELMAN (decades before he metamorphosed into Miracleman), plus an interview with writer/artist/co-creator MICK ANGLO, and rare Marvelman/ Miracleman work by ALAN DAVIS, ALAN MOORE, a new RICK VEITCH cover, plus FRANK BOLLE, Part 2, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

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ALTER EGO #92

First-ever in-depth look at National/DC’s founder MAJOR MALCOLM WHEELERNICHOLSON, and early editors WHITNEY ELLSWORTH, VIN SULLIVAN, and MORT WEISINGER, with rare art and artifacts by SIEGEL & SHUSTER, BOB KANE, CREIG FLESSEL, FRED GUARDINEER, GARDNER FOX, SHELDON MOLDOFF, and others, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

HARVEY COMICS’ PRE-CODE HORROR MAGS OF THE 1950s! Interviews with SID JACOBSON, WARREN KREMER, and HOWARD NOSTRAND, plus Harvey artist KEN SELIG talks to JIM AMASH! MR. MONSTER presents the wit and wisdom (and worse) of DR. FREDRIC WERTHAM, plus FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) with C.C. BECK & MARC SWAYZE, & more! SIMON & KIRBY and NOSTRAND cover!

BIG MARVEL ISSUE! Salutes to legends SINNOTT and AYERS—plus STAN LEE, TUSKA, EVERETT, MARTIN GOODMAN, and others! A look at the “Marvel SuperHeroes” TV animation of 1966! 1940s Timely writer and editor LEON LAZARUS interviewed by JIM AMASH! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, the 1960s fandom creations of STEVE GERBER, and more! JACK KIRBY holiday cover!

FAWCETT FESTIVAL! Big FCA section with Golden Age artists MARC SWAYZE & EMILIO SQUEGLIO, and interviews with the FAWCETT FAMILY! Plus Part II of “The MAD Four-Color Wannabes of the 1950s,” more on DR. LAURETTA BENDER and the teenage creations of STEVE GERBER, artist JACK KATZ spills Golden Age secrets to JIM AMASH, and more! New cover by ORDWAY and SQUEGLIO!

SWORD-AND-SORCERY, PART 3! DC’s Sword of Sorcery by O’NEIL, CHAYKIN, & SIMONSON and Claw by MICHELINIE & CHAN, Hercules by GLANZMAN, Dagar by GLUT & SANTOS, Marvel S&S art by BUSCEMA, KANE, KAYANAN, WRIGHTSON, et al., and JACK KATZ on his classic First Kingdom! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, STEVE GERBER’s fan-creations (part 3), and more! Cover by RAFAEL KAYANAN!

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Vol. 3, No. 95 / July 2010 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

NOW WITH 16 PAG ES OF COLOR!

Cover Artist Marie Severin

Cover Colorist Tom Ziuko

With Special Thanks to: Jack Adler Heidi Amash Bob Bailey Dominic Bongo Christopher B. Boyko Brian’s Drive-In Theater Mike Burkey John Butler Nick Caputo Dewey Cassell Teresa R. Davidson Betty Dobson Mark Evanier J. Fairfax Gary Friedrich Stephan Friedt Shane Foley Janet Gilbert Don Glut Golden Age Comic Book Stories Grand Comics Database Jennifer Hamerlinck Barbara Harmon

Heritage Comics Archives Bernie Hogya KAS Graphics Larry Kashdan Greg Koudoulian Darrell McNeil Clifford Meth Brian K. Morris Michelle Nolan Barry Pearl Bill Peckmann Gene Reed Steve Rude Bob Rozakis Randy Sargent Mitchell Senft Marie Severin Desha Swayze Marc Swayze Dann Thomas Dave Thorne Mike Tiefenbacher Dr. Michael J. Vassallo Eddy Zeno

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Shel Dorf & Jim Harmon

Contents Writer/Editorial: “Not A Spittoon – Not A Cartoon – Not A Harpoon – But A LAMPOON!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 “ECHH” Marks The Spot! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Roy Thomas’ very personal guided tour of Marvel’s Not Brand Echh, 1967-69!

“I Learned To Do A Little Bit Of Everything”. . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Bernie Hogya’s 1977 chat with artist Marie Severin about Not Brand Echh, Spider-Man, and more.

“[The DC Editors] Often Got Into Arguments” . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Part III of Jim Amash’s lore-laden talk with DC Golden/Silver Age editor George Kashdan.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! Twice-Told EC – Part 2! . . . . . . 61 Michael T. Gilbert is seeing double—or is it quadruple?

Crudzine: Steve Gerber’s Fanzine That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Bill Schelly introduces more manic 1960s madness from the co-creator of Howard the Duck.

Tributes to Shel Dorf & Jim Harmon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 FCA (Fawcett Collectors Of America) #154 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 P.C. Hamerlinck presents Marc Swayze—and Darrell McNeil on Mary Marvel. On Our Cover: We’ve been waiting a long time to do this one! We first printed this drawing by multi-talented Marie Severin back in A/E #16—and we’ve known ever since that, when we finally got around to doing an issue on Marvel’s Not Brand Echh comic, it was the illo we wanted to use as our cover. Nothing else would’ve made any sense. Thanks, Marie—for everything! [Marvel heroes TM &©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.; other art ©2010 Marie Severin.] Above: When we were forced, regrettably, to delay this issue’s letters section till next month, we were left with this fine take on Forbush-Man with our maskots Alter and Captain Ego by Shane Foley— done as an homage to the Stuporman and cub reporter figures on the cover of 1968’s NBE #7. We suspect ultimate lampooner Marie Severin will get a kick out of being lampooned just a wee bit herself—with the added help of colorist Randy Sargent. [Alter & Captain Ego TM & © 2010 Roy Thomas & Bill Schelly; created by Biljo White; Forbush-Man TM & ©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.; other art elements ©2010 Shane Foley.] 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. Eight-issue subscriptions: $60 US, $85 Canada, $107 elsewhere. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © Roy Thomas. Alter Ego is a TM of Roy & Dann Thomas. FCA is a TM of P.C. Hamerlinck. Printed in Canada. ISSN: 1932-6890 FIRST PRINTING.

writer/editorial

“Not A Spittoon – Not A Cartoon – Not A Harpoon – But a LAMPOON!” C omics fans of a certain age and inclination will probably recognize the above as one of the many humorous billboards and background bits (a.k.a. “chicken fat”—see p. 7) which festoon the eight-page parody “Bat Boy and Rubin!” in Mad #8 (Dec. 1953-Jan. 1954).

When he and artist Wally Wood stuck those notices throughout that classic takeoff on “Batman and Robin,” editor/writer/layout artist Harvey Kurtzman was both hedging his bets and sticking out his figurative tongue at National/DC. Earlier in 1953, after all, DC had threatened EC publisher William M. Gaines with grievous bodily legal harm after the publication of the even more classic “Superduperman!” in Mad #4… and eight months later, EC wanted to do everything it could to deflect the wrath of the older, far bigger, and deeper-pocketed DC. It apparently worked. DC seems not to have bothered Gaines over “Bat Boy” or the later “Woman Wonder”—and it would be left for the venerable but clearly humorless Life magazine to feel strongly enough about EC’s parody (on the cover of Mad #11) of its general cover format to actually sue Entertaining Comics. And, happily, lose… just as DC would’ve deserved to, a year earlier. The courts decided there was little danger the reading public would confuse a 7"x10½" color comic book (with a cover composed of a whiteon-red logo above a cityscape photo behind the ugliest female head that even Basil Wolverton could draw) with a 10"x13" tabloid magazine. For Life to have won, justice would have needed to be not only blind but deaf and, especially, dumb. What that all means to us is that, ever since, parody has thrived in

comics, freed from the danger that some overly touchy target would deprive US citizens of that most basic of human rights—namely, the right to laugh their butts off. Recalling how all those early Mad wannabes were allowed to publish and perish on their own merits and demerits back in the mid-1950s (as seen in A/E #86 & 91)… and how many copycats there were later of the even more successful black-&-white Mad… and how Marvel was able to launch (Not) Brand Echh in 1967 with no real worries about a lawsuit… I am joyed and buoyed both by nostalgia, and by historical perspective… except when I see what the “political correctness” crowd is doing in the alleged name of multi-culturalism and “good taste.” Also, of course, it’s amusingly ironic that, nowadays, Mad is basically owned by DC Comics… while both are now part of a conglomerate once known as “Time-Life, Inc.” partly after the very publication that sued Gaines. What goes around comes around. And keeps going round… and round… and round…. Bestest,

P.S.: Alas, we had to forego our letters section again this issue… and even delay the conclusion of our three-part George Kashdan interview till, well, Part 4, next month. Bear with us—we’ll catch up soon (it says here)!

COMING IN AUGUST

THE MIGHTY CRUSADERS! Archie Comics’ 1960s Team Extreme! • Color-splashed cover by MIKE MACHLAN—an homage to the work of PAUL REINMAN! • “Too Many Super-Heroes!” The Fly (a.k.a. Fly Man) & Fly Girl—The Jaguar—The Shield —Hangman—Black Hood—and many, many more! WILL MURRAY introduces us to the 1960s+ annals of JERRY SIEGEL • PAUL REINMAN • JOE SIMON & JACK KIRBY • JOHN ROSENBERGER • JOHN GIUNTA • GEORGE TUSKA • AL WILLIAMSON • RICH BUCKLER • GRAY MORROW • BOB FUJITANI, et al.! • Golden Age artist/writer MELL LAZARUS talks to JIM AMASH about the 1950s at Toby Press alongside CAPP • FRAZETTA • CAPLIN • SULTAN • SPARLING • BOLLE • KEEFER • BROWN & GANTZ • GILL • SCHROEDER, & others—plus the beginnings of his long-running comic strips Miss Peach and Momma! • The cosmic conclusion of JIM AMASH’s interview with GEORGE KASHDAN! • FCA with MARC SWAYZE, plus DARRELL McNEIL on doing Shazam! at Filmation— MICHAEL T. GILBERT on Jimmy Corrigan, The Super-Man—& MORE!! Edited by ROY THOMAS ie Comic Publications, Inc.] [Heroes TM & ©2010 Arch

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“ECHH” Marks The Spot! A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH - 1967-69

by Roy Thomas (Who Was There!)

elcome aboard! Step lively now, ’cause this locomotive’s about to leave the station at bullet-train speed, to cover the 13 issues of Not Brand Echh in a single trip. This will be a distinctly personal tour, since so many of the people involved are no longer with us, and Marie Severin’s health did not allow for a new interview. But, adding to my own travelogue, co-engineers Gary Friedrich and Bill Peckmann offered up a few welcome reminiscences… so at least this whistlestop tour will be conducted by folks who rode this route on the maiden voyage. If anything gets skipped or wrongly identified as we roll merrily along, hopefully some alert passenger will pull the cord overhead and clue us in. End of tortured metaphor… beginning of journey.

since I’d quickly ceased being a salaried “staff writer” in favor of performing proofreading and other menial editorial chores, I hadn’t had any title, not even “editorial assistant.” Marvel in the latter ’60s, only slowly beginning to expand again after the skeleton crew of the late ’50s and early ’60s, didn’t bother much with formal job descriptions, since there were maybe a dozen people on staff. By the turn of 1967 those included, besides Stan, Gary, and me, the following intrepid souls: Production manager Sol Brodsky… Production staffer Marie Severin (who’d recently begun doubling as artist of the 10-page “Dr. Strange” and “Incredible Hulk” features)… Staff artist John Romita (drawing The Amazing Spider-Man, and already being utilized as a sort of informal assistant art director)…

Brand Echh A-Borning Guess you might call it a “power lunch,” 1967 style… at least within the narrow confines of Marvel Comics as it then was. It may well have been the only time that editor/chief writer Stan Lee, new editorial assistant Gary Friedrich, and I ever went out to eat as a threesome. In fact, that might’ve even been the same day that, out of the cerulean blue, Stan abruptly announced to us: “Y’know, we need some titles around here. I’m the editor… so I guess that makes Roy the associate editor... and Gary the assistant editor.” And lo, it suddenly was so. For the past year-plus, ever

Corresponding secretary (what they then called a “gal Friday”) Flo Steinberg… Morrie Kuramoto, staff letterer… New production man John Verpoorten (if he was there by then)…

They Had Us Covered! The Jack Kirby-penciled, Stan Lee-dialogued cover of Brand Echh #1 (Aug. 1967)—plus clockwise images of Stan the Man and King Kirby—plus Rascally Roy Thomas, Groovy Gary Friedrich, and Jolly Solly Brodsky, who are spuriously “quoted” on it. The photos first appeared in the 1969 Fantastic Four Annual; our thanks to Bob Bailey and J. Fairfax. The cover scan is courtesy of the Grand Comics Database (see p. 76 for more info). And see p. 10 for commentary on the cover of Brand Echh #1. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“Daredevil” cocreator Bill Everett as staff artist... …and maybe one or two others. Gary had recently replaced short-time editorial assistant Ron Whyte, a talented young playwright who hadn’t quite jelled on staff. In late ’65 I’d persuaded Gary, who back in our hometown (Jackson,

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

Mad About Super-Heroes Panels from two classic super-hero parodies in the four-color Mad— from #4 (April-May 1953) and #8 (Dec. 1953-Jan. 1954)—by the team of Harvey Kurtzman (editor/writer/layout artist) and Wally Wood (artist), with coloring by a very young Marie Severin. It doesn’t get any better than this! [©2010 E.C. Publications, Inc.]

Missouri) had been my best friend, a fellow movie usher, and rockbandmate, to move to New York. There, he was soon banging out scripts for Charlton editor Dick Giordano till I could wangle him a shot at taking the Marvel “writer’s test” and landing a job on Stan’s little staff. Which he duly did by the latter part of ’66. Anyway, back to that lunch: Stan was looking for new concepts he could convince publisher Martin Goodman to put out. Besides superheroes, Marvel still produced a handful of Westerns (mostly written by Stan’s brother Larry Lieber, plus the new Ghost Rider by Gary and artist Dick Ayers), the two wilting “Millie the Model” titles, and the quasisuper-heroic war comic Sgt. Fury. That day, over a meal probably at Schrafft’s Restaurant (whose specialty was their ice cream), Gary and I tossed out to Stan the notion of doing a comic along the lines of the early Mad. I’d always believed it was Gary who brought it up; but, this past February, when I asked him for any anecdotal memories he had about NBE, Gary e-mailed: “I recall it having its genesis in several conversations you and I had about doing a book along the lines of the original Mad comic book, not the later b&w one. I remember you coming up with the idea to call it Brand Echh, which I thought was great, in that we’d be doing a lot of take-offs on DC characters.” I myself have no recollection of the comic’s title being my idea, though I’d be delighted to take credit for it—even if the phrase itself was totally Stan’s, as detailed on the next page. Since its early days, I’d been a rabid fan of Harvey Kurtzman’s brilliant four-color Mad #1-23 published from 1952-55 before it metamorphosed into a black-&-white “magazine”… and, having also purchased Timely/Marvel/Atlas’ own parody comics Crazy, Wild, and Riot in the mid-’50s, I knew they’d had a few good moments all their own (as detailed in A/E #86, hint, hint). Gary adds of his own days as a kid back in smalltown Missouri: “My friend Paul Roussel and I would get a new Mad and go over it word for word in the swing on his front porch. My early favorites were Melvin Mole and the Shane takeoff, ‘Sane.’ Also liked the Blackhawks story.” That makes Gary, who’s 3-4 years younger than I am, a Mad reader at least as early as I was! I’d been a whole twelve when Mad #5 & #4 (in that order) had suddenly hit me like a broadside. When I’d suddenly “got it.”

Whichever of the two of us first brought up the idea of Marvel doing a parody comic, Stan loved it—but instantly decided that, rather than poking fun at rival companies’ heroes, or putting out a general satire/spoof title, it should be specifically devoted to burlesquing Marvel’s own characters. At first blush, I didn’t like that concept nearly as much as our original one—but in retrospect I realize it was a far better choice commercially. Our readers were far likelier to buy a comic featuring ribald renditions of Marvel heroes than one that showcased latter-day equivalents of Kurtzman & Wood’s “Superduperman!” and “Bat Boy and Rubin!” In fact, since Marvel wouldn’t have been able to publish ongoing adventures of parody versions of other companies’ heroes without quickly encountering problems with their attorneys, under Gary’s and my plan we’d soon have run out of characters we could lampoon! For his part, Gary says, “I remember going into the meeting all pumped up about the possibility of doing a book like my old favorite Mad comic, and leaving it feeling like we’d made a really big mistake suggesting it in the first place.” If I was initially disappointed at the direction Stan decided to take the proposed new title—and I was—Gary liked it even less. Stan had no immediate intention of our lampooning other companies’ heroes… and indeed, there’d be precious little of that in the first issue. Gary believes the idea of calling the mag “Not Brand Echh,” rather than “Brand Echh,” was brought up by Stan at that lunch—while, based on my own vague memories and a perusal of the comic’s various indicia, I suspect the “Not” part came about a few weeks later, when Stan had to work up a cover logo and topline for the new title. (More on that in a minute.) But—why Brand Echh… with or without the “Not”? Since at least 1960, TV and print ads had been rife with references to “Brand X”—the always-unnamed competitor to whatever sponsor was buying the ad. Brand X’s true moniker, wink wink nod nod, couldn’t be revealed for legal reasons; but its merchandise—whether laundry detergent or mouthwash or whatever—was of course invariably and demonstrably inferior to the name brand. According to an article in the Oct. 31, 1960, issue of Time magazine, by then the phrase had even inspired a few enterprising companies to turn out actual “Brand X” cigarettes, cleaners, popcorn, and whiskey, with more suchlike on the way. (No real-life Brand X product of that era ever sold well, though—surprise,

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

surprise!—and ere long all had vanished into limbo.) As unearthed by intrepid researchers Barry Pearl and Nick Caputo, it was a letter from two Forest Hills, NY, fans printed in Fantastic Four #7 (Oct. ’62) that had first used the disapproving term “Echh” (yep, two “h’s”)—to refer, among other things, to Stan’s ubiquitous “wisecracks.” Our Leader himself introduced the phrase “Brand X” into Marvel in the letters page of FF #26 (May ’64), though he used it there to refer to Marvel itself rather than to rival companies! The use of that term for the competition first popped up on the letters page of Amazing Spider-Man #31 (Dec. ’65), where Stan wrote of one fictitious entity: “He must be a Brand X character—we don’t remember using him.” In the meantime, beginning in the letters section of FF #43 (Oct. ’65), Stan had added his own spin and begun referring to Marvel’s competitors as “Brand Echh.” In a boxed comment, he wrote: CHEE! Have you noticed the sorry mess of Marvel IMITATIONS making the scene lately? Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery and all that jazz, but we wanna make darn sure no dyed-in-the-wool Marvel madman gets stuck with one of those inferior “Brand Echh” versions of the real thing! So, lull yourself to sleep each night with these imperishable words: “It isn’t a Marvel masterpiece unless it SAYS Marvel on the cover trademark!” Don’t ever settle for less—you’re far too important to us! Remember—we found you first! The “Echh” was probably an unconscious riff on Mad magazine’s frequent use of the term “Ecch”—note the different spelling—to connote disdain or disgust. (Later, when a letter-writer referred in Amazing Spider-Man #34 to “Brand Ecch,” Stan good-naturedly corrected his spelling!) Stan’s earliest “Brand Echh” digs were doubtless aimed mostly at DC Comics’ belated attempts to emulate certain Marvel traits (like hip buzzwords, an informal editorial attitude, and, yes, character development)—but the origins of what would soon be the Archie group’s Radio Comics line (starting with Fly Man) had gone on sale by spring of ’65, as well. Still, when a fan-letter from future Dr. Strange artist Frank Brunner, printed in The X-Men #20 (May ’66), challenged him to name Marvel’s “competitor” and “stop beating around the bush (FORbush?),” Stan responded: “As for why we don’t name Brand Echh, it’s because we have more than one competitor—so Brand Echh stands for all of ’em. You pays yer money and you takes yer choice! Besides, we did name ’em—who do you think made up the appellation ‘Brand Echh’?? (Nyahh!)” Two months later, in the Bullpen Bulletins page that appeared in all Marvel comics dated July 1966, he responded to letter-scribe Mike Murano’s admonition to cease and desist with the “name-calling” thusly: Actually, we’ve never tried to single out any one competitor for criticism. By BRAND ECHH, we really meant all of them. But, that’s beside the point. What we want to know is—do most of you

Stupor Market A few months before Brand Echh was launched, Roy T. alternated with Topps Chewing Gum Co. exec (and friend) Len Brown on a series of sixteen tiny 8-page color parody comics, each with one panel to a page and packaged like Bazooka bubble gum cards. The artists were Wally Wood and Gil Kane. Len worked out the covers and titles with future Pulitzer winner (for Maus) Art Spiegelman. One of those Roy wrote was “Blunder Woman,” drawn by Wood... which cameo’d Topps’ own Stuporman in one panel. [©2010 T.C.G.]

agree with Mike? If so, we won’t mention Brand Echh again. Personally, we get a kick out of the mutual letter-col needling that goes on—but, as always, our job is to please YOU!! So, clue us in, frantic ones—and we’ll announce your decision as soon as the mail is in. For, by now, along with a Marvelesque series or three at National/DC (e.g., Doom Patrol, Metamorpho, and “Eclipso”) and the burgeoning cast of Archie’s Fly Man that would soon coalesce into The Mighty Crusaders (a source of supreme annoyance to both Goodman and Stan because of its over-the-top attempts to appropriate the Marvel style), a new if less imitative company called Tower had recently introduced the super-hero comic T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, under the artistic aegis of living legend (and recent Daredevil artist!) Wally Wood. And still more companies, it seemed, were entering the super-hero sweepstakes every month, especially since the recent blockbuster success of Batman on TV, a phenomenon which during 1966-67 dwarfed even the powerful effect Marvel was having on the comics field. On the Oct. ’66 Bulletins page, after giving readers time to respond to his “poll,” Stan announced that the resultant mail had left him “more confused than ever!” [The mail is] evenly divided—fifty percent in FAVOR of our roasting our competition every chance we get, and fifty percent OPPOSED to our carrying the batty bickering on any longer! It looks as though there’s nothing left to do but play it by ear— we’ll mention ’em when we feel so justified—and ignore ’em when we think they deserve it (like most of the time)! While I myself mostly read Marvel fan-mail only when Stan or Flo routed letters to me, I suspect his estimate was a fairly accurate reflection of readers’ response. After that, true to his word, he did use the term “Brand Echh” less often in Bullpen Bulletins and letters pages. Then, in all Aug. ’67 issues (after a teaser mini-ad the month before), Stan led off the Bullpens page with a self-proclaimed “BOMBSHELL!” item which announced that Marvel’s new mag Brand Echh #1 was on sale. Why this title and its humorous format, whose cover was depicted in a full-page house ad earlier in the same comics? Smiley explained: If everyone else is determined to imitate Marvel, we figure that your ol’ Bullpen can do a better, nuttier, funnier, more exciting job of poking fun at itself than anyone else can do! But why call

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

it BRAND ECHH? Because we’ve been steadily making those two words the most famous title in comicdom—so we figured we might as well cash in on the publicity ourselves!

title, although he also instantly latched onto one letter-scribe’s reference to it as “Brechh.” And, with the indicia of #5, the title would indeed become, officially, Not Brand Echh.

Stan declared that the new title was “jam-packed with Marvel’s mightiest super-heroes” (with no indication that their names would be altered into parody versions) and would be “loaded with block-busting bellylaughs in every incredible panel! It’s the mag you never expected to see—created by the only cavortin’ crew of creative cornballs who could have done it!” And so on.

Now—what about the contents of that first issue, which set the style, and of the others that followed?

That lead item, plus a small repro of the mag’s logo near the bottom, took up roughly a quarter of that Bullpen Bulletins page. Stan was promoting Brand Echh’s debut far more than he had, say, that of the Western Ghost Rider a few months earlier. I don’t recall ever knowing if he’d had any difficulty talking Goodman into adding the new comic to the schedule… but, unlike most new Marvel titles of that era, Brand Echh started life not as a bimonthly, but on an 8-times-a-year schedule. Which, probably coincidentally, was the frequency with which National/DC, not Marvel, issued a number of its titles. But—why is that mag invariably referred to above as “Brand Echh” and not as “Not Brand Echh,” the name by which it’s almost universally been known for the past four-plus decades? The reason, of course, is that the comic’s official title for its first four issues was indeed simply Brand Echh, as a peek at the various indicia will verify. However, because the topline on all its covers read “Who Says A Comic Book Has To Be Good??” above the larger words “NOT BRAND ECHH,” most fans from the outset treated that three-word phrase as if it were the actual title.

BRAND ECHH #1 (Aug. 1967) The stories, of course, were produced before the cover. For some reason, it was decided there’d be four of them in #1—and that I’d write two of them, a parody of Marvel’s Westerns and (I probably volunteered for this one) a take-off on the Golden Age reprints then appearing in Fantasy Masterpieces. Stan would script the lead feature lampooning Fantastic Four, and Gary would do a takeoff on the Sgt. Fury comic he’d recently begun scripting. We wound up in that first issue with a wonderful mix of artists, all of whom, as it happened, had been associated with color parody comics in the mid-’50s: Jack Kirby (who, with then-partner Joe Simon, had produced Charlton’s From Here to Insanity #11, Aug. 1955)… John Severin (who’d contributed “Melvin of the Apes,” etc., to the very early Mad)… Bill Everett (a regular in Timely/Atlas’ aforementioned trio of Mad imitations)… the team of Ross Andru & Mike Esposito (artists and even publishers of the three issues of Get Lost)… and Marie Severin (who’d colored each and every story in those first 23 issues of Mad).

Proof you want? In issue #4, all three comments from readers printed on the series’ very first letters page would refer to it as “Not Brand Echh.” By then, even the writer of that page’s answers—probably Stan himself—refers to the comic by that

Ironic that it would be Marie— the only one of the half dozen named above who hadn’t contributed actual art to a 1950s satire comic—who’d become NBE’s stand-out artist… the one who gave it, most of us feel, its soul, its best moments, and its prime justification for existence! Not that that was immediately clear in Brand Echh #1, which opened with…

What The Echh Is Going On Here? Three titles that Smilin’ Stan may have considered in 1965 to deserve the label of “Brand Echh” were DC’s Doom Patrol, Archie/Radio’s Fly Man (forerunner of The Mighty Crusaders), and Tower’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Of course, many readers then and now felt that Doom Patrol (and its fellow DC title Metamorpho) and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents were more than just pale imitations of Marvel—and even The Mighty Crusaders has its defenders, as you’ll see next issue. The cover of Doom Patrol #86 (March 1964) is by Bruno Premiani… the splash from Fly Man #31 (May 1965) by Paul Reinman (with script by Jerry Siegel)… and the cover of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1 by Wally Wood. All three of these pieces have been reproduced from currently available hardcover or trade paperback reprintings… so clearly, somebody liked ’em! [©2010 DC Comics; Archie Comic Publications, Inc.; & Estate of John Carbonaro, respectively.]

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

and, by sheer coincidence, fan-writer/artist Richard “Grass” Green had come up with the same name for his and Ronn Foss’ “Da Frantic Four” in a 1963 companion fanzine to the first volume of Alter Ego. (Grass had also coined the name “Sunk-Mariner.) But then, humor is, at rock bottom, a personal thing… and besides, it was Stan, not I, who’d already written tons of humor comics, some of them quite successful. The tip of the hat to the early Mad by Stan via the use of the word “furshlugginer” on page 2 was a nice touch, as well. That word would pop up more than once in Stan’s Brand Echh stories—and in mine. Brand Echh #1 was off to a swingin’ start!

“Too-Gone Kid in ‘The Fastest Gums in the West!’” Roy Thomas (writer) – Marie Severin (artist/co-plotter) – 4 pp. In the four pages of our sagebrush saga, Marie and I spoofed all of Marvel’s current Western stars—Two-Gun Kid, Rawhide Kid, and Kid Colt—except, oddly, the new Ghost Rider. By that point she and I had done several “Dr. Strange” stories together and had a nice rapport. Probably after a brief discussion in the office, Marie began drawing; in the process, she also contributed quite a bit to the plot. Both of us were even greater believers than Stan in what some call “chicken fat”—i.e., the filling of panels with humorous signs, labels, slogans, etc. Our tale was stuffed to the gills with “chicken fat” beyond any other in #1. Some of these were worked into the pencils by Marie, often with wording by herself. In other instances, I might add a sign wherever I found (horrors!) empty space in a panel.

Bloom County You already saw Kirby’s capricious cover for Brand Echh #1 back on p. 3—so here’s his (and Stan’s and Frank Giacoia’s) salubrious splash page. Thanks to Barry Pearl—who kindly provided the great majority of the NBE scans that accompany this article, except for those few that could be wellreproduced from Ye Editor’s bound volume of those lucky thirteen issues. We won’t type in Barry’s name in every caption—but he knows who he is! [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

E.g., looking over the story now, I’ve no idea which of us came up with the running gag of repeated signs referring to the final scene in the 1953 George Stevens/Alan Ladd film Shane; but “Sane!” had been one of Mad’s very first movie spoofs… and the flick’s most eminently parodyable bit (which had also been a staple on radio comedy shows) was the kid Brandon DeWilde’s plaintive cries of “Come back, Shane!” as he pursued his departing hero at the movie’s end. Our series of gag signs on that

“The Fabulous Fantastical Four Suffer thru the Saga of… ‘The Silver Burper!’” Stan Lee (writer) – Jack Kirby (penciler/co-plotter) – Frank Giacoia (inker) – 8 pp. What better way to begin than with a spoof of Fantastic Four by the two guys who’d created Marvel’s flagship series? Whether from a short written plot or after a brief verbal discussion, Jack drew and then Stan dialogued a send-up of FF #57+, wherein Dr. Doom had acquired The Silver Surfer’s surfboard and gone on a rampage. The story was well written and well drawn, and pointed the way the comic book would develop… though I must confess I personally winced at the names “Dr. Bloom” and “Silver Burper.” I felt alliterative monikers would’ve been better... like “The Simple Surfer,” since that hero was so pure and good and even gullible in the tale being parodied; but I did like the “burpboard.” And I loved “Shrew Storm” being referred to as “the Inevitable Girl,” for obvious reasons… although, rather than “Human Scorch,” I’d have preferred the no-holds-barred “Fumin’ Scorch.” That was the name I’d used in a Mad-style story I’d written and drawn as a teenager;

Hey, Kids! Cowboys! “Too-Gone Kid” splash panel from issue #1. Roy and Marie even forced Sam Rosen to letter Artie Simek’s name! Marie is seen at left in her photo from the 1969 FF Annual; see p. 18 for a pic of Slammin’ Sammy Rosen. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

slugfest from Marvel Mystery Comics #9 (July 1940). That issue was hitting the newsstands around the time we were prepping Brand Echh #1… so it was the perfect story to lampoon. Stan had assigned staffer Bill Everett as artist. That made perfect sense, since Bill, Gary’s and my sometime roommate over the past year or two, had created Namor and had drawn the Sub-Mariner figures in the 1940 story (Torch creator Carl Burgos had drawn his flaming foe). I wrote up a page or two of plot notes for Bill, which basically exhorted him to just draw a humorous 6-page version of the original story. I don’t know how specific I was about the gags—but I suspect I included the tale’s climax, in which “Chaplain America” leaps in from his 1967 adventures, informs the battling duo that they’re passé, and sends them off to an old-folks’ home. If that ending sounds a bit familiar to someone who read “Captain Marble Flies Again!” (from Nuts! #5, Nov. 1954) when we reprinted it back in A/E #33—well, that old spoof (in which Golden Age heroes wound up confined in padded cells) was definitely on my mind when I wrote those notes for Bill. However, since Stan had been fairly non-directional about the precise way we should handle the stories, one sentence in my “synopsis” read, in essence: “I’m not quite sure of what Stan wants, so let’s treat this story as if we were doing it for Harvey Kurtzman for one of the early color issues of Mad.” I was mostly just trying to inspire both Bill and myself. Bill, however, wasn’t in a mood to be inspired that year. This was during the period when he was doing a lot of drinking, as he himself was the first to admit later… and, frankly, I’ve always felt he was just looking for an excuse not to do this assignment. He roughly penciled the splash page… after which, instead of asking me for more details or a story conference, he charged with it into Stan’s office and, to punctuate whatever precise complaint he made, shoved my typed notes under Stan’s nose.

Slimely/Marble’s “Big Three” (Above & bottom flight:) The splash page of the Golden Age spoof in Brand Echh #1 was probably partly drawn by Wild Bill Everett—hence the credit—but the entrance of Chaplain America four pages later was pure Andru & Esposito. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

theme climaxed with one that read: “Forget the whole thing, Shane! We just rented your room!” Still, it shows our early-Mad roots that our big running gag referenced a movie nearly a decade and a half old, rather than a current Western. Anyway, we closed the story by sticking an “Approved by the Comics Code Authority” sticker on sidekick Bum Bum’s hat. We feared the Code might make us remove it, but since we hadn’t made any disparaging references to the Code itself in the story, we hoped they’d be good sports about it. And damned if they weren’t! There was a fiery aftermath to this story—but we’ll get to that.

“The Human Scorch versus The Sunk-Mariner” Roy Thomas (writer) – Ross Andru & Bill Everett (pencilers/ co-plotters) Mike Esposito (inker) – 6 pp. This is a hard one to write about. You’ll see why. A year or so earlier, Stan had decided to re-present vintage stories of Timely’s 1940s super-heroes in our reprint title Fantasy Masterpieces. Since Marvel didn’t have black-&-white proofs going back that far, copies of the actual old comics were found and Photostatted, with the color washed out to the extent possible; then the art was retouched… not always with proper care, given our hectic pace. FM #7 (April ’67) had reprinted the 22-page “The Human Torch versus The Sub-Mariner”

Stan read them… and saw red. He quickly relieved Bill of the assignment, called me in, and proceeded to rake me over the coals—not about the plot, but about my statement that I’d write it as if I were doing it for Kurtzman’s Mad. “Did Harvey Kurtzman get you a raise?” was one of the questions he fired at me. I didn’t know how to respond, since I’d meant no disrespect and had no idea what I’d done wrong. But I left, chastened… and Ross Andru was quickly lined up to pencil the rest of the story. Since Ross and partner/inker Mike Esposito had drawn the “Captain Marble” spoof mentioned above (though I don’t think I knew that till later), it was right up their alley… and things went off without a further hitch.

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

Phantom, Mickey Mouse, The Little King, Little Lulu, and, yes, Batman into the final panel (as seen in A/E #33). As it turned out, that glimpse of an obvious Batman type smoking a stogie (along with passing verbal mentions of “Green Lampburn” and “The Dash” here, and of “Blatman and Robert” in the following story) would be the only hint in Brand Echh #1 of Gary’s and my original plan for the mag. And that was probably for the best.

Artists Alley (L. to r.:) Bill Everett… Ross Andru… Mickey Demeo (alias Mike Esposito)—the artists of “The Human Scorch versus The Sunk-Mariner.” Wild Bill clearly wanted no part of Brand Echh—but it's strange that veteran parodists Andru & Esposito weren't tapped to draw more for the mag. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Later, I pieced together what might’ve happened: Stan had written a lot of humor during his career to that date, and had had a fair degree of success with it, mostly for Timely/Atlas, but occasionally for outside media, as well. And, back in the 1940s, Kurtzman had written and drawn humor material for Timely; Stan had appreciated his “Hey Look!” and had found space for it in Atlas comics. But then Kurtzman had left to edit, write, and draw for EC Comics and, in short order, had created Mad, which even in its four-color incarnation was something of a sales phenomenon by 1954. Stan and Timely had responded with no fewer than three parody titles, and there was some good stuff in them, but they’d all failed in short order. Perhaps, I reasoned, Stan felt I was unfavorably comparing him with Kurtzman, who by 1967 had risen to iconic status among comics fans and the burgeoning underground “comix” creators. But I had far too much respect for Stan to try to “bait” him that way; and he himself was well on his way, of course, to becoming another “legend in his own time.” In any event, to my relief, the whole thing quickly blew over, and was never mentioned again till now… as a frabjous footnote of comics history.

Interestingly, too, on the story’s splash page I referred to the 1940 comic being lampooned as “Marble Mystery #9”—which seems to be the first use (and the only use, in #1) of the obvious term “Marble” as the official Brand Echh version of “Marvel.”

“Sgt. Furious and His Hostile Commandos!! ‘A Day of Blunder!’” Gary Friedrich (writer) – John Severin (artist/co-plotter) – 5 pp. Gary had been as thrilled as Stan or I when, a few months earlier, artist John Severin had suddenly popped up, with a bit of time to spare from his workload for the black-&-white satire mag Cracked. Stan had instantly hired him to pencil and ink the monthly Sgt. Fury, which Gary now scripted. Gary had seen Severin’s two “Melvin of the Apes” parodies in early Mad, as well as his takeoffs on Robin Hood, Westerns, et al. Gary decided to basically parody “A Day of Thunder!,” the D-Day story I had scripted (with artists Ayers and John Tartaglione) for the 1966 Sgt. Fury Annual. The Brechh tale’s splash, though, spoofed that of Sgt. Fury #42 (May 1967), the very first issue Gary himself had written. The story was quite successful, to my way of thinking, right up through Happy Slam Sawbuck revealing on the final page that “D-Day” actually stands for “Desertion Day,” so that the Commandos all split for parts unknown and

For my part, I was proud of the finished story, as drawn by Andru, Everett (maybe the figures on the splash page?), and Esposito (as “Mickey Demeo”). I felt “Chaplain America” was the perfect riff on the name of Captain America, who was given to pontifical ultrapatriotic pronouncements. And, even if I’d “borrowed” the general notion of the ending from Nuts! #4, I loved working takeoffs on Charlie Brown, Little Orphan Annie, Dick Tracy, Archie, The

Heck Hath No Fury (Above left:) The splash page of Sgt. Fury #42 (May 1967), by scripter Gary Friedrich, plotter/penciler Dick Ayers, & inker John Tartaglione. Too bad Dick, who’d drawn for Charlton’s Eh! in the mid-’50s, never got a chance to draw a story for NBE. (Above right:) The splash for Gary’s and artist John Severin’s parody from Brand Echh #1. You can tell the difference—can’t you? At far left is Marie’s big brother John, from that 1969 Fantastic Four Annual. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

their beleaguered commanding officer is free of them forever. Unfortunately, Stan had some problems with the scripting. If memory serves, Gary had titled the feature “Sgt. Furry and His Yowlin’ Comanches!!”—which Stan altered to “Sgt. Furious and His Hostile Commandos!!” Both Gary and I liked Gary’s title better, nor could we understand why the word “Commandos” was left unparodied. Many of Gary’s balloons and captions remained intact, but Stan rewrote numerous others, while Gary bit his tongue after one or two efforts to defend his lines were met with the refutation: “That’s not funny!” And, of course, since humor is in the mind (and funnybone) of the beholder, there was no answer to that blanket statement. If the man in charge didn’t find something you wrote “funny,” all the explanations and fulminations in the world weren’t gonna change his mind. You just had to vow to try harder next time.

Next came the cover, assigned to Jack Kirby to pencil. I’m not sure who inked it—or about much of anything else related to it, frankly. Chances are, Stan gave Jack the basic idea: the “Forbush-Man” character, his back turned to us, scaring the living daylights out of the parody stand-ins for the FF, Dr. Doom, and Silver Surfer. Whether it was Stan or Jack who had the idea for the look of Forbush-Man, I couldn’t say… but, except for lacking a cape, he looked much the way he’d appear in future issues. The name “Irving Forbush,” of course, had been a gag presence in Marvel comics for some time—the equivalent of Mad’s Alfred E. Newman, except till now he’d had no visual incarnation. (An Irving Forbush had been drawn by Joe Maneely for Timely’s 1950s b&w satire mag Snafu which Stan had written and edited, but thus far in the “Marvel Age” Irv had only been a name in the credits, Bullpen Bulletins, and letters pages.) Gary and I were thrilled that Stan used spurious “quotes” from the three of us—plus production manager Sol Brodsky—as mock testimonials. It was the first time either of us had ever seen his name on the cover of a comic book, and we greatly appreciated Stan’s doing that. In retrospect, though, surely Jack Kirby’s moniker should’ve been there, as well. (An oddball admission: In looking at the covers of the title’s 13 issues as I wrote this guide, I was several issues in before I realized—nor do I specifically recall observing it four-plus decades ago—that the “N” in the word “BRAND” is backward! I probably noticed it once, in 1967—then forgot it and never thought about it again.) Finally, with the stories and cover taken care of, Stan wrote the copy for the issue’s contents page on its first interior color page—from a layout probably by Marie, with Photostats from the four stories pasted up beneath a new drawing of Mr. Fantastical and a caricature of SpiderMan. In lieu of a text page, Stan scripted a full-page “nextissue” ad at the end of the mag. By now, he’d decided #2 would be the place to introduce lampoons of the heroes of the real “Brand Echh”—our competitors—in battle with the “Marble” stalwarts. But he wanted only one DC character in the mix—Batman, he of recent TV superstardom—so Gary staked his claim on Tower’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, and I contented myself with Gold Key’s Magnus, Robot Fighter. Stan ended that page with balloons of Marvel staffers and freelancers saying “Goodnight” to each other, in the manner of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on their popular TV newscasts. (By coincidence, that page foreshadowed the extended “goodnights” on the TV series The Waltons in the 1970s.) All in all, despite the false starts and occasionally butted heads, things had turned out pretty well, we all thought… …till the make-ready came in.

Fast And “Furious” Page 4 of “Sgt. Furious” from Brand Echh #1—repro’d from a scan of the original art (with many of Stan’s corrections partly visible in the margins), with thanks to Bob Bailey. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Now, a “make-ready” (the term has probably fallen into disuse in recent years) was a printed, full-color copy of the interior of a comic issue, lacking only the slicker-paper cover. I was never quite sure why the printer sent them to us at all, since they reached us only shortly before the actual issue went on sale; by then it was far too late to make any changes, should we find anything amiss in the mag. (That was supposed to have been done earlier, when black-&-white proofs had been sent.) When it arrived, Stan looked over the make-ready for Brand Echh #1—

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

Button, Button, Who’s Got The Button?

came to the door and summoned me back into his office. I had no idea what for. To fire me? Could be. Well, c’est la vie.

As soon as he’d shut the door behind us, however, Stan apologized for getting angry… and proceeded to explain himself, while I, uncharacteristically, said nothing.

And, once again, everything hit the fan. Stan summoned me into his office, clearly angry, and pointed to panel 6 on the second page of Marie’s and my “Too-Gone Kid” story. There, on Bum Bum’s stovepipe hat, was a tiny metallic button emblazoned (if you look very closely) with the words “All the way with LBJ,” with a mushroom-shaped cloud in the middle of the phrase. Stan felt certain that button had been added since he’d proofread the original art a few weeks earlier. As the story’s writer and the guy who’d scribbled in both the words and the atomic cloud, I insisted, no, that was exactly the way it’d been when he’d proofed it. Stan insisted he’d never have allowed so political and controversial a button to appear in a Marvel comic. (Its sentiment and H-bomb image were those of a very real button, currently worn by anti-war protesters. Remember, while in spring of 1967 we were coming up on the so-called “Summer of Love,” opposition to the Vietnam War was growing, spurred on by a combination of sincere moral convictions and fears of being drafted, and the country was moving toward becoming polarized. The real push-comes-to-shove would arrive in 1968, but ’67 was a “preview of coming attractions.”) I pointed out that the offending button was only the last of six buttons and signs on Bum Bum’s hat in a half dozen sequential panels on the top two tiers of that page. The first two signs were totally apolitical (“Ballplayers will be prosecuted” and “For Sale”), two referred to the 1964 Presidential contest in which President Lyndon Baines Johnson had bested Senator Barry Goldwater (“AuH2O”—which was “Goldwater” spelled out using atomic symbols—and “A Choice, Not an Echh-o!” which combined a Goldwater campaign slogan with our comic’s title). The fifth was also anti-war and may have likewise been a realie: “Draft beer, not students!” I’d probably written all six—but only, I insisted, to fill space humorously utilizing trendy expressions, not out of any political agenda. Although I’d have been most unhappy to have been drafted (I’d been labeled “1-Y” at my physical in January of ’66), I was not anti-war. Oh, I’d have been overjoyed to see the war simply fade away, with the Viet Minh retreating back up the Ho Chi Minh Trail into North Vietnam; but I was against letting South Vietnam fall to Communist forces. As I declared to Stan, no one holding such views would’ve sneaked that anti-war button onto a character’s headgear for any ulterior purpose.

He spoke of comic books’ severe problems during the 1950s… not the establishment of the Comics Code and its review board per se, or even the furor over horror and crime comics, but problems specifically related to war comics. In those days before and after the 1953 truce that ended the Korean War, Timely, like EC and a number of other companies, had published comics set during that conflict. Some had starred continuing heroes like Combat Kelly, but others had featured one-off stories that showed the grimmer, grittier side of war… at least so far as it was likely to be portrayed in a kids’ comic book of that era. The message at stories’ end had often been simply that war was no damn good, or even tragic… but never that the US or UN forces were violating anyone’s sovereignty in Korea, or murdering civilians… certainly not any kind of “anti-war” statement in the vein of the Vietnam protesters, the so-called “peaceniks.” Even so, some of the ’50s story endings had been real downers, with brave American soldiers dying, or at least slogging wearily through the mud to fight another day. Since our government proclaimed that it, too, hated war, Stan said he had felt that kind of message was in line with the approved view, and that’s precisely where he’d wanted to be. To its horror, however, Timely Comics—which meant publisher Martin Goodman—had soon discovered that its war comics, or maybe it was all its comics, were no longer being sold in PX’s, those stores on armed-services bases where men in uniform went to buy their candy and cigarettes, to shoot pool, to hang out. A ban of that kind entailed a serious loss in revenue for any comics company… even as it fed the growing public perception, stoked by Dr. Wertham and his ilk, that comics were bad, evil… not just for children, but even for adult servicemen. And so, Stan said, when he’d spied that “All the way with LBJ”/mushroom cloud button—well, it had sort-of pushed his buttons, and made him see visions of the wrath of self-appointed do-gooders again descending upon the collective head of the comic book industry. On reflection, however, he’d decided that, if I said that neither I nor anyone else had altered the button at the eleventh hour, that was good

Stan, however, was adamant—and, under his continued insistence that the button must’ve been altered after his proofing, I’m afraid I got a bit hot under the collar myself. I informed him that if he was accusing me of lying, as he seemed to be coming dangerously close to doing, I was out of there… quit… finis. I left, to stew at my little desk in the smaller office with Sol and Flo. Exactly what I’d have done or where I’d have gone if I’d carried out my quasiForbush Forever! threat, I didn’t know… didn’t really care, at the Irv made his visual debut on the cover moment. But I’d drawn my line in the sand… of Timely/Atlas’ Snafu #1. The text under his mug shot reads: “Irving and, anytime I ever threatened to quit a job, I Forbush – Man or Myth?” Curiously, was never, ever bluffing. It just wasn’t in my the cover has a “December” date—but nature. It seemed like a long time… but it was probably only a few minutes… before Stan

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

enough for him… he must’ve just missed it, with so much clutter on the page… and he hoped I’d accept his apology, and we could forget all about it.

respect, as well.

Naturally, I accepted at once… and if it’d be impossible to “forget” something so traumatic, I certainly never held a grudge about it. Indeed, I was impressed that Stan was “big enough,” as they say, to admit he’d overreacted for a moment. For my part, I assured him that in the future I’d take extra care to see that neither I, nor anyone else, put anything of that type into an issue. After all, we were in the business of entertainment, not politics. And what went into a Marvel comic was ultimately Stan’s responsibility—with everybody’s jobs ultimately on the line if sales were adversely affected. If there’d been trouble with the government or over-zealous critics and censors, Martin Goodman would’ve been after Stan’s head on a platter, not mine. I was too far down the food chain to even be noticed!

To a few of us, it became a wee bit more than that.

And here you thought that Brand Echh #1 was just this… this comic book.

BRAND ECHH #2 (Sept. 1967) “The Aging Spidey-Man! ‘Peter Pooper vs. Gnatman and Rotten’” Stan Lee (writer) – Marie Severin (penciler/co-plotter) – Frank Giacoia (inker) – 8 pp. Jack Kirby, busy penciling some of Marvel’s most important features, wasn’t available for this second issue—nor would John Romita, under whom The Amazing Spider-Man had risen, in the past year, to become Marvel’s bestselling title, ever be tapped by Stan to contribute a full story to Brand Echh. And that gave other artists a chance to shine.

Thus, Brand Echh began as what we all thought would just be a fun idea, a lark… had swiftly become a source of various types of Marie’s cover for Brand Echh #2. Thanks to the unpleasantness… and now, I like to think, had GCD. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.] cemented a new bond between Stan and me. I had always respected his talent. After that day, I would more than ever Especially Marie Severin. respect him as a human being. And I would seek to be worthy of his Entering the field originally with the cachet of being artist John Severin’s kid sister, she had been a colorist, not an “artist” per se, for EC and the early Mad. But Marie had been noted even in the 1950s for her devastating office cartoons, even though they were never published. Already by the time I’d walked in the door at Marvel in July of ’65, secretary Flo Steinberg had one or two of Marie’s caricatures of her and others taped up over her desk… and other personnel happily squirreled away those she did of them, even though they were often pictured in situations that were unflattering. I myself long treasured the only cartoon she ever did of me (at least, that I knew about); she kindly drew a more detailed version of it a few years ago, and I ran it in A/E #50.

Stan, recognizing her flair for parody in the “Too-Gone Kid” story in #1, teamed up with her himself in #2 to spoof two of Marvel’s and DC’s most popular characters (with joking mentions of Superham, The Green Sparrow, and even The Gloom Patrol). The basic plot was that Daily Bagel publisher J. Jawbone Junkton hires Gnatman and Rotten to get rid of Spidey-Man. When they do, JJJ discovers he’s exchanged one annoyance for another (actually, for two others). Once again, as she always did, Marie contributed even more to the story than did most artists in Brand Echh, tossing in lots of “chicken fat” (as well as opportunities for Stan to add more of his own): Jimmy Olsen was seen making an urgent call in a phone booth. “Commissioner Good-Guy” was a dead-ringer for TV’s Commissioner Gordon, played by Neil Hamilton. JJJ drove a Volkswagen with a sun roof, while the Gnatmobile was hilariously detailed. There was even a last-panel jab at the recent powerful scene (in Amazing Spider-Man #50, July ’67, just then going on sale) in which Spidey’s costume winds up in a trashcan. A good time was had by all. (Including, I suspect, John Romita, who I believe drew the faces in that last-panel shot of Peter Parker, Gwen, and Mary Jane hangin’ out on a park bench! Maybe Jazzy Johnny just couldn’t resist the temptation to get

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

And All That Jazz Roy T. suspects that Jazzy Johnny Romita had a hand in drawing Peter Pooper and his lady friends in this final panel from the “Spidey-Man” spoof-saga in issue #2. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

in on the fun—or, more likely, Stan drafted him to make the trio look 100% authentic. Which, of course, John did.) Marie also contributed the issue’s cover—including the inset drawing (I never know quite what to call them) in the upper left-hand corner, which changed every issue. It hadn’t taken her long to emerge as NBE’s secret weapon, had it? The lead-off spot, with a Stan Lee script, by the second issue!

“The Unrinseable Ironed Man Meets… ‘Magnut, Robot Biter!’” Roy Thomas (writer) – Don Heck (penciler/co-plotter) – Dan Adkins (inker) – 7 pp. Magnus, Robot Fighter wasn’t exactly a straight super-hero… and I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that a majority of Marvel readers had never read a single issue of that Gold Key quarterly. (A quarterly, for Cripes’ sake! What kind of self-respecting regulation-size hero comic was published just four times a year?) Rather, Magnus was a highly-developed physical specimen specially trained to battle evil robots in the “North Am” of 4000 A.D. The series’ chief virtue was the slick, antiseptic, yet somehow irresistible artwork of Russ Manning, who had drawn all the issues to date, of which there’d been roughly 18 by mid-’67. Still, with Stan doing DC, and Gary T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, I didn’t have a wide choice. I doubt if Stan would’ve wanted to give Archie’s

Anybody Wanna Cry U.N.C.L.E.? Marie appropriated Wally Wood’s pose of Dynamo from the cover of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1 (see p. 6) for this panel from Brand Echh #2 in which amazingly-abilitied acronymical agencies assaulted each other assiduously. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Mighty Crusaders even a back-handed kind of publicity in a Marvel mag… and anyway, I liked Magnus. Even if, in our version, his principal costume colors were green and yellow rather than red and white. Don Heck was perhaps an unusual choice for artist. He drew handsome heroes and beautiful women and decent robots—and had, for the first few years, been the regular artist of the “Iron Man” series, as well as of The Avengers—but he drew the figures in this story so close to the way he’d done them in Iron Man’s actual exploits that nearly all the humor had to be added in the dialogue. And, while I felt I could write humor reasonably well, I was not a natural gag-man like Stan—who, I believe, coined the “Ironed Man” monicker for the hero. Still, readers seemed to like it—and I’m glad to say this tale was reprinted to flesh out the hardcover Marvel Masterworks: The Invincible Iron Man, Vol. 3 (2008). Note: The story’s final caption—“Moral: People

Magnut, P.I. (For “Perfect Imbecile”) If you wanna see Magnus, Robot Fighter, in gracefully delineated battle with meticulously drawn metal marauders, pick up the three gorgeous hardcover Magnus, Robot Fighter Archives volumes published by Dark Horse over the past few years. If you wanna see Magnut, Robot Biter, dig his dentures into Iron Man—Brand Echh #2 was definitely your meat! Don Heck’s photo appeared in both Marvel Tales Annual #1 (1964) and the 1969 Fantastic Four Annual. Thanks to Bob Bailey and J. Fairfax. [©2010 Marvel Characters, inc.]

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

knew his quirks and stylistic flourishes—from his penchant for showing heroes crashing, a bit stiffly, through brick walls to all those lighting effects that looked as if someone were shining a flashlight directly at one side of a character’s head (which, in fact, agent Dynaschmoe does to himself at one point). She’d been observing Kirby and Steranko for some time, as well, and it showed. (Incidentally, the only other BLUNDER Agent depicted in the story was Nobody, in for NoMan.) As for the names of the two acronymic organizations: “S.H.E.E.S.H.” stood for “Secret Hang-up for Evil Emissaries of Satanish Hyde-andJekylls”), while BLUNDER” (never written with periods) was short for “Bedraggled League Uv National Defenseless Encroachment Reserves.” And, perhaps inevitably, both are foiled in the end by a third secret agency—AUNTIE, inspired by the popular TV show The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Marie’s caricatures of Robert Vaughn and David McCallum were spot-on. The only thing missing was the ultimate inspiration for all the 1960s secret-agent stuff: Bond. James Bond. Once again, a next-issue ad closed out the issue—with a Watcher caricature heralding an upcoming “Origins” edition. Irv Forbush (not costumed as Forbush-Man) is seen on this page—but asleep with his feet on a desk, and a copy of Brand Echh #2 covering his snoring face.

S.H.E.E.S.H., What A Grouch! Pages 1 & 3 of Brand Echh #2’s “Agent of S.H.E.E.S.H.” story, repro’d from scans of the original art, courtesy of dealer Mike (www.romitaman.com) Burkey. A number of Stan’s editorial corrections are visible in the margins— though partly cut off on the scans we have. Some of Marie’s border notes are visible beneath Stan’s corrections on the latter. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

who live in tin houses shouldn’t throw can-openers!”—is a straight steal from Walt Kelly’s Pogo. I swipe from the best.

“Knock Furious, Agent of S.H.E.E.S.H., Takes on… ‘The BLUNDER Agents!’” Gary Friedrich (writer) – Marie Severin (artist/co-plotter) – 7 pp. Right off the bat, the main thing I recall about this tale—other than feeling it was a good takeoff on Tower’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents—is that once again Stan rewrote a number of Gary’s gags and dialogue. The original art for the splash page, which still exists, underscores that point, starting with “Knock” as Furious’ first name (I forget what Gary’d wanted that first name to be, but “Knock” definitely wasn’t it). Even so, Gary and Marie’s basic story remained, and it gave them ample opportunity to lampoon aspects of the styles of Jim Steranko and Jack Kirby (the most noted “Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” artists) and of Wally Wood (who generally dominated the look of the Tower line). Marie had colored Wood’s EC art in the first half of the 1950s, so she

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

BRAND ECHH #3 (Oct. 1967) Stan felt each issue needed a theme in order to hang together and not seem just a hodgepodge gathering of unrelated stories… and he was probably right. Behind Marie’s cover (including her top-left drawing of a weary stork delivering three costumed infants) and a contents page probably written by Stan came a trio of obstreperous origins:

“The Mighty Sore! ‘The Origin of Sore, Son of Shmodin!’” Stan Lee (writer) – Jack Kirby (penciler/co-plotter) – Frank Giacoia (inker) – 8 pp. As one who’d bought Journey into Mystery #83 off the newsstand between college classes in 1962 (though I’d actually graduated the year before), it was a real treat to see Stan and Jack re-visit Thor’s origin. At that time, I’m not sure I was aware that Stan’s brother Larry had done the actual script to that tale, from Stan’s plot. Stan and Jack touched most of the bases in this romp. My favorite dialogue occurs when a specs-wearing Gumball (Heimdal) on the Rain-Soaked Bridge to Jazzgard squints at Sore, who’s standing right in front of him: “I’m real big with hummingbird’s wings and falling feathers—but I’m kinda shaky on stuff that’s up close! How’s about steppin’ back a few million miles so I can make you out?” Great stuff!

“The Inedible Bulk! ‘The Origin of Brucie Banter… and Friend’” Gary Friedrich (writer) – Marie Severin (artist/co-plotter) – 7 pp. Gary had been the second person ever to script solo stories of the Hulk, so this “Inedible Bulk” parody was right up his alley—not to mention that of Marie, who by then had penciled a number of Ol’ Greenskin’s adventures. They presented the Bulk’s origin as a flashback in which Brucie Banter gets radiated at the city dump rather than by a takeoff on the Gamma Bomb per se… nor is the juvenile delinquent stand-in for Rick Jones given a name. I found the last page the high point, whereon “Dr. Sivana, M.D.” tries to get the Bulk to change back to Banter by saying “Shazam!”—the first (unless we missed one) of many uses of that then-apparently-forever-defunct-incomic-books magic word in the pages of NBE—and a final panel in which Merry Marble’s jolly green giant gains TV stardom by portraying—the Jolly Green Giant, complete with leafy toga and carrying a big can of peas.

“Charlie America – Leaping Lumpkin of World War II! ‘The Honest-to-Irving, True-Blue, Top-Secret Original Origin of Charlie America!’” Roy Thomas (writer) – Tom Sutton (artist/co-plotter) – 7 pp. Wish I could remember precisely how Tom Sutton wandered into the Marvel offices and made his debut in this “Captain America” parody. I just recall him as this young guy with a lot of talent and enthusiasm and a mean sense of humor. At any rate, he immediately became the second most important NBE artist (or third, if you count Kirby’s handful of early contributions). Like most of us, Tom was a devotee of the early Mad. Thus, though I don’t specifically recall whether I wrote a page or three of notes or we merely talked over the basic idea, I’m listing Tom, like Marie and Jack, as a co-plotter of stories he illustrated, because he, too, did so much more than merely draw them. From the splash page where he added a comic spin-rack full of titles

Marie’s cover for Brand Echh #3, repro’d from a scan of the original art— and autographed, for some reason, by John Romita! Marie signed it in blue pencil, as well. Thanks to the Heritage Comics Archives & Dominic Bongo. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

parodying Brand Echh itself (shades of the first page of “Julius Caesar!” in Mad #17, as seen in A/E #86!) through the final page, on which C.A. turns out to actually be “Bunky Barnes,” he and I were perfectly in synch. Besides cameos of several DC heroes (see accompanying art), we involved several comic strip characters in the origin: Little Orphan Annie, Dick Tracy, Mary Worth, the Peanuts gang—and Pogo. Tom was, like myself, an inveterate Walt Kelly fan, and when I didn’t specifically suggest a way to shoehorn the cast of Pogo into a parody, he often came up with one on his own! The only minor sour note to me was Stan’s insistence that the C.A. stand-in be called Charlie America. Not a bad handle, but I’d have preferred to continue Chaplain America from issue #1. But it was no big deal. Kurtzman’s Mad, once John Severin had departed it, had settled on the regular crew of Will Elder, Wally Wood, and Jack Davis as the color comic’s heavy lifters. Now, with Marie and Tom and sometimes Kirby in tow, things were falling in place for Marvel’s new entry, as well.

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

Three-Peat Just to save space on the captions, here’s a clockwise triple-dip of splash pages from Brand Echh #3: the origins of Sore, the Bulk, and Charlie America. This was the first issue of NBE to feature tales drawn by all three of the series’ primary artists—Jack Kirby, Marie Severin, and newcomer Tom Sutton. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Vas You Dere, Charlie? “Titanic Tom Sutton”—in a photo from FOOM #19 (Fall 1977)—and (above) a panel from the origin of Charlie America. In this panel set in 1940, the year Captain America Comics made its debut, Tom tossed in parodies of not only the Golden Age Superman and Batman, but the lesser-known (especially to Marvel fans) original Flash. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

BRAND ECHH #4 (Nov. 1967) Jack Kirby sat out this issue—but Marie’s penciled cover, inked mostly by Tom Sutton, brought the mag’s two other most important artists together again for the first time, in the issue which Stan had themed “The Bad Guys Win!” Though Stan continued to guide the issues in a general way, he increasingly gave us more leeway in the actual scripting. I suspect that, about this time, Gary and/or I began to write the contents pages. If there was a weak note in #3, it was that the featured heroes were three of Marvel’s weakest sellers: Daredevil, Sub-Mariner—and oh yes, The X-Men.

“Scaredevil, the Man Who’s Scared of Fear – ‘Defeated by the Evil Electrico!’” Stan Lee (writer) – Gene Colan (penciler/ co-plotter) – John Tartaglione (inker) – 8 pp. Colan, of course, was a natural on the lead-off tale, as Daredevil’s regular penciler. No one else could have pulled off this perfect blend of the actual look of DD and a lacerating lampoon of it. All it lacks is a close-up of a doorknob! Proofreading this tale, I lusted after working with Gene on an NBE story myself—and I’d soon get my shot. Hmm… was this the first reference in NBE to “Mort Wienieburger,” a spoof of the name of DC’s “Superman” line editor Mort Weisinger? I know I was surprised to see Stan toss that in, even in a footnote (related to labels of “AC” and “DC” current for Electrico), since the great majority of our readers wouldn’t recognize the source of the name—and, to the best of my knowledge, Stan never parodied any other

Sunk-Mariner No-More! The Sunk-Mariner was flanked by foes in these panels from #4—the warlord Krank, Floyd Britches, and Aqualung-Man. Wonder if Floyd knew that his son son Jiff would later play the bad-guy in the first Ironed Man movie? [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

talent working for the competition. Maybe the “Wienieburger” name just came to him, and he couldn’t resist it. Want to read this story in its entirety? Well, thankfully, you can—if you own a copy of the 2009 hardcover Marvel Masterworks: Daredevil, Vol. 5. And you should.

“Prince No-More, The Sunk-Mariner! ‘Kayoed by Krank!’” Gary Friedrich (writer) – Marie Severin (artist/co-plotter) – 7 pp.

Gary and Marie tossed all the water-related biggies they could think of into this one: Floyd Britches (Lloyd Bridges of Sea Hunt), Aqualung-Man (DC’s Aquaman), Jackie Gleapsome (Jackie Gleason, some of whose TV series was shot in Miami), even a mention of retired movie swim-star Esther Williams. The ending, in which The Sunk-Mariner takes the place of another pointy-eared type, Mr. Spook of Star Trick, was perhaps a nod to the fact that Marvel, over the past couple of years, had been in receipt of a few letters which assailed us for “copying” the Spock look with Namor’s ears! Those who do not

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

Would You Like To Write My Beautiful Balloons? Poor Sam Rosen actually had to letter each and every balloon in these panels from the last two pages of the “Echhs-Men” epic in Brand Echh #4—plus plenty more in the panels that surrounded them! The photo of long-suffering Sam appeared in the 1969 Fantastic Four Annual. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

know history are doomed to be embarrassed by it.

“Echhs-Men! The Most Non-Usual Fighting Team of All Time! ‘If Magneat-O Should Clobber Us..’” Roy Thomas (writer) – Tom Sutton (artist/co-plotter) – 7 pp. As the guy who’d succeeded (if that’s the right word) Stan Lee as scripter of The X-Men, I was happy to sink my teeth into this one. The guy I feel sorry for—and I believe I felt a tinge of pity even then—is letterer Sam Rosen, who had to letter all the dialogue I put in the mouths of five Echhs-Men (a natural of a name). As if my regular “X-Men” stories weren’t wordy enough! The problem is, Tom came up with such wonderful panels and compositions, with every mutant just crying out to be saying something—and who was I to resist that temptation? Just for the record, besides Professor Echhs, the group consisted of Cyclomps, Icy-Man, The Beastly, Angel-Face, and Marble Girl… and this time it was my turn to throw in the Mad-lib “furshlugginer” (Stan had used it twice by now). In the course of the story, we tossed in a cameo panel with the (unnamed) Doom Patrol, who of course had been, by a few months, the first team of costumed super-heroes to be led by a guy in a wheelchair (collect them all!). But the real high point—or low, if you were Sam Rosen—was the final two pages. In panel 3 of page 6, not only does The Beastly deliver himself of a 63-word dialogue balloon… but he then grabs it by the tail and slugs Magneat-O with it in the next panel—at which point Sam had to letter that balloon all over again! Marvel may have had a Photostat machine (complete with its own little room) by that point, though probably not a Xerox copier—but either such new devices were not for use for humble story purposes, or else I just didn’t think of it. In the page’s last panel, much of that balloon had to be lettered a third time—along with several others under which the Echhs-Men began to bury Magneat-O.

Then, to add insult to injury—well, the accompanying repro of the first two panels of page 7 (directly above) tells the rest of the story. I’d have been well advised, for the next few weeks, not to have opened any ticking packages that arrived from Brooklyn (where Sam Rosen and his also-letterer brother Joe lived). I was kinda proud of the story—but there must’ve been a sadistic streak lurking somewhere within me. Or, more likely, I was just oblivious to anything but the needs of the tale. If it makes anybody feel any kindlier toward me, it usually took me twice as long to write a page of NBE as of any other series I scripted. In terms of hourly wages, the comic was a definite loser for me—I don’t know how it was for Stan or Gary, let alone the artists—but I loved doing it and never even considered bailing out. Oh, and this issue finally sported the mag’s very first letters page (titled “This Is a LETTERS PAGE?”), whose trio of missives were mentioned on p. 6 of this article. I was pleased that the first letter printed listed “TooGone Kid” as that scribe’s favorite—with page 2 (the one that had caused the short-lived blowup) said to “rank with the best Mad ever did.” Fan Philip Cohen had counted the number of gags on the page (19, he said) and had read the issue five times, finding new humorous bits each time. We couldn’t have made up a better letter of comment than that! To balance it out, reader Ed Sapp felt the issue was “a disaster”—and one John Moore thought we “should concentrate on the real Brand Echh, movies, actors, and newspaper strip characters. After all, we see enough of Marvel’s marvelous creations in other Marvel mags.” And no, John M. wasn’t related to Gary or me!

NOT BRAND ECHH #5 (Dec. 1967) This issue, the first whose indicia actually carried the now-official title Not Brand Echh, was also the first to have no precise “theme”—though two of its three stories were devoted to a Marvel staple, the hero-vs.-hero

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

battle. The cover subject, however, was the nebbish super-hero ForbushMan, who hadn’t been seen since the cover of #1. By now, he’d gained a little weight: a hyphen in the middle of his name. The cover (see next page) appears to be the joint effort of Marie Severin and Tom Sutton—but I could be wrong about that. As an interesting touch, the three T-shirts depicted thereon bear the Photostatted hero images of real ones Marvel had been selling—only with the names of the characters changed to the NBE versions.

“The Origin of… Forbush-Man” Stan Lee (writer) – Jack Kirby (penciler/co-plotter) – Tom Sutton (inker) – 8 pp. Since Stan had been the guy who hired Tom to work on NBE, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he now lassoed him to ink one of his and Jack’s felonious forays into foolishness. For perhaps the first time, one of the mag’s stories is not a parody of either a specific Marvel episode or even series, but is a full-blown origin saga. In it, young Irving Forbush (whose face is never seen) lives with his Auntie Mayhem (his Uncle Benny is behind bars) and first dons a costume to fight the mutant called Juggernut. After he triumphs, every other Merry Marble super-villain surrenders to the police so F-Man can’t get at them. Forbush-Man would remain a presence in the mag, off and on, for the rest of its life… and still occasionally pops up in Marvel mags.

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

“The Flighty Revengers! ‘The Revengers vs. Charlie America!’” Roy Thomas (writer) – Gene Colan (penciler/co-plotter) – John Tartaglione (inker) – 7 pp. No way can I recall at this late stage if Stan chose this “battle” for me to write about—a story that’s really more of a riff on the return of Captain America in The Avengers #4 than a super-hero slugfest per se. Still, it gave me a chance to work with The (Severin & Sutton?) cover of Not Brand Echh #5. Gene Colan on an Thanks to the GCD. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.] NBE tale, so I wasn’t complaining! We followed the original epic pretty faithfully, except that we omitted the part where Charlie America, Sore, Ironed Man, Giant-Sam, and the wonderful Wisp should’ve ganged up on Sunk-Mariner (who appears in a one-panel cameo) and the inedible Bulk (who was probably busy applying his makeup for the next story and never showed up in this one at all). In our tale, it turns out Charlie wasn’t really trapped in that block of Arctic ice at all—he’d rigged it up himself, to get away from all the trouble and tribulations of the modern world. Of course, the continuity-minded reader might’ve recalled that Tom Sutton and I had briefly covered Charlie’s 1964 thaw-out back in NBE #3, with considerably different events (and gags)—but then, as Ralph Waldo Emerson’s third cousin said, a foolish consistency is the Green Goblin of little minds. A parody mag allowed even a continuity junkie like me to ease up a little. This story was reprinted in the hardcover Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers, Vol. 9 (2009).

“The Ever-Lovin’ Thung vs. The Inedible Bulk!” Stan Lee (writer) – Marie Severin (penciler/co-plotter) – Frank Giacoia (inker) – 7 pp.

NOT BRAND ECHH #6 (Feb. 1968) Marie Severin’s cover was a solo act artwise, its blurb declaring it a “Big, Batty Love and Hisses Issue!” (At the bottom of #5’s letters page, the coming theme had been heralded as: “Marble’s Mightiest Heroes Get MARRIED!” And indeed, weddings as much as romance were the topic of the month.)

“The Human Scorch Has to… Meet the Family!”

Marie’s connubial cover for NBE #6. Thanks to the GCD. [Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Stan Lee (writer) – Jack Kirby (penciler/co-plotter) – Tom Sutton (inker) – 8 pp. Once again, Stan and Jack weren’t parodying a specific story in this tale built around the Fantastical Four and the Unhumans. After all, Johnny Storm and the Inhuman beauty called Crystal never did get married—did they? This entry opens with the wedding of the Scorch and his bride Gristle, and moves on to the groom’s first encounter with his oddball inlaws. The best gags are built around Blech Bolt’s empty word balloons. (But wouldn’t that better have been spelled “Blechh”?) The other Unhumans are Medoozy, Loosejaw, Kar-Whack, and the amphibious Frighten, with no equivalent of Gorgon. (I suspect Jack just forgot about him.) Oh, yeah, and the villain of the piece was Sandyman, since Sandman and Medusa had both been members of The Frightful Four. At story’s end, Scorchy is abandoned by his bride and accepts Sandyman’s invite to come live with his family—which turns out to be caricatures of Dr. Doom, Attuma, The Mole Man, a Skrull, Impossible Man (I guess—he’s not colored green), and the Big Bad Wolf from the Disney “Three Little Pigs” cartoon, all sitting around playing poker. This story was reprinted in the hardcover Marvel Masterworks: The Inhumans, Vol. 1 (2009).

For some reason, Gary didn’t script a story in this issue; instead, Stan did two of them. This one doesn’t seem to be a lampoon of any particular battle among the several which the Thing and the Hulk had fought in actual Marvel comics. That way, it wasn’t necessary to ring in the rest of the Fantastical Four. The visual highlight of the tale is page 5, on which the Bulk is knocked through the side of a building—and past a Dagwood Bumstead lookalike taking a bath—to plummet down through four floors of the structure, in a scene viewed in a “cutaway” panel. By coincidence, a year later, John Buscema would pencil a very similar schematic in a free-for-all between Namor and The Thing in Sub-Mariner #8.

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

“Best Side Story” Gary Friedrich (writer) – Tom Sutton (artist/co-plotter) – 7 pp. This was a story I’d been gearing up to write. I loved doing parody lyrics for songs—and indeed, back during our days as movie ushers and popcorn/soda dispensers at Jackson, Missouri’s Palace Theatre, Gary and I had amused ourselves by writing risqué (okay, dirty) lyrics to rock’n’roll songs, a few of which had a head start on us. Moreover, both of us enjoyed the parodies of movie and Broadway musicals that appeared in Mad magazine—including “East Side Story,” which had adapted the songs of Bernstein & Sondheim’s West Side Story to Kennedy, Khrushchev, Castro, and company at the UN on New York City’s East River. Matter of fact, when the film version of West Side Story had played for an extended run at a Cinerama-screen theatre in St. Louis in 1961-62, Gary and I had driven the hundred-plus miles two or three times to view it there. I came up with the notion of using the Romeo and Juliet theme of West Side Story to parody Marvel-vs.-DC, with the star-crossed romance of Wotta Woman and some “Marble” hero (I forget if Dr. Deranged was my choice or not) replacing that of Maria and Tony. But then I got even busier than usual, so I settled for a “Based on an idea by Roy Thomas” credit and turned my skeletal notion over to Gary, who took and it ran like hell with it—as the panels parodying the classic songs “America,” “Maria,” “Tonight,” and “Somewhere” (see accompanying art for two of these) should prove to anybody who isn’t visually tone-deaf. Like myself, Gary, who’d been the drummer in our early-’60s rock band the Gaberlunzies (later the Galaxies, when it turned out nobody could spell “Gaberlunzies”), took pride in making the beat count of the lampoon’s lyrics precisely match the originals. Gary did such a superlative job that I was green as the Inedible Bulk with envy! And having Will Shakespeare turn up at the end in a Charlie America suit to complain about infringement of copyrights was a nice touch. Interestingly, this was actually the second time Gary had written an allout parody of Marvel-vs.-DC heroes. The first had been in Charlton’s

humor comic Go-Go #6 (April 1967), where a bunch of “Marvelous heroes” had battled the “Bestest League of America”; the latter was composed of DC stand-ins I’d originated back in 1961’s Alter-Ego [Vol. 1] #1. (For more about Go-Go #6, see TwoMorrows’ trade paperback The Alter Ego Collection, Vol. 1, which reprints the first two issues of A/E, Vol. 3.)

“The Aging Spidey-Man! ‘The Wedding of SpideyMan, or… With This Ring, I Thee Web!’” Gary Friedrich (writer) – Marie Severin (artist/co-plotter) – 7 pp. Well over a decade before Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson got hitched for real (whatever contortions of continuity have been visited upon that union since), Gary and Marie contributed this wedding story to NBE… whether at Stan’s suggestion or not, I don’t recall. But it wasn’t MJ—or even her platinum-haired predecessor Gwen Stacy—who was the object of the wall-crawler’s affections in this satire. In fact, the identity of Peter Pooper’s bride wasn’t revealed until four panels before the story’s end. It was the Wisp, the NBE stand-in for the Wasp—and when Petey held out his hand to introduce her to his Auntie May, the old lady swatted her (apparently fatally) with a flyswatter: “Nasty old flies carry germs, you know! Now what was the big news you had for me?” “Forget it, Auntie,” Pete replied, shambling sadly back upstairs, “and bring me an Alka-Seltzer!”

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

Webbing Bells

Origin-al Art

The story was a howling success, and was been reprinted no less than three times to date—first in Marvel’s Crazy #2 (1973), then in the tabloidsize Marvel Treasury Edition #14 (1977), and in the otherwise serious 1991 trade paperback The Amazing Spider-Man: The Wedding.

than he did, and concentrated on getting a fine cover from Marie Severin. Probably on her own, Marie tossed in not just Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen but a whole passel of super-animals… most likely because, by then, she and I had completed our “Stuporman” story with its similar theme.

NOT BRAND ECHH #7 (April 1968) In the same month this issue hit the stands, Stan announced in his Soapbox on the Bullpen Bulletins page that, since a “Second Golden Age of Marvel” was beginning (with all six stars of the three monthly anthologies graduating to their own full mags), “From this moment on, we'll no longer refer to our competition as Brand Echh!” Now that Marvel was, in Stan's words, “the undisputed leader of the comics industry,” if still not the biggest company, “it doesn't seem right to rib the other guy who hasn't quite made it—and that's why the only time we'll use the phrase BRAND ECHH from now on is in the title of our own goofy gag mag!” Thus, as one era was born, another ended. Stan decided this issue would parody the origins of both the Fantastic Four and Superman. He left the Man of Steel to me, since I knew a lot more about the details of that pop-culture legend

One sour note re this issue: I don’t recall precise sales figures, but I do very clearly recall one salient fact about NBE #7. Namely, it was the very first edition of NBE whose sales figures really took a dip—quite a bit down from those of the six preceding ones. Since at that time Marvel was still handled by DC’s distribution arm, Independent News, it should surprise no one that there was considerable suspicion at Marvel that there might’ve been some sort of sabotage over at IND because we’d lampooned DC’s icon (of course, there’d been Gnatman and Rotten in #2, but they hadn’t been quite so prominent on the cover). I’m not saying there was sabotage—only that everybody I ever talked to at Marvel and/or Magazine Management thought there was… but of course, even that mental allegation was still some months in the future when the issue came out. And there’s no way to ever prove it, one way or the other. Me, I’d like to think we were all wrong, and that there’s some other explanation for the sales dip.

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

“The Origin of the Fantastical Four” Stan Lee (writer) – Jack Kirby (penciler/co-plotter) – Tom Sutton (inker) – 12 pp. “Aided and Abetted by Merry Marie Severin” Once again, who but Stan and Jack to parody the first issue of Marvel’s flaithship title? Well—Marie Severin, that’s who. The meaning of her credit listed above isn’t hard to discern: surely, Marie was asked by Stan to do some redrawing, adding more caricatures of celebrities of the day— such as Congressman Adam Clayton Powell in the splash, Sean Connery (mostly recognizable by his “007” badge), NYC Mayor Koch, Ronald Reagan (rising star in the Republican party), ex-VP and probable Presidential nominee Richard Nixon, Dick Tracy, Elvis Presley, Uncle Creepy, Bobby Kennedy, etc., etc., etc. It looks like she also drew a few full panels here and there. Though I may have been aware at the time of what her drawings replaced, I’ve no memory of such at this late stage. The story itself is a fairly straightforward spoof of the first half of Fantastic Four #1. It’s a shame Stan and Jack didn’t parody the earlier lumpy appearance of The Thing, the original more-torch-than-human “look” of the Johnny Storm Human Torch, the ludicrousness of having Reed Richards, his girlfriend, her kid brother, and his pilot buddy steal a rocket Reed had designed and simply blast off into the blue with no real plan in mind except to beat the Commies into space. Still, it was great to see the FF’s co-creators going over their 1961 classic with a humorous glint in their eye.

“The Origin of… Stuporman!” Roy Thomas (writer) – Marie Severin (artist/co-plotter) – 10 pp. When it came to spoofing the origin of Superman, Marie and I were both eager—and a bit apprehensive. After all, “Superduperman!” in Mad #4 (April-May 1953) had been one of the best efforts ever to flow from writer/layout artist Harvey Kurtzman… and, with the added artistry of Wally Wood, and because it spoofed a property trademarked by rival DC, it had become perhaps the most important single story in the 23-issue

history of the color Mad. Some of us would rank it among the best comic book stories of all time.

All For One, And One For Whatever In NBE #7, the FF’s co-creators burlesque the group’s coming together in The Fantastic Four #1. But hey—dunno about you, but we’d have paid to read “The Origin of Stan and Jack!” [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Luckily for us, Kurtzman & Wood hadn’t touched on Superman’s origins—so at least we didn’t have that looming over us. Marie and I talked over that origin, with me filling her in on the particulars— including the direction editor Mort Weisinger had taken the Man of Steel beginning in the late 1950s, when there was no more TV series to keep it straitjacketed. With his writers and artists, Mort had built on the destruction of the planet Krypton (Kreepton) and Jor-El’s (Spark-Ell’s) decision (in the words of Spark-Ell’s wife Ta-Ra-Ra) that they’ve “got to selflessly put our only son [Twink-Ell] in a rocket, shoot him off to Earth, and the whole bit?” When the rocket lands near Hickville, USA, it’s found by the Kettles, who are the spitting image of Grant Wood’s iconic “American Gothic” painting—surely one of the most parodied art masterpieces of all time. I was particularly happy with such touches as the bottom of page 3, where young Kluck Kettle dons a pair of glasses and suddenly even his adoptive parents don’t recognize him. (The “Kettle” permutation of “Kent,” of course, was owed to the series of Ma and Pa Kettle movies starring Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride that had filled seats for years at the Palace Theatre.) Picking up on Stan’s mention of “Mort Wienieburger” in NBE #4, we rang that Natural/Defective Comics editor into the tale; as his foil, we added his assistant “Birdwell,” a caricature of “Superman” assistant editor

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

The real point of the adventure is the proliferation of “super” characters that begin crowding into the story by page 6: first Kreepto the Stupordog—then Stuporgirl—then Sneaky the Stuporcat—and finally a cast that can only be referred to as “Stupor-Everybody.” Stuporman gets rid of all of them by sending them (plus Wienieburger and Birdwell) off into space… only to face the situation pictured below right, which even he can’t handle. I don’t know about Marie—but this was my absolute personal favorite among the stories I worked on in the lucky thirteen issues of Not Brand Echh.

Gals Don’t Make Passes… (Above:) Ye Editor believes it was Marie, not he, who came up with this specific two-panel gag for “The Origin of… Stuporman!” Either way, Roy recalls laughing out loud when he first saw the pencils! He then added a gag or two of his own. (Right:) Mort Wienieburger and Birdwell in Dynamic Continuity! [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

E. Nelson Bridwell. Each of the pair’s dialogue balloons contained a phrase in which two words began with the letters “D” and “C” (e.g., “Stuporman is Decidedly Cross!”) Marie and I tried to keep any maliciousness out of the strip… but we didn’t even try to resist the temptation to toss in a panel of Captain Marvel (in limbo ever since 1953), even though most of our younger readers wouldn’t recognize his once-familiar red-and-gold costume. And, like Kurtzman & Wood before us, we plastered Stuporman’s chest with a different symbol in most panels.

If Two’s Company And Three’s A Crowd—Then What The Heck Is This? (Above:) Stuporman discovers he’s not exactly the only survivor from Kreepton—and (right) that even getting rid of the other Kreeptonians doesn’t exactly solve his problems. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

On the issue’s letters page, a fan wrote that he always especially looked forward to my stories in NBE, “because I like to get out my magnifying glass and try to spot the allusion to J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings.’” Actually, I wasn’t an ultra-devotee of Tolkien (though I did finish reading the trilogy’s third and final book in the wee small hours of New Year’s Day 1968 after a particularly dull party at Len Brown’s and my Brooklyn digs), but I knew many of our readers were admirers—so I tossed in references to it when I got the chance. I do wish in retrospect, however, that I had resisted the temptation to call an X-Men human pteranodon “Sauron” and the new Black Knight’s horse “Aragorn.”

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

NOT BRAND ECHH #8 (June 1968) This time around, Forbush-Man was the theme of the issue, behind Marie’s cover. By this stage, it well may be production staffer John Verpoorten who’s doing such original art as there is on the contents page (a figure of F-Man), balancing Photostats from the three stories.

“Forbush-Man—the Way-Out Wonder – ‘What Price Forbush-Man?’” Roy Thomas (writer) – John Verpoorten (artist/co-plotter) – 3 pp. From this point on, Stan did little if any more scripting for NBE, and left most of the supervision of the actual contents (except for covers) to Yours Truly. I’ve no recollection whether it was his idea or mine to use a framing sequence at the beginning and end of the issue, but that was a natural approach. John V., another artist whose humor work was strongly influenced by Harvey Kurtzman’s, was a good penciler; I’d have preferred to see a slightly lighter line to his inking, but I didn’t press the point. John and I were roughly the same age, and had become friends (though not to the extent he and Gary were), which aided our collaboration. He added his own touches to our general plot— such as having Mammy Yokum from Al Capp’s Li’l Abner comic strip shaking her fist at F-Man on p. 2, near a wash-line whereon hung Stuporman’s cape. We used these three pages to set up the basic premise, with the face-obscured Irving Forbush reading classified ads from three super-hero groups, all of which are seeking new members—and vowing to join the first one that’ll have him.

rather than to reflect them—though I suppose someone could’ve objected that The Yellow Paw is found hiding out in a Chinese laundry (or “Raudry,” according to the sign in the window). I don’t recall that anyone did, though. Guess they’d noticed that NBE burlesqued everybody. Along the way, Gary slips in mentions of Bonnie and Clyde (Warren Beatty’s hit movie had just come out), Jim Steranko (F-Man claimed to be his “bosom buddy”), James Bond, Phyllis Diller, and super-model Jean Shrimpton (apparently then making TV lipstick commercials), and has the S.H.E.E.S.H. crew singing lyrics from the Lennon-McCartney song “I Am the Walrus.” Based on the existence of an earlier version of page 5 of this story (see p. 27 of this issue of A/E), it’s likely to have been Stan himself who affixed a label onto some high-tech gadgets in one panel: “Return machinery to JACK KIRBY! Jim is finished with it now!” The “Jim,” of course, was yet another reference to Steranko, who’d recently been doing inspired riffs on Kirby themes in the real Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. comic. Still, when Furious unmasks The Yellow Paw’s disguise as his daughter Sue-Wannee Liver, FMan is heartbroken. And he’s given a Dishonorable Discharge from S.H.E.E.S.H.

“Echhs-Men! The Most Non-Usual Fighting Team of all Time! ‘Beware the Forbush-Man, My Son!’” Gary Friedrich (writer) – Tom Sutton (artist/co-plotter) – 6 pp.

Since Gary had recently taken over scripting of The X-Men, he also handled the Ecchs-Men’s encounter with both Forbush-Man and MagneatO’s evil-mutant brotherhood (The Toadstool, Slicksilver, and The Scarlett Wench—no equiv“The Flighty Revengers – alent of Mastermind). When the Wench’s hex spell turns her into Irv’s Auntie Mayhem, The ‘This Fan—This Forbush!’” Angel “remember[s] her from Brechh #5!” (Even Roy Thomas (writer) – Gene Colan with the name of the mag officially changed, (penciler/co-plotter) – John Tartaglione that old nickname popped up from time to (inker) – 6 pp. time—including in the letters pages. The “NBE” Marie’s cover for NBE #8. Thanks to the GCD. abbreviation we employ here was never used.) [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.] Gene and I would work together briefly on When F-Man nearly kills his new teammates by The Avengers at the turn of 1968-69, but in a activating the Dangerous Room, he’s booted out of his third and final sense this episode was his introduction to penciling the comic that cochance at joining a super-hero group. starred “Some of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.” Since we weren’t burlesquing any particular story in this tale, whose villain was Dang the Conqueror, I “Epilogue” [Untitled] kept the cast down—just Giant-Sam, the Wisp, Hogeye, and Black Panter. Roy Thomas (writer) – John Verpoorten (artist/co-plotter) – 1 p. (But then, this was the period when Stan had decreed that Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America couldn’t be a part of a regular lineup.) Dang In this tail-end of the framing sequence, Irv discovers that you can’t go sends F-Man back to the Stone Age, where he encounters the Flintstones home again—because his dear ol’ Auntie Mayhem (the real one, this time) and Alley Oop; there’s also a mention of comedienne Imogene Coca, then doesn’t recognize him and dents his helmet with a rolling pin. John co-starring in the prehistoric/time travel sitcom It’s About Time. At story’s cleverly drew the rolling pin so that, to the aficionado, it was instantly end, The Revengers accidentally activate a button on Dang’s time ship that recognizable as Plastic Man in disguise, though a coloring snafu rendered hurtles them back into eternity. Worse yet, Forbush-Man realizes he isn’t the “red” parts of his outfit pink, instead. The final panel gave John, an officially a Revenger at all: “They forgot to sign my membership ever bigger Beatles fan than Gary and I were, a chance to draw the certificate in triplicate!” Liverpool boys.

“Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.E.E.S.H. – ‘And the Dragon Cried… Forbush!’” Gary Friedrich (writer) – Marie Severin (artist/co-plotter) – 6 pp. Teaming up for a second “Knock Furious, Agent of S.H.E.E.S.H.” exploit, Gary and Marie had F-Man sent to capture the arch-villain The Yellow Paw. The dialogue of the Chinese participants is the pidgin-English of early Terry and the Pirates and the like, done to parody the clichés

FOOTNOTE: Interestingly, a fan-letter in this issue spoke of “rumors that unless sales of NOT BRAND ECHH pick up soon, you’re dropping it”—and begging us not to. Actually, at that time, since the disappointing figures for NBE #7 wouldn’t have come in yet, quite the opposite was true. Martin Goodman, flush with good sales on the early issues, had agreed to what I suspect was Stan’s notion (around the same time as the oversize Silver Surfer #1) to metamorphose the mag into a 64-pager (68 with covers) selling for 25¢ instead of the usual 12¢….

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

Faster Than A Speeding Forbush! Follow ’em clockwise, and these five art spots will walk you through the “Prologue,” “Revengers,” “Agent of S.H.E.E.S.H.,” “Ecchs-Men,” and “Epilogue” of NBE #8. At the end, they leave Forbush-Man exactly where he was when he started—namely, nowhere. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

We’ve Got You Penciled In (Left:) Here’s a rarity: page 5 of the “Forbush-Man/S.H.E.E.S.H.” story from NBE #8—with Artie Simek’s lettering all inked in, over Marie’s pencils—prior to inking. Thanks to Jerry K. Boyd, who found it in the official Marvel club mag Marvelmania #5 (1970).

(Above:) As Jerry points out, though, Gary’s dialogue underwent an almost total change prior to publication, as shown by the printed page. Since Gary wouldn’t have made them, and Roy is sure he didn’t, this is pretty much proof positive that Stan still had a distinct editorial hand in the finished product of Not Brand Echh right up to the time when the size of issues was doubled with #9. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

NOT BRAND ECHH #9 (Aug. 1968) Mercifully, concurrent with the page count increase, the frequency of NBE was knocked back from monthly to bimonthly; still, we actually had to churn out slightly more pages over a twomonth period than previously. There were 23 pages of comics (counting the contents page) in issue #8, and 52 pages in #9. With Warren Beatty’s new Bonnie and Clyde film doing fantastic boxoffice and being heralded as an instant American classic (at least by those critics who didn’t condemn it outright for its attitudes and violence), it made sense to Stan to have Marie feature them on the cover, shooting up a billboard of Marble heroes. I always found the movie tagline (“They’re young! They’re in love! And they kill people!”) pretty repulsive, no matter how “hip” it was supposed to be—though I did like the film—but we still parodied it on the cover. All that and Forbush-Man, too! The contents page, as usual, was composed of Photostats, with credits heralding “Stan Lee, caliph of confusion! Sol Brodksy, hizzoner of hysteria! Roy Thomas, pundit of pandemonium! Gary Friedrich, baron of bedazzlement! John Verpoorten, doctor of delirium!”

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

“The Inedible Bulk Meets Prince No-More the Sunk-Mariner, and We… ‘Bet There’ll Be Battle!’” Roy Thomas (writer) – Marie Severin (penciler/co-plotter) – Tom Sutton (inker) – 9 pp. I’ll confess it up front: this is another of my favorite NBE stories, mostly because of the splash page. Marie and I decided to spoof the issuelength “Hulk/Sub-Mariner” co-starrer “Let There Be Battle!” in Tales to Astonish #100 (Feb. 1968) as closely and relentlessly as we could… starting with the splash. (The splashes of both issues were seen in A/E #16 (July 2002), so we won’t reprint them here—but if we had more room, the temptation to do so would be irresistible.) Marie and I may have tossed more “chicken fat” into this tale than into anything we ever did together, but I don’t feel it overwhelmed the story. My favorite aspect of the tale was using the iconic 1950s TV marionette Howdy Doody as the stand-in for The Puppet-Master. If anything, Tom’s inking of the story clarified Marie’s drawing and made it even more effective than her own had. There are no brilliant points or morals made—it’s just a fun romp, parodying the classic Stan the Man and Marie the She story—but it made the perfect lead-off for the issue. It was reprinted in the hardcover Marvel Masterworks: The Sub-Mariner, Vol. 3 (2009). ’Course, I’m prejudiced—but I’d like to see Marvel reprint the entire run of NBE! In color!

“‘Casey at the Bat!’ by Ernest Lawrence Thayer” Roy Thomas (writer) – Tom Sutton (artist/co-plotter) – 6 pp. With Stan pretty much out of the picture now as a writer, I suddenly found a greater percentage of my writing time—which was the four days a week I didn’t spend in the office—taken up by NBE. The result had to be either a slight loss of income (since it usually took me extra time to write an NBE story) or an increase in the number of hours worked. I suspect it was the latter—even though in early 1968, when this issue was prepared, I was pursuing a long-distance courtship of Jean Maxey in St. Louis, which would result in our July elopement. I could see I was going to have to reach out to other writers in the future, but there probably wasn’t time to do so before plunging into this ninth issue. Of course, in “Casey,” I was the “writer” only of the dialogue inside the panels; every upper-and-lower-case word in the captions was from Thayer’s immortal baseball poem, though I carefully laid them out in longhand to make sure the letterer spaced things correctly. As soon as the expansion of NBE was decreed, it was inevitable that I’d do “Casey”… partly because of my love of the Kurtzman/Jack Davis rendition in Mad #6 (Aug-Sept. 1953), but also because having the basic story and script largely laid out for me in advance would make up a bit for the extra time spent on other NBE stories. Tom and I probably didn’t go over the episode in advance panel by panel; in all likelihood, we probably just

On The “Casey” The ballpark crowd who’d gathered to see “Casey at the Bat” in NBE #9 was clearly full of celebrities—but then, so were the two teams who wanted to take over the field when that game was over! [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Howdy Dooit? The Puppet Mister in NBE #9’s “Bet There’ll Be Battle!” was visually based on Howdy Doody, right down to the painted-on freckles. In this panel, PM prepares to bend The Inedible Bulk to his will against The Sunk-Mariner. (You can’t see it here, but in a nice touch, Marie drew marionette strings dangling from PM.) [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

discussed the basic story, with the Inedible Bulk standing in for Casey, Doc Ock as the pitcher, the basic ending, a few particular gags here and there that came to us at the moment, etc. The rest Tom liked adding as he went along. For the final panel, I adapted the ending of the “Bestest League Meets Da Frantic Four” parody that Grass Green and I had done back in Alter Ego (Vol. 1) #6 in 1963, bringing in two teams that wanted use the baseball diamond: the Pogo gang and the Peanuts kids. Tom had also utilized the Kelly funny-animals in an earlier panel, as was his wont—along with Little Orphan Annie, Dick Tracy, Archie, Li’l Abner, The Spirit (and Dugan), Superman, Popeye, Dagwood, Mickey Mouse, Scrooge McDuck, and a few more. He was as indefatigable as Marie! Stan and I were truly blessed to have these two talented artists as the mainstays of NBE!

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

“The Mean Hornet!” Roy Thomas (writer) – Tom Sutton (artist/co-plotter) – 6 pp. A third story—and a third Thomas/Sutton collaboration in a row (counting Tom’s inking of Marie in the lead-off spot). Were we overburdened, or what? The Green Hornet had become a mild hit on TV on the heels of the Batman phenomenon, and launched the meteoric career of Bruce Lee. Myself, I’d preferred the earlier radio version of Hornet, and this is one tale I’d have been happy to have someone else do. But besides Gary, we really didn’t have anybody available. Young scripters like Gerry Conway, Len Wein, and Marv Wolfman were only then entering the field—but at DC, not at Marvel with its smaller number of titles. Before long, they’d come wandering into Marvel when DC had built up an inventory of mystery stories and suddenly asked them not to eat for a few months and then come back and maybe they could write more stories… but just now, there weren’t that many guys around Marvel to take up the slack. Nor did Stan and I have time to go looking for them. Eyeballing the story today, it must’ve been fun to write—and Tom and I tossed in panels of Bob Culp and Bill Cosby from the excellent TV series I Spy, as well as “Mr. Spook.” But my personal favorite bit was a reference to “the dread eyeless monsters from Venus—otherwise known as the Venusian blinds!” There aren’t many things some writers—at least this one—enjoy more than a wicked pun! I even waxed educational in one footnote, informing readers that in many ways the Green Hornet and the Lone Ranger were the same character—as indeed they were, having been created by the same man. We ended the story on a note we’d struck before—the Hornet and Plato (in for Kato) lounging on a beach with “other re-run heroes” such as Paladin (from Have Gun, Will Travel), the Honeymooners, Lloyd Bridges (Sea Hunt), and Lucy and Desi.

“Super-Hero Greeting Cards” Marie Severin (writer/artist) – 4 pp. Actually, I’m not 100% certain about this one. The credits read: “STAN LEE said… Why not? MARIE SEVERIN said… Huh?” I’m not sure if Stan’s listing was because he contributed something to the writing—or was it just his usual editorial credit, which preceded all other entries in the issue, as well? My suspicion is that Marie wrote this piece… but I’d bet dollars to Dragon-Man that Stan doesn’t remember, either way! It was a nice filler—and I’d like to think at least a few people actually cut up their copies of NBE #9 and sent those “cards” to their friends.

“Boney and Claude” Gary Friedrich (writer) – John Verpoorten (artist/co-plotter) – 10 pp.

Don’t Touch That Dial! Wadda ya mean it’s basically the same ending as in the “Human Scorch vs. Sunk-Mariner” story back in issue #1? The two are completely different! The first issue ended showing old comic book and comic strip characters— “The Mean Hornet” finished with TV re-run heroes! So there! [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“Arch and the Teen-stalk!” Roy Thomas (writer) – Jim Mooney (artist/co-plotter) – 6 pp. Good grief! Still another Roy Thomas story!? I must’ve been getting desperate by this point. Still, I had fun making “Archie Andrews” the hero of the “Jack and the Beanstalk” fairytale, surrounded by Mighty Marble characters. Jim Mooney wasn’t ordinarily known as a humor artist, but somehow he wound up being tapped to draw this one, and he did a creditable job. I recall being particularly pleased at our working in the three Ghoul-Lunatics from 1950s EC Comics (plus a copy of Scales from the Crypt)—not to mention giving the giant’s magic harp the face of Elvis singing “Harp-break Hotel” and several other parodied Presley hits. We worried that perhaps the humorless Disney attorneys would pop up to object to the bird that laid the golden eggs looking quite a bit like Donald Duck (in those pre-Howard the Duck days)… but thankfully the heirs of “Walt Dizzy” had other things to do that year.

“Marble’s Space-Worn Superhero Captain Marvin! ‘Where Stomps The Scent-ry!’ (Or, ‘Out of the Holocaust—Hoo-boy!’” Roy Thomas (writer) – Gene Colan (penciler/co-plotter) – Frank Giacoia (inker) – 10 pp. This had become the closest thing to an all-RT issue of NBE that the mag would ever see (thankfully)—but it did give me a chance to parody the first few “Captain Marvel” stories Stan and I had written for the Kree hero who’d been created to protect that illustrious name in perpetuity for Marvel Comics. If anything, I was even happier with this one than I was with “Bet There’ll Be Battle!”—and that’s going some. I preferred not to use the obvious name “Captain Marble,” but to go for “Captain Marvin.” I just thought it was funnier… perhaps in part because it echoed the use of the similar name “Melvin” in early issues of Mad.

This spoof came closer than most NBE efforts to being the kind of thing Gary and I’d had in mind when we’d suggested a parody comic to Stan. There are very few Marble (or other) super-heroes in sight… a definite first for the mag! And, besides getting yet another chance to draw the Beatles (this time in Ravi Shankar mode as opposed to Sgt. Pepper get-up), John tossed in a couple of truly Kurtzmanesque panels. The result, I think, was a raucous romp that covered all the bases in lampooning the popular film starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the murderous 1930s bank robbers. Gary and John avoided the movie’s gruesome finale by having Boney and Claude flee before it got to that part… only to find themselves wiped out by a flash powder explosion— before Rod Steiger gets his own shot at them. You had to be there.

Although he’d drawn several stories for Timely/Atlas’ Mad wannabes back in the mid-1950s, Gene wasn’t generally thought of as a humor artist… but he handled the funny stuff very well indeed. It probably helped that he had also illustrated the “Captain Marvel” stories being spoofed. His pacing was superb, especially the final page, on which the hero meticulously dismantles the Scent-ry even as he reveals the secret of the Kreep mission to Earth.

Proofing the story, I got a kick out of Gary’s footnote referring to our birthplace Southeast Missouri as “Swampeast Missouri”—a real phrase we’d often used for Cape Girardeau County.

I supplied Gene with ample reference materials so that Fawcett’s original Captain Marvel and crew could make some cameos, at a time when his (totally unanticipated) revival by DC was still several years in

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

Four-Flushers A colorful clockwise foursome from NBE #9: one of Marie’s “Super-Hero Greeting Cards”… the splash panels of “Boney and Claude” and “Arch and the TeenStalk!”… and an actionistic panel from “Captain Marvin.” The latter story, at least, has been fully reprinted so you can read the whole fershlugginer thing! [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

the future: Billy Batson hawking newspapers… the Seven Deadly Sins… Dr. Sivana… the Big Red Cheese himself. I was particularly happy to get a chance to personally pencil Cap’s invertebrate enemy Mr. Mind—probably his first appearance in a professional comic book since 1946. I’d say more— but, happily, this “Captain Marvin” story was reprinted in the 2007 hardcover Marvel Masterworks: Captain Marvel, Vol. 2, so anyone who wants to read it has what the courts call “implied access” to it. Thanks, Cory Sedlmeier!

NOT BRAND ECHH #10 (Oct. 1968) This was the only reprint issue of NBE… probably scheduled to help us catch our breath, and probably by special request of our deadline-beset manager, Sol Brodsky. I knew I couldn’t go on writing the majority of the mag… nor did I want to… nor would Stan have wanted me to take up that great a percentage of my time doing so. As for Gary, he was nearing the end of his staff gig at Marvel (though his name was still on the inside-frontcover contents page, which was rendered in black-on-white, as a blackboard). And Stan had The Silver Surfer and other things on his mind. The reprint ish probably didn’t help the mag’s sales momentum: in its first year, NBE had come out eight times, then gone to monthly—and now there’d be four months between new stories. Not good. Only Marie’s multi-hero cover was new on what was heralded as “The Worst of Not Brand Echh.” There wasn’t even a letters page!

(Right:) The cover of Not Brand Echh #10. The rest of the issue may be all-reprint… but Marie shoehorned enough gags into this one drawing to give a fan his money’s worth! Thanks to the GCD. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

NOT BRAND ECHH #11 (Dec. 1968) “King Konk ’68” Roy Thomas (writer) – Tom Sutton (artist/co-plotter) – 11 pp. “with an artful assist by Marie Severin” Marie Severin’s “King Konk” cover is a fairly simple one—lots of Marble heroes, though all but Spidey-Man are in the ape’s oversize fist. The “German” pilot and his quote, for those to whom it’s a mystery, came from the then-super-popular TV skit-comedy series Laugh-In, and the comedian caricatured is Arte Johnson. (The most famous long-time alumnae of Laugh-In are Goldie Hawn and, coming along a little later, Lily Tomlin.) On the inside front cover, opposite the contents page (where Marie’s name as “Tsarina of the Tscallions!” now replaced Gary’s accompanying those of Stan, Sol, Roy, and John V., indicating Gary’s departure from the office), the spoof of the 1933 film classic King Kong began. At the time, the mostly wretched Dino DeLaurentiis remake was still nearly a decade away… but of course the original Kong was forever playing on late-night TV and in revival movie theatres. Since the super-star couple of the day were Elizabeth Taylor and

“The Eighth Blunder Of The World” Liz Taylor and off-again-on-again-off-again husband Richard Burton starred (more or less) in NBE #11’s “King Konk ’68,”—and the iconic Empire State Building shot on its p. 10 gave Tom Sutton a chance to toss in plenty of superhero cameos! Thanks to Barry Pearl for the former—and to John Butler for a scan of the original art to p. 10. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Richard Burton, Tom and I decided to make them the stars of our four-color “remake,” and I was pleased with the way it turned out. Stan, however, must’ve had issues with some of Tom’s caricatures of the Burtons and others, because many (if not most) of the various celebrity faces in the story have been redrawn by Marie, the source of her “assist” credit. In the course of the tale, Tom and Marie between them caricatured Hugh Hefner, Playboy cartoonist/writer Shel Silverstein (a personal favorite of mine—maybe Tom’s, too), Alfred Marie’s cover for NBE #11. Thanks to the GCD. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.] Hitchcock, Laurel and Hardy, Tarzan, The Phantom, Ed Sullivan, US Vice President Hubert Humphrey (a candidate for the U.S. Presidency at the time the issue came out), the Universal

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

In Your Dreams! One of the “Super-Hero Daydreams” becomes reality—while the real artist (see him there in the shadowy background?) keeps up a good front later in NBE #11, in “How to Be a Comic Book Artist!” [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

movie monsters, Snoopy, Superman, (more surprisingly) Blackhawk, a whole passel of Marble heroes (including perhaps the only spoof ever of The Phantom Eagle)… and Albert the Alligator from Pogo (this is Tom Sutton and me, remember!)… as well as a line or two from Bob Newhart’s famous “King Kong” routine. I also worked in parodic references to as many Taylor, Burton, and especially Taylor-and-Burton movies as possible, mostly in dialogue on the splash page. Whew!

Jim’s work proved tricky to parody, though Arnold and Frank got in a couple of good shots, including graffiti (“Steranko + Hitchcock”) inside a heart pierced by an arrow… and having Snoopy replace the “Hell Hound” of the original title.

Once again, the long shadow of Kurtzman’s Mad cast its shadow. Since his and Will Elder’s “Ping Pong!” in its sixth issue (Aug.-Sept. 1953) had ended with the giant ape’s arrival in New York—i.e., before the movie’s most famous sequences—Tom and I devoted half of our entry’s pages to the big fella’s Manhattan mishaps. The story ends with Konk swimming back toward Skull Island after someone tosses him a copy of Darwin’s Origin of Species: “When he saw he might be related to human beings, he decided to split before this happened to him!” Okay, so it wasn’t the greatest closing gag in the world. So go do your own King Kong parody!

Stu Schwartzberg (writer) – Marie Severin (artist/co-plotter [?]) – 2 pp.

“Super-Hero Daydreams” Marie Severin (writer/penciler) – John Tartaglione (inker) – 4 pp. This time, though Stan was credited for “editing and inspiration,” Marie received a byline as scripter as well as artist of this feature which shows normal people daydreaming about saying the magic word “ShaMarvey!” (left over from Captain Marvel’s “Shazam!,” of course, last uttered in a comic book 15 years earlier) and turning into super-heroes.

“Dark Moon Rise, Hell Heck Hound Kill! Hurt” Arnold Drake (writer) – Frank Springer (inker/co-plotter [?]) – 7 pp. Arnold had recently come over from DC, where he’d made himself persona non grata to management by being involved in an attempt to gain royalties for writers and artists. There, of course, he’d co-created “Deadman” and “Doom Patrol,” and Stan had been happy to see him come waltzing in one day, giving him work on the spot. Along with X-Men and Captain Marvel, Arnold soon became Gary Friedrich’s primary replacement in NBE. His first effort was this spoof of Jim Steranko’s instant-classic homage to Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles” in Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #3 (Aug. 1968). It was either ironic or, more likely, intentional that Frank Springer was the feature’s artist, since one month before, Frank had done a fill-in issue of S.H.I.E.L.D.

“It’s a Mad, Mad Ave! A BRECCH Smek at the Boob Tube!”

The other scripting addition to the NBE “staff ” at this time was “Gooey Stuey” Schwartzberg, another Kutzman devotee. In fact, since Stu (who started out, as had Herb Trimpe, operating Marvel’s Photostat machine, which had its own dark little room) was also an artist of sorts, he often drew layouts for stories he scripted… though he may not have done so in this case. This minor initial effort was basically an extended joke that dropped the names of as many products in current TV and print commercials as possible—with Marble heroes as the pitch-men.

“The Puns of Will Bonnet” Arnold Drake (writer) – Tom Sutton (artist/co-plotter [?]) – 4 pp. Parodying the 1967-69 TV series The Guns of Will Sonnett was probably Arnold’s idea. The real show dealt with Walter Brennan (as Will) and his young grandson (played by Dack Rambo) searching the Wild West for Will’s lost son. I don’t recall if Arnold wrote full scripts for his NBE efforts, or wrote them “Marvel style” as he did The X-Men, et al. Either way, he and Tom get a nice Kurtzmanesque feel into this spoof, with cameos of other TV “questers” such as David Janssen (The Fugitive), Ben Gazzara (Run for Your Life), and Roy Thinnes (The Invaders). In the final panel, playing poker at the “Television’s Lost Villians [sic] Club,” the two Bonnets find the entities that all are searching for: a specialist in incurable diseases, the infamous One-Armed Man, an alien invader, and even “the Union officer who can prove Chunk Connors wasn’t a coward.” (Oddly, there’d been no cameo earlier in the story of Chuck Connors, the star of Branded, whose protagonist was trying to clear his name for allegedly fleeing a battle/massacre modeled after the Little Big Horn.) A Not Brand Echh first: there are absolutely no super-heroes in this story!

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

Steranko Gets Hounded In NBE #11, Frank Springer helped Arnold Drake poke fun at Jim Steranko’s twopage spread from his most famous issue of Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., but Frank—like the rest of the Marvel bullpen—had a great respect for Steranko’s talent. Okay, Jim—you can put down that fencing foil now! [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.] The photos of Arnold (above left) and Frank (above right) were provided by Arnold himself and Mark Evanier’s website www.newsfromme.com, respectively. Both guys are sadly missed by those who knew them.

“How to Be a Comic Book Artist!” Marie Severin (writer/artist) – 2 pp. As best I can recall, Marie (who didn’t bother to sign this entry) would just draw such fill-ins whenever she felt like it, and we’d fit them in. No super-heroes here, but caricatures of Stan Lee and presumably others. The highlight of the story is the splash page, seen on p. 32. On p. 50, Marie specifically recalls writing this piece and/or the related one in #12… but it’s just this side of a dead certainty that she wrote others in the several giant-size issues, as well.

“Prince No-More, The Sunk-Mariner – ‘Don’t Rock the Vote’” Arnold Drake (writer) – Tom Sutton (artist/co-plotter [?]) – 6 pp. Another teaming-up of Drake and Sutton, this time as an excuse for a full-scale electoral contest—1968 being a Presidential election year— between Sunk-Mariner and Aqualung-Man. Except for his wearing a turtleneck (certainly appropriate in a sea king) and sporting a lower-case “a” on his belt, the costume of the parody of Aquaman is identical to the one worn by the real thing, coloring and all. By this point, maybe DC didn’t feel like complaining. What a contrast with its threatened lawsuit re Mad’s “Superduperman!” in 1953! Going by DC’s later acquisition of Mad and Fawcett’s “Captain Marvel” comics characters, DC’s philosophy would seem to be, “First sue ’em—then buy ’em!” Once again, Lloyd Bridges shows up, as does the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Arnold ends with Bridges (here called just “the stranger”) winning the election and California Governor Ronald Reagan leading a spoof of “There’s No Business like Show Business” sung by a choir consisting of Lou Costello (?), Doris Day (?), Julie Andrews, Sammy Davis Jr., Simon & Garfunkel, Sinatra, Elvis, and Peter, Paul, and Mary—and

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

“A Choice, Not An Echh-O” (No, Wait—That Was A Slogan In ’64!) Prince No-More and Aqualung-Man have a second encounter in NBE #11 (the first was back in #4). Well, 1968 was a Presidential election year, after all— though, as it would turn out, an even less peaceful one than usual. Marvel figured its readers could use a few yocks! [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

some little blonde in a tiara that I don’t recognize for the life of me! Any help out there? Remember, we’re talking 1968 here!

“Auntie Goose Rhymes Dept.” Roy Thomas (writer) – John Verpoorten (artist/co—plotter) – 5 pp. A burlesque of several Mother Goose rhymes with Aunt May standing in for Ma G. gave me a chance to enjoy myself, to work with John V., and to script pages a bit more quickly than usual (though probably not much). We spoofed “Little Miss Muffet” (with Medoozy and of course Spidey), “Three Blind Mice” (as “Three Blechh Knights,” with Marvel’s trio of Black Knights—the Lee/Maneely, Lee/Kirby, and Thomas/Tuska versions… the latter of which, actually, had been co-designed by Jumbo John rather than George T.)… “Little Jack Horner” (“Little Jack Kirby”), and “Old King Cole” (with Odin, Thor, and the boys).

“Invanshmoe!” Roy Thomas (writer) – Tom Sutton (artist/co-plotter) – 4 pp. Actually, Stan Lee should’ve gotten at least a co-scripting credit (and probably half my writing payment), because this one was merely an adaptation—though an acknowledged one—of a parody by the same

name that The Man had written for Riot #2 back in ’54! I gave Tom a copy of that 1954 Atlas comic and he drew it up with Tony Stark/Iron Man (Ironed Man) standing in for Ivanhoe. Naturally, a few new gags were called for… but not that many. The Lee/Maneely Blechh Knight made another appearance—as did Walt Disney’s Goofy, the Destroyer (from Thor), the Rawhide Kid, et al.

“The Amazing Spidey-Man! ‘Fame Is a Cross-Eyed Blind Date with B-a-a-a-d Breath!” Arnold Drake (writer) – Marie Severin (penciler/co-plotter) – John Tartaglione (inker) – 6 pp. Arnold and Marie worked in tandem—probably Marvel-style—on this light-hearted look at the growing commercialization of Spider-Man. My favorite panels are the first and the last. On the splash page, Marie does a flawless riff on the plastic Aurora model kit of Spidey and Kraven the Hunter—while on the final page a caricatured Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (who had actually split up as a comedy team nearly a decade and a half earlier!) dragging off the “real” Spidey-Man. Actually, the latter was Ye Present Writer in a photo especially shot for NBE, in the mid-’60s

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

Michael T. Gilbert Ain’t The Only One With TwiceTold Tales! (Left:) In A/E #86, we printed the splash pages of “Ivanshmoe!” from Riot #2 (June 1954) and the re-do of it for Not Brand Echh #11 fifteen years later. In a neverending spirit of originality, here are the final pages of those selfsame stories! [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Spidey, Spidey, Burning Bright… (Right:) From an Aurora-type model on p. 1—to Marvel’s rascally associate editor modeling as Spider-Man on its final page—NBE #11’s “Spidey-Man” story covered a lot of ground. Actually, though, the page with the photo is from the reprint of the latter page (with a caption or two added) two issues later, to get a better repro of the pic. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

professionally-made costume I’d worn in Marvel’s 1972 Carnegie Hall show, etc. Unfortunately, the reproduction on the photo part of the page was lousy, so two issues later I had the page reprinted. I wasn’t gonna have the efforts of the photographer and myself wasted—although I greatly regret that I didn’t squeeze the shutterbug’s name in anywhere at the time, and now I’ve no recollection who it was!

the animation field. Our studio, PK&A, was only a couple of blocks from Marvel. (Boy, do I remember those great Friday lunches on 56th Street restaurant row.) John and I became friends at the High School of Industrial Art (Alex Toth’s alma mater) when we realized we were both fans of the “Good” Duck artist. We didn’t know Carl Barks’ name at that time. John found out four years later, when he wrote a fan letter to Whitman Publishing.

NOT BRAND ECHH #12 (Feb. 1969) I’ve only one thing to say about Marie Severin’s fine cover for this issue. Namely, it reminds me of a meeting I had with David DePatie, head honcho of DePatie-Freleng Animation in Los Angeles, back in the late 1970s. I turned in a proposal he’d asked me to develop for a series exploiting the new phenomenon of disco. I’d called it The Disconauts, a title he liked… and I gave it a cast starring a boy, a girl, and a dog. He looked over the cast of characters, then at me, and smiled: “A dog is always good.”

So is the Frankenstein monster. The inside-cover contents page consisted of stats from the stories—all employed as giant holes in a piece of Swiss cheese, and with takeoffs on several mouse types (Mickey, Mighty, and Ignatz Rat) gnawing away at it. It was doubtless designed by John Verpoorten.

“Comiclot” Roy Thomas (writer) – Marie Severin (artist/co-plotter) – 8 pp. Despite its flaws, I’ve always loved the Lerner-Loew musical Camelot, and have always regretted not seeing it on Broadway starring Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, and Robert Goulet… and I’ve always resented how Hollywood went to a different cast for what turned out to be, in my mind, a very poor and even ugly film adaptation. This story I was determined to write myself. This comics parody began with an odd detour… since, for reasons now unremembered, it was originally going to be drawn by an animator named Bill Peckmann, a good friend of John Verpoorten’s and a real nice guy besides. Contacted just before presstime for comment, Bill not only came through with a few reminiscences of that day three decades gone— but with scans of the four pages of actual layouts he did for the story (see next page). And he wrote to Ye Editor: Right off the bat, I have to say, your memory on “Comiclot” is a lot better than mine. Blame it on those ol’ sands of time…. Working in animation back then, it seemed to me like I had more friends in the comic book business than I did in

Making A Splash—All Over Again Having both Bill Peckmann’s original layouts (see facing page) and Marie Severin’s finished art (as per splash at right) for the same story in NBE #12, we can see how the artists took whatever written or verbal outline Roy T. gave them and ran with it. For instance, Bill worked in a croquet game, with Sore using his hammer as a mallet. Marie’s take begins with a kid in the 1930s, reading a book; on the final page he’ll turn out to be young Stan Lee, in touch with an equally juvenile Jack Kirby. But whether that was part of the original synopsis done for Peckmann—or added by Roy and Marie after Bill dropped out—or even a notion Marie got all on her own—well, Ye Ed suspects the second option, but it’s way, way too late to know for sure! [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

After SIA, John and I went on to the School of Visual Arts for three years, where we met Herb Trimpe and Stu Schwartzberg. We all took the Cartooning course, which included animation and comic book art. After numerous attempts to break into the two cartoon fields, John, Herb, and Stu wound up in comics and I in animation. But with the “grass always being greener,” John became a bit animation fan and I a comic book fan. So…

When John made me an offer which I couldn’t refuse, to pencil “Comiclot,” it seemed like a great idea. Plus, one of the perks was being able to see the movie version of “Camelot” with you and Groovy Gary [Friedrich]. Unfortunately, having a steady job did not leave me much time to work on the story, and the penciling wasn’t anywhere as easy as I thought it would be. So…

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

“I Know It Sounds A Bit Bizarre…” Amazingly, animator Bill Peckmann’s original pencil layouts for pp. 1-4 of “Comiclot,” done for NBE #12, have survived these past four decades—and are printed here for the first time ever. Too bad Bill wound up not having time to make his comic book debut in 1969— he’d have made a splendid addition to the cast of Not Brand Echh. (Just in time for the mag to be canceled one issue later, of course—but you can’t have everything!) [Heroes TM & ©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.] The photo above shows Bill (on the right) and his pal John Verpoorten in November of 1972, when they journeyed out West to pick up a pair of Donald Duck/Uncle Scrooge paintings they’d commissioned from Scrooge McDuck creator Carl Barks. (Carl’s artist wife Garé probably took the pic in the Barkses’ home in Goleta, California.) The lads’ paintings were among the first couple of dozen that Barks did after the Disney folks gave him permission to paint the Ducks that he’d written and drawn in comics years earlier—and were then going for a fast $200 or so per painting! We hear they’ve gone up a little in price since. Thanks to Christopher B. Boyko.

I’ll always remember making that call to John on a Sunday night to very ungracefully bow out of completing the job. I still don’t feel right about doing that. Roy, I’m sorry I can’t help you more about the particulars of plot and story. I just can’t find the files in my gray matter. Must be too much of that “vino rouge” from those wonderful lunches on 56th Street. The faded Photostats [of the NBE layouts] were found by me about a week ago as I was looking through boxes that

I haven’t touched in about 25 years. I did not even remember having these, and here you are asking about “Comiclot.” Unbelievable. And only two days ago, I found and re-read your beautiful Marvel piece “In Memoriam” that you wrote for John. God, it seems like it was just yesterday. There are times when I feel like I think about John almost on a daily basis. I don’t, but that’s what it feels like. John has been gone as long as when he was here; he was way too young. I haven’t read your piece in a long, long time, but I did… and again, here you are. Great timing. (By the way, Herb lives only twenty minutes from here, so we still get to see each other every now and then.) I seem to recall it was Bill who christened the parody “Comiclot,” before I’d even begun to think about a title… something I’d have done when scripting the tale, as opposed to plotting it. (But I could be wrong about that, since Bill doesn’t remember naming the story—and his layout

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

was in these things (like the final-page answers to the puzzles) could be ingenious in its way. For example, her answer to a “Maze” drawing in which the Fantastical Four are trying to make their way through a labyrinth to locate Weed and Shrew’s wandered-off baby reads: “The Maze—All tunnels lead to little baby, but by the time they all crawl thru, little baby has crawled around and out, then is captured by a band of roving Yippies, who are the Revengers in disguise—they (the Revengers-Yippies) decide little baby is more trouble than he is worth, so they all bring him back to the maze and fall in… just as Fantastical Four are coming out—and now you know the plot for the next Echhs-Men story!”

“Unhumans to Get Own Comic Book!” The Code Of The Best (Above & bottom right:) For Roy, the high point of “Comiclot” was writing two sets of lyrics for the title song, with quite different dramatic purposes, just as in the actual musical. Unfortunately, when the story was reprinted in its entirety in the 2006 hardcover volume Marvel Visionaries: Roy Thomas, the word “Code” got somehow dropped from the first line of the song lyric in the panel (above) from page 3—so Roy feels a compulsion, every time he signs a copy of that book, to scribble “Code” in the empty spot. The story’s ending (below) brought the tale full circle. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

for the splash has no title.) At any rate, with Bill’s abrupt departure, Marie Severin stepped admirably into the breach, but didn’t directly use any of Bill’s layouts. If she had, we’d have mentioned Bill in the credits. As for the tale itself: The love triangle of King Arthur, Queen Guinevere, and Sir Lancelot was handled by parodic versions of Thor (who else?), Mary Jane Watson, and Spider-Man. Whether it was always planned as the payoff of the lampoon, or whether it flowed from that “Comiclot” title, I don’t recall… but in the final panel it was revealed that schoolkids “Stanley” and “Kirby” were creating all these legends. (See art below.) Even more fun for me personally, however, was writing the (time-consuming) spoofs of the lyrics to “Camelot,” “I Wonder What the King Is Doing Tonight,” “C’est Moi!,” “How to Handle a Woman,” and “I Loved You Once in Silence.” Most of these were truncated versions, but, just as in the play and film, “Comiclot” is “sung” twice, with quite different and story-crucial lyrics. Gotta admit, though… in writing this article, I chuckled when I re-read the few lines I’d written long ago of the spoof of “C’est Moi!” and was reminded of how “In far-off France I heard your call” became “In Forest Hills I heard your bray”—a perfect line for Spidey-Man to sing, of course. That’s the kind of thing that the word “serendipity” was created to describe. Did I remark that Marie did her usual brilliant job? I should have! Hey, maybe she’s the one who coined the name “Comiclot”!

“Not Brand Echh’s Puzzle Fun” (writer/artist: Marie Severin – 3 pp.) The more I look at Marie’s solo contributions, the more I’m inclined to think that official “approval” of them generally consisted of her telling me she’d like to do something-or-other and me saying “Great!”—and it’s not unlikely that, on occasion, she just drew a feature and handed it in and we shoehorned it in. Marie considered herself an artist, not a writer… yet such writing as there

Arnold Drake (writer) – Roy Thomas (?) – Tom Sutton (artist/co-plotter) – 8 pp.

I’m happy to say this story was reprinted in its entirety in the hardcover Marvel Masterworks: The Inhumans, Vol. 1 (2009)— because all six of its one-page parodies of Sunday comic strips are worth seeing for Tom’s artwork: “Blechhman the Caped Crumb Fighter with Kar-Wak the Boy Blunder” (Batman still had his own newspaper strip at that time; Gnatman and Rotten, from NBE #2, swing in on the final page, along with the rest of the daily comics crowd)—“The Unhuman Beans” (Pogo, based on the phrase “human beans” which often popped up in that pun-laden strip)—a Harold-Gray-style takeoff on Little Orphan Annie (not yet just Annie)— “Fuzz Frigthen of The Unhumans” (Dick Tracy), “Unhumans featuring ‘Good Ol’ Charlie Blechh’” (Peanuts)—and a spoof of Prince Valiant. Why the credit for Yours Truly in some vague capacity other than editor? My guess is that I did a spot of rewriting… a bit more than just editing a line or two. Naturally, Arnold got all the page-rate money, such as it was.

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

On Your Mark… Need something to do for the next hour or two? Try ID-ing everybody in this two-page spread from NBE #12 which parodies the famous centerspread from the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, plus some of the most famous folks of World War II. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“Sgt. Fury’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”

“Hey Kids! Free!”

Gary Friedrich (writer) – John Verpoorten (artist) – 4 pp.

Marie Severin (artist/plotter/co-writer) – Roy Thomas (co-writer) – 2 pp.

For a guy who (as editor of our hometown weekly newspaper) once wrote an early denunciation of the Beatles, Gary had come a long way, baby… to being, along with his buddy John V., the resident super-fan of the Fab Four, even beyond Yours Truly. Gary wrote two pages of spot-on parody lyrics to no less than seven songs from the already-classic 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—ignoring the “Knock Furious” monicker—and he and John filled a two-page spread with every World War II personage, real and fictional, that they could think of, including comics characters such as Smilin’ Jack, Sad Sack, Terry Lee (minus the Pirates)—and the post-WWII Beetle Bailey and Sarge. So why Bugs Bunny, sporting sergeant’s stripes? I’m sure Bugs was in uniform in one or more WWII animated shorts. Blackhog was a nice touch, too… as were the caricatures at the bottom flanks of Junior Juniper and Pam Hawley, the two members of the Sgt. Fury supporting cast who had perished in early issues. You certainly can’t say that Gary and John were afraid of work! The full list of all the people and characters shown on that two-page spread was given in the letters page of the following issue.

Marie really turned herself loose on these takeoffs on ads—for posters, wall-hangings, “inflatable plastic muscles” (“$1.00, plus $4000 for gas tank to inflate muscles”), and “Live Your Own Comic Book!”—“a huge selection of dramatic dialogue balloons, captivatin’ captions, thoughtless thought balloons, sonorous sound effects—printed life size, so that you run around or loiter just like a super-hero!” I’m not quite sure what I contributed to earn that reference in the introductory caption to “Stan, Marie, and Roy”—a bit of rewriting, at most.

“The Revengers” Roy Thomas (writer) – Tom Sutton (artist/co-plotter) – John Buscema (penciler, p. 6) – George Klein (inker, p. 6) - 6 pp. This was basically just a “day in the life” feature, showing how The Revengers passed the time while waiting for some super-villain to get around to attacking them. It’s a minor effort—except that on its final two pages we juxtaposed Tom’s drawing of the heroes, beat-up and bandaged

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

after the violence of the ensuing pages, with a final page starring the actual current Avengers—Black Panther, Giant-Man, the Wasp, Hawkeye, and The Vision—sitting around their mansion, likewise with nothing to do. I’m sure many readers were truly surprised when they turned that last page. I can only imagine that, when I sent Big John Buscema the synopsis for that final page—along with a copy of Tom’s pencils for the preceding one—he simply shook his head uncomprehendingly and gruffly muttered, “They’re all idiots!” before he drew his absolutely perfect page.

“Charlie America’s Family Album!” Marie Severin (writer/artist) – 3 pp. Another first-class filler by Mirthful Marie (“Remember—only in ‘Not Brand Echh’ can you see and read about things hardly anybody is really interested in!”). The feature was done in the style of a photo album, with pictures “pasted” onto black pages. Charlie winds up flappin’ in the wind from a flagpole as his Army camp’s “living symbol”—appropriate for a hero whose costume was basically swiped from the U.S. flag! (Incidentally, on her own, Marie sneaked the original Captain Marvel—labeled “Billy”—into a pic of a baseball team Charlie had played on. The Big Red Cheese undoubtedly made more appearances in the pages of Not Brand Echh than anywhere else in the two decades between his Fawcett demise

in 1953 and his DC revival in 1973!)

“My Search for True Love!” Writer uncertain – Tom Sutton (artist/co-plotter) – 5 pp. Actually, this spoof of a romance-comics tale starring “Medoozy” has no credits, for some reason. But the fact that it’s chockfull of visual and verbal Beatles references (with a bit of Bob Dylan thrown in) suggests to me that it was scripted by Gary—that, and a reference to Gary’s rock-band buddies Country Joe and the Fish, plus the final-page parody of the lyrics to a pop tune called “In Love in Vain.” That song, not exactly one of the melodies then being warbled by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra on their “Great American Songbook”-style collections, had been sung by Bobby Darin on a recent album—and Gary and I were great Darin fans, always taking in his annual appearances at the famous Copacabana night club in Manhattan. (Gary nearly got punched out by one of the legendary night spot’s bouncers on one occasion—but that’s another story.) Oh, and in the last panel, Medoozy winds up living happily ever after with “Dr. Say-Yes” from Planet of the Apes. One hairy mutation deserves another, right? This story, too, was reprinted in 2009 in Marvel Masterworks: The Inhumans, Vol. 1.

Revengers Reassemble! The second-from-last page of the “Revengers” tale in #12 seemed like just another NBE romp—till the reader turned the page and found himself hurled into another reality altogether. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

“Frankenstein Sicksty-Nine!” Arnold Drake (writer) – Tom Sutton (artist/co-plotter) – 8 pp. Despite the “co-plotter” credit I’ve given Tom Sutton here, I can’t be certain Arnold didn’t do some of his NBE efforts with a full script in advance… the older method, to which comics in recent years have (sadly, to my mind) returned. Tom’s work is a bit less whacky, a bit more controlled in this story… I don’t see the totally wild layouts he usually did when working from a synopsis. Whatever the method, the pair nicely managed to work some madness into it. One of the best bits: Tom’s caricatures of the Frankenstein monster, a favorite subject of his. And mine. Matter of fact, the two of us worked together around this time to develop a humorous-family approach to a Frankenstein comic, with Dracula, Wolfman, Bride of Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon, etc., all parodied in a single beautiful color drawing that Tom did—inspired by our joint love for Dick Briefer’s funny Frankenstein comic of the 1940s. But nothing ever came of it… and once The Munsters hit TV, it would’ve looked like a copy of that series, even though our concept slightly preceded it. Another high point: page 7, with its caricatures of numerous old-time comic strip characters as the inevitable movie villagers who chase the

Hey, I just had a thought—I was a big Beatles and Dylan fan, too… and I had that Darin album. Is there any chance that I wrote this story? What? And forgot to give myself a scripting credit? No way!

“Drawing Lessons” Marie Severin (writer/penciler) – John Tartaglione (inker) – 4 pp. A delicious little parody by “Sev” of those how-to-draw-comics things which weren’t nearly as prevalent in 1968 as they’ve become since. Truly ingenious, especially since she emphasized ways that artists could fake it and do a minimum of drawing: “50% heroes and 83% villains wear gloves! This is good, because then you don’t have to draw fingernails… Think ahead!” [In a caption accompanying panels taken up almost entirely with sound effects:] “If you plan well, leaving enough room, you may get away with whole areas of hardly drawing or writing anything at all!” John Tartaglione is credited as “John Tartag,” which is how staffers often informally referred to him. It wasn’t intended as an actual pen name.

Tilting With Windmills Comic strip characters from the early 20th century besiege the Frankenstein Monster and his creator in this scene from “Frankenstein Sicksty-Nine!” in NBE #12. Tom Sutton must’ve had quite a collection of old Sunday newspaper comic sections at home! [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

monster and his creator up onto a windmill, as per the first Universal Frankenstein movie: Andy Gump, Barney Google and his horse Sparkplug, the Katzenjammer Kids and the long-suffering Captain, Jiggs and Maggie, Popeye and Wimpy, Smokey Stover, Krazy Kat and Ignatz, Nancy, Henry, and Major Hoople from Our Boarding House. Since most of NBE’s relatively young readership would know little (and care less) about most of the above, I suppose it was a self-indulgence of sorts to toss them in, instead of current favorites like the Peanuts crowd, Hagar the Horrible, et al. But it’s hard to believe it made much difference in the overall scheme of things. The amazing thing is that, untypically, Tom didn’t draw Pogo Possum and his pals into this scene! Sure, they were still running in newspapers… but so were Nancy and a couple of the others.

“The Origin of The Simple Surfer!” Roy Thomas (writer) – Marie Severin (artist/co-plotter) – 8 pp. This spoof gave me the opportunity to use the parody name “The Simple Surfer,” which I’d always wanted to see replace “The Silver Burper.” Partly because it made a good gag—and maybe, just maybe, to forestall Stan seeing the splash page and making me change the name back to “Burper”—I made Surfy’s original spoofname the subject of a gag on page 1.

NOT BRAND ECHH #13 (May 1969) I suspect Marie Severin wrote the basic copy on this cover, with Stan and/or myself at most polishing the wording here and there. As for whether it was her idea to do this “Stamp Out Trading Stamps!” cover—or Stan’s—or mine—or Irving Forbush’s—I have absolutely no idea.

For Comparison Purposes Only—Your Mileage May Vary The 6th page of The Silver Surfer #1 (Aug. 1968), by Stan Lee (writer), John Buscema (penciler), and Joe Sinnott (inker)—juxtaposed with the 2nd page of the Thomas/Severin “Simple Surfer” epic from NBE #13. Do we have to tell you which is which? [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Marie and I had a blast closely parodying the first issue of The Silver Surfer, then only a year or so old (see below for a comparison of matched pages from both tales). Norrin Radd became Borin’ Kadd… Shalla-Bal became ShalloGal… Zenn-La became Hoop-La… I can see that we were having a high old time on this one. I’m sure Marie enjoyed drawing the full-page shot of Galacticus on p. 5, with a zillion price tags dangling from his ornate costume.

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

“Pulse-Pounding Pin-Up Dept.” Roy Thomas (writer) – 1 p.

It was perhaps inevitable that we’d wind up with Surfy actually going surfing, sharing the waves with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, stars of all those Beach Party-type movies of a few years earlier, when surfing had been the New Hot Thing. Just for the record: this story was reprinted in the giant hardcover The Silver Surfer Omnibus, which collected all 18 issues of Surfy’s own mag— but not in either of the original Marvel Masterworks volumes. Guess Marvel felt it should give you something extra for that $75!

“Liltin’ Limericks!” Roy Thomas & Phil Seuling (writers) – Tom Sutton (artist) – 3 pp. If my memory serves me rightly, my Brooklyn buddy Phil Seuling presented me with one or two limericks, and that’s what birthed this feature. Phil, a comic book back-issue dealer and high school teacher, was then prepping the very first of what would become his big annual New York Comic Art Conventions, after having been involved with the socalled SCARP-Con (don’t ask!) in 1968. We’d been friends ever since he and his wife Carole had invited me to dinner at their Coney Island apartment on my second Friday in New York in ’65—so I was happy to give him a chance to see his work published in the medium he loved, and to which he gave so much over the years. Phil was never seriously looking for a career in comics, but he would virtually invent the idea of no-returns “direct sales” of comic books, which transformed the industry in the 1970s.

We probably had a page to fill— so I wrote an intro caption atop a blank sheet of art paper, signed it “…Here’s LOOKIN’ AT YOU! —Shrew Storm,” had Sam Rosen letter it up—and probably vouchered a fast $12 or $15 or whatever my going page rate was at the time. Actually, there virtually is art as well as writing on the page—’cause the pulpish paper on which comic books were then printed was so porous there was often a bit of bleedthrough from the art on the other side of the page. Marv Wolfman used to say you could save time by reading two pages at once!

“Guess What’s Coming to Dinner!” Stu Schwartzberg (writer/penciler) – Tom Sutton (inker) Stu might well have become one of the stars of NBE, had it lasted a bit longer. Indeed, he did play an important role in the short-lived Spoof series a year or so later. He was far more interested in Kurtzman- (or even Feldstein-) style parodies of movies and life than he was in lampooning super-heroes; but in this takeoff on the celebrated 1967 film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner that had starred Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, and Sidney Poitier in a (slightly limpid) racially conscious storyline, he made good use of the Inedible Bulk as a stand-in for Poitier’s suave African fiancée of Tracy and Hepburn’s beautiful white-bread daughter. He hit all the right notes, including a riff on the famous “ice cream” scene. Stu’s own penciling was a bit sketchy, but Tom’s embellishing pulled it together nicely. This is the story in the issue that probably had the staff laughing around the Marvel offices. (I recall that, later, several of us were sent into virtual paroxysms of laughter when we read his parody of the

At the end of the piece, we invited readers to send in limericks… and we probably received at least a few, though they were destined not to see print.

“Who Says a Carnival Has to Be Good?? (Not Brand Echh!)” Arnold Drake & Roy Thomas (writers) - Marie Severin (artist) – 2 pp. Since I wouldn’t have written myself a credit into the introductory caption unless I had done quite a bit of rewriting and/or added gags, I can only presume that’s what happened. Since Marie doubtless contributed a few visual or verbal jokes herself, that means this two-page spread had, in effect, no less than three writers! Once again, the Fawcett Captain Marvel made an appearance—side by side with Marble’s own Captain Marvin, in all his green-and-white splendor.

Guess Who Read Mad Comics As A Kid! As seen by these panels from NBE #13’s “Guess What’s Coming for Dinner!,” newcomer Stu Schwartzberg (seen in photo from the 1969 FF Annual) had a real feel for Kurtzmanesque scripting, storytelling, and layouts, which were then ably finished by Tom Sutton. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

1972 horror movie Frogs in Spoof #3 (Jan. ’73), as drawn by Marie and inked by Herb Trimpe; we considered that Schwartzberg/ Severin/Trimpe entry one of the best parody-humor stories Marvel ever published.) Curious as to whether Stu’s precise parody title had ever been used elsewhere, I Googled the phrase and discovered that “Guess What’s Coming to Dinner” was also the name of a 2008 episode of Battlestar Galactica. But Stu got there first—by four decades!

“Cheap Shrills – Big Benjy & the Clobbering Co.”

Grainger. Sam was already a working commercial artist in his native North Carolina, and we’d been planning to do a fan-story together for the first volume of Alter Ego right before I went pro. Gary Friedrich had suggested him to editor Dick Giordano as the artist of his 1966-67 Charlton feature “The Sentinels” (a back-up in Pete Morisi’s Thunderbolt), and eventually I’d gotten him work at Marvel, as well. Sam eventually went on to do quite a bit of Joe Sinnott-style inking there. A truly nice guy, as well as a talented one.

“Adult Super-Hero Dreams!”

Gary Friedrich (writer & breakdowns) – Herb Trimpe (artist) – 1 p.

Bill DuBay (writer/penciler) – Tom Sutton (inker) – 4 pp.

Working from Gary’s script and rough breakdowns, Incredible Hulk artist Herb Trimpe turned in a masterful parody of Robert Crumb’s cover for Janis Joplin’s sensational “Cheap Thrills” record album—done at a time when she was officially the lead singer of the short-lived rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company.

This was a companion piece to the “Super-Hero Daydreams” piece in issue #11.

Ad Parodies Writer uncertain – Tom Sutton (artist) – 3 pp. Yeesh! No credits—or even an overall title—on these parodies of ads for Nice and Easy Shampoo, Winston cigarettes (turned into, of all things, an ad for stretch pants!), Ford (featuring Forbush-Man), and All-State Life Insurance. I kinda suspect I did the scripting. Although he contributed enormously to the gag content of NBE, Tom never suggested fully writing a feature, or we’d probably have given him a shot at it.

Though I’m credited with “a smidgin of scripting” on this one, mostly this was another attempt to give a comics fan a chance to break into the field. I saw Bill, who’d soon move on to a long stint as writer and editor at Warren Publications’ Creepy and Eerie black-&-white horror comics, as working in the style of Dave Berg’s very popular “The Lighter Side of…” feature in Mad. (A couple of years later, in fact, in our b&w Crazy mag, he would parody that series.) Sutton was brought in to ink and make sure that the art had a professional sheen.

“Rent-a-Super-Hero!” Stu Schwartzberg (writer) - Marie Severin (artist) – 4 pp. Whether or not Marie co-plotted this piece on ways Marble Comics could make money by renting out its heroes, I’ve no idea… though I don’t see Marie as working from a script, even a thumbnail-illustrated one like Stu’s, at this stage. Despite Marie’s being the sole credited artist on this tale, one or two of the faces have the look of having been done by Tom Sutton—but that could just be my imagination.

“Dr. Deranged vs. Deadpan!” Roy Thomas (writer) – Gene Colan (penciler) – Sam Grainger (inker) – 6 pp. At that time, one of the best comics around was DC’s Strange Adventures, starring “Deadman” as written by Jack Miller and drawn by Neal Adams. I felt a parody of Deadman—with Dr. Strange as a natural foil—would be fun to do… so I did it. Gene Colan was the perfect choice as artist, mostly because he, like Neal, was given to wild, free-ranging page layouts. Also, not discounting the likes of Russ Heath and (when he wanted to draw realistically) John Buscema—to say nothing of Gray Morrow or Al Williamson and their use of photos for reference—Gene and Neal were the two key practitioners of photographically realistic faces and backgrounds in superhero stories. Not that Gene had much opportunity to draw anything remotely real-looking in this battle between Marvel and DC stars. It was nice, for a little while, to return to the simpler themes of the early Not Brand Echh. My own enjoyment came from parodying Dr. Strange’s oaths: “By the vapors of Volkswagen”—“By the Wand of Walt Dizzy”—“In the name of Sinatra the Supreme.” Even The Spectre—excuse me, The Spookter!—made a cameo appearance. A minor effort… but fun to do. And, hopefully, to read. According to a note on the letters page about that issue featuring the debuts of “fan” artists including Bill DuBay and Ronn Foss as well as writer Phil Seuling, this was probably the first pro work of artist Sam

Herb Instinct This one-page parody of the history-making late-1968 record album “Cheap Thrills” (whose lead vocalist was the meteoric Janis Joplin), scripted by Gary Friedrich, was artist Herb Trimpe’s sole contribution to Not Brand Echh. Herb would later prove himself a superb inker of Marie Severin on the 1970-73 satire comic Spoof; he’s seen here in the Fantastic Four Annual #7. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

My Funny Valentine

All In A Spirit Of Good, Clean Fun

(Above & right:) Ronn Foss (in a 1962 photo) and the Valentine card art he penciled for NBE #13. Inks by John Verpoorten. Among his other accomplishments, Ronn was the second publisher/editor of the original volume of Alter Ego, in 1962-63… and the guy who took the hyphen out of its name. Photo courtesy of Bill Schelly from his study of fandom. [Panel ©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

(Above:) Actually, all the heroes parodied in “Dr. Deranged vs. Deadpan!” were temporarily on their last legs, ectoplasmically speaking, at the time the story was published. The Dr. Strange mag would be canceled half a year later, and he’d have to wait for The Defenders to stage a comeback… “Deadman” had pretty much run out of supernatural steam over in DC’s Strange Adventures… and The Spectre had just been discontinued, as well. Hey, maybe they really were ghosts…! [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“Valentines!” Roy Thomas (writer) – Ronn Foss (penciler) – John Verpoorten (inker) – 4 pp. Ronn Foss had been one of the best fanzine artists of the early ’60s, though somehow he’d never managed to make the jump to pro-dom that we’d envisioned for him at the time. He, his friend Richard “Grass” Green, and Biljo White were three of the best fan-artists of that era… and I wanted, if possible, to give each of them their day in a Marvel mag. Ronn’s drawings were nice, if a trifle unpolished; John Verpoorten tightened them up when he inked. Ronn, who passed away a few years ago, was always grateful that, at least for a few pages, he’d had a chance to appear in a pro comic. (A page of Biljo White art later appeared in an issue of The Invaders—and I once sent Grass my synopsis for the Alamo-based series that later became “The Renegades” in Western Gunfighters #1 (1970), but no Grass Green art ever quite made it into a Marvel mag, alas.)

Every Fan’s Daydream Bill DuBay, seen in a 1972 snapshot—and his debut writing and penciling (as inked by Tom Sutton) for “Adult Super-Hero Daydreams!” in NBE #13. He’d been a prominent member of 1960s comics fandom, producing fanzines with his buddy Marty Arbunich and others. Photo courtesy of Bill Schelly. [Panels ©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

A Goofy, Gregarious Guide To Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH—1967-69

Instant Replay Dept. Arnold Drake (writer) – Marie Severin (penciler) – John Tartaglione (inker) – 1 p. This was simply a reprinting, with two new blurbs, of the final page from the last story in NBE #11. The repro of the photo of me in a SpiderMan costume had printed up so muddy the first time around that I was determined to see it come off better (see p. 35). This time it did.

“The Return of… Forbush-Man!” Roy Thomas (writer) – Tom Sutton (artist) – 7 pp. It’s fitting, perhaps, that the final story stars Forbush-Man, the one Marvel character created for the mag. Not quite as fitting is that Tom, rather than Marie, drew it… but that’s no reflection on Tom, who was one of the great finds of the mag. As stories go, this was a minor effort, with The Strangie (in for The Stranger from The X-Men) as the mile-high super-villain. It’s also fitting that Stan Lee, who had spearheaded the direction of Not Brand Echh even if he wrote nothing for its later supersize issues, appears in the tale’s closing panels. For this turned out to be the final issue of Not Brand Echh. I don’t recall much about the sales figures of the series as it went along—aside from that dip related to the “Stuporman” issue—but it should be remembered that, only three months later, Marvel’s other extra-length 25¢ mag of that era, The Silver Surfer, would abruptly down-size to a 15-center in an attempt to remain viable. I suspect that publisher Goodman would just as soon have cancelled Surfer outright, as well, but that Stan fought for cutting it back to a 32-page mag instead. Not Brand Echh, for its part, was simply cancelled.

As so often happens, a couple of mysteries remain. There’s no notice in the letters page of the unlucky 13th issue of NBE that this was the final issue. Not that Stan usually felt obliged to inform readers in print that a comic had been discontinued—they mostly just vanished without a passing mention—but it could also be that this cancellation was a rather abrupt thing. If it was, though, you’d think that a few stories for issue #14 would’ve been in various stages of preparation… and I’ve no memory of there being any, nor have I run into any left-over art from or reference to such material anywhere. Not Brand Echh was just cancelled… and that was that. Well… not quite.

BEYOND NOT BRAND ECHH Only a year and a half later, with a cover date of Oct. 1970, Stan launched a new parody title, which he christened Spoof. In some ways it was closer to the color Mad-style comic Gary and I had envisioned threeplus years earlier, but minus super-heroes. If the latter weren’t expressly forbidden in Spoof, there was a sort of silent understanding that this was not a continuation of Not Brand Echh. For reasons I’ve forgotten, Spoof was discontinued after a single issue—I suspect at the insistence of Martin Goodman or his son (and successor as publisher) Chip Goodman—only to return two years later, about the time Stan became publisher, for issues #2-4 (dated Nov. ’72 through May ’73). Marie, Stu, and I were part of the mix in #1, with Len Wein and soon others added—but by then Tom Sutton had moved on to the Warren horror mags. Overlapping Spoof were three issues of a new title with an old name and contents: Crazy (Feb. to June ’73), utilizing the monicker of Timely/ Atlas’ first color Mad wannabe in 1954 and composed of reprints of Not Brand Echh, with two new covers by Marie Severin. My favorite is that of #3 (inked by Herb Trimpe), an issue which reprinted the “Fantastical Four” and “Stuporman” origins from NBE #7. By then I was Marvel’s editor-in-chief, and while the idea of the reprint book was Stan’s, the cover idea I gave Marie was very definitely an homage to scenes featuring Superduperman and Captain Marbles in 1953’s Mad #4—and to a 1963 drawing I’d done which is printed on the next page. The color reprint Crazy expired with #3, just in time for Stan to decide to put out a third publication with that name. The 1973+ Crazy Magazine was a black-&-white title in the vein of Mad magazine, which under editor Al Feldstein had become one of the big publishing success stories of the mid-20th century. Once more, there were no super-heroes in evidence in this rendition of Crazy unless in conjunction with a movie or TV tiein. This incarnation, which I assigned Marv Wolfman to edit (he was later followed by Steve Gerber and others), lasted till 1983… a total of 94 issues, plus a few specials.

Some Enchanted Evening, You May See A Strangie Forbush-Man’s dust-up with The Strangie was the final feature in Not Brand Echh #13—and, as it turned out, in the entire series. (Don’t worry—the little guy survived.) The final two panels of this story, which featured Irving F. and Stan Lee in the Marble offices, were printed in our Stan special in A/E #74. In closing—our thanks once again to Barry Pearl for furnishing so many of this feature’s scans—and for not forcing us to type out his name a hundred times or so! [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

In 1974, as a new color comic I could package after stepping down from the editor-in-chiefship, Stan approved my notion for a new horrorparody title called Arrgh! which I’d edit and partly write. But I was never really able to devote enough time to it to realize its potential. I was proud of Marie’s covers for it, and happy for the chance it gave me to reprint material from mid-’50s Mad imitations published by both Timely and MikeRoss Publications (Andru & Esposito’s Get Lost) as well as Tom Sutton’s previously printed tale “Rat!” and his new sequel to it. But Arrgh! faded after a mere five issues. In 1988, Marvel debuted What the--?!, a color comic that was the spiritual heir to NBE, and it’s enjoyed a goodly number of issues off and on since then. The b&w Crazy Magazine launched in ’73 was by far the most

“ECHH” Marks The Spot!

A Klockwise Kornucopia Of Kookie Komics Kovers As per the closing paragraphs of the Not Brand Echh article, with scans from the Grand Comics Database: Marie Severin’s “infinity cover” for 1970’s Spoof #1— Her new covers for the otherwise-NBE-reprinting Crazy #1 & #3 in 1973 (the latter inked by Herb Trimpe)— Longtime Mad cover artist Kelly Freas’ cover for Crazy Magazine #1 (also 1973—hoo-boy, that was one busy year in Marvel parody mags!)— Marie’s monster-mash cover for Arrgh! #1. If only she’d had time to draw something inside! The beat goes on…. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

successful of the various parody publications put out by Timely/Atlas/Marvel over the decades, from the 1950s to the present. But those of us who liked a few laughs with our super-heroes—those of us who quietly, from time to time, still pull out our copies of Mad #1-23 and read them silently until we begin first to giggle, then to chuckle, and finally to guffaw uproariously—well, some of us still have a soft spot in our hearts (and mayhap our heads) for NBE. Who says a comic book has to be good? Not Brand Echh. But we kinda think it was, anyway.

Superham And Yeggs (Left:) Marie Severin’s cover for Crazy #3 (June 1973), seen above, was partly “inspired”—if that’s the word—by this pen-and-ink drawing Roy Thomas had done in 1962. The illo depicts Superham being deluged in vain by his fellow members of the Bestest League of America, for Alter Ego [Vol. 1] #5. [©2010 Roy Thomas.]

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“I Learned To Do A Little Bit Of Everything” A 1977 Interview With Artist MARIE SEVERIN About NOT BRAND ECHH, Spider-Man, And Lots More Interview Conducted and Transcribed by Bernie Hogya

A/E

EDITOR’S NOTE: For the March 1977 issue of the fanzine Fans of Central Jersey, comics enthusiast Bernie Hogya interviewed Marie Severin at the Marvel offices. Our thanks to Barry Pearl and Nick Caputo for providing us with a copy of that mag, and to Bernie for permission to reprint it. This piece is a snapshot of its era, when Marvel was struggling to emerge from the related problems of shrinking sales outlets and the relative lack of profitability of comic books due to their low cover price. Of course, no one knew at that time that Marvel was about to get at least a temporary reprieve from those problems as the company’s six-issue adaptation of the 1977 film Star Wars, whose first issue had just gone on sale, would go on to seven figures’ worth of reprinting.]

“I Started Doing Comics At EC”

Marie, The Dawn Is Breaking… Editor David Anthony Kraft’s interview with Mirthful Marie Severin for FOOM #16 (Dec. 1976) did indeed begin with the query: “Where were you born?” Her answer was “Oceanside, Long Island”—and that when she was born was nobody’s business but her own. FOOM, of course, was the magazine published by Marvel for members of its mid-1970s fan club. That issue’s cover was a wraparound schematic masterpiece (complete with staff and freelancers) of the Marvel offices; it also showed how much Marvel had grown in the decade-plus since she had come to work there on staff in 1964-65. Curiously, despite her unwillingness to provide interviewers a birth date, Marie had provided the photo above right of herself as a toddler, so it could be printed in FOOM #8 (Dec. 1974), along with the more recent snapshot. [©2010 Marie Severin.]

BERNIE HOGYA: Where were you born?

pany at that time to work for that was really doing storytelling.

MARIE SEVERIN: They did an interview with me in the newest FOOM magazine [#16], and their first dumb question was, “Where were you born?” Now, nobody cares about that, do they? What they really want to know is how old I am, and I’m not going to tell them that. [laughter]

I was at EC till the beginnings of Mad magazine, and after that, I worked for Stan Lee at Timely. There, I learned to do a little bit of everything—lettering, designing mastheads, coloring, writing, costume design, comics production—the line of it is, I’m a jack-of-all-trades. That’s good today, because we lost a whole generation of people when comic groups went out of business in the ’50s. A lot of, for instance, letterers—there wasn’t anyplace for them to work then, so now we have to scrounge around for letterers. We have so many books, but not enough letterers. It’s the same with writers. It isn’t too bad with artists, because a lot of artists have no place to go but comics. In the old days, there was magazine art, like in The Saturday Evening Post. Very few artists do magazine fillers today. There’s really no need for it. A lot of the guys that would be working there are seeking out comics. So we get a lot from that crowd.

To get into a past history of myself, as you may or may not know, I started doing comics at EC. My brother John was working there, and I came as a girl Friday, but I soon progressed to full-time production and coloring. EC had such a small staff that we had a lot of fun, but we also learned a lot—it was early in the game, and EC was the only com-

Also, there’s a resurgence of interest in comics. People your age like them. Our readership ranges from little kids, age nine up, to and past your forties. Anyway, because I’ve been in comics so long, and know the different aspects of it, I’m very handy to have around. I can jump in at almost any instance, to help someone out. I know I can’t do it as good, as if, say, a correction is needed on a Neal Adams story—well, I don’t draw like Neal Adams, but I can sort of know maybe a shortcut of how he might draw an arm turned a different way. I’d prefer if he’d do it himself, but if he wasn’t around, I could do it. So, that’s my history in comics. In short, I began doing comic work for EC. After that, I did some stuff for Timely. When comics went out of

A 1977 Interview With Marie Severin

Stan and Jack, when they started out, worked a lot in collaboration. Stan would tell Jack what he had in mind for a new character, and Jack would draw it up. It’s the same thing now. A writer would say, “I want a guy that does this and that, let’s play around with a costume.” An artist, for instance, like Dave Cockrum, who’s working on The X-Men, would come to a writer with an idea sketch for a new character, and together, they’d rework it till it came out to what they wanted. It’s that combination that has made Marvel comics interesting. If the writers and artists get enthused about a creation of theirs, it’s plausible to believe that the readers will be enthused as well.

“I Really Never Had That Much Of A Yen To Write” HOGYA: A lot of artists have gotten into writing, or would like to try writing. Are you one of them? SEVERIN: Let me see, a long time ago, in one of the Spidey Annuals [#5, Nov. 1968], I did a story on how Spider-Man was written. I drew it and wrote it; Stan edited the heck out of it, but the essence was mine. But, well, he edited everything because he’s a better writer than anybody. Then in Not Brand Echh [#12, Feb. 1969], I did a thing on how to be an artist. I’ve never written that much dialog, but I’ve plotted lots of things with writers beforehand. I really never had that much of a yen to write. HOGYA: What was the first thing you and your brother worked on together?

Strange But True By 1967 Marie had succeeded Steve Ditko and Bill Everett on the “Dr. Strange” feature in Strange Tales. She seems to have penciled this drawing for a fanzine in 2000. Thanks to the Golden Age Comic Book Stories website. [Dr. Strange TM & ©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

business in the ’50s, I did some work in a couple of places, freelancing, and finally ended up in the offices here, and haven’t left since! HOGYA: They didn’t let you out! SEVERIN: [laughs] No, actually, they were desperate. When comics began mushrooming again in the ’60s, a lot of people didn’t think that they were going to take off. I reentered comics around 1964, and have been busy ever since. HOGYA: What’s your present title at Marvel? SEVERIN: Assistant Art Director, or Associate Assistant, I don’t know; titles don’t mean that much to me. A lot of people get titles, and you never see them again. John Romita is my immediate boss—he is the Marvel image—he knows what sells comic books. He and I were both trained by Stan Lee as to what Marvel was expected to produce, and what Marvel was selling at the time. The Kirby-Lee dynamics of comic production was passed on to us directly from Stan. Now, Stan doesn’t have the time to work with every young artist, but we can now project Stan’s feelings to them. Stan used to run the whole place, but it’s gotten so big now, that he has to have people that understand and can carry out his expertise in comic understanding. If you could clone Stan, John Romita, Roy Thomas, and people like that, you know you’ll be able to do good, with no sweat, but you can’t—you’ve only got one of each of them and, they’re specialists—excellent at what they do. Jack Kirby, too, if you could clone him—now he’s doing everything. He writes his own stuff, draws and everything. He’s an entity in his own self.

SEVERIN: The first thing we did together was Kull [the Conqueror]. We had to stop, because we were spending too much time on it. Each page was like doing a Sunday comic strip page. You cannot exist financially doing work like that. I had responsibilities here, and he had other things to do, so we stopped. We may pick it up again sometime to do a story here or there. If John wasn’t booked up for the next four months, we’d probably work something out on a new “Kull” story. John works an awful lot at Cracked magazine, and is also doing work at Warren. The plotting and pencilling here, really, doesn’t pay enough for his work, because he’s really detailed. He’d rather do a story from a complete script rather than from a story plot. He’s very good, and I like him very much. Even though I like doing super-hero stuff, I’m more tuned into the “Kull” type stuff—semisuper-hero—fairy story thing. It’s sword-and-sorcery, but a bit more realistic. HOGYA: Did your brother push you into art? SEVERIN: No, he never pushed me into art. He dragged me. [laughs] No, he had sent me to art

Old King Kull A Kull pencil illo by Marie, provided by Barry Pearl and Nick Caputo—from this interview as originally printed in FCJ #13. [Kull TM & © Kull Properties, Inc.]

“I Learned To Do A Little Bit Of Everything”

well, when he was scripting The [Incredible] Hulk.

“The Money Crisis Is Horrendous” HOGYA: Are comic books doing well as a business today? SEVERIN: Yes, very well. We are doing fantastic this year. Last year we didn’t do that well, but you know we are in a money-making thing here— and whether the trend is that we’re on the crest of a wave, I don’t know. This is the longest period of success comics have been in. It has been going in cycles, up and down, for short periods of years in the past. HOGYA: The comic companies seem to be trying different formats for the comic book—like experimenting with digest size, treasury size, and the new DC dollar size books. Has there been any realization that comics cannot exist in the form they presently exist in? SEVERIN: Well, the money crisis is horrendous—with paper costs and printing costs rising, we’re trying to find a cheaper vehicle. The only way to keep the quality up may indeed be to keep raising the prices. When I was a kid, for a quarter, you got a big fat book that would tie you down for a whole day of reading. It was great! Now, you have these little things that are difficult to develop a story in. HOGYA: Marvel seems to be doing a lot of reprints now. Is that because of the price thing?

Kung Fu To You, Too! For the Oct. 1974 issue of Marvel’s black-&-white parody mag Crazy (#7), Marie penciled a takeoff on the popular Kung Fu TV series that starred David Carradine. Several years later, she penciled and inked the above illo for the cover of the March 1977 issue of the fanzine Fans of Central Jersey, which featured the very interview you are now reading—or at least will be, as soon as you finish this caption! Thanks to Barry Pearl and Nick Caputo. [Art ©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

school. I was enrolled in Pratt while all of my friends were working and making money. I felt that I wanted to be in that scene, so I just started working. I felt that I didn’t need four years of art school. So, instead, it took me ten years to learn what I could have learned in three. HOGYA: Did it seem you were in the right place at the right time, when you got your first break in comics? SEVERIN: Yes, and my brother helped out in that respect. He certainly was in the right place at the right time. He met Wally Wood and Rick Mann, and went to see Bill Gaines. The guys knew each other in school. Comics, you know, are a specialty field. There are some illustrators that draw beautifully, but can’t tell a story. That’s the essence of comic art—the ability to tell a story. You’re given a plot, and have to be almost held by the writer’s hand, to tell his story the way he had written it down. There’s continuity and character development to watch out for. At Marvel, we try to make our characters real. The way Stan polished the characters of Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four is truly amazing; you could almost predict how they are going to react in any situation imaginable. You could even forsee the dialogue before a word is spoken. It’s remarkable. The current phrasings used by Peter Parker are all Stan Lee. Iron Man and Daredevil, on the other hand, haven’t been polished enough. Their type of development isn’t as strong as the FF or Spidey, or even the Hulk. But the Hulk is a different type of character. He could be done by Walt Disney and still be kept appealing. Roy really had him going

SEVERIN: Well, there’s a crop of new kids coming up, and we sell enough of the reprint books to make up for new books that don’t do well or are dropped after a few issues, because of sales. There are a few new books coming from Marvel—like Tarzan, John Carter [Warlord of Mars], and Kiss. I’ll be coloring the first Tarzan book. I like coloring first issues, either myself, Glynis Wein, or Michelle Wolfman, because we really like to play around with first issues and get an established coloring, so that if the title -does continue, another colorist would have someone to emulate, to have taken a little care to set the color standards. Some of those things are tricky to color, especially if you have jungle scenes. I love coloring anything, if it has science-fiction in it. I love science-fiction books! I’d love to color the new John Carter comic-book. I hope it takes off.

“[The Spider-Man Newspaper Strip] Might Help Out In Merchandising” HOGYA: Now that they’ve put Spider-Man into newspaper comic strips, do you think it will actually help [the Spider-Man comic books] out in reference to sales? SEVERIN: Well, it might help out in merchandising. More kids will get to know about him. Look what happened with Planet of the Apes. Anything that goes into mass promotion, television, etc., pushes all aspects of the concept. Spider-Man reached thousands of kids that never held a comic book in their hands through the Spider-Man cartoon, even though the artwork was dopey compared to what we were putting out in the book; he’s a household word with millions of people that might never have heard of him in a comic book. If it’s a syndicated thing, there’s a lot of adults that would see it. In the newspapers they’re exposed to it on the comic page—they don’t necessarily buy comic books, but they now read Spider-Man in the papers. They’ll be aware of it. This means Spider-Man will be more well-known; it means that someone that saw Spider-Man in the daily and Sunday papers, may pick up a Spider-Man toy come next Christmas for their kid, when the merchandising hits, because he’d been exposed to the character through the papers. As soon as Planet of the Apes went off TV, all of the stuff in the stores has gone down, including our magazine. We hope Spidey keeps on, like Superman who’s lasted all these years. He’s a household word, and I’m sure National [DC] should have been able to do much better with him than they have, but it seems they’re afraid to tamper with him. But, on the

A 1977 Interview With Marie Severin

other hand, they’ve done all these dopey things with him, like the Krypton thing, and Superdog, Superboy, Supergirl, and Super-Rat, or whatever they’re doing. HOGYA: Now, they’ve even gotten rid of Kryptonite, so nothing can hurt him. At least Spider-Man can get ulcers. SEVERIN: Yeah, that’s the thing, anything can happen to him, and he’s appealing because of it. Everybody has problems. One of our problems with the [Sunday] strip was with the coloring and reproduction. We did the coloring on it very carefully, and we sent it to the syndicate—they sent us a proof that looked great—full page, and all. Now, The [Daily] News printed it on a half page, with all the colors changed to a stronger intensity than what was specified. Where I had a 20% red, the proof had a 50% red, with the printed strip at almost 100% red. They’ve promised us at the News that they’ll eventually carry the strip full page, and they’ve already begun running the dailies. Years ago, there were all kinds of adventure strips, and all of them were great! Full pages of Flash Gordon, Terry and the Pirates, and Prince Valiant, all colored as good or better than our comic books today. But the comics in those days sold newspapers. I don’t think they sell that many today. For the past twenty years, they didn’t have anything to color with real detail. You have mostly cartoon stuff, which is very flat color. Spidey is the only adventure strip which is jumping around in color, because of the anatomy, figures, and action. It’s an adventure strip, and there’s nothing like it today, except maybe Rex Morgan, where you’ve got a bunch of people just constantly talking, and that’s all; or Mary Worth and

Brenda Starr, which has gotten absolutely dumb—with its fluffy “lady art.” It’s OK for what it is, but Spidey is the only one of it’s kind today. The color separators have no experience in separating color for a strip like Spidey. But it’s gonna get better. I’ve been coloring in comics since about 1953. When Barry Smith started doing Conan [the Barbarian], it would make you cry to see all the lines that were lost. It was beautiful, but he was too detailed—that’s when coloring gets to be a problem. Earlier, when Barry first came to Marvel, he tried to draw like Kirby. Marvel’s style at that time was Kirby. But you should never try to draw like Kirby. Rather you should try and think like Kirby. There’s only one Kirby. It is the Marvel way how he draws, and you may not like what he does, but he’s got the dynamics. You’ll look at it whether you like it or not. It will catch your eye. One thing Stan has always said is, when you pick up a comic off the stands and flip through the pages, there should be something on each page that jumps out at you and intrigues you enough to buy it. And that is Jack Kirby’s thing! He’s got it! I think we’re going to have to stop now, fellas. The place is really jumping here, and I’ve got to get back to work. HOGYA: Just one more question… where were you born? SEVERIN: See ya, guys. HOGYA: Wait, how old are you?

Spidey Does Sunday This very first Spider-Man Sunday newspaper strip, dated Jan. 9, 1977, was scripted by Stan Lee, drawn by John Romita—and colored by Marie Severin. Talk about starting off at the top! With thanks to Dr. Michael J. Vassallo. The Spider-Man comic strip is still going strong, well over three decades later, still written by Stan, and with art now by a combination of Larry Lieber, Alex Saviuk, and Joe Sinnott—Ye Editor’s involved in it now, too. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“[The DC Editors] Got Into Arguments” GEORGE KASHDAN On Editing And Writing Comics In The Golden Age – Part III Conducted by Jim Amash Transcribed by Brian K. Morris

eorge Kashdan (1928-2006) was a writer and editor for DC Comics from 1947 until sometime in the 1970s, and later wrote for the comics of Western Publishing and for Filmation TV animation. As editor and/or writer, he handled many of DC’s top characters at one time or another, including Superman, Batman, and Aquaman. Although, as related more fully in our previous issues, he was a bedridden stroke victim when this interview was conducted by telephone in bits and pieces, he felt it was important to relate his version of the history of DC as a company… even if his view of some of his associates was less than flattering. Last issue contained much of Kashdan’s discussion of artist Jack Kirby’s serious, even legal, differences with DC editor Jack Schiff over monetary arrangements for the comic strip Sky Masters. —Jim.

George Does It Again! George Kashdan (on right in photo at top) with his brother Larry, who kindly provided us all photos of George used in conjunction with this several-part interview. Since George was both an editor and a writer, here is an introductory glimpse of his work in both capacities: (Left:) A dynamic action page from The Brave and the Bold #58 (Feb.-March 1956), the second “Metamorpho” issue. Script by Bob Haney; pencils by Ramona Fradon; inks by Charles Paris. Editor GK was proud of this series, which he says was his original conception. Thanks to Stephan Friedt. The covers of B&B #57 & 58 were seen last issue. [©2010 DC Comics.] (Above:) The splash page of an adaptation of renowned science-fiction great Poul Anderson’s short story “Call Me Joe,” scripted by GK and drawn by Adolf Buylla for Western Publishing’s Starstream #4 (1976). For more about Kashdan’s experiences writing for Western, see next issue. [©2010 Western Publishing Co., Inc., or its successors in interest.]

George Kashdan On Writing And Editing Comics In The Golden Age

“As Long As I Work Here, Jack Kirby Will Not Work Here” JA: Supposedly, there was an editorial conference to discuss why Marvel was doing so much better. And either [editor] Bob Kanigher or Irwin [Donenfeld, co-publisher] held up a Jack Kirby comic book, and said the secret of Marvel is “bad art.” Were you there?

man. One day, Kirby asked Schiff for some assignments, and Schiff virtually kicked him out and shouted at him, “What the hell do you want here with me?” Kirby says, “I’m just trying to make a living, Jack.” And Schiff said, “Well, go make a living somewhere else.” And they wound up on non-speaking terms. Once, as we were all heading to lunch, Kirby walked past us and totally ignored us. He showed his hostility in other ways. JA: What other ways?

KASHDAN: [groans] I don’t remember anyone saying that. It was probably an idea I would have agreed with.

KASHDAN: Like going to Marvel. [chuckles]

JA: You did not like Jack Kirby’s artwork?

JA: Well, he had to make a living.

KASHDAN: I can’t say I didn’t like it. He hit on a nerve that the fans all liked. I could see where it was eye-catching, and fans would find that really appealing.

KASHDAN: That he did.

JA: Was there any pressure to imitate Marvel?

KASHDAN: Oh, Schiff had no bad blood. He expected Kirby to cooperate, and take it like a man… like a gentleman.

KASHDAN: They never said “imitated.” People were angry at [editor Jack] Schiff for letting Kirby get away from National, for virtually kicking him out. I think Irwin Donenfeld may have blamed Schiff for that.

JA: Obviously the bad blood went both ways at that point.

JA: Did Schiff feel he was entitled to money because he got them the Sky Masters assignment?

JA: And now it came back to bite DC in a big way, because Kirby was creating a lot of characters that could have been DC’s.

KASHDAN: Yes, he gave it all over to them. It wasn’t a finder’s fee or a kickback. It was a commission. And the court supported Schiff.

KASHDAN: Right. After I left, Carmine [Infantino] and Irwin were running the firm. Carmine brought in Jack Kirby to draw for them. DC tried to imitate Kirby’s success at Marvel. That didn’t succeed too well. And they had an artist named Jay Scott Pike, who was an excellent artist. He drew some damn good covers for them.

JA: Marvel was paying about half the rate DC was paying, but Kirby couldn’t get work at DC from any other editor. Do you think Schiff had something to do with that? KASHDAN: The other editors joined ranks at the request of Schiff. I knew Kirby, and I kind of liked him. We had lunch together a couple of

JA: By the mid-’60s, Carmine had begun having more input into covers. KASHDAN: He was there to guide them. I had been saying to Irwin that he needed good artists to do good covers, and draw some ballsy stories. And when Carmine was hired [as cover editor], Irwin said, “Well, your wish is going to come true. Carmine’s gonna be that artist you wanted.” The next thing I knew is that Carmine and Irwin were running the company like a pair of Army generals: the General and his adjutant. JA: I’ve heard that Jack Schiff had said, “As long as I work here, Jack Kirby will not work here.“ KASHDAN: He may have. I could believe it. Schiff was mad at Kirby over [the comic strip] Sky Masters, as we’ve discussed. Schiff ’s lawyer told him to make short shrift of Kirby. And Schiff was a temperamental

Challenging The Unknown—One Comics Company At A Time (Left:) Jack Kirby’s last comic done for DC for more than a decade was Challengers of the Unknown #8 (June-July 1959), which he both scripted and illustrated. Repro’d from the hardcover Challengers of the Unknown Archives, Vol. 2 (2004). [©2010 DC Comics.] (Right:) Kirby’s first new art for the company for which he’d co-created Captain America in 1940—an outfit that would, in 1963, be rechristened Marvel—was the credit-bereft tale “I Discovered the Secret of the Flying Saucers” for Strange Worlds #1 (Dec. 1958). Kirby’s story art and related cover were inked by Christopher Rule. Thanks to Dr. Michael J. Vassallo for the scan and inker ID. [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“[The DC Editors] Often Got Into Arguments”

times, and some pleasant conversations. I didn’t ask him about Sky Masters, and he never cared to talk about it. JA: Would Schiff have been mad at you if you’d hired Kirby? KASHDAN: I couldn’t have done it with Schiff around there. JA: So Kirby was blackballed. KASHDAN: Yes, virtually, he was. JA: Kirby said Schiff demanded a percentage of Sky Masters, and that he [Kirby] was forced into an agreement to pay Schiff royalties because Schiff had intimated that [otherwise] he wouldn’t hire Jack for other work. I was wondering if that sounded like Jack Schiff to you. KASHDAN: That’s not the sort of thing that I would expect of Schiff. What did Kirby say to him, and what did Schiff say? JA: There’s actually a transcript of the pre-trial depositions, and Kirby on the witness stand said that Schiff told him he wanted a percentage, and that basically Schiff let Kirby know that if he didn’t sign it, he wouldn’t get work from DC anymore. KASHDAN: They let him know that? I don’t see how he [Schiff] could have done that. JA: Kirby said that Schiff said he would not think well of Kirby if he didn’t sign the agreement. So Kirby felt pressured to sign an agreement because he didn’t want to lose his income. That’s what he claimed, anyway. Since you knew Jack Schiff, and I did not, I was wondering if this sounded like Jack Schiff to you. KASHDAN: No, it doesn’t.

“They Took Kickbacks?” JA: I’ve been debating whether or not to ask you about this, but in fairness, I almost have to, since you’ve been so open with everything else I’ve asked you. I know there were some editors who took kickbacks from their freelancers. Do you think that this was a widespread thing? KASHDAN: It wasn’t widespread up there. JA: I’ve heard that [DC editors] Kanigher and Jack Miller did it. KASHDAN: They took kickbacks? Oh, my!

The “Wonder” Years, For Sure! For Wonder Woman, Kanigher birthed the offbeat concept of the “Impossible Story”—yarns in which the Amazon seemed to coexist as her adult star-spangled self, as a teenager (“Wonder Girl”), and as a toddler (“Wonder Tot”)—with her mother Hippolyte often showing up and being dubbed “Wonder Queen.” “Captives of the Mirage World!” in WW #140 (Aug. 1963) was the fourth of this series. Pencils by Ross Andru, inks by Mike Esposito. Thanks to Bob Bailey. [©2010 DC Comics.]

KASHDAN: I certainly would not. Neither would Jack. He was a very moral man. JA: I don’t think [DC co-publisher] Jack Liebowitz would have taken too kindly to the idea of kickbacks. KASHDAN: Definitely not. JA: And even Mort, the way he was with a dollar—no one’s ever reported that he asked for kickbacks. KASHDAN: Mort was money-hungry, and he used to tell us how much he earned for an article that got printed in Collier’s. He once said to Jack Miller, “You think I’m happy with all this money? How could I be happy when every morning, I look in the mirror, and what do I see looking back at me? A fat, bald schlubb.”

JA: But I never heard it about you or Jack Schiff or [fellow DC editors] Julie [Schwartz] or Mort Weisinger. I just heard it about those two. Did you ever hear of kickbacks being done?

JA: Didn’t he and his wife get along?

KASHDAN: No, no. [Writer] Ed Herron used to buy me drinks when he took me to a bar. But that had nothing to do with whether or not I or anyone else hired him. I never asked him to do that. It had nothing to do with business. Phyllis [Reed, DC romance editor] used to be a very careful person about things like that.

JA: Kanigher had an apartment near the office for that, didn’t he?

JA: Did anyone ever offer kickbacks to you? KASHDAN: No, no one said they’ll give me 10% of what they earned, or something like that. [chuckles] JA: I know these things happened at some companies. [Artist] Mike Esposito told me [in his interview for A/E #53-54] that Kanigher put out his Christmas list, and you were expected to buy him something off that list.

KASHDAN: They apparently got along, but he felt he had to live the life of a playboy. All playboys get mistresses. Kanigher was an operator, too.

KASHDAN: Yes. Kanigher had a very cocky exterior. He was always talking about how brilliant he was, and how well-adjusted he was. He had been getting some psychoanalysis, and he went around psychoanalyzing people. Kanigher, I remember, hated Mort. JA: Kanigher had a reputation for being real rough on the people who worked for him. KASHDAN: He had that reputation, but if he needed a man badly, he wasn’t rough on him. I think Kanigher was very deferential to [artist Bob] Oksner. He was in awe of Joe Kubert. You could ask Kubert to give you a cover, and it would come out strong. Kubert was an excellent artist.

KASHDAN: That sounds like Kanigher.

JA: But I know that Kanigher mistreated people like [artist] Mort Meskin, for instance.

JA: But you and Jack Schiff don’t strike me as the type of people that would have done that.

KASHDAN: Well, Meskin was terribly sensitive. He couldn’t take Kanigher with a sense of humor, or like all the writers who hated Mort.

George Kashdan On Writing And Editing Comics In The Golden Age

They could find him funny. They could sit around and joke about him. JA: I heard this from two eyewitnesses: Meskin had just gotten out of a mental institution, after a nervous breakdown. Kanigher was unhappy with a drawing he’d done and said, “A man could not crawl on his belly and hold a rifle in that position,” and he had Meskin crawling on the floor on his belly trying to show whether or not it could be done. KASHDAN: For a man coming out of an institution, Kanigher was hardly the solution. I think he got some pleasure out of humiliating people. [Writer] Bob Haney disliked him, because any time Haney wanted an assignment, Kanigher was writing a story and said, “I don’t need any stories from you.” Many people didn’t get along with him. [Production chief Jack] Adler despised Kanigher. I think he was jealous of Kanigher’s relationship with Phyllis Reed. Jack was always following her around. One day, he was seated on a couch in her office, gazing at her longingly. So I walked by and said to Phyllis, “How does it feel to be stared at with loving eyes?” She burst out laughing. Adler jumped up and walked out of there.

there?” And Kanigher said, “I will have to investigate her.” About a week later, he told Jack a story that he went down there and met her, but they didn’t speak to each other. He said, “She looked at me, and I looked at her, and when she stood up to leave, she motioned to me with a gesture of her hand, and I went with her. She took me home to her apartment and I stayed there. We had a very loving night,” and we knew this was a Kanigher fantasy. I once plotted a love story with him. He said, “You’ve got to have your females thinking differently. It reminds me of a woman I slept with on my last ski trip,” and he gave me some bull**** conversation they had. He once told me that DC’s contract with the Marston estate—you know “Wonder Woman” was created by a man named [William Moulton] Marston—was about to run out, and he said, “The Marston Estate told Liebowitz that they would not renew the contract unless I was the writer.” So that’s how he feathered his nest. JA: What did you think of Kanigher as a writer?

JA: Julie and Kanigher started out working for [DC/All-American line editor] Shelly Mayer. Kanigher and Julie did not get along....

KASHDAN: The stuff he wrote was quite competent. His “Wonder Woman” stories were exciting and well-written… good “Sgt. Rock” stories.

KASHDAN: They appeared to get along; they had a civil relationship. Julie considered Kanigher a character, a cross that he had to bear. [chuckles] Until you told me [off tape], I didn’t know there had been friction between them.

JA: He’s really about the only editor, besides Jack Miller, who wrote their own stories. You didn’t do that.

JA: You’ve described how you and Jack Schiff and [editor] Murray [Boltinoff] worked on your books. You had different titles, and you worked on a feature like “Green Arrow” whether it was in Mort’s books or in Schiff ’s books. I’m trying to figure out how Julie and Kanigher worked together. Do you know if they edited each other’s books? KASHDAN: As far as I know, they worked on some of the books together. They had that kind of relationship. Mort and Schiff had a relationship that you might say Kanigher and Julie copied.

KASHDAN: Not for myself, though I once did. I would attempt to write for other editors. Sometimes I would come up with an idea and discuss it with Jack Miller, and he’d help me with it. Jack and I were friends outside the office. I could have [done what] Kanigher did. I didn’t want to. I felt that was immoral [to write stories for your own books].

“Dorothy And Carmine Did A Lot Of Fighting” JA: There were a couple of women editors that worked there that I know very little about.

Everyone used to wonder how [Kanigher’s] wife tolerated his behavior with females. He used to boast about his female conquests, and most of the time they turned out to be fantasies. Jack Miller and I used to eat in this luncheonette in Grand Central Palaces, and we admired a Japanese woman who used to come there to eat. Miller told Kanigher, “Have you seen that beautiful Japanese woman down

Ladies First—And Second For his own interview in A/E #56, longtime DC production chief Jack Adler sent us these photos he took of editors Zena Brody (top) and Dorothy Roubicek Woolfolk (directly above). Jack’s pic of DC editor Phyllis Reed was printed last issue. [©2010 Jack Adler.] “Impatient Heart!” in Secret Hearts #26 (Feb.-March 1955) was probably edited by Brody, whom the online “Who’s Who in American Comic books (1928-1999)” lists as editing that title, as well as Girls’ Love Stories and Girls’ Romances, from 1952-57. The splash is signed by Bernard Sachs, who was more usually an inker than a “full-art” kind of guy. “My Mother, the Mantrap” appeared in Falling in Love #131 (April 1972), whose indicia lists Dorothy Woolfolk as editor. Comics historian Michelle Nolan informs us that researcher Mike Tiefenbacher has ID’d the writer as Jack Oleck, with pencils by Mike Sekowsky and inks by Dick Giordano. Both these stories were reprinted in the trade paperback Heart Throbs: The Best of DC Romance Comics (Fireside/Simon & Schuster; 1979). [©2010 DC Comics.]

“[The DC Editors] Often Got Into Arguments”

KASHDAN: There was Zena Brody. She was [humor editor] Larry Nadle’s assistant, and she probably knew about his embezzlement activities. JA: She obviously wasn’t the type to spill the beans. KASHDAN: Nor should she. Larry was nice to her, and Kanigher was constantly after her. She was continually putting him down. Sometimes, he’d say something and Zena would say, “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.” He would shrug it off like, “Why should I argue with the stupid masses?” She went to the University of Michigan. You could easily chat with her on any intellectual subject. Zena was friendly. [Another editor was] Ruth Brandt. Ruth and Zena were friends, and they exchanged jobs. When Ruth left, Zena took her place at Ruth’s recommendation. Ruth was a former dancer who’d had a bad accident and had to give up her dancing career. She walked around with a cane; a very pretty girl. She was young and friendly. She may have reached her thirties when she left DC. I know a lot of the artists and writers tried dating her, and maybe they succeeded in getting a date and felt she was prudish. JA: Was she prudish? KASHDAN: No, I didn’t think so. JA: Dorothy Woolfolk was an editor and a writer. What do you remember about her? KASHDAN: Dorothy had a pretty good sense of humor, and she was a rather pretty woman, slightly overweight. When I met her, she had been dieting and had lost a lot of her baby fat. Dorothy was a skilled writer and editor. Whenever Mort wanted a story done, he would give her a plot which he was said his own, but probably stolen from a writer, and Dorothy would bring in a very competent story. I remember that Dorothy and Carmine did a lot of fighting about schedules and stories. A story that she was supposed to have put in as a trial balloon, that sort of thing. They wound up screaming at each other, and one day Dorothy quit. I said to Carmine, “I think you’ve lost a good editor by letting her go.” He said to me, “Oh, yeah, yeah. She’s just too nervous for me.” That was after Irwin Donenfeld was gone and Carmine was the man in charge. Is Bill Woolfolk still alive? JA: No, he passed away. KASHDAN: He and Dorothy had a horrible divorce, and Bill remarried. Dorothy told me that he met this young woman at Fawcett, and she said, “I wasn’t surprised that he married her. She was after him when she met him. She’s the one who got him to divorce me.” JA: I understand that she was rather opinionated and firm in her opinions. KASHDAN: Oh, yes! And she had a drinking problem. Kanigher tried to make out with her. She told me about it. He came up to her apartment, and pulled the blinds and said, “Where shall we go to sleep? This room or the bedroom?” And Dorothy says she kicked him out of there. And maybe it was he who told Carmine to fire her?

“Jack And Mort Got Into Arguments” JA: Kanigher seems like he was a vindictive kind of guy. KASHDAN: Yes, he was. JA: But you don’t think he was a sadist like you told me Mort was. But Kanigher was rotten to people, too. KASHDAN: It wasn’t a sadistic glee he got out of it. Kanigher could never say, “I’ll wipe my ass with your script,” and that sort of thing. Mort was rather shrewd in his behavior. Ed Hamilton was a successful sciencefiction writer, and Mort would throw a problem at Hamilton and say, “Go

figure it out.” Hamilton used to write the dullest scripts, the dullest dialogue, that he used to solve the Lord’s problems. I think he said to himself, “If that guy [Mort] thinks I’m going to knock myself writing good prose, I’ll send him back my solution to the problem.” But you had to admire him for being inventive enough. Mort would give him a problem to solve: “Superman comes into a crime setting, and there’s this parrot in a cage. The parrot is saying, ‘Superman is Clark Kent! Clark Kent is Superman!’ How does Superman get out of that one?” And Hamilton came up with this crazy idea, and had Superman yell at the parrot: “-’s friend!”—as if a parrot could add an apostrophe. [Jim chuckles] So [Mort and Ed] would say, fast and loud, when Ed was finished, “Clark Kent is Superman’s friend!” [mutual chuckling] Hamilton had an inventiveness about him left over from his sciencefiction days. He was married to the writer Leigh Brackett. She was a rather skilled detective story writer. She ghost-wrote a story in the name of George Sanders, the actor, and nobody knew who ghost-wrote it for him.

The Last Time I Saw Parrots Sf and comics scribe Edmund Hamilton in the ’70s, from James Gunn’s invaluable 1975 tome Alternate Worlds: The Illustrated History of Science Fiction. (Photos of Mort Weisinger and numerous other Golden/Silver Age DC editors were seen in parts 1 & 2 of this interview.) We’d hoped to pair this pic with panels from the “Superman” story George K. talks about, wherein a parrot nearly exposes Clark Kent’s secret identity… but not even knowledgeable expert Eddy Zeno or Michael Fleischer’s 1970s encyclopedia-style Great Superman Book seems aware of any such episode. Perhaps it was just a passing notion? (Incidentally, this caption’s heading is a title Ye Editor once planned to use in Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew!—with an alternate of “We’ll Always Have Parrots”—but he never quite got around to it. Maybe it’s just as well.) [Page ©2010 DC Comics.]

Hamilton was a very nice guy. He occasionally came in to New York to visit Mort, and he’d sit down at my desk and chat a while. We used to do the same thing on “Superman” and on “Batman.” He was always dependable, and Mort and Jack always accepted his writing because he’d solve a gimmick, and I would rewrite the dull lines.

JA: Was this always the case? I know Julie usually had a cover idea, and then they’d build a story around it. KASHDAN: Maybe so. I don’t think it always worked that way. We often came up with covers in advance of stories. JA: But then you’d have to write a story around that cover.... KASHDAN: I wouldn’t. I would give it to Jack Miller or Bob Haney. JA: But my point is that somebody would write a story around the cover, because the covers were done first. When you were an editor, did you work that way? KASHDAN: I tried to, yes. Schiff used to try that. He used to appreciate when I threw a cover idea at him. He would jot it down, and then assign it to a writer. Did [DC writer] Arnold Drake ever tell you about “Fireman Farrell”? Mort and Jack found that fire on a cover sold well, so Mort came up with an idea called “Fireman Fred Farrell - Adventures of a Fireman.” Arnold wrote the issue of “Fireman Farrell” [Showcase #1], and it sold poorly. It had nothing to do with the story inside. It was just a stupid idea, because they thought all you had to do was to put fire on a cover. JA: The gorilla covers were very popular.

George Kashdan On Writing And Editing Comics In The Golden Age

KASHDAN: Arnold and I used to joke about that. Larry Nadle, in order to help his brother make money—we knew he was doing it, and nobody had any objection—came up with an idea for a magazine called It’s Game Time. It consisted of a lot of comic games that [his cartoonist brother] Marty Nadle invented, and nobody bought it. It sold absolutely zero. And Arnold used to say, “Fireman Farrell had competition.” JA: Generally, the editors got along with each other in the offices, right? KASHDAN: Jack and Mort often got into arguments. They were sometimes political. Julie had a Chinese Wall around him. I remember Julie and Jack Schiff having a public disagreement. Schiff would never care to run a cover showing New York totally underwater, with the whole city and skyline turning into an Atlantis. Schiff said, “That’s bad. How can we show a cover where New York was totally inundated while we’re all walking around in the streets of New York? That’s not logical!” Julie said, “That’s ridiculous!” As far as to show New York or San Francisco getting sunk under the sea, Schiff was very conscious of the readers’ consciousness. It’s one of the reasons he didn’t believe in giving writers printed credits when the book came out. Julie really got that trend going with [writers] John Broome and Gardner Fox. JA: So if Julie had picked a fictional city to sink, Schiff wouldn’t have complained? KASHDAN: Right. If it were Atlantis, there would be no complaint. JA: The fact that nobody got credit in the books was generally a company policy, wasn’t it? Artists seldom got credit, either.

KASHDAN: It was company policy. I believe that was [managing editor Whitney] Ellsworth’s influence. He felt you lose the fantasy value. Some writers and artists complained about this in the early ’60s. They said, “We want to do like Marvel does.” And, of course, the writers had in mind that getting a credit on a story would entitle them to royalties if the story was re-run. Jack Schiff was on the writers’ side. He believed they should get paid for re-use of their work. JA: Since you generally worked with Boltinoff and Schiff, did you spend much time with the other editors? Who would you go out to lunch with? KASHDAN: Usually Jack Schiff. Occasionally, he and Murray and I would go out, and writers would join us. Arnold Drake came with us, and [Bob] Haney would often come. Jack Miller, when he was around, came down with us. [We talked about comics], but nothing about business. JA: I know that when Julie would go out to eat with Gardner Fox or John Broome; they would talk plots. Of course, Julie, a lot of times, played cards with Milt Snappin at lunch. KASHDAN: Oh, yes. Julie was a master Bridge player. JA: Do you remember the time that he had the problem with [artist] Alex Toth over a check? [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: For details, see Julie Schwartz’s recounting of this event in his 2000 memoir Man of Two Worlds: My Life in Science Fiction and Comics—Toth’s response in A/E #46—and comics historian Greg Theakston’s full rendering of the oftrelated tale in A/E #63, a special issue devoted to Toth’s life and work.] KASHDAN: I remember hearing about it, but I didn’t participate in it. I know Toth was furious with Julie. Toth, you know, had a reputation for an easy-to-lose temper. John Broome was the man with the tender temper. When he worked for us, Schiff had him writing the daily Superman strip, and they got into big arguments over the way Broome was handling it. JA: I didn’t know Broome ever wrote the Superman strip. I know Alvin Schwartz had written some… KASHDAN: Jack usually wrote it all himself. Jack was in charge of the strip, and he wrote it and assigned it to other writers when he wanted to. He once even asked me to write a Sunday comics page when he was going off on vacation. All I would do is read some previous color supplements that were written and the daily which was incorporated into the Sunday supplement. I never got around to writing that, but that’s how it was done. If I’d done it, I would have been paid by the company, not by Schiff. JA: By the way, did you get paid vacations? KASHDAN: We did, yes. We had insurance plans [and stock options].

Bobbing For The Big Apple (Left:) DC collector Bob Bailey kindly perused the covers of his entire collection of Julius Schwartz-edited science-fiction comics of the ’50s and ’60s (i.e., Strange Adventures and Mystery in Space) in search of a cover on which the skyscrapers of New York City lie submerged beneath the sea, a concept Kashdan describes Julie and fellow editor Jack Schiff arguing about. Bob reports that this Gil Kane cover for Strange Adventures #113 (Feb. 1960) is the only DC comic he located that “meets the criteria.” [©2010 DC Comics.] (Right:) On the other hand, Stan Lee and his unabashed agents of Atlas had no such Schiff-like qualms, as per this Joe Maneely cover for Uncanny Tales (#35, Sept. 1955). The matching story inside was illustrated by Pete Tumlinson. Bob says he finally acquired a copy of this comic only after he e-mailed us this scan, so maybe Alter Ego was his good luck charm. “Now,” Bob says, “if I could only find that 1957 Nellie the Nurse that Bill [Everett] did and Mystery Tales #40. That’s the one that has become so scarce due to its appearance on Lost.” Good luck with your quest, Bob! [©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JA: Jack Miller had an assistant named Barbara Friedlander. Do you remember her? KASHDAN: She was basically an assistant editor. She would check the scripts for grammar and dialogue, correcting spelling mistakes. She was a bright girl, very witty, and snide in her conversations. If anybody hassled her, she’d come back with a good put-down reply. Once she heard Jack, Arnold, and me talking about whether astronauts would ever get to Mars. Someone said, “Where would they stay if they

“[The DC Editors] Often Got Into Arguments”

had to live on Mars?” And Barbara said, “How about the Mars Hilton?” That was her type of humor. [mutual chuckling]

“Bob [Kane] Did Not Know The English Language” JA: We talked a little about Gardner Fox. He was really an important writer for the company. KASHDAN: Gardner, when he wrote science-fiction, had a good sense of authenticity and didn’t go in for purple prose. He was very cooperative. Once I asked him to do a revision and the script came back fine, all revised. I think he wrote some “Space Ranger” stories. Gardner was an old pro, been in on the pulp days; he was still writing successful historical novels, making pretty good money on them. I can tell you something about Sheldon Moldoff, who was an excellent artist. When Mort, Jack, Murray, and I got individual books and features, Mort got his own “Superman” department. Sheldon did work for him. One day, Sheldon and I were talking. He could not understand why his work decreased after he told Mort that he and his wife were getting a free trip to Las Vegas. Mort used to resent writers and artists who had enough money to do things. If he thought one of his people was making too much money, he would cut back on the man’s work. Sheldon was a quiet, modest man. We knew he was doing some ghosting for Bob Kane [official creator/artist of “Batman”]. He didn’t talk about it. He talked about his relationship with Kane, and he often tried to defend him, as a good friend would. He would say, “Bob is a more sensitive man than you realize.”

A Dark Night—But In 1941? Probably Not.

JA: Was that true? KASHDAN: When Bob married Beverly, everybody thought she was a twit. She always came in like a society maiden who spends the whole morning in front of her mirror, and works on her hair, then chooses a wardrobe, and comes looking expensively dressed. She had a great body, and filled whatever clothes she wore; she looked good. We were talking about that one lunchtime, and Sheldon said, “I know Beverly. She married Bob, and she’s a lot more intelligent and sensitive than we realize.” And in a way, she knew what a screwball she was married to, and kept a leash on him, which he needed. Bob was a ladies’ man. He could draw a figure of Batman or a Joker, but he had no sense of composition. He needed ghosts. So what I remember is, Sheldon left “Batman,” and then went to work for Mort Weisinger, doing some “Superman.” [But he still ghosted for Kane.] JA: But Shelly only inked for Mort. Why did Shelly leave “Batman” for a while? KASHDAN: I think Bob had another ghost. JA: Jack Schiff said that Bob Kane brought in a

A Batman illo reputedly drawn and signed by Bob Kane. We received copies of what seems to be the very same drawing from both Jerry K. Boyd and Dominic Bongo—apparently taken from different sources, since the one from Dom (and Heritage Comics Archives?) lacks the “1941” date near the signature which is on the photocopy Jerry made of a page from a catalog. A photo of Kane was printed in A/E #93. [Batman TM & ©2010 DC Comics.]

ghost named Phil Kelsey, whom I know very little about. KASHDAN: Kelsey didn’t ghost for Kane. He was a pretty good artist. Phil Kelsey was a friend of Ed Herron, who introduced him to us. He was always broke and he had a booze problem, but he was reliable. Kelsey was rather adaptable. He didn’t have a sense of adventurous science-fiction, but I had him on “Space Ranger.” His artwork was weak in many places. It used to drive Arnold crazy. JA: Is there anything else about Moldoff that you remember? KASHDAN: He was a solid man. You could always enjoy his company. If he did any drinking, it would be like maybe one drink before lunch while we were all ordering our cocktails. JA: He got along well with Bob Kane. Did the editors? KASHDAN: His pencils layouts were always stiff and empty. Kane did not know the English language when he spoke, and he once said to Jack Schiff, [when Schiff complained about his work] “Hey, come on, Jack. What are you complaining about? You’ve got to admit my art is audible.” [laughter] He once came in and noticed Arnold typing a story. He said, “Write me a good story there, Arnold. Make it good and profane.” He massacred the English language. JA: Was he the type to remind everybody that he created “Batman”?

KASHDAN: He was constantly doing that. I think, basically, Finger really developed the concept, and then Bob Kane would get credit for those stories. In the beginning, nobody heard of Finger. Kane was the only man the readers knew about. Jim Amash's interview with George Kashdan will conclude next issue.

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

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

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Twice-Told EC—Part 2! by Michael T. Gilbert

Picto-Fiction! The Picto-Fiction line was EC’s attempt to avoid the restrictive Comics Code and to reach a more mature audience. Combining art with blocks of type, the ambitious experiment quickly died, largely due to distribution problems. Shock Illustrated #1 was their first title, cover-dated Oct. 1955.

The next year, for July 1956, they published their final Picto-Fiction magazine, Shock Illustrated #3. In 2006, Russ Cochran and Gemstone Publishing collected every Picto-Fiction magazine in a deluxe fourvolume set, including four previously unpublished issues! While the Picto-Fiction line was never very popular, even among EC fans, the magazines contain some outstanding art. The more upscale format encouraged many artists to produce some of their finest work. Better yet, the re-worked tales allow us to compare different versions of the same story illustrated by different artists, or even years later by the same artist! [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: This “Crypt” column was originally written around the time of A/E #91, which featured John Benson’s coverage of two stories mentioned on the following pages—“Ivan’s Woe!” and “Low Noon”—and at that time we asked Michael to delay its publication. Hence, this “Crypt” echoes a bit of information covered a few issues back—but as always, Michael’s put his own distinctive spin on things, so we both felt it was best to print the piece exactly as originally submitted. Enjoy!] (Top:) Jack Kamen drew two different splash pages for Confessions Illustrated #1 (Feb. 1956). The one at right is the published version, while the version at top left is a rejected splash, printed for the first time in Russ Cochran’s 2006 Complete EC Library. Lettering was added to the page for this printing. [©2010 EC Comics] (Left:) Different artists would sometimes re-do stories. George Evans drew “Curiosity Killed…” for Tales From The Crypt #36 (June 1953), and it was later reworked by Reed Crandall for Shock Illustrated #3 (July 1956).

Twice-Told EC—Part Two!

“The Thing From The Grave!” ’Good Lord! (Choke!) EC really got their money’s worth with this ofttold tale! It started life as a measly little text page titled “Out of the Grave!” in Moon Girl Fights Crime #7 (May 1949). The page was then reprinted in the first Haunt of Fear (#15, May 1950). Al Feldstein next drew the same story as an 8-pager for Tales from the Crypt #22 (Feb. 1951), as seen above right. A few years later, Joe Orlando redrew the whole furshlugginer thing in 3-D for Three Dimensional Tales from the Crypt of Terror! (seen at right). Then on May 8, 1990, it was adapted for HBO’s Tales from the Crypt TV series (seen below). Quite a run, eh? And that’s not even counting the various reprint comics and book collections over the years! The story? Jilted lover kills his ex’s boyfriend and buries him. After the creep locks up the girl, her boyfriend’s rotting corpse returns with a vengeance. Sort of like this story!

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

“Ivan’s-Woe” Howard Nostrand’s “Ivan’s-Woe” (Witches Tales #23, Feb. 1954) is actually a loving homage to the late great Wally Wood, rather than a simple swipe. Bhob Stewart, prefacing an interview with Nostrand, told about his visit to Wally Wood in the winter of 1967. As Bhob tells it, “Wally Wood pulled a Nostrand page out of his files. It was a remarkable parody of the joust Wood drew in his Two-Fisted Tales #34 story ‘Trial by Arms!’ Wood, who had never met Nostrand, seemed to derive a gleeful satisfaction from this parody, noting that was not a swipe, but that every panel was a new drawing from a completely different angle!” Nostrand himself commented on the story in the same 1968 interview, printed in Bill Spicer’s Graphic Story Magazine #16 (Summer 1974): “Like that thing “Ivan’s-Woe”... when I swiped Woody’s technique, … I was trying to zing Wally a little bit on that thing. And I wanted to flat out look like he did it ! ... so I spent more time on it this than I should have, just trying to make it look like Woody did it. An in-joke was the way it came out, with me the only one laughing, because nobody else knew what the hell I was doing!” Well, it’s sure taken a while, Howie, but we Alter Ego readers get it!

Twice-Told EC—Part Two!

“Low Noon” One of the most popular movies of 1952 was High Noon, an “adult” Western starring Gary Cooper as an aging sheriff fighting against overwhelming odds. It certainly made an impression on at least two cartoonists. Both Jack Davis and Howie Nostrand did takeoffs of the film. Davis wrote and drew “Betsy!” for EC’s Two-Fisted Tales #34 (July 1953) while editor (and usually writer and layout artist) Harvey Kurtzman was in the hospital recovering form jaundice; he incorporated a Cooper lookalike as part of the story (see below and bottom right).

Meanwhile, over at Harvey Comics, Howard Nostrand cranked out “Low Noon!” in a dead-on Jack Davis style for Black Cat Mystery #47 (Dec. 1953), as seen on the three pages repro’d at the top of this page. Comparing the two side-by-side, it’s hard to tell where the Nostrand version ends, and Davis’ begins. Both “Ivan’s-Woe” and “Low Noon” came out just a few months after the Wood and Davis stories.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

“V… For Wampire” Finally we have a real oddity—a thrice-told EC story! First we have “V-Vampires!,” a silly vampire satire by Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood (Mad #3, Feb. 1953). One year later, the same furshlugginer team completely redrew the same furshlugginer story for Three Dimensional EC Classics (above right)! Were these guys nuts?

Curiously, when Bhob Stewart asked Nostrand about it in a 1968 interview, the artist denied any influence. “I hadn’t seen Wood’s ‘VVampires,’” he insisted. “This was inspired by Bill Eisner.” Maybe “V-Vampires!” wasn’t the source for Nostrand’s story, but frankly, I’m not convinced. Compare them and judge for yourself!

Th-That’s all, folks. EC you next ish! Till next time…

Speaking of which, nutty Howard Nostrand followed up with an apparent parody of “V-Vampires!” titled “V... For Wampire!” for Harvey’s Flip! #1, (April 1954). His style, a perfect blend of Jack Davis and Wally Wood, really caught the feel of the original.

Comic Fandom Archive

Crudzine: Steve Gerber’s Fanzine That Couldn’t Shoot Straight A Ludicrous Landmark From The Golden Age of Comic Fandom

An Appreciation of Sorts by Roy Thomas (Presented by CFA Editor Bill Schelly)

n issues #89-91, Comic Fandom Archive presented John G. Pierce’s examination of my old Missouri buddy Steve Gerber’s early-1960s Headline, one of the first comics fanzines founded in the tradition of Jerry G. Bails’ original Alter-Ego. John’s three-part article, in turn, put me in mind of a particularly fond memory of Steve, from the 1962-65 days when, after a bit of correspondence between us, he and I and a few of his local friends would gather from time to time in his parents’ home in University City, a suburb of St. Louis. Despite the age gap (being in my early twenties, I was a few years older than they were, at a time when that sort of thing made a difference), we enjoyed each other’s company and shared several nice evenings discussing comics and related matters. And in 1965, seven years before I hired him as an assistant editor and budding writer at Marvel and he started on his path to glory with Man-Thing, Howard the Duck, et al., Steve and his pals brought to fruition a concept that was dear to my fannish heart. A little thing called… Crudzine. At that time, the term “crudzine,” now doubtless in disuse, referred to any fanzine—comics, science-fiction, or other—that was basically devoid of merit. At least to its more discerning readers, if not to its producers. Crudzines came in many varieties, but they all had several (sometimes all) of the following failings: Virtually no imparting of useful or even merely interesting information (this was often because they covered topics already familiar even to a fledgling fandom, and yet did it badly). Stylistic failures such as lousy sentence structure, poor punctuation, the division of one-syllable words at the ends of lines, and atrocious spelling. Just plain bad writing, period.

“One Of The Few Zines Worth Publishing!” Steve Gerber—and his cover for Crudzine #1-and-only. The portrait was reprinted in the Marvel house-produced fanzine FOOM #15 (Sept. 1976); original source and artist uncertain. [Gerber pic ©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Terrible (i.e., below the standard “mediocre”) fan artwork… whether accompanying historical articles or in the service of truly dreadful ama-strips (amateur comics stories). Poor production standards: illegibility… pages printed out of order and/or upside down from each other… that kind of thing. In short, crudzines—which in those days were usually printed with purple type and artwork on a spirit duplicator reproduction machine, though there were also mimeographed and even a few photo-offset specimens—had no reason for existence other than the egoboo (an old sffandom term meaning “ego boost”) of their so-called “creators” (we might call them “perpetrators”). My idea was that Steve and I should team up to produce a prime specimen of a “bad fanzine,” featuring all the above faults in a single oneshot publication, to be titled Crudzine. Its dual purpose would be to have a bit of fun (we all loved parody in general and the original four-color Mad in particular) and, perhaps, to give potential fan-publishers a yardstick against which to measure their own projected fanzines.

Comic Fandom Archive

time, with no real reference books on comics history in existence (that’s what early fandom was leading up to, after all), a researcher could be forgiven for not having all the facts at his disposal, even for so seminal a feature as “Batman.” Still, several of Steve’s sentences were parodic gems which echoed the worst of the early zines (and which referenced Biljo White’s Batmania, which was one of the best):

Bat’s All, Folks! Steve surrounded this art spot with text: “The Bat-symbol, too has undergone changes. Here are the changes it has undergone.” Reproduction of the art even from standard purple (as opposed to light “black”) masters was poor on this page—but then, lousy printing was yet another hallmark of the true crudzine, so perhaps he did it on purpose?

I’m not 100% sure when I suggested this mini-brainstorm to Steve— surely sometime in 1964, around the time I began devoting my nonteaching time to editing and publishing the first volume of Alter Ego, starting with #7, which came out late that year. Steve, in turn, enlisted the aid of his friends Steve Grant, Bruce Carlin, and Allen Goffstein… though for some reason not Paul Seydor, his partner-in-crime in Headline. At first we were all going to do Crudzine together; but I quickly came to realize that A/E was sucking up every free moment I had or was likely to have. (Eventually, I didn't even find time to concoct my advertised “interview with Stan Lee's third cousin.”) So Steve (and when I refer to “Steve” hereafter, I mean Gerber, not Grant, whom I don’t specifically recall) decided he and his gang would produce the zine themselves… which, by that point, was exactly what I hoped he would say. It took quite a few months for them to put it together, but it was apparently printed sometime in ’65, and I’ve held on to my copy ever since. Simply to peruse it, even now, is to be reminded, albeit with a bit of wincing, of all the truly horrible fanzines that popped up in those days. A brief overview of Crudzine’s 26 pages, I suspect, will get the idea across. (And please forgive the fact that I didn't have the energy to type “[sic]” after every misspelled word!) It begins with a cover by Steve (signed “SG”). The title logo is a parody of Alter Ego’s, and of the slogan Ronn Foss had dreamed up for it: “Featuring Comic Heroes of the Past, Present, and Future.” (See the first page of this article for the cover of Crudzine #1. That’s far better than my describing it.) As Steve told me later, he came to realize as he worked on the zine that he was, in part, burlesquing the faults of Headline and his own early comics creations. Of course, we’d all done things that veered too close for comfort to the contents of Crudzine. Hopefully, however, we’d learned from our mistakes. So did some other “crudzine” editor/publishers. But alas, not nearly all. Actually, it’s a bit tricky to read Crudzine—which may be part of the point—’cause when you open it, you discover the front cover is printed upside down to the rest of the issue, so that its final interior page is on the cover’s back side. But, just for the sake of inconsistency (a true crudzine, you see, couldn’t even be wrong with 100% consistency): on the third page is a pin-up… which few if any readers would’ve wanted to pin up anywhere, even on a dartboard. It sports a Gerber drawing of “The Green Lantern of 1960’s”—“Fighter of Justice!”—“fighter of realistic alien menaces! Better than ever in 1965!” Only when you flip the mag and ignore its nondescript back cover do you come face to face with Steve’s two-page article: “A Complete History of BATMAN from the Beginning and including ROBIN!!!” In it, Steve parodied the worst of the fan-historical writers. At that

I think I read someplace that BATMAN began his career in the issue DETECTIVE COMICS #27. I think I read it in BATMANIA. In this issue (DETECTIVE COMICS #27, not BATMANIA), BATMAN did not have Robin. In fact, Batman never had Robin. His mother had him, though Dr. Wertham says this may not be so…. If 1 is to be a compleat BATMANIAC, he must have 100 comics of Batman to qualify for it. If not, he just can’t and that’s not fair, ’cause I have only three and need 97 more….

Mentioning that the “Batman” titles had recently been taken over by editor Julius Schwartz, he opined: “Our hero just isn’t the same anymore. He now has a new look, but I thought he could see alright before.” And: BATman still appears monthly in two fine comics— DETECTIVE and BATMAN. He appears eight times a year in JUSTICE LEAGUE and WORLD’S FINEST, except JUSTICE LEAGUE where he isn’t in every issue except the ones he’s in. He is a popular character with a high circulation. He will be on TV very soon, if he isn’t already because our zine was delayed. The next page consisted of a “Reader’s Pole,” basically a parody of the Alley fan poll as covered in Jerry Bails’ Alter-Ego #4 (1962)—by Yours Truly, as “secretary” of the Academy of Comic-Book Fans and Collectors which Jerry had conceived. The “pole” listed the “Top Ten Comic Books” in order as Archie’s The Mighty Crusaders, followed by the seven regularly published comics in which Superman appeared, plus Batman and Superman Annual. The Favorite (indeed, only) Artist listed was Carmine Infantino (“unanimous decision”), with a tie between Gardner Fox and Stan Lee (“twelve votes each apiece”), and “Origin of Nukla” (a Dell hero) as “Favrwritten Storey.” The “Favorite Editor” category was announced as a “24-way tie between every editor in the business except Bill Harriss who is no longer in the buisnsse [sic].” Bill Harris (with one “s”) had only recently resigned his position as editor of the new line of comics published under the Western’s Gold Key imprint. “Headlined” [sic] was listed as #1 under “Best Zine,” with Crudzine somehow coming in second; the other three places were taken up by Searchlight News Disc, Comic Caper, and Comi-Rama. (I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some of these last were actual zines, as well… though whether they were true “crudzines” or not I couldn’t say.) “Best Fan Writer” was “Steve Gerber [&] Steve Grant – ANOTHER TIE!!!!”—with the “Best Fan Comic Strip” award won by “THE GREEN RABBIT” (which somehow also managed to come in fifth in that category)—backed up by “Ex Lax – the Human Cat” (a name that’s a parody of Richard “Grass” Green’s “Xal-Kor the Human Cat”), “Captain and Alter-Ego” (a takeoff on Biljo White’s “Alter and Captain Ego” in A/E (Vol. 1) #7, and “The vindo Viper,” whatever that means—probably a side“svipe” at a Ronn Foss fan-strip called “The Viper.” One slightly puzzling category at this point in time, the last on the page, was the “Best Fan Projectt”—which was “Paul Gambaccini’s Resignation.” Paul, who was currently serving as the “executive secretary”

Crudzine: Steve Gerber’s Fanzine That Couldn’t Shoot Straight

(i.e., head) of the ACBFC, might’ve ruffled a feather or two among fans—I don’t recall, since certainly he didn’t ruffle mine—so I’ve no idea why Steve deemed this a humorous entry. Perhaps Paul himself can enlighten us, since he’s still around—living in London, as he has for many years, and (so far as I know) still hosting programs for BBC radio and television. On the next page, Gerber spoofed my A/E #4 analysis of the voting. The “pole,” he said, was “based on a random fandom.” Steves Gerber and Grant had “decided the winners unbiasedly and without prejudgice, and we cast twelve votes apiece for each categorie. Rest ashore that this system in accurate, comprehensively, and well-done.” Then, after another “pin-up”—an alternate version of the zine’s Batman cover—came the ama-strip “Introducing—The Green Rabbit.” Its splash page was done in three colors: the basic art in “black” (actually dark gray, an alternative to the usual purple masters used for type)… green for part of the hero’s costume… and red (along with more green) in the giant radioactive carrot which is his “one weakness.” Steve, as John G. Pierce pointed out, was one of the pioneers of the ama-strip. In this one he lampooned that growing fandom phenomenon in an 8-page tale featuring Clark Crud, who, when he hears “a desperate call for help” (“Help! I’m desperate!”), ducks into a handy storeroom and emerges garbed as The Green Rabbit. Well, actually, the first time he emerged, he was duded up as the 1960s Green Lantern, with actual green color added—“Right color, wrong hero!”—so he ducked back into the storeroom, to return in another guise, but without added hues this time: “We’re outa color,” says the costumed character, “but even so, I’m The Green Rabbit now!” “Leaping with the force of 1000 rabbits” thanks to his “rabbit feet,” “the heroic hare” uses his “hyper-sensitive rabbit-ear anteannae” to locate a victim of the evil Doctor Dirt… alias Dr. Wertham R. Nasty.

High Angst-iety This panel took up the top two-thirds of the eighth and final page of the “Green Rabbit” story in Crudzine. Art and script by Steve Gerber.

In a flashback to his origin, we learn that Dr. Nasty had given Clark his powers via a serum “made from the distilled ectoplasm of this radioactive rabbit” in a laboratory cage. “It’s green!” gasps Clark. “A result of the radioactivity—like with Dr. Solar!” responds Nasty. “Now drink!!!” The story is a fun romp—assuming one is in the proper mood to appreciate a truly badly-done amateur comic story that makes every mistake in the book. For instance, when the hero first appears, the words “THE GREEN RAB” are written on his chest—as if the artist had run out of room. On the next page, a hyphen has been added after “RAB” and the three letters “BIT” below it, and the hero explains: “Instead of simply The Green Rab—it now says THE GREEN RABBIT—my full name, to strike still greater terror yet into crook’s hearts!!” Steve proves adept, too, at parodying the footnote—originally championed in comics by DC’s Julius Schwartz, then perfected by Stan Lee, who’d written in a note in the “Human Torch” feature in Strange Tales that that teenager appeared “thru the courtesy of the Fantastic Four magazine”—as if both weren’t published by the same company. Steve first has Dr. Nasty proclaim that his potion will make Clark Crud “a Superman*”—with a note saying “*The word Superman is © 1965 by DC Comics and is used with thier kind permission!!!” Not much of a joke, perhaps… but a page or so later, he draws the Hulk into a panel, with this footnote: “*The Hulk appears by courtesy DC Comics who really don’t care where the heck he appears because he’s owned by Marvel!” Doctor Dirt’s super-power turn out to be his ability to bury The Green Rabbit under a huge pile of dirt (what else?)—“All radioactive!” The “villian” is out to gain revenge on one Ingrid Nirtz, who ratted on him and thus foiled “my project to fill the Suez Canal with synthetic dirt.” Naturally, Ingrid loves GR and loathes Clark Crud… an omnipresent cliché from the Golden Age on up. On the final page, GR indulges in a bit of Spider-Man-style soliloquizing, as seen above. Okay, so it wasn’t Harvey Kurtzman—but I found it funny. I still do.

Making A Splash Gerber’s splash page for “Introducing--- The Green Rabbit.” If you don’t believe Steve did it all—look at the credits!

Next came a 4-page “Authoratative Index to Justice League of America”—Steve Grant’s (bylined) parody of Jerry Bails’ correctly-spelled

Comic Fandom Archive

John Stanley (not the Little Lulu artist, surely) of San Francisco had seen the Crudzine ad in Rocket’s Blast Comicollector: “If only more had your good taste and sense of humor. Mainly your honesty. For many fanzines are indeed bad. Some are unreadable. I am enclosing a quarter for a sample copy of CRUDZINE. I hope I am not disappointed.” So do we.

A Salute From The Steves For the illo that accompanied the issue’s editorial, Steve returned to his signature style, seen in Headline—and, 2-3 years earlier, by Ye Editor, in those “Legion of Super-Heroes”-style comics SG drew on sheets with roughly the consistency of paper towels.

Authoritative Index to the Justice Society. Following a page of poorly rendered heads of the members of the JLA, the second page of the index, amazingly, actually is an index, detailing the issues of JLA and The Brave and the Bold in which individual members had appeared—the proper art credits for “Michael” Sekowsky, Bernard Sachs, and Murphy Anderson— and the “writers” (“Gardner Fox (28B-30B, 1-35).” Perhaps this was Steve’s way of saying that, even in a crudzine, some things got done right. But then, of course, Grant had to scribble in a couple of bits of additional information between the lines, managing to include the misspellings “Justiece” and “Dr. Midnight”—the latter by containing the correct spelling of “Midnight.” Crudzine editors were so incompetent they didn’t realize that some words are misspelled on purpose. The main humor of the piece is the listing, on the final two pages of the piece, of the first 38 Justice League issues and stories, rife with “typos” such as “Outcats of Infity” and leaden descriptions, like this one for #32: “‘A Tack of the Star-Bolt Warior.’ (24 pp.) The starbolt gets them. (3 chap.)” Being a crudzine editor, of course, Steve Grant can’t express the facts clearly even when he has them at his fingertips. In referring to JLA #16, in which an offstage character was named “Jerry Thomas,” he adds in parentheses: “(A later story said it was writen by Jerry Bails and Roy Thomas and drawn too.”) I swear to Crom that, although I can’t recall them right now, I had read actual lines in fanzines that were every bit as semi-intelligible as the foregoing. A half-page personal “ad” from Steven Grant closes the piece. He offers for sale such items as the “Original artwork to Li’l Jinx insert in Jughead #798” for $15… “Jack Kirby’s autograph” for 15¢… a copy of Alter Ego #7 for 10¢…and “the original masters to CRUDZINE #1” for $7.50. It was a semi-inspired bit of nonsense, next, to have a “Letters to your Editors – Steve Gerber, Roy Thomas, Steve Grant, Bruce Carlin, Allen Goffstein!!” section—and totally inspired to include a number of actual letters generated in response to ads for Crudzine that had appeared in a fanzine or three. The lead-off note from “Jerry Bails” may (or may not) be authentic: Dear Editors: Without a doubt the highlight of the ish was the “Authoritative Index to the Justice League of America.” Here was a superb compilation of useless fact that any fanzine would be proud to publish. Superfluous! After an inarticulate letter-defense of “the Schiff years” of Batman came the announcement: “And now, CRUDZINE does what no fanzine ever dared before—print the letters we received ordering our magnificent mag!” There were no less than eleven such, a few with recognizable names (of people not really known to Gerber and company at the time).

Since the ad had said to “Send us a nickel and we will totally ignore you—send us 25¢ and we’ll send you a copy,” Richard Jankoski of Dunkirk, NY, wrote: “Dear Sir: I am sending you 5¢ for the utterly ignore and hear [sic] is 25¢ for the copy of CRUDZINE all right?” There was also a letter from “R. Buckler” of Detroit, Michigan—yep, the future comic book artist, though he was still several years away from prodom. The issue’s final article, with a Gerber byline and drawing of Fly Man, Shield, Black Hood, and “The Comment” (for The Comet), was titled: “A Complete Capsule 2-Page History of the MIGHTY CRUSADERS from the Beginning and—Including Thunder Agents!!!!” “The stories,” it says, “are written by Jerry Shuster who drew the dialog for Superman back in the 1940’s when he started in 1938. He signs the stories Jerry Ess, because he doesn’t’ want DC to know where he’s working. We thot it’s be fun to print the truth, send a copy to Mort Weisinger, and see what happens. Who says fans can’t affect the comics??? (I’m a sadist. I like sad stories.)” The final interior page—after that GL pin-up described earlier—is an editorial headed by a Gerber drawing (see above left) of himself, Steve Grant, and a different Comet, one of the Gerber fan-heroes seen in Headline #1. Titled “The Crudded Zine” in homage to my own editorial page (“The Altered Ego”), it mostly consists of the Steves (whether one or both of them wrote it is never made clear) lambasting the editor/ publishers of the crudzines being lampooned. The editorial ends: Now, as a final word to fanzine editors: IF YOUR ZINE LOOKS ANYTHING, REPEAT - - ANYTHING - - like the magazine you have just read… BURN ALL COPIES AND DESTROY THE MASTERS! (That last sentence was hand-scribed… but, for once, without a single misspelled word. The editors wanted to make sure they got their point across.) The Gerber-spearheaded Crudzine was not a work of genius, perhaps. However, it foreshadowed, at least to some small extent, the wacky persona and intellect which would be unleashed on the comics world when Steve became a pro in 1972. It was so lovingly done—with attention paid to every detail, to make it quasi-literate but not totally illiterate— that, except perhaps for its title giving it away, it’s not difficult to conceive of some 1965 reader receiving a copy in the mail and believing it was a serious publication. In its own way—perhaps it was. Thanks, Steve. I never glance thru my dog-eared copy of Crudzine without spotting some new outlandishness I’d previously overlooked… …and laughing. That’s one thing you were always good at, old buddy. Making us laugh… even if through our tears. Mitchell Senft advises us that readers who’ve enjoyed these pieces on Steve Gerber’s fanzine work may be interested in reading about his professional work in comics and animation at www.thegerbercurse.yolasite.com

In Memoriam

Shel Dorf (1933-2009) “The Supreme Fan Of Comics” by Mark Evanier

hel Dorf, who passed away on Nov. 3, 2009, knew virtually every major comics creator and dedicated much of his life to promoting their greatness and saluting their work. That’s the first thing you ought to know about Shel… that he was the supreme fan of comics, especially of newspaper comic strips.

The second thing, of course, is that he was the founder of the entity we now know as the Comic-Con International in San Diego, California. One of its longtime nicknames was “DorfCon,” because he was so much a presence at it, so much responsible for its existence. There has been a tendency to give him all the credit, as if he single-handedly threw the first con and most that followed; that is wrong to the extent that it deprives others of their place in that history. But it is not wrong to say that, without Shel, there would have been no San Diego Con by any name. Shel was born in Detroit, Michigan, on July 5, 1933. He fell in love with comics at an early age and began clipping his favorite strips from newspapers and pasting them into keepsake scrapbooks. His love of comics led him to study art at Cass Technical High School and the Chicago Art Institute, and he made unsuccessful attempts throughout his career to sell his own strip or to work in the field. The closest he came— and it was, along with the con, the pride of his life—was being hired by Milton Caniff to letter the Steve Canyon strip during the last 14 years of its existence. He got that job because he’d become a good friend of Caniff ’s… close enough that the legendary artist honored him by making him into a character who appeared several times in the Canyon strip: a well-meaning football player named “Thud Shelley.” Jack Kirby also made Shel into a character… a father figure named Himon in Mister Miracle. It seemed appropriate for Shel to be a part of comics, because comics were so much a part of Shel. It was his friendship with so many creators that led him to help put on the Detroit Triple Fan-Fairs in the ’60s and then, when he moved to San Diego, to rally fans there to start something similar. Shel was the president and/or chairman of the San Diego Comic-Con for many years. There’s a long, uncomfortable story of how he came to be estranged from the organization. Many of us witnessed it (and tried to help), but it was one of those problems that just could not be solved, at least to his satisfaction. This isn’t the place for a detailed account, so I’ll just say the following: Shel’s zeal built the con, but at some point, those doing the actual handson work of running it found that the convention had become too big, in both a practical and legal sense, to be run the way he wanted to run it. He

was offered roles and jobs, but none he liked, and he chose instead to stop participating and attending.

Shel Dorf And Friends Shel Dorf (on right in photo) with his boss, friend, and idol Milton Caniff (center) and Gasoline Alley writer/artist Dick Moores at Caniff’s Palm Springs, California, home. The creator of Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon holds an original Gasoline Alley daily. The two artists were fans of each other. Thanks to photographer Dave Thorne, and to Greg Koudoulian—both charter members of The Official Shel Dorf Fan Club and Entourage; you can learn more about it by contacting Greg at sfmedia@earthlink.net.

I believe the last Comic-Con he attended was The Steve Canyon daily below was drawn by Milt Caniff in 2001, (probably with his longtime assistant Dick Rockwell) for because he Air Forces Day, Aug. 17, 1985—and was lettered by Shel wanted to see Dorf. It was reprinted in the 1987 Eclipse book Milton Broom-Hilda Caniff’s America: Reflections of a Drawingboard Patriot, artist/writer edited by Shel. [©2010 Estate of Milton Caniff.] Russell Myers. (One of the lesser but constant areas of disagreement Shel had with the management of the con was his feeling that more attention should be paid to newspaper strips.) Soon after that, he became reclusive and eventually housebound. Until the last year or so, we spoke every few months on the phone, not really about anything. He did insist he was not unhappy that he had severed all ties with the convention or that he had sold off (or donated to universities) his wonderful, extensive collection of comic strips and memorabilia. I couldn’t tell if he really felt that way or if he just wanted me to think he really felt that way… so I just decided it was better for both of us if I believed he really felt that way. The last year or so of his life was spent in a hospital where he was kept technically alive on a bank of machines. I visited Shel in that hospital right after the con this past year and it was one of the saddest moments I can recall. The convention is, of course, his legacy, but it goes much deeper than that. Shel was a big booster of new talent. He wanted very much to be in comics himself, and it was almost like he said, “If I can’t make it, I’ll do everything I can to help everyone else.” He encouraged and aided a number of young writers and artists who went on to become major talents, and of course the very existence of that convention has made hundreds, perhaps thousands of careers not only in comics but in allied fields, as well. Those of us who care about comics are forever in his debt.

The above is an abridged version of Mark’s original tribute/ obituary on his informative website www.newsfromme.com. Another place you can read about Shel is the Shel Dorf Tribute site, erected by several of the folks who also deserve kudos for starting the San Diego Comic-Con.

In Memoriam

Jim Harmon (1933-2010) “Mr. Radio” by Don Glut

im Harmon, known to many of his friends and fans as “Mr. Radio,” has left the airwaves. Jim (born in 1933), after years of poor health, died of a heart attack on February 16, 2010. He and I were friends (and sometimes collaborators) for nearly half a century. But let’s “return to those thrilling days of yesteryear…”

I first met Jim in June 1962, the very same moment that I met Bob Burns and the late Ron Haydock, two professionals whose names were also well known to genre fans. We’d all gathered at a screening room at CBS, where Bob was an editor, to watch some of my amateur movies. At the time, all three of us (plus special-effects artist Paul Blaisdell) were putting out a new magazine called Fantastic Monsters of the Films. Jim was that periodical’s associate editor. He also wrote many of “FanMo”’s articles. A very creative man, Jim wore many hats (including a couple of the 10gallon style). He was an established writer of both fiction (mostly sciencefiction) and nonfiction, but also dabbled in other arenas. He was an editor of both books and periodicals, wrote comic-strip scripts, was a motion picture actor (he was one of Ray Dennis Steckler’s “Lemon Grove Kids”), and appeared as a guest on radio and television talk shows and as a “talking head” in various video documentaries. Among Jim’s greatest loves in life was the Western genre, on radio, TV, in comic books, pulp magazines and Big Little Books, but mostly the old “B” cowboy films, particularly those starring such heroes of his youth as Buck Jones and Tim McCoy. His favorite cowboy hero, however, was the legendary Tom Mix. Jim may have been the world’s greatest fan of old-time radio (“OTR”) programs and did his best not only to preserve that art form, but also to keep it alive. His books The Great Radio Heroes and The Great Radio Comedians—just two of his many written works on his beloved topic— became national bestsellers and have been reprinted. He also produced/wrote/ directed/acted in various new radio dramas, in which he cast many former radio, TV, and movie stars (Les Tremayne, Kirk Alyn, Jack Lester, Jock Mahoney, John Abbott, Art Hern, and others). Thus, in doing his own radio shows—some of which were aired or came out on audio cassette and CD—Jim got to work with some

Harmony (Above:) Jim, seen at far right in photo, was indeed “Mr. Radio”—but he and Don Glut (seen on left) were also good friends with Kirk Alyn (center), the actor who portrayed Superman in the 1948 and ’50 Columbia movie serials. Thanks to Don for this photo. (Below:) Jim and Barbara Harmon and their dog Leslie enjoy a walk around Pioneerstown in 2007. Jim was also an inveterate comics fan, and, as related in The All-Star Companion, Vol. 4, in 1957 he wrote one of the first nostalgia pieces ever celebrating the Golden Age of Comic Books—in his fanzine column called “Harmony.” Photo sent by Jim.

of his own “radio heroes.” Two of Jim’s favorite old-radio shows of all time were Carlton E. Morse’ I Love a Mystery and Tom Mix and His Ralston Straight Shooters. It’s no surprise, then, that among Jim’s proudest (and most pleasurable) achievements were working with creator Morse himself, bringing back new audio dramas of I Love a Mystery, and, also with original sponsor Ralston Purina company, a new Tom Mix series, the latter starring Curley Bradley, the actor who’d played the title role back in the 1940s. Jim and I sometimes worked together on projects. Together we wrote the books The Great Movie Serials: Their Sound and Fury and The Great Television Heroes. Later, when Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas hired Jim to edit that company’s Monsters of the Movies magazine, Jim brought me on board as an associate editor and staff writer. During this phase of his career, Jim’s love for his favorite cowboy star sometimes worked its way into articles ostensibly about horror characters (as in his article about Peter Cushing’s favorite movie star Tom Mix). I also worked on some of Jim’s radio-style drama series, including Mini-Drama, as both a writer and actor. Jim Harmon was a Straight-Shooter, a kemo-sabe, and a loyal member of Captain Midnight’s Secret Squadron—and I think he really did like to eat hot Ralston and drink (from a Little Orphan Annie shake-up mug, of course) chocolate-flavored Ovaltine. He is survived by his very devoted wife Barbara, who was also a valuable collaborator in many of his projects. She was also the world’s number one Jim Harmon fan. A lot of us who know Jim Harmon—either personally or only through his work—will also miss him. Don Glut wrote numerous comics for Gold Key, Marvel, and others, especially in the 1970s, and is currently writing and direction sf/horror films. See his article on his Dagar the Invincible comic in Alter Ego #92 for more on his career—and on his available films.

[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)—and last issue we re-presented that debut column for the very first time in the pages of Alter Ego, wherein Marc took us back to 1941 and his first day at Fawcett Publications. We now reprint his second “We Didn’t Know…” installment from FCA #55 (1996), as the artist brings us back to the end of his second day at Fawcett Publications, when he and C.C. Beck grabbed a bite to eat and talked shop at a nearby café. —P.C. Hamerlinck.]

C.C.

Beck and I were seated across from one another at the Blue Ribbon Café on, I believe, 45th Street. We had just left work, my second day at Fawcett Publications. It was 1941. On our walk over from the Paramount Building, Beck had begun to talk, and I got to know him pretty well that night. He obviously enjoyed discussing comics and drawing, and he kept me laughing at the manner in which he illustrated his views.

Café Conversation “I like to see some logic behind the directions the characters take,” he said. “If a guy says he’s going to the kitchen and he heads off to the right, then in the next panel, still on his way to the kitchen, he is drawn—for sake of composition, I suppose — heading to the left, some little kid just learning to read is going to say, ‘Hey, look! He’s coming back from the kitchen!’” Beck laughed, “And he hasn’t even been there yet!”

(Above:) Marc Swayze and C.C. Beck talked shop and got better acquainted with one another at the Blue Ribbon Café in NYC after Marc’s second day on the job at Fawcett in 1941. During their conversation, Beck informed Marc that “some of the top comic book artists in the city” had submitted Captain Marvel samples to Fawcett, but none of their renderings really looked liked the World’s Mightiest Mortal … except for Swayze’s. At top is a photo of Marc Swayze from the ’50s, next to a 2006 sketch he drew for Belgian collector Dominique Leonard; directly above is C.C. Beck’s cover to CMA #3, (Aug.-Sept. 1941), plus a ’42 headshot of Beck at Fawcett. [Shazam hero TM & ©2010 DC Comics]

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

Rogers. He was then assigned one of the first flying strips, Skyroads. Some months prior to my joining him, he signed a contract to do his own strip, Flyin’ Jenny. When I reported, he was doing the whole thing by himself, writing the daily strip and Sunday page, penciling, inking, and lettering. “What did you do when you first got there?” Beck asked. “Lettering,” I said. “And I was terrible! I’m surprised he didn’t send me home the first day!” Beck wanted to hear of other professional work I had done, so I told him of having illustrated when in high school a magazine featuring a couple of World War I doughboys, and while with Keaton, of selling gag cartoons to music magazines. “How’d you end up here?” he asked. “With Fawcett, I mean.” Russell Keaton had said I was wasting my time as an assistant and ought to be where the action was … New York or Chicago.

“Good-Bye, Dolly!” Marc Swayze retired as a milkman to become comic strip artist Russell Keaton’s assistant—and in the Sept. 21, 1940, Flyin’ Jenny strip, Swayze integrated into a panel his former occupation and his old horse Dolly who used to pull his milk wagon. [Flyin’ Jenny TM & ©2010 The Bell Syndicate]

“I like for the pictures to tell a story,” he said. “And I don’t like to see a page cluttered up with a bunch of odd-shaped panels fitted into it like a jigsaw puzzle. Why make the reader have to go to a lot of trouble to follow the story?” “As for action,” he continued, “action should appear where it belongs … where the story calls for it … not in every panel along the way. It annoys me to see a beautifully drawn scene of a character dashing at full speed … to answer the telephone. When action is wasted like that, it is less effective when it’s really needed.” Then he suddenly asked, “What did you do before you came here?” It was apparent he had not seen the résumé I sent to Eddie Herron and Al Allard. So I gave him the whole ball of wax, skimming over the childhood drawings of horses and cowboys, the teenage sketches of ballplayers, the yearbook illustrations. I told of finishing one school in music and another in art, of working at summer camps, of playing ball and holding down a double job playing music at night and delivering milk during the day. Beck must have been bored with it all, but he perked up when I mentioned working with veteran comic strip artist, Russell Keaton. “How’d you get that job?” he asked. It was easy to remember. I had just come in from my milk route and had a call from Louisiana Tech. A member of the faculty, a relative of Keaton’s, learned he was looking for an assistant. I sent him some samples. “He called, we talked, and then it was good-bye, Dolly!” I said. “Who was Dolly?” asked Beck. “The horse who pulled my milk wagon!” I laughed. I’ve referred to Russell Keaton as a veteran, but he must have been barely thirty when I joined him. In pure knowledge of comic strips and drawings, however, he was indeed a veteran. He attended the Chicago Academy and had gone directly to work with Dick Calkins on Buck

“So I sent out résumés,” I told beck. “Eddie Herron’s response was one of the first.”

Funny thing, in all the days that I knew C.C. Beck, he never once told me that Captain Marvel had been modeled after actor Fred MacMurray, although in later years the claim was made in his interviews and editorial writing. On that night he simply said he had borrowed features from various movie actors. He mentioned Frederic March, Robert Young, and Cary Grant, and MacMurray’s name may have been among them. It’s pretty obvious in looking back through the Fawcett books that there was a strong resemblance between Captain Marvel and the latter actor. But not in the beginning! In the very early art, both face and figure were thinner, the nose less tilted, the mouth tight-lipped. I would have thought first of Frederic March as a likeness. For that matter, the early Captain Marvel resembles somewhat the actor who played the part in the first Captain Marvel film, Tom Tyler. This would be purely coincidental, of course, as it is doubtful that a movie was in mind in 1939. (Tom Tyler must have been one of the ageless wonders. He was one of my favorite cowboy actors when I was a kid. Another coincidence!)

I believe Beck was sincere in both instances. As time passed, Captain Marvel underwent the changes common in the development of so many cartoon characters. The need for a greater variety of expressions, for example, may have brought about a roundness of the jaw, more emphasis on the dimples, and so on. It is possible that Captain Marvel came to resemble that great actor who played such a variety of roles, without anyone realizing the change. Then, when it became apparent and Beck was asked about it in later years, he may have given the simpler answer. At any rate, I’m glad that I wasn’t concerned with getting a likeness of a living person. After all, I was not there to draw MacMurray or March or anyone else. My job was to draw Captain Marvel. I felt very comfortable as we left the café when Beck said: “I’m glad you’re here. Before you came, the work of some of the top comic book artists in the city was reviewed, but their samples just didn’t look like Captain Marvel. Yours did.” Marc Swayze’s Golden Age memoirs will continue next issue.

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L.A.X.(TRA, XTRA!)

was born here in La-La-Land—specifically South Central Los Angeles (the neighborhood so nice they thought renaming it just ‘South Los Angeles’ would make it nicer. Gee, wonder how that’s workin’ out!)—on Nov. 26th, 1957 (which, à la The Flintstones… an early omen… was actually “Trash Day”!) and have lived in Cali all my life and love it too much to ever leave. Fave comics: was then—and now— primarily a DC/National dude, so Superman, Batman, Flash, Metamorpho, Metal Men, Jack Kirby’s Fourth World series, and my proverbial favorite, the original “Dial H For Hero!” Fave cartoons: no. 1 with a bullet was the Bullwinkle Show, followed closely by Space Ghost and the Hanna-Barbera Super Adventure pantheon, Globetrotters, Superman/Batman/Aquaman (Filmation versions), The Archies, The Banana Splits, Josie and the Pussycats (take out the laugh tracks on its DVD release—how dare you!!!), George of the Jungle, Hardy Boys, Jonny Quest… and let’s not forget Clutch Cargo! (On second thought…) My mom said that, when she was a little girl in the South, she read and collected comic books, including Captain Marvel… which, for one who was a black girl, let alone a girl in the South, was unusual (not to mention scary, considering how her oldest son turned out!). She said I used to tear through the Herald-Examiner newspaper when I was two, making my way right to the funnies section… while destroying Dad’s sports sections in the process! My favorite strips were The Heart of Juliet Jones, Steve Canyon, and, again no. 1 with a bullet: Ripley’s Believe It or Not! (And that was before I discovered the pre-1949 ones that Rip himself

Animation Transformation TV animated cartoon artist Darrell McNeil’s recent re-creation of Filmation’s Marvel Family transformation scene for FCA, colored by KAS Graphics. [Shazam heroes TM & ©2010 DC Comics.]

[mostly] did.) He (Robert Ripley) became one of my early comic influences, along with Jack Kirby (natch!), Carmine Infantino, Joe Shuster, Mike Sekowsky, Neal Adams, and, in comics but mainly toons, my mentor, future workmate, and bestest friend, my “Unca,” Alexander Toth.

How I Got Big, Red, & Cheesey As I started to gravitate towards the fairer sex in both real and comics life, I picked up, and was intrigued with, DC’s “Captain Marvel” revival in the early ’70s. (And, yes, before The [Jim] Steranko History of Comics, I too thought Gomer Pyle invented the word “Shazam!”) I have to admit the Captain himself didn’t do that much for me (I thought Supey’d kick his Big Red Rear myself!), nor Cap Jr., which my kid self saw as a Superboy rip-off. (What can I say? I was a kid!) But, when it came to the third member of the Marvel Family… well, not at first. I admire C.C. Beck, mind you… but chicks just weren’t his thing, man. However, a few issues into the new Shazam! run she gained both a new solo series and an artist named Bob Oksner… and I was in luv!!! He brought Mary Marvel to 2D life, combining perkiness, cuteness, and one pair of hot gams (legs to you!) into a package that had me go: “Wonder Who?” (Not to mention “Super What?,” “Bat Huh?”). Marvel… they didn’t have anybody comparable then, except the Invisible Girl… and I couldn’t see her. (Yeah, like you didn’t see that joke coming!) So what, you axe, did Mary Marvel have that no other comic book super-babe had at that time?

Zha-Vam!! (Above:) As a young “Little D,” McNeil was exposed to (and counts among his all-time favorite series of “Superman” stories) the Otto Binder-created Captain Marvelesque villain Zha-Vam, seen here in scenes from Action Comics #352 (July 1967); art by Wayne Boring. (Right:) The god-powered bad boy, along with his later exposure to Mary Marvel, inspired McNeil to create his own god-powered good girl, Shannon Lee Collyer, rendered in 1974 by Neal Adams. [Superman art ©2010 DC Comics; Shannon Lee Collyer TM & © GMP.]

Slippers. (Slippers???)

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

Love That Bob! (Oksner, That Is) (Left:) C.C. Beck had re-designed Mary Marvel’s costume with slippers (and brought back the shorter “tennis” skirt from Marc Swayze’s original character design) simultaneously with Otto Binder’s infusion of “EC New Trend”/horror elements into the trio’s adventures commencing in Marvel Family #71 (May 1952)—wherein Beck and Kurt Schaffenberger alternated on the series’ story illustration. Beck’s tank-top look for Mary was ephemeral, however, as her short sleeves came back for good in the following issue. [Shazam heroes TM & ©2010 DC Comics.] (Center:) Bob Oksner’s illo for DC’s Who’s Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #14 (April ’86) demonstrates what made readers love that girl (Mary Marvel, not Marlo Thomas; ask your parents). [©2010 DC Comics] (Right:) Darrell’s ‘Linda the Liberty Belle’ character, drawn 35 years ago back when he was a kid, shows the influence of Mary Marvel’s then-modern look, with the additional touch of a “bell”-shape to her mini-skirt. [TM & ©2010 GMP.]

Yep. Slippers. Back then, in the early ’70s, most if not all supergals wore either flatheeled boots, high-heeled boots (if Jack Kirby drew ’em, could we call them “Jackboots”?), or high-heeled shoes. Li’l ol’ Mary Marvel wore gold slippers that frankly were more practical than heels for super-hero-ing and were much sexier (or whatever term my pre-teen self then thought of) than boots. And no other heroine at that time in comics (unless there was a “Super-Dorothy” comic that I was unaware of) wore them. (At least not until Supergirl later switched to them… and she was also drawn by Mr. Oksner at the time. Coincidence? I don’t think so!) It so influenced my nascent super-heroine-making-up-self that I dressed/designed some super-gals of my own, the Liberty Belles, in multi-colored Mary Marvelinspired costumes, combining Mary’s basic suit and shoes with the collars worn by Josie’s Pussycats in Outer Space. And that was about as close to Mary Marvel, at least fan-wise, as I was going to get. Little did I know (heh, heh, heh…)… (Or, citing her more recent appearances, “bwah ha ha…”)

Lightning Strikes Hanna-Barbera I, along with the majority of Hanna-Barbera’s artists, had been laid off just before my birthday in late November ’77 (whatta present!). We were called back two weeks later, just before Xmas (whatta present!) to start animation on a Flintstone’s Christmas special, and pre-production on Godzilla, among other things. Among those other things (and something I was pulled off Flintstones X to work on) was presentation artwork for a concept developed by Sheldon Moldoff for a pair of specials/pilots for a comic revival of a Batman-type show… only cheaper, and with a lot more heroes and villains from the comics in it, for NBC. As I recall it (and having just got back and working in a different building away from the main complex, I wasn’t near the writers, so I’m going by second-hand memory here), the natural thinking when it came to a multi-character/Justice League-ish concept was that Superman, natch, had to be a part of it, power-wise and character recognition-wise. But to star in a low-budget, low-brow comedy project? Not gonna happen! (And note how deftly I manage not to talk about the Broadway suck-cess, It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman! Oops!! Guess I didn’t! Oh well!…) Anyway, Supes was out… a similarly-powered, just exposed for three years star of a live-action series on a rival network… in? To quote a recent Vice-Presidential candidate: “You betcha!” Particularly when the rights to said character on said rival network produced by said (well, not said yet, but I’m gettin’ to it, I’m gettin’ to it!) rival company had just expired. Filmation Associates’ (see?) rights to produce the live-action Captain Marvel character, from 1974-77 for their Shazam! Saturday morning series, had just expired that September of ’77, and H-B jumped at the

Let’s Win One For The Slipper!

Super Friends And Foes (Above:) Big D’s mentor/best friend, the late, legendary Alex Toth, rendered this color presentation piece of a pre-Challenge of the Superfriends/pre-Lex Luthorled “League of Evil” featuring Shazam! villains Beautia Sivana, King Kull, Dr. Sivana, and Mr. Atom… but Filmation’s retention of the Shazam! animation rights prevented their inclusion into the “Legion of Doom.” (Right:) The amazing Alex’s artwork for Hanna-Barbera’s 1978 casting call ad for the Legends of the Superheroes specials. Obviously, this piece was done before the producers knew they could get Adam West and Burt Ward to reprise their roles as the Dynamic Duo. [©2010 Hanna-Barbera Productions; characters TM & ©2010 DC Comics]

chance to make the former Superman rival their key super-type character in the proposed line-up of Legends of the Superheroes. While that was going on (as I was helping development artists Alex (my “Unca”) Toth and “Grumpybear” Mo Gollub keep the look of the characters DC-accurate, ABC’s (the network that ran Super Friends— soon to become Superfriends) network development folk saw some of the Legends development pieces and thought these were being put together for their SF. When informed that they weren’t, their response was “Why not? We could do this!” And indeed they started to, as the presentation being written for The Battle of the Superheroes reflected ABC’s anticipation of the “Shazam!” franchise by centering on the then-

called “League of Evil” leadership of Cap’s arch-foe Dr. Sivana, with Marvel enemies Mr. Atom, King Kull, and Beautia Sivana as fellow Evil Leaguers. The only problem, however, as I recently confirmed with old Filmation boss (and the one who’d know), Lou Scheimer: “We relinquished the live rights, but made sure we [at Filmation Associates] retained the animation rights to the Captain Marvel characters.” As a result of that bit of forward thinking (plus Lou’s re-securing of the Batman character rights a year before to produce The New Adventures of Batman for CBS), H-B found they not only had to drop the aforementioned Shazam villains, but Bat-villains Joker, Penguin, and Catwoman as well. (More on superhuman “rights issues” later in this piece.)

Shazamimated! And, speaking of New Adventures of Batman, when I left H-B in early 1978 and made Filmation my next place of employ (Lou Scheimer laughingly remembers this as: “I had to hire you… you wouldn’t stop showing up at the studio door! I didn’t have a choice!” You betcha, boss man!), the first show I worked on was assisting my layout mate and mentor Wes Herschensohn on finishing scenes for the last Batman episodes (during which I had met, for the first time in a professional context, TV’s Batman himself, Adam West, the voice of that version of Bats and, ironically, a few months later, the aforementioned H-B’s live Batman for Legends). Let us now jump ahead three years, three studios, and a strike later to 1981… the Shazam! year… and my re-acquaintance with my childhood “sweetheart”… one Mary Marvel. How’d that happen? Well, the 1981 season at Filmation was the biggest one the studio had ever had up to that

Batman & the Boyee Wonder Artist Darrell McNeil with Adam (Batman) West at a cable TV convention. The New Adventures of Batman was the first series on which McNeil toiled when he started at Filmation in the ’70s, and West provided that series’ Bat-vocals. [Photo ©2010 GMP.]

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

point, with so many new series (and pick-ups of returning series) that, for the first and only time in his studio’s 15-year existence, Lou Scheimer couldn’t get enough experienced union manpower (with Hanna-Barbera, Ruby Spears, and the new Marvel Productions starting up) to do all the work instudio, causing him to send Zorro to Japan’s TMS to be produced.

In addition, he farmed out work to various subcontract studios around town. One of them was a partnership between veteran black animator Jim Simon and someone who will not be named (’cause I want to be able to finally tell this story… you’ll see why…), located a few blocks from Filmation’s Canoga Park studio, where they had previously shot their Space Academy and Jason of Star Command live-action series. They had picked up a contract from Filmation to sub out layouts on Blackstar… as a non-union deal (something else Lou wasn’t crazy about, but to get the work done, he had no choice, airdate-wise). The pay was on a per-scene basis, at $15 a scene. (Which was a little low, seeing as how hard/intricate a typical Filmation layout was to do… on the other hand, because of Filmation’s reliance on their stock/reuse system for animation, if those scenes, already done, were counted (by the artist who picked them up) and you were fast, you could make out a pretty good side income from it. (If, however, the people you were picking said scenes from didn’t let you count them… because they themselves did… not so much.) Which was basically the function of “she who will not be named” (or ‘swwnbn’ for short). Like most subcontracting outfits in town at that time, they would get paid from the studio for layouts so much per scene per show, take a percentage off the top for themselves, then pay the rest out to their “talent.” (Remember the $15 per… it comes into play later.) Now I also have to say (and I will be politically correct here, even though I’d rather not!) that “swwnbn” had a certain apathy, let’s say, towards a certain type of person. (And this included her partner, but he had connections, you see.) After two weeks of employ under her (oh, is that a bad choice of words!), it was obvious that she only tolerated me because of (1) her partner’s influence and (2) her innate ability to not only keep all the stock/re-use scenes away from my hands (and into hers), but to make sure all the intricate scenes somehow found their way into my scene folders. After week three, I started to complain just a smidge. Jim was sympathetic, but there was nothing he could do about it. She could do something about it, however: she fired me… which wasn’t great for me because (1) by this time, I’d become permanently non-union (they didn’t help me get any work, and this was after our ’79 strike) and (2) I really didn’t want to work in-house anymore. I kind of liked the idea of not taking 3-hour one-way bus trips from South Central to Reseda/Canoga Park to ’n’ fro every day. (That’s six hours of work time for moi at home!) So I’m without a gig and not happy… and, after the long walk outta her office, last check in hand, I found myself trudging down to Filmation’s Canoga Park place to commiserate my miserable self. Well, all my old layout pals were out to lunch… except for unit head David West, who was

eating in, ’cuz he was preparing some stuff. “Of what?” I axed. “The first episode of Shazam! I’m trying to find somebody good I can… hand… these… off… to… say! You want some work?” “Um…” “You banged out Lone Ranger pretty fast last year… and did Tom and Jerry, too! You can work at home if you want.” “Um…” “You’re non-union so you won’t get a screen credit…” “Um…” “…but we’re paying $25 a scene…” “Um…” Finally, “And I know how much you like drawing leggy chicks, man.” “Dude,” I stammered, “you had me at ‘work’! Ten dollars more per scene… and on characters I actually like?” The final convincer was Dave showing me ex-Jem boss/friend Will Meugniot’s models of the Marvel Family… and one in particular. I said: “Can you give me an hour? There’s something I need to do.” Dave responds: “I’ll have a special package ready for you when you come back.” So where did I go? Right back to my ex-employer down the street, where I thanked “swwnbn” for freeing me from “bondage” on Blackstar… as I was trading up to do a real super-hero… for real money… finally winding up by telling “swwnbn” to kiss a certain part of my anatomy… which I demonstrated rather forcefully by… well, you can guess! (It took all Jim had not to fall over laughing so hard… and he’s trying—not really!—to keep a “stern” you-shouldn’t-do-that look on his face). And with that, I stood at her office door, yelled “Shazam!” and left my own version of an “explosive cloud” behind! Next Issue: Filmation Nation.

M&N Darrell McNeil is the writer of Mightor & Nexus—a project currently in development with artist (and Nexus co-creator) Steve Rude, who provided this sample drawing (as well as FCA’s cover on p. 73). [Nexus TM & ©2010 Rude Dude Productions; Mightor TM & ©2010 Hanna-Barbera.]

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