Alter Ego #96 by TwoMorrows Publishing

Roy Thomas’ Almighty Comics Fanzine

No.96 August 2010

7.95

‘NUFF SAID?

The MIGHTY CRUSADERS!

In the USA

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& MELL MELL LAZARUS LAZARUS &

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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!

2010 EISNER AWARD Nominee Best Comics-Related Periodical

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ALTER EGO #82

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

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

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

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ALTER EGO #88

ALTER EGO #89

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

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

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

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

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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!

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ALTER EGO #90

ALTER EGO #91

ALTER EGO #92

ALTER EGO #93

ALTER EGO #94

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!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “EarthTwo—1961 to 1985!” with rare art by INFANTINO, GIL KANE, ANDERSON, DELBO, ANDRU, BUCKLER, APARO, GRANDENETTI, and DILLIN, interview with Golden/Silver Age DC editor GEORGE KASHDAN, plus MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER, STEVE GERBER, FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), and a new cover by INFANTINO and AMASH!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “EarthTwo Companion, Part II!” More on the 19631985 series that changed comics forever! The Huntress, Power Girl, Dr. Fate, Freedom Fighters, and more, with art by ADAMS, APARO, AYERS, BUCKLER, GIFFEN, INFANTINO, KANE, NOVICK, SCHAFFENBERGER, SIMONSON, STATON, SWAN, TUSKA, our GEORGE KASHDAN interview Part 2, FCA, and more! STATON & GIORDANO cover!

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(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 US • (Digital edition) $2.95

Vol. 3, No. 96 / August 2010 Editor

NOW WITH 16 PAG ES OF COLOR!

Roy Thomas

Associate Editors Bill Schelly Jim Amash

Design & Layout Christopher Day

Consulting Editor John Morrow

FCA Editor P.C. Hamerlinck

Comic Crypt Editor Michael T. Gilbert

Editorial Honor Roll Jerry G. Bails (founder) Ronn Foss, Biljo White Mike Friedrich

Cover Artist Mike Machlan (after Paul Reinman)

Cover Colorist Tom Ziuko

With Special Thanks to: Heidi Amash Bob Bailey Mike W. Barr Pat Bastienne Alberto Becattini John Benson Dominic Bongo Jerry K. Boyd Bob Brodsky Frank Brunner Nick Caputo Bill Croskey Michaël Dewally Michael Dunne Mark Evanier J. Fairfax Shane Foley Bob Fujitani Jeff Gelb David George Janet Gilbert Jennifer Hamerlinck Roger Hill Alan Hutchinson Denis Kitchen Mel Keefer Bob Layton Mell Lazarus Jim Ludwig Mike Machlan

Dan Makara Bruce Mason Darrell McNeil Brian K. Morris Lou Mougin Mark Muller Will Murray Rik Offenberger Jake Oster Mrs. Edith Penty John G. Pierce Gene Reed Trina Robbins Ethan Roberts Peggy Rosenberger Steve Rude Buddy Saunders Anthony Snyder Chris Squires Desha Swayze Marc Swayze Dann Thomas Kevin Tomaszewski Michael Vance Chris Ware Brett Weiss Steve Whitaker Gregg Whitmore Eddy Zeno

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Dick Giordano, Jim Mooney, Valerie Barclay, & Bill DuBay

Contents Writer/Editorial: Too Many Super Heroes? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Those Mighty, Mighty Crusaders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Will Murray chronicles the Rise and Fall—and Rise and Fall and Rise—of Archie’s Silver Age super-hero group.

“Toby Press Was My College” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Artist/writer/editor Mell Lazarus talks to Jim Amash about his 1940s-50s comic book career.

Tributes to Dick Giordano, Bill DuBay, Jim Mooney, Valerie Barclay . . . 55 Comic Crypt: “Super-Man Unmasked!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Michael T. Gilbert & Mr. Monster on Chris Ware’s oddball super-villain.

Comics Fandom Archive: Of Texas Trios, Wars, & Comics Shops. . . . 65 Bill Schelly presents Brett Weiss’ interview with 1960s super-fan Buddy Saunders.

re: [comments & corrections] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 FCA [Fawcett Collectors of America] #155. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Mary Marvel and Marc Swayze—presented and annotated by P.C. Hamerlinck. On Our Cover: Collector Michael Dunne kindly provided us with three tributes by pro artists to Paul Reinman’s cover for The Mighty Crusaders #4 (April 1966)—and we were pleased as perdition to run all three in this issue! The cover spot went to the rendering by Mike Machlan, who among other things was the inker/co-creator of Infinity, Inc. in the 1980s. Our only regret: to leave room for our A/E logo, we had to omit the smallish figure of the hero Fireball from the upper left of the drawing. But you still got plenty of super-heroes for your money—and besides, you can see the missing figure in living black-&-white on p. 20! [Heroes TM & ©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.] Above: And here’s a rare specimen—the vintage (1965-67) Paul Reinman art to a Mighty Crusaders house ad featuring Fly Man, Fly Girl, The Comet, Black Hood, The Shield, Dusty, and The Web. Repro’d from the original art. Thanks to dealer Anthony Snyder, whose ad can be seen on p. 54. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications.] 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

“Too Many Super Heroes”

he above phrase is the title of the most famous/infamous, most archetypal story in the several-year history of Archie Comics’ grandiosely dubbed Mighty Comics Group.

You can read about The Mighty Crusaders #4—and even count the nearly two dozen costumed cut-ups who cascade through its colorsplashed pages (with a couple of the heroes transformed into villains)—on pp. 17-19 of this issue. Of course, as the guy who back in the early ’80s dreamed up DC’s AllStar Squadron, whose 60-plus members dwarfed even the Crusaders’ lineup, I should be the one to talk about “too many super-heroes,” right? But then, I’ve never had any quarrel with the basic concept of a sizable gang of long-underwear characters. It’s all in how you handle them. For my own part: from a sales viewpoint, in my 67-issue series, I probably should’ve focused more than I did on a small core group of heroes—a handful of JSAers plus Johnny Quick, Liberty Belle, Robotman, maybe The Shining Knight, a few of the later “retro” characters. But, for better and/or for worse, I was more interested in creating a visual tapestry than a personality-driven storyline… and in being true to my historybased belief that, during a Second World War in which super-heroes had existed, President Franklin Roosevelt would’ve probably pushed them all to join a single organization responsible directly to him. In the case of the rather briefer 1960s life of The Mighty Crusaders (including their pre-christening antics in the revived Fly Man comic), I suspect writer Jerry Siegel and his superiors were simply trying to develop, almost overnight, an amalgamation of virtually all the superheroes who’d rampaged through the pages of MLJ Comics during the 1940s. The Archie folks probably wanted to catch up fast with Marvel’s two dozen or so key heroes… who of course had been launched one or at most a few at a time over the preceding several years.

Perhaps, apart from any other problems, it was all done a bit too quickly—so that The Mighty Crusaders, surfacing in the turbulent comic book world of the mid-1960s, experienced a four-color equivalent of “the bends,” that dangerous and painful condition suffered by deep-sea divers who come up for air too quickly. Jerry and artist Paul Reinman have taken a lot of lumps from fans over the past nigh half-century. And they take a few more from comics historian Will Murray in the main piece which follows, as reprinted from a 1980s magazine in which he deliberately took a more fannish and less historical approach than is usual for him. So I asked Rik Offenberger, a freelance writer who’s also the public relations coordinator (whatever that means) for Archie Comics to add his own thoughts, which I’ve made a trio of sidebars to Will’s article—and Rik himself brought in a third voice, that of broadcaster, artist, and comics fan Chris Squires, to write about his own enthusiasm for The Fly/Flyman and The Mighty Crusaders. These combined pieces also cover the earlier runs of Adventures of The Fly, The Double Life of Private Strong, Adventures of The Jaguar, and even Archie’s version of The Shadow—the 1959-64 predecessors of the Mighty Comics Group. Together, they—added to Jim Amash’s conversation with Toby Press editor Mell Lazarus (who went on to create two popular, long-running comic strips)—made it impossible for us to include the fourth and final installment of Jim’s extra-long interview with the late DC editor George Kashdan, which we’ll get to (we promise!) in our October issue. Then we’ll be back on track—till the next time! Bestest,

COMING IN OCTOBER

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THE NON-EC HORROR COMICS OF THE 1950s! • Creepy cover of Simon Garth, Zombie—by WILD BILL EVERETT! • “The Other Guys!” Ominous overview—from Menace to House of Mystery—from Adventures into the Unknown to Tomb of Terror—from Weird Tales to weirder Wertham—with awe-inspiring art by EVERETT • BRIEFER • DITKO • MANEELY • COLAN • MESKIN • MOLDOFF • HEATH • POWELL • COLE • NOSTRAND • SIMON & KIRBY • CAMERON • PALAIS • TUSKA • AVISON • DRAUT • HARRISON • KRIGSTEIN • LAZARUS • FUJITANI, & many another—examined by LAWRENCE WATT-EVANS! • “The Hand of Doom!” An incredible interview with one of horror’s most enduring stars, by GARY BROWN—with art by KIRBY • KANE • BROWN • MOIRERA, et al.! • At last! The phantasmagorical finale of JIM AMASH’s colorful conversations with Golden/Silver Age DC editor/writer GEORGE KASHDAN! • FCA with BECK & SWAYZE—MICHAEL T. GILBERT on “Clowns in the Comics!”—& MORE!! Edited by ROY THOMAS

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Those Mighty, Mighty Crusaders The Rise And Fall— And Rise And Fall And Rise—Of Archie’s 1960s Super-Hero Group by Will Murray

A/E

EDITOR’S INTRO: Will Murray is the author of more than fifty novels, ranging from Doc Savage to Nick Fury, and with artist Steve Ditko created the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. He recently penned a history of Marvel for the Marvel Comics Golden Age Omnibus. He has written widely on the subject of comics for magazines, and in the following article has scribed a distinctly personal look at the Silver Age super-hero comics published by Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

“Too Many Super Heroes!” This article was edited by Will from a piece that That was the highly appropriate name of the book-length story in The Mighty Crusaders #4 (April 1966), originally appeared in the magazine Comic easily the best-known of all the group’s Silver Age tales—so over the past few years collector (& A/E Feature #56-57 (July & July 1987). Will says that, benefactor) Michael Dunne has commissioned several artists to draw their own homages to its multiwhen we discussed reprinting the piece, he was costumed Paul Reinman cover. Mike Machlan’s version appears on the cover of this issue of A/E… that of tempted to rework it more than he did and take out Bob Layton can be seen on p. 17… and here’s a version done in 2007 in black-&-white “wash” by the late great George Tuska, one of the earliest artists of Adventures of The Fly. If this doesn’t put you in the mood the personal approach, but in the end opted against for Mighty Crusaders madness, nothing will! Thanks to Michael D.—and to George, who gave us permission it. Thus, this article remains what it originally was: to use it some time before his recent passing. [Heroes TM & ©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.] an informal, partly historical and partly nostalgic look at Archie’s super-hero output, dealing largely High on my “smattering” list were the unlikely pair of Adventures of with the late 1950s through the 1960s… as an adjunct to our The Fly and Adventures of The Jaguar, products of the Archie Adventure index/study of the 1940s MLJ comics in Alter Ego #82… line, formerly known as MLJ Comics, but for some reason now calling themselves Radio Comics. I bought those two titles for simple reasons: Part I: Radio Comics they were bright, colorful, and most importantly, between 1961 and 1964, they were practically the only super-hero comics not published by DC or When I began collecting comics in the early 1960s, my allowance was a Marvel. mere dollar a week. But comic books were only 12 cents. It was enough to buy all the DCs—my first love—and most of the Marvels. And a They were also relentlessly anonymous. No writer credits were given, smattering of lesser titles from the Charlton, Dell, and ACG lines. and the artist never signed his work—they were just very simple stories of

The Rise And Fall—And Rise And Fall And Rise—Of Archie’s 1960s Super-Hero Group

Fly On The Wall The last hurrah of the fabled team of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby (who are seen l. to r. in photo at left) was Adventures of The Fly in 1959… even if their actual partnership had broken up a few years earlier. Their two-page “Wide Angle Scream” splash panel appeared in issue #1 (Aug. ’59), and is reprinted from the 2004 trade paperback The Adventures of The Fly… while the oft-reprinted 1940 snapshot of S&K appeared in Joe’s invaluable historical 1990/2003 memoir The Comic Book Makers. The longest-lived Fly artist, by far, was John Rosenberger, seen below in a photo printed with Roger Hill’s biography of the artist in A/E #23; it had been provided to Roger by the artist’s widow, Peggy Rosenberger. Next to the photo is JR’s lead splash from Adventures of The Fly #28 (Oct. 1963), the third-from-last issue. Script attributed to Robert Bernstein. [Fly pages ©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

a couple of well-drawn and fairly new super-heroes. I never ran across any of the pre-1961 issues of either title, so I never suspected that it hadn’t always been that way. Nor did I have an inkling that the figure of The Fly buzzing out of the magazine’s bold logo—it had to be bold because the title was so wimpy—was actually drawn by no less than Jack Kirby. But I get ahead of my story. Adventures of The Fly was the older of the two titles—its first issue had had a cover date of Aug. 1959—and my favorite of the pair. Blond attorney Thomas Troy possessed a magic ring which, when he rubbed it in the fashion of Aladdin and his magic lamp, transformed him into the heroic Fly. Clad in a spiffy green and yellow outfit, a buzz gun hanging at his hip, and clear fly wings growing out of his shoulders, he was half-man, half-insect. The Fly could fly, spin hard steel cocoons around his body, and communicate with an obedient insect world. He also possessed the proportionate strength of an insect—a super-power analogy than went back to Superman’s earliest days. In many respects, The Fly was an anticipation of Marvel’s Spider-Man and AntMan, two characters on which Jack Kirby would later claim co-creator status. The stories were simple and straightforward, but in truth, dull. The Fly fought the usual hoods, an arch-enemy uninspiredly called The Spider, and hosts of alien invaders. Alien invaders were a Fly staple. Curiously, almost all of them were similar saurian bipeds armed with death rays, doom robots, and names like Lxo III, Roxr, and Bra-kr. But the art sparkled. It was mostly the work of John Rosenberger, now deceased, who drew in what might be described as the Silver Age DC house style—crisp and clear of line and devoid of frills—only he was doing it mostly for Archie/Radio. One thing that fascinated me was The Fly’s costume. It was a bright yellow and green. But no ordinary green. Not quite blue-green, and

certainly not olive green, it lay somewhere in between. Definitely an insect green. I’ve rarely seen this specific hue before or since, and I’m told that in colorist parlance it’s known as Y3BR2—which means that it’s a blend of 50% yellow, 25% red and a solid blue. Not every comic book company had the palette to reproduce it properly. Apparently it was formulated to mimic the iridescent green of the common housefly.

By contrast, The Jaguar’s costume was a bright red, relieved only by spotted leopard-skin boots and belt, with a black jaguar symbol etched on his chest. He was a sort of animalpowered version of The Fly, and John Rosenberger originated him, in concert with his uncredited “Fly” scripter, Robert Bernstein. I suspect

Those Mighty, Mighty Crusaders

their inspiration for the character came from the Jaguar luxury sports car, which in the late 1950s was taking America by storm. As revealed in his first issue (dated Sept. 1961), The Jaguar was really Ralph Hardy, a zoologist who stumbled upon an Inca temple in Peru while hunting the fabled white jaguar. In the ruins, he discovered a Jaguar Belt. Donning it, he became The Jaguar, imbued with animal strength, invincibility, and the power to telepathically communicate with all animals. He added a pair of nucleon-jet energy pods to his belt and thus acquired the un-jaguarlike power of flight. How a zoologist possessed the technical genius to invent a flying belt was never addressed. Where The Fly’s magical transformation included a yellow aviator-style helmet and goggles to conceal his true identity, when Ralph Hardy became The Jaguar, his pencil-thin Clark Gable mustache simply—disappeared. The transformation obviously worked in the same suspension-ofdisbelief way that Clark Kent’ glasses confused everybody’s perception of Superman’s rugged face. In fact, there were a lot of Superman touches to the Jaguar series. He had a snoopy girlfriend, Jill Ross, who was pretty sure The Jaguar was really Ralph. And, like Superman’s Lois Lane, whom she more than resembled, Jill Ross had plenty of competition. There was the greenskinned sea siren Kree-Nal, who loved The Jaguar with the same watery

Driving A Jag The team of Rosenberger & Bernstein likewise produced Adventures of The Jaguar. Pictured are the cover of #13 (Aug. 1963) and the “Black Hood Teaches Karate” page from the selfsame issue. The scripter of the latter page is unknown. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

(Jaguar) Man And Superman (Left:) Though it doesn’t ever seem to have been mentioned in dialogue, Ralph Hardy’s mustache magically disappeared when he donned his Jaguar Belt, as per these not-quite-sequential panels from #1 (Sept. 1961). As Will writes, this was roughly the equivalent of Clark Kent taking off his glasses and combing his hair a bit differently and nobody discovering his secret identity. Script by Bernstein, art by Rosenberger. (Right:) Superman had Lois Lane—and occasionally Lana Lang—and, briefly, Lori Lemaris. Rosenberger’s cover for Adventures of The Jaguar #7 (July 1962) depicts his trio of “love interests”— clockwise from top left, The sea-born Kree-Nal, Jill Ross, and Cat-Girl. Thanks to Gregg Whitmore for both scans. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

The Rise And Fall—And Rise And Fall And Rise—Of Archie’s 1960s Super-Hero Group

ponytail when her sandy hair turned as black as an unlucky cat. But she still pined for The Jaguar and helped him to fight the Cat Gang. It looked like the beginning of a new chapter in their lives, but The Jaguar’s magazine was cancelled a mere two issues later. Alas for ongoing subplots. Superman-like plot devices were also a Fly staple. He wasn’t burdened with a snoopy girlfriend, but he did inherit the equivalent to a Supergirl. Actress Kim Brand (think Kim Novak) first appeared in issue #13 in 1961. The Fly happened to save her life when she fell from a roof and he caught her—a standard “Superman” story opening—and they became friendly. Elsewhere in that issue, an ad alerted readers to watch for first appearance of Fly Girl in the very next issue. (Three guess who that was likely to be!) Our hero again bumps into Kim Brand in Fly #14 and their friendship—it was never a romantic interest—resumes. Along comes the Metal Monster, an alien whose powers strikingly resemble those of future Hulk villain The Metal Master, but who looks like a silver robot with an ice cube for a head. While The Fly has his hands full fighting off The Metal Monster’s robotic menaces, Kim receives an unexpected visitation. That visitor is Turan, the self-styled emissary from the Fly Dimension. He explains that, years ago, he appeared before Thomas Troy and presented him with the magic ring that transmogrified—is there a better word?—him into The Fly. Turan, who looks like a man except for his insectlike complex eyes and costume, tells Kim that The Fly needs a helper. And you’re it, honey. In the space of a page, Kim Brand becomes Fly Girl—or, in alternating stories, Fly-Girl with a hyphen. (If I ever become a super-hero, I hope my origin is that painless!) Her costume is identical to The Fly’s except for a yellow domino mask and the lack of a helmet impeding her long hair from flowing in the wind. Good thing, too. She was a doll. Together, The Fly and Fly Girl mop up The Metal Monster and begin their new joint career. Typically, they teamed up at least once an issue, but Fly Girl always had a five-page solo story at the back of the book.

Love Sphinx! Cat-Girl (a.k.a. Cat Girl) had looked a wee bit different when she first appeared, on the cover of Adventures of The Jaguar #4 (Jan. 1962). Thanks to Gregg Whitmore. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

fervor that mermaid Lori Lemaris loved the Man of Steel. Then there was Cat-Girl. In many ways Cat-Girl was more intriguing than even The Jaguar. The modern reincarnation of the Sphinx, she first appeared in Adventures of The Fly #9 (Nov. 1960) as a villainess who attempted to enslave that book’s hero. Failing that, she turned her sights on her natural counterpart, The Jaguar. In the process she fell victim to evil entities from a twodimensional world, and the Jaguar had to rescue her. Naturally, she fell in love with him—and, for the rest of the series, was disposed toward trickery and mischief in her quest to become Mrs. Jaguar. The pair first met in Adventures of The Jaguar #4 (Jan. 1962), over a year after her introduction in The Fly. Cat-Girl possessed supernatural powers such as flight and invisibility, as well as telepathic control over felines. She also changed costume a lot, first appearing in a tawny leotard, adding leopard-skin trim after her first encounter with The Jaguar, then changing to a blue miniskirt and tiger(!)striped tunic, and, in a girlish touch, a 1950s ponytail. Despite that, there was more than a touch of dominatrix to her bad-girl persona, which set her apart from comic book femme fatales of that more innocent era. In Adventures of The Jaguar #13, Cat-Girl reappeared as society girl Lydia Fellin, having lost her supernatural powers as a result of strontium buildup from atmospheric nuclear tests. She also lost her cougar-colored

Some of my favorite stories of this period actually involved Fly Girl. Like the time a trio of juvenile delinquents glommed her magic ring and suddenly she had to defeat three evil Fly Girls or she’d never be able to revert to normal Kim Brand again. It should go without saying that Fly Girl’s powers were identical to those of The Fly—including a deadly weakness. Both were vulnerable to chlordane, a component of insecticides. It was their kryptonite. It was even colored kryptonite green—and was also as overused as kryptonite, which is strange, because The Jaguar had no specific weakness, and that never seemed to get in the way of a good story in his title. The Fly and The Jaguar continued their roughly parallel adventures, which in turn were nearly identical to Superman’s adventures, until 1963 when, after 15 issues, Adventures of The Jaguar was quietly cancelled. The Fly kept going, but he lost John Rosenberger’s liquid-lined artwork when that artist took on two new Radio Comics titles, the Dr. Kildareinspired Young Dr. Masters and a revival of The Shadow. Artist John Giunta replaced him on The Fly. At that time, I didn’t warm to Giunta’s work. It was thin, scratchy, and unappealing. Little did I dream that Giunta was in fact returning to the series after a long absence. There was a lot I little dreamed, because when Turan told Kim Brand the story of how he’d come to give Thomas Troy the magic Fly Ring, he left out a teensy little fact: he hadn’t gifted it to Thomas Troy, attorney at law—but to little Tommy Troy, orphan! That tale had been told in the Adventures of The Fly #1, cover-dated August, 1959. Young Tommy Troy is shipped from an orphanage to live with Ben and Abigail March, reputed wizards. The Marches work the little tyke pretty hard, and one day he seeks refuge in their dusty attic, where he finds the Fly Ring caught in a spider web. Rubbing it, he is astonished

Those Mighty, Mighty Crusaders

when Turan appears, explaining that his people originally ruled the Earth with magic. But wars and catastrophes ruined their civilization. Some Fly people were reduced to mere houseflies, but others escaped to another dimension, where they rule anew. Turan explains that he has been searching for someone “pure of heart” to fight injustice on earth. By rubbing the Fly Ring, Tommy is projected into the Fly world, but assumes the form of the adult Fly on Earth. I’m not clear how the metaphysics of that works, because in all subsequent issues, Tommy simply becomes The Fly à la Billy Batson and Captain Marvel. That’s how the character’s creators, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, explained it back in 1959. I would never have dreamed that Jack Kirby, who in my early collecting days was responsible for the Fantastic Four, had co-originated The Fly, but he had. I should have suspected as much, I suppose. Somewhere around 1963, I found a back copy of Radio Comics’ The Double Life of Private Strong #1 (June 1959). A Simon & Kirby production, it premiered two months before Adventures of The Fly. It was a revival of MLJ’s patriotic super-hero from the 1940s, The Shield, except that the character in costume and origin now closely resembled Simon & Kirby’s Captain America in virtually all respects expect the lack of a… shield. No matter. This Shield was Lancelot Strong, an orphan adopted by a farm couple who discover he has superhuman powers. Lancelot grows up, joins the Army as a bumbling private, and battles injustice Captain

Fly Away Home! While John Rosenberger drew the lead story in Adventures of The Fly #28, as seen a few pages back, it was Golden Age artist John Giunta—one of the first real “comics fans” to turn pro in the early 1940s—who drew the backup “Fly” tale in that same issue. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications.]

America-style—with a little of Simon & Kirby’s Fighting American thrown in. I suppose not calling the comic book The Shield hurt sales, and not reviving the original Shield—who in fact predated Captain America by quite a few months—annoyed some Golden Age fans. But most importantly, Simon & Kirby merely launched the character, hiring a battery of other talents to draw some of the stories for them. That may have doomed the magazine, although the story goes that DC Comics objected to the character on the debatable ground that his powers suggested a star-spangled Superman. The Double Life of Private Strong died with issue #2. Adventures of The Fly was a similar packaging job. Simon & Kirby dropped out after only four issues. With the fifth, Robert Bernstein took on the scripting chores. The artists ran the gamut from the forgotten Bill Vigoda to John Giunta. With issue #5, Giunta took over the art chores completely. In that issue, Tommy Troy and the Marches disappear—and the adult Thomas Troy, lawyer, stands in his place. Bernstein and Giunta redefined the series and perhaps saved it from early extinction. It was during these 1960 issues that Cat-Girl first appeared. In issue #7, the company’s greatest Golden Age hero returned in a story called “The Fly and The Black Hood Join Forces!” Next issue, The Fly teamed up with a rather bland non-Kirby Shield. The Shield seldom appeared after that, but Black Hood emerged as a frequent drop-in guest. Black Hood was no Superman as super-heroes went, but back in his heyday (the 1940s) the acrobatic Black Hood, alias patrolman Kip Burland, had had his own comic book, pulp magazine, and even radio program—the latter distinction one he shared with Archie Andrews. I imagine the name Radio Comics is a holdover from those halcyon years.

They Say Women Can’t Keep A Secret… Fly Girl, a.k.a. Kim Brand, reveals her secret identity to The Fly in her debut appearance in costume, in Adventures of The Fly #14 (Sept. 1961). Script by Bernstein, art by Rosenberger. Thanks to Gregg Whitmore. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

Staring with issue #11 (May 1961), John Rosenberger took over the art, and the golden age of The Fly—as far as I’m concerned—had commenced. Regardless of how limp Bernstein’s scripts were, his stories were always a feast for the eyes. In them, The Fly fought the colorful menaces that were a hallmark of the Bernstein-Rosenberger years. In fact, The Fly and Fly Girl acquired such a collection of foes that, in issue #21,

The Rise And Fall—And Rise And Fall And Rise—Of Archie’s 1960s Super-Hero Group

six of the worst, including The Spider and The Metal Monster, teamed up as the Anti-Fly League. Over the next several issues they spun a wheel of fortune-like pointer to see who would next take a crack as the stub-winged duo. One by one, they failed. Evidently, they became dispirited and prematurely gave up their plans, for the idea petered out before every member had his or her shot. You’d have thought they would have all ganged up at once for a sure-fire victory. But Silver age villains weren’t very sophisticated. It was probably no coincidence that, six months before the Anti-Fly League surfaced, Superman had had his first encounter with a very similar group, who called themselves the Superman Revenge Squad.

Private Matters Joe Simon and Jack Kirby handled the first issue of The Double Life of Private Strong themselves, as per the introductory “powers page” above— but by #2 (Aug. 1959), George Tuska (top right) was rung in to pencil two of the stories. Kirby, in fact, contributed no art to the second issue except for the cover. The same “Trojan Horse” technique was employed for Adventures of The Fly, as well—as witness the page at right drawn by Bob Powell for issue #3 (Nov. 1959). Repro’d from a scan of the original art, courtesy of Ethan Roberts. Incidentally, Sol Brodsky is erroneously listed as the artist of this story in the 2004 trade paperback collection of the same name. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

Those Mighty, Mighty Crusaders

Be My Guest! The Black Hood and The Shield popped up in team-up tales in Adventures of The Fly #7 & #8 (July & Sept. 1960), with stories by Robert Benstein and art by John Giunta. Thanks to Gregg Whitmore. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

Evidently, sales took off during the Bernstein/Rosenberger tenure, because the companion Jaguar title was launched in September of 1961—the very same month Fly Girl debuted. All three super-heroes grew so popular they took turns appearing in Pep Comics and Laugh Comics between stories featuring Archie Andrews and his pals. But that era, too, was short-lived. The last of these was printed late in 1963. An inventory story from an unpublished issue of Adventures of The Jaguar, it took him back to his origin. The tale was called “The Return of the White Jaguar” and it appeared in Pep for January 1964. Back in Peru, Hardy and his group are waylaid by bandits who make off with is wallet and Jaguar Belt. Tracking them to the Inca temple where he had originally found the magic Jaguar Belt, Hardy comes into the sights of a sniper when the White Jaguar itself appears out of nowhere and cuffs the sniper into fleeing for his life. Other bandits open fire, but the rounds go right through the supernatural creature.

Three’s Company While battling the Anti-Fly League in the course of Adventures of The Fly #23 (Nov. 1962), Fly Girl met The Jaguar—who was pretending to be The Fly so the latter could go off on a mission to the Fly Dimension. Shades of Superman and Batman in many a World’s Finest Comics saga! Script by Bernstein, art by Rosenberger. Thanks to Gregg Whitmore. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

The Rise And Fall—And Rise And Fall And Rise—Of Archie’s 1960s Super-Hero Group

John Rosenberger went to work for DC Comics. Robert Bernstein jumped over to Marvel, where, as “R. Berns,” he scripted early “Iron Man” and “Thor” epics before disappearing from the field. Earlier in his career, he had scripted “Captain America” and other Atlas features for Stan Lee. It was later revealed by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby that “The Fly” was a reinvention of a concept their studio had developed with Captain Marvel’s C.C. Beck. When Archie’s John Goldwater had asked them in the late ’50s for some new super-heroes, they had salvaged one called “The Silver Spider” and redrawn him as “The Fly,” taking the name from the famous 1958 science-fiction/horror film. Costume elements from another aborted Simon & Kirby concept, “Night Fighter,” were added to the mix. Further, Simon has recounted how he and Kirby and their artists were booted off The Fly in favor of talents willing to emulate the DC house look. Kirby went over to Timely (not yet called Marvel), where he has claimed that he offered still another version of “The Silver Spider” to Stan Lee. Out of this came “Spider-Man,” certainly the most successful superhero since Captain Marvel. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Respect Joe Simon greatly though I do, and without a suspicion in the world that Joe is being anything less than 100% forthright when he relates the story in his book The Comic Book Makers, I see the connection between “The Silver Spider” and “Spider-Man” as being considerably more tenuous and debatable than Will’s article suggests.] [Continued on p. 12]

A Pep-py Jaguar This page of original John Rosenberger art from the “Jaguar” story that was printed in Pep Comics #157 (Sept. 1962) is courtesy of Ethan Roberts. The writer may—or may not—have been Robert Bernstein. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

When the bandits are all felled, the White Jaguar picks up the Jaguar Belt in its mouth and offers it to Hardy. So ends the original career of The Jaguar, exactly where it all began. After The Jaguar had bitten the dust and John Giunta resumed his Fly art chores, things went downhill. The Spider returned, but he was no longer the roly-poly costumed Spider Spry of the Simon & Kirby era, but a bald master criminal who bore a suspicious resemblance to the ’60s version of Lex Luthor—right down to the habitual prison gray uniform. Coincidence? I doubt it. For the new scripter was no less than Jerry Seigel, co-creator of “Superman,” who did most of the scripts in Adventures of The Fly #29 and #30. One unusual story in Fly #30 introduced the handsome rainbowhelmeted Comet, a native of the planet Altrox, who came to Earth to marry Fly Girl. But Fly Girl’s annoying suspicions—she thinks he might be an alien invader come to trick her—put him off, and he departed in disgust. The Comet was actually a revival of a Golden Age hero who had worn a very different costume in the old MLJ days.

On, Comet…! This was the final story in the last issue of Adventures of The Fly. Ten months had passed between the previous issue and this one. So clearly the title was limping along until the flyswatter of cancellation struck.

“Superman” co-creator Jerry Siegel wrote and John Giunta drew this “Fly Girl” story from Adventure of The Fly #30 (Oct. 1964) that introduced a new and quite different character using the name of the 1940s MLJ hero The Comet. Thanks to Gregg Whitmore. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

Those Mighty, Mighty Crusaders

INTERLUDE #1:

A Capsule History Of The Fly—And His Awesome Offspring by Rik Offenberger & Chris Squires Rik Offenberger is a freelance writer whose work has been seen in Comic Buyer’s Guide, Newsarama, Comic Book Resources, and First Comics News. He is also the public relations coordinator at Archie Comics. In his free time Rik maintains a personal website at www.mightycrusaders.net, which is where he met Chris Squires. Chris Squires is a lifelong broadcaster and comic book fan, who wrote and drew the Kern 1410 Super Comics, a combination song popularity list and illustrated “adventures of the DJs,” for a local radio station in the mid-1970s. Chris is the father of three grown children and four grandkids, and leads another life as a professional wrestling referee, always ready for one more match.

hen did the Silver Age begin? It’s hard to say. Was it with the publication of J’onn J’onzz, “The Manhunter from Mars,” in November 1955? Or was it with the birth of the “Barry Allen” Flash in October 1956? That will always be up for discussion. For Archie Comics, however, the Silver Age began much earlier—in 1953, with the creation of the original “Spiderman” by one of the Golden Age greats, Joe Simon!

Troubled orphan Tommy Troy is taken in by an elderly couple, where he discovers in the attic a magic ring. Moments later a genie appears and grants him one wish. Tommy wishes to be a super-hero and is instantly transformed into “Spiderman.” Simon worked with his brother-in-law Jack Oleck on a script, and for the artwork turned to another Golden Age legend, C.C. Beck of “Captain Marvel” fame. In a last-minute change,

Come Fly With Me These two “Fly” stories in issue #2 were drawn (above) by Dick Ayers (pencils) & Paul Reinman (inks)—and, below, by Al Williamson. Reprinted from the 2004 trade paperback The Adventures of The Fly, which collects the first four issues of the series. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

“Spiderman” was renamed “The Silver Spider” before it was presented to Harvey Comics in 1954. “The Silver Spider” sat there for five years without being published. In 1959, John L. Goldwater of Archie Comics noticed the success DC was having with its super-heroes. He contacted Joe Simon to update The Shield, its most successful hero from the 1940s, and to create another new hero. Simon used the “Silver Spider” pages and script to create a pitch for “The Fly”; however, he was careful not to let the people at Archie see the actual pages. In the original story, The Silver Spider was the hero and The Fly was the villain. Simon switched things around so that neither Goldwater nor the Harvey execs would know it was the same story. Simon felt strongly that his “Spiderman” was the next big thing; rather than create something entirely new for Archie, he re-envisioned him as “The Fly.” Upon selling the concept to Goldwater, he gave the “Silver Spider” pages to Jack Kirby to redraw as “The Fly.” Adventures of The Fly #1 saw print with a cover date of August 1959. Simon had agreed to a packaging deal wherein he created the comics in his own studio and Archie printed them. The Fly dream team consisted of Jack Kirby, George Tuska, Al Williamson, Carl Burgos, Bob Powell, Angelo Torres, and Jack Davis. Interestingly enough, Neal Adams’ first published work was a panel in Adventures of The Fly #4. After Simon left Archie, it was an interesting time for The Fly; Robert Bernstein took over the scripting, now with adult attorney Thomas Troy in the role. The art was handled by John Giunta and, later, by John Rosenberger. Both offered a more modern style, keeping up with what DC was doing. The stories were done in the science-fiction style of the day and were well received. [See Interlude #2 on p. 17]

The Rise And Fall—And Rise And Fall And Rise—Of Archie’s 1960s Super-Hero Group

[Continued from p. 10] Given the shifting winds of the comic book field in the early 1960s, all of this would soon become highly ironic. With their hero crossovers and villains migrating between titles, Radio Comics had been dabbling in the kind of continuity that would revolutionize super-hero comics once Marvel got going. For, only six months after his cancellation, The Fly was destined to return, with a new name, new powers, and an entirely new look.

Part II – Mighty Comics It was not the first time that the company that had once been MLJ had put its super-heroes out to pasture. By 1947, they had canceled all of their Golden Age mystery men except “The Shield” and “The Black Hood,” who hung around for another year or so in Pep Comics and the renamed Laugh Comics. But Radio Comics was not completely defunct yet. They continued publishing their revival of The Shadow. Launched in 1964 to keep the Archie Adventure line going, at least in name, Radio’s Shadow was updated—a helping of James Bond, a touch of the old-time radio version of The Shadow, and a dollop—in the form of the character’s old archnemesis, Shiwan Khan—from The Shadow’s pulp magazine. His trademark slouch hat was nowhere to be seen. Out of fashion, no doubt. The first two issues of The Shadow were solid efforts, the work of Fly scripter Robert Bernstein and Jaguar artist John Rosenberger. But, with the third issue, the character was turned inside out like a sock puppet. They took away his dark blue-black business suit and matching cloak, and

handed him an ugly blue and green super-hero costume and a trick multipistol. Siegel, who had grown up on The Shadow’s pulp exploits and should have known better, was responsible for the reimagining—or should we call it undoing? Some responsibility could also be attached to the new house artist, Paul Reinman. He had been working for Marvel Comics, doing short backups for Tales of Suspense and inking Jack Kirby’s pencils on classic Marvels like The Incredible Hulk #1 and The X-Men. No great penciler, Reinman was a pedestrian inker who stepped on Kirby’s pencils until the magic was, in the immortal words of Little Lulu’s Tubby, “mashed to a crisp.” The Shadow became very boring very fast. In virtually every issue the hero fought Shiwan Khan. But even as that title was marching into oblivion, Radio Comics unexpectedly revived The Fly. I really missed The Fly after his title was cancelled in the summer of 1964. So you can imagine my pleasure when, the following spring, the character came buzzing back. I can still recall my initial surprise at finding issue #31 at the corner drugstore. The cover showed a weakened Fly about to be pounced on by several thugs led by The Spider, now tricked out in a weird cobwebby purple outfit. Three other super-heroes were swooping to his rescue. I recognized The Black Hood and The Comet—but the latter’s costume was an ugly orange and green instead of the pristine red and white of his revival appearance. The third character called himself The Shield, but he wasn’t the exciting star of The Double Life of Private Strong. This Shield wore a clumsy body “shield” as part of his star-spangled panoply. In those days I was ignorant of the Golden Age Shield. Most disconcertingly, the book was now called Fly Man—not exactly a title calculated to walk off the newsstands. But it was the familiar Fly I knew, despite a minor but important alteration in one of his costume colors. The classy insect green had become olive drab. “Drab” was a good word for everything associated with the new Fly Man. But I bought all subsequent issues anyway. Call it misguided youthful nostalgia. This return issue featured “The Fly Man’s Partners in Peril.” pitting him against his old nemesis, The Spider. That villain’s efforts are thwarted as, in turn, The Shield, The Comet, and Black Hood come to his rescue—the latter astride a ridiculous robot horse named Nightmare!

A Shadow Of His Former Self The first issue of Archie’s comic The Shadow (cover-dated Aug. 1964) saw the master of night in something resembling his original 1930s/40s pulp-mag attire… but he soon changed to green-and-blue super-hero threads, and to battling more super-powered foes than Shiwan Khan, as in the final issue (#8, Nov. 1965), scripted by Jerry Siegel. Scans by Nick Caputo. The art on both is by Paul Reinman, depicted at right from the 1964 Marvel Tales Annual. Back in the ’40s, Reinman had been a pretty fair penciler on “Green Lantern”—and in the ’50s he’d drawn some excellent war and horror stories for Timely/Atlas. Thanks to Bob Bailey & J. Fairfax for the scan. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.; The Shadow is a trademark of Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

Those Mighty, Mighty Crusaders

Writer Jerry Siegel.

The Spider becomes fed up with the interference and sends the superheroes an anonymous message inviting them to join a non-existent group called The Mighty Crusaders. It’s a trap. But our heroes win handily, and conclude the issue’s festivities wondering if the Mighty Crusaders is such a bad idea, after all…. Aside from his new name, Fly Man (sometimes hyphenated as “FlyMan”) suddenly possesses new powers to augment his original insect abilities. These were the ability to shrink or grow to any size—powers lifted from Marvel’s Giant-Man, without question. But that wasn’t all writer Jerry Siegel purloined. In subsequent issues, Fly Man started reading more and more like a Marvel comic—a bad Marvel comic. But the Stan Lee influence was obvious, from the jocular and melodramatic dialogue to story titles like “Evil Lurks amongst Us” and “Beware... The Blockbuster!” Siegel’s superheroes bickered among one another. They had problems. In real life, The Shield was unemployable cluck Joe Higgins. The Comet perpetually mourned his dead wife. The Web, who came along later, was hen-pecked by his wife. At Marvel, Stan Lee gave his heroes real-life issues that made their struggles seem even more heroic. Siegel gave his heroes problems that reduced them to sad-sack status. It’s difficult to say now, over 40 years later, whether Siegel was just doing a hack imitation, or was actually lampooning the Marvel approach to comics. He and artist Paul Reinman certainly were poking fun at the former Stan Lieber’s signing his stories Stan Lee when they bylined theirs as “Jerry Ess” and “Paul Are.” But either way, the result was sad. Sad, because this was the work of the pioneering Jerry Siegel, and sad because

They Wouldn’t Hurt A Fly, Man (Left:) Paul Reinman’s cover for Fly Man #31 (May 1965). (Right:) The page in that issue in which the villain taunts Fly Man, Fly Girl, The Shield, a becaped Black Hood, and The Comet into joining forces as “The Mighty Crusaders”—and they discover they kinda like the idea! Script by Jerry Siegel. The issue’s main splash page, in which the latter three heroes are slugging Fly Man, was printed last issue. Thanks to Gregg Whitmore. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

he literally trashed most of the Golden Age MLJ heroes he revived in the back pages of Fly Man—and in The Mighty Crusaders, which sprang up in the summer of 1966. That inaugural issue revealed that The Shield was the son of the original Shield, who had been turned to stone by a villain known as The Eraser. The Web was simply a middle-aged guy come out of retirement over his wife shrewish objections. Captain America-style, Black Hood had lived through the 1940s and ’50s without growing old because he had been dematerialized by another villain until an experiment returned him to solid form. (Siegel completely ignored the fact that Black Hood had been appearing in Adventures of The Fly since 1960). The Comet had been living on the planet Altrox with his alien bride until she was murdered and he lost his original powers, which were replaced by a bizarre rainbow helmet. (Unfortunately, no one told Siegel that the Golden Age Comet was murdered in 1941 and was replaced by his brother, who became known as The Hangman.) Siegel revived The Hangman, too—but as a former super-hero gone bad. Another MLJ hero, the magical Wizard, reappeared as a bearded old goat turned ultra-villain. For some reason, Siegel called his costume

The Rise And Fall—And Rise And Fall And Rise—Of Archie’s 1960s Super-Hero Group

A Rosie By Any Other Name (Above:) The “hen-pecking” of Dr. John Raymond, a.k.a. The Web. is only hinted at in this page from his return in a solo story in Fly Man #36 (March 1966)—but Jerry Siegel and Paul Reinman did a creditable job retelling his origin. (Top right:) This house ad from Mighty Crusaders #5 (June 1966) displayed the differences between the romances of Fly Man and The Web. Was Siegel saying that it was marriage that ruined romance? (Right:) In Mighty Comics #43 (Feb. 1967), The Web’s wife became a masked crime-fighter on her own, coming on to him to “test his love.” There are names for spouses like that—but “Pow-Girl” isn’t one of them. Thanks to Gregg Whitmore. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

characters “ultra-heroes” and “ultra-villains”—rarely invoking the modifier “super.” It’s ironic that the father of the first super-hero would do that, but perhaps he couldn’t stomach the adjective any longer. With the issues of Fly Man and The Mighty Crusaders cover-dated March 1966, Radio Comics dropped the Archie Adventure Series house name and reinvented themselves as Mighty Comics. They also copied Marvel’s emblematic corner box as closely as they could, in a blatant attempt to bag some of Marvel’s expanding readership. They failed miserably. The same month they launched The Mighty Crusaders, they announced a revival of their Golden Age Man of Steel, Steel Sterling, in his own title. “Now on sale!” swore the house ad. But Mighty never released the comic. It was an omen.

Those Mighty, Mighty Crusaders

Now, if there’s a safe bet in comics publishing, it’s a team book. The Mighty Crusaders should have been a sure thing. In fact, it had been inspired by a fan letter in 1962’s Adventures of The Jaguar #8, in which reader Paul Seydor suggested that Radio take its five best characters—The Fly, Fly Girl, Jaguar, Black Hood, and the Simon & Kirby Shield—and put them in a team book he called The Anti-Crime Squad. Seydor drew an imaginary cover which the editors reproduced with his letter. It showed

You’ve Never Seen Nothin’ Like The Mighty Crusaders! Reinman’s cover for The Mighty Crusaders #1 (Nov. 1965), which spotlighted The Shield in particular—and a house ad from issue #4 that highlighted the concept of “The Mighty Comics Group” and referred to its editor, writer, and artist as “the Mighty Guys.” Thanks to Gene Reed for both scans. Incidentally, contributing to the annoyance of Stan Lee and Marvel publisher Martin Goodman re The Mighty Crusaders was the fact that Stan had been prominently employing such terms as “Mighty Marvel” and of course “The Mighty Avengers”—while “the Mighty Comics Group” echoed the Marvel Comics Group christened two or three years earlier. Even so, when scripter Jerry Siegel left Archie’s employ, Stan gave him a proofreading job at Marvel (“How can I not offer Jerry Siegel a job in the comics industry?” was his rhetorical question voiced to Roy T.), which the co-creator of the original super-hero held for a number of months, until he and his family needed to move to California. Artist Paul Reinman did a bit more artwork for Marvel later, as well. Mighty colorist Victor Gorelick never had to worry about working for Marvel; he soon became the editor of the Archie line. “Rick Gee” was editor Richard Goldwater, son of founding publisher John Goldwater. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

The Rise And Fall—And Rise And Fall And Rise—Of Archie’s 1960s Super-Hero Group

the group fighting the Cyclops from Space—a giant one-eyed multitentacled monster, in a knockoff of the first Brave & Bold cover introducing DC’s Justice League of America, on which the latter had wrestled with the many-armed Starro the Conqueror. The Mighty Crusaders’ lineup was similar to Seydor’s suggestion—except that they went back to the original Shield and replaced The Jaguar with The Comet. The team got off to a rocky start when their inaugural meeting was interrupted by some of the worst super—excuse me, ultra-villains of the Silver Age: the immortal Bombor, Thornaldo, Wax-Man, Electroso, and ForceMan. To describe them in detail would be a waste of ink. Besides, they were merely advance men for The Brain Emperor, a typically absurd Mighty Comics alien invader. The high point of The Mighty Crusaders’ short existence was issue #4, and its book-length story, “Too Many Super Heroes.” The title was exactly correct. That tale made the annual JLA/JSA teamups of the ’60s seem underpopulated. Virtually every Golden Age hero the company owned came out of oblivion for this one. That includes Mr. Justice, Captain Flag, Firefly, Bob Phantom, The Fox, and Inferno the Fire Breather. The plot? Don’t make me laugh. These sagas weren’t plotted. To use one of Jerry Siegel’s favorite words, they were exuded. It was a huge, mindless slug-fest noteworthy mostly because it included the missing Jaguar. The villains were the evil Hangman [Continued on p. 20]

“Zip! I Was Reading Steel Sterling Last Night…” The house ad above heralded the debut of two comics titles—but the Steel Sterling comic never materialized, although MLJ/Archie’s own “Man of Steel” did pop up later both in The Mighty Crusaders and in solo tales in Mighty Crusaders and Mighty Comics. Note the prominent use of the sound effect “ZIP”—a reference to the fact that, back in the 1940s, he’d been the star of Zip Comics. Art by Paul Reinman. May the ghosts of Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart forgive the heading above! Thanks to Gregg Whitmore & Nick Caputo. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

The Anti-Crime Squad Printed at right are the fan letter, drawing, and editorial response referred to by Will Murray elsewhere on this page, which may well have had some influence on the creation of “The Mighty Crusaders.” Collector Gregg Whitmore, who supplied many of the images which accompany this article, sent us the following info gathered from the website www.mightycrusaders.net, and this note: “As it turns out, The Mighty Crusaders did not make their first appearance in the pages of Fly Man! Instead, a fan illustration in Adventures of The Jaguar #8 [Sept. 1962] shows the first grouping of these heroes. The fan called the heroes The Anti-Crime Squad, and the lineup consisted of Lancelot Strong, The Black Hood, The Jaguar, The Fly, and Fly Girl. The illustration and the fan’s letter are prominently displayed on the letters page, so, evidently, Archie must have been at least pondering a team book featuring their own heroes. It’s certain that the success of the Fantastic Four and Justice League hadn’t escaped their editorial staff’s attention.” Surprisingly, the “Paul Seydor” who wrote that letter and drew the picture (which betrays the strong influence of the “JLA” cover for 1960’s The Brave and the Bold #28), is no doubt the same fan-friend with whom Steve Gerber launched his early-’60s comics fanzine Headline, as detailed in A/E #90-92. But the Archie folks kinda took their time about getting their team comic into print, didn’t they? [Heroes TM & ©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

Those Mighty, Mighty Crusaders

INTERLUDE #2

Mighty Marvel And The Mighty Crusaders by Rik Offenberger & Chris Squires Things were going good for The Fly until the dawn of the “Marvel Age of Comics.” The “House of Ideas” began rapidly gaining sales at the expense of DC and other publishers. Adventures of The Fly was also in jeopardy. In the mid-1960s, in an attempt to revamp and bring new life to the hero, editor Richard Goldwater hired “Superman” co-creator Jerry Siegel to write and Marvel artist Paul Reinman (X-Men, Fantastic Four, Hulk, Avengers) to draw. It was the perfect pairing of the creator of Superman, the first and greatest super-hero of all time, and an artist from some of Marvel’s hottest new comics. The story-telling was “High Camp,” debuting months ahead of the Batman TV series, which made that style a national fad (and saved “Batman” comics from extinction, too). The main joke in the “High Camp” approach is that the heroes take themselves overly seriously in an exaggerated, complicated situation, with the reader laughing at the absurdity of it all! Siegel’s stories, unfortunately, came off as stiff rather than funny, and Reinman’s artwork looked sloppy and hurried. Fans misunderstood the humor and assumed Archie’s “Mighty Comics Group” was only a bad attempt to cash-in on unsuspecting buyers as a

“Too Many Super Heroes”? Paul Reinman’s cover for The Mighty Crusaders #4 (March ’66)—the ultimate issue of that title—and Bob Layton’s 21st-century reinterpretation of it, done a few years back for collector Michael Dunne. Thanks to Gregg Whitmore for the cover scan. [Cover ©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.; characters in McLeod drawing TM & ©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

Marvel comic. While Adventures of The Fly, Fly Man, and the companion title The Mighty Crusaders were never number-one titles at Archie, sales were acceptable and returns were minimal. Archie Comics even managed to license Fly Man Halloween costumes and a Mighty Crusaders board game featuring The Fly. In 1967 The Fly ended his first run at Archie Comics: 31 issues as Adventures of The Fly (#1 to #31), eight as Fly Man (#32-39), and as the lead character in all seven editions of The Mighty Crusaders. “The Fly” also made several appearances in Laugh Comics and Pep Comics. While some comics historians may judge the character based entirely on its “Fly Man” phase and call it a failure, or simply a Marvel “knock-off,” that is not the case. The Fly’s first published life lasted over eight years, surpassing many creations, titles, and features of the early Silver Age. [See Interlude #3 on p. 29]

The Rise And Fall—And Rise And Fall And Rise—Of Archie’s 1960s Super-Hero Group

23’s A Crowd—Or Are There Only 22? Just in case you were thinking that maybe the title of The Mighty Crusaders #4 was an overstatement, here’s a double-page, clockwise intro to the heroes (and villains with old heroes’ names) in the pages shown: (A) Inferno, Firefly, and Fireball… (B) The Fox, The Web, Blackjack, Bob Phantom, Fly Man, and The Shield… (C) Fly Girl, Captain Flag, Dusty (The Shield’s kid partner), The Comet (1960s version, natch), and Zambini, the Miracle Man (a magician, with a brush on his headpiece)… (D) Mr. Justice, The Wizard (evil incarnation), The Jaguar, and The Hangman (temporarily a criminal)… (E) Kardak the Mystic Magician (interfacing with Zambini) and Roy the Super Boy (the hero-Wizard’s sidekick)… (F) The heroic Wizard from the 1940s… (G) Steel Sterling, who along with Mr. Justice and others tried to muscle his way into membership, but was temporarily turned down because, well, there were just “too many super-heroes.” Thanks to Gregg Whitmore for the scans of this Siegel/Reinman fist-fest. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

Those Mighty, Mighty Crusaders

The Rise And Fall—And Rise And Fall And Rise—Of Archie’s 1960s Super-Hero Group

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Music, Maestro, Please! Reinman’s cover for The Mighty Crusaders #6 (July 1966), with its villainous Maestro, seen above, illustrates a basic concept a bit suggestive of Mike Sekowsky & Murphy Anderson’s cover for Justice League of America #16 (Dec. 1962), with its villain called, er… The Maestro. Thanks to Gregg Whitmore for the MC art. [JLA cover ©2010 DC Comics; MC cover ©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

[Continued from p. 16] and Wizard. The ending was bizarre, to say the least. The original Wizard was summoned from the 1940s to battle his older, vicious counterpart. The young Wizard is disgusted by his ’60s self and shames the old guy into surrendering. What always bothered me about that ending is this: After the Wizard returned to the ’40s, knowing that he would one day turn bad, why didn’t he prevent himself from taking the wrong road later in life?

Mike Machlan’s figure of MLJ/Mighty Comics Group hero Fireball got squeezed off our colorful cover—so here it is in glorious black&-white! Thanks to Mike and to Michael Dunne. [Fireball TM & ©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

But what would you expect from a writer who hatched menaces like Inferno the Tyrant, Evilo the Tempter, and my favorite, Phantasmon the Terrible and his Alieg-Laboids, at his heroes? The latter, who fought Fly Man, hailed from another planet and ejected lighting bolts from his nostrils, among other ridiculous talents. Mighty Comics ultra-villains could be divided into two distinct classes: brutes who were a cross between Attila the Hun and a modern wrestler, and impossibly bombastic alien menaces. They always talked like this: “Writhe...groan…in tribute to me: The Terrible Titan! I, who am lord and master of the underground civilization of Subterrania, will now conquer the surface world, too, through my control of the mightiest of weapons: X002—radiation weakness!”

Those Mighty, Mighty Crusaders

The heroes were not much better. Quoth Fly Man in one story: “That’s it! The getaway car my insect chums gave me the tipperoo about!” With campy dialogue like that, the Mighty line was foredoomed. And so it came to pass. In issue #5’s “The Sinister Agents of the Nameless One!” in which they battled a terrorist organization calling itself D.E.M.O.N, two new groups were introduced. Mr. Justice, Steel Sterling, and The Jaguar formed the Terrific Three. The Ultra Men consisted of The Fox, The Web, and Captain Flag. But they went nowhere, and were never seen again. In the sixth issue, The Mighty Crusaders were tormented by a villain who called himself The Maestro. It turned out that The Maestro was an agent for an U.N.C.L.E.-like organization and was testing the group before

allowing them to join T.R.I.U.M.P.H., and become subject to The Maestro’s orders. Now, a Marvel super-hero would have been insulted. Not The Mighty Crusaders. They joined up, timorously wondering what the future held for them. As it turned out, exactly nothing. The next issue was their last. And it featured a five-page “Mighty Crusaders” story starring only Black Hood and The Shield. No mention of T.R.I.U.M.P.H. The cover feature was the second part of the “Steel Sterling” story that was supposed to have run in Steel Sterling #1. Part one had appeared in Fly Man #39 the previous month. Earlier, a different version of that story had appeared in the Belmont paperback book High Camp Super-Heroes. (Belmont was Archie’s book imprint.) This was not the end of the Mighty line. Fly Man was retitled Mighty Comics with issue #40 (Nov. 1966), and it ran for ten more issues as a revolving door for the adventures of “The Web,” “The Fox,” “The Shield,” and whoever else Siegel and Reinman felt like playing with that month. The Black Hood seemed to get the most play—and his Golden Age nemesis, The Skull, was brought back despite the documented fact that he had been electrocuted by the state in 1941. The Hangman resurfaced as a hero again, with no explanation. The final issue, cover-dated October 1967, featured two excruciatingly undistinguished stories, a “Web” caper and a “Black Hood” exploit. And so it ended. The Mighty Comics line was a classic example of how publishers can go wrong chasing trends. The downfall of Radio Comics was that their books were slavish imitations of Mort Weisinger-era “Superman” comics. That was fine for the early ’60s, but by 1965, even the Man of Steel was [Continued on p. 26]

Send These Boys To Camp! (Left:) A cover by (surprise!) Paul Reinman graced the cover of the 1966 paperback High Camp Super-Heroes, which attempted to hitch a ride on the Batman TV gravy train. Amazingly, it contains original (Siegel/Reinman) stories, not reprints! Thanks to Gregg Whitmore. (Right:) But, campy as his 1940s costume may have looked to a ’60s audience, there were those who were happy to see creator Jack Cole’s original look for The Comet restored in his solo origin tale in The Mighty Crusaders #2 (Jan. 1966). Thanks to Gene Reed. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

The Rise And Fall—And Rise And Fall And Rise—Of Archie’s 1960s Super-Hero Group

A Five-Page, Four-Color Phantasmagoria Of Mighty Comics Festivities

All In Color For A Dime—Or 12¢—If You Count Black And White As Colors! (Above:) The published cover of Adventures of The Jaguar #1 (Sept. 1961)—and a pristine black-&-white look at the original art of John Rosenberger’s main splash (with script reportedly by Robert Bernstein). The former was sent by Gregg Whitmore—the latter by Dominic Bongo, courtesy of Heritage Comics Archives. (Left:) The cover of Adventures of The Fly #24 (Feb. 1963) was signed by Rosenberger—but his byline was deleted on the printed cover. Shame on whoever did it! Repro’d from a scan of the original artwork, with thanks to collector and dealer Mike Burkey (www.romitaman.com). [All 3 scans ©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.] NOTE: Adventures of The Fly ran from #1 (Aug. 1959) through #30 (Oct. 1964). Thanks to the Grand Comics Database website.

Those Mighty, Mighty Crusaders

Fly Man And Friends (Counter-clockwise from top left:) Since the cover of the revived and retitled Fly Man #31 had depicted a quartet of heroes, could we have expected that of #32 to do any less? The Reinman drawing has a real early Justice League of America feel. Thanks to Gregg Whitmore for this scan and the next. Siegel & Reinman’s splash page for the bimonthly Fly Man #34 (Nov. 1965) shows an increasingly rare solo outing for The Fly— But as the story gathered steam, not only did his several of his fellow ultra-heroes show up—but they all went to a comics convention, complete with its costume masquerade! This is doubtless one of the earliest con appearances in a pro comic. Score one for Siegel and Reinman! And to Gene Reed, for sending us this scan. [All 3 scans ©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.] NOTE: Fly Man picked up the numbering of Adventures of The Fly with issue #31 (May 1965), and ran through #39 (Sept. 1966)—after which the title was rechristened Mighty Comics from #40 (Nov. 1966) through the final issue, #50 (Oct. 1967). Source: Grand Comics Database.

The Rise And Fall—And Rise And Fall And Rise—Of Archie’s 1960s Super-Hero Group

An Ad Hoc Super-Hero Group (Clockwise from top left:) This comics-style house ad for Fly Man bears witness to the transformation of that mag into a group comic—which of course had begun with its initial issue (#31). Script probably by Jerry Siegel; art certainly by Paul Reinman. Thanks to Gregg Whitmore for all three scans on this page. Another house ad—by which time, the mag had definitely transmuted into The Mighty Crusaders. Art by Reinman. An interior splash page from an issue of The Mighty Crusaders—does it really matter which one? And do we have to tell you that it’s by Jerry Siegel (writer) and Paul Reinman (artist)? [All 3 scans ©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.] NOTE: The Mighty Crusaders was launched with a first issue dated Nov. 1965; its final bimonthly issue, #7, was for Nov. 1966. Source: the GCD.

Those Mighty, Mighty Crusaders

Of Pop Art And Paintings (Clockwise from top left:) Not being members of The Mighty Crusaders, Golden Agers Mr. Justice and Steel Sterling teamed up with Silver Ager The Jaguar to become “The Terrific Three”—though only for that single issue of Mighty Crusaders (#5). The Fox, The Web, and Captain Flag—all 1940s retreads— joined forces for that same issue as The Ultra-Men. Script and art for both these pages by Siegel & Reinman; thanks to Gregg Whitmore for the scans. [Both pages ©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.] Paul Reinman was also a painter—and we have Dan Makara to thank for sending us this scan of one of his less actionistic art works. [©2010 Estate of Paul Reinman.]

The Rise And Fall—And Rise And Fall And Rise—Of Archie’s 1960s Super-Hero Group

Even Bad Guys Deserve A Second (Or Third) Chance (Above:) Mighty Comics #40 (formerly Fly Man, née The Adventures of The Fly) became a revolving door of colorful heroes in mostly solo action— beginning with The Web battling a villain called Ironfist. Ye Ed admits that Jerry Siegel got to the latter name for Mighty before he himself did for Marvel (even if Roy has no memory of ever seeing Mighty #40, and named his and Gil Kane’s early-’70s hero after a “ceremony of the iron fist” in the first kung fu movie he ever saw). But there’d been a communist general called Iron Fist back in Plastic Man #50 (Dec. 1954), and this one Roy knows he must’ve seen, even if he didn’t consciously remember it. Well, as Harry Truman liked to say: “There’s nothing new under the sun except the history you don’t know yet.” Thanks to Nick Caputo & Gene Reed. (Top right:) The Hangman became a hero again in Mighty Comics, as per this splash from #45 (April 1967). He didn’t wear his former cape in his 1960s incarnation. Art in this & preceding spot by Paul Reinman; script by Jerry Siegel. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.] (Right:) And, just for good measure—here’s a 2005 sketch by Golden Age “Hangman” artist Bob Fujitani, courtesy of Bob and collector Jeff Gelb. Fujitani was interviewed in A/E #23. [Hangman TM & ©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

Those Mighty, Mighty Crusaders

[Continued from p. 21] falling out of favor with an increasing number of fans. While Marvel was climbing to new heights, Mighty Comics was aping the Lee/Kirby/Ditko style and claims to greatness and sinking to depths of absurdity undreamed of by even the rankest of independent comics. I don’t know what possessed Jerry Siegel to turn the unique MLJ and Radio Comics characters into a bunch knockoffs and also-rans. Or what prompted editor Richard Goldwater to hire Paul Reinman to almost single-handedly draw the Mighty line. Was it because he was the only Marvel artist they could afford? Or because Reinman had drawn a “Fly” story back in the Simon & Kirby period? Most likely, it was because Reinman had been one of MLJ’s star artists in the old days.

Part III – Red Circle And Beyond When the Mighty heroes were resurrected in the 1980s as part of Archie’s Red Circle imprint, I was astonished. Who would want to revive that dank, depressing, and insincere corner of comics? I could see giving The Fly and The Jaguar and the second Shield another shot, but without the original artists who had made those characters so appealing, it seemed like a waste. The Mighty Crusaders boasted not one but two Shields in the title’s ’80s go-round. Steel Sterling finally got his own title—though it only lasted four issues.

The Rise And Fall—And Rise And Fall And Rise—Of Archie’s 1960s Super-Hero Group

They’re Baaaaack! The first issue of All New Adventures of The Mighty Crusaders (March 1983) boasted a cover and much interior art by Rich Buckler. Earlier, artist Grey Morrow had given The Black Hood a new look—and a motorcycle. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

But this resurrection had its moments. Spider-Man’s Steve Ditko did a wonderful job on the rechristened Fly. I read his adventures religiously over its two-year run, and wished it had flown forever. By the time DC Comics radically reinvented the MLJ/Archie heroes in the early 1990s for its Impact line, the Mighty heroes were unrecognizable. The Jaguar, for instance, was reincarnated as a female—and failed to find an audience. The Jaguar was next seen, in his original identity, in an issue of Archie’s Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Now, once more appearing under the Red Circle banner, the latest generation of the former ultra-heroes is again being offered by DC. Once more, they have been retooled and reimagined. Some of the old magic that touched me in the early ’60s must linger, since they keep dying while refusing to die. Still, but for various flukes, they might now be long dead. For, when writer Alan Moore originally conceived his famous Watchmen graphic novel, his first thought was to use preexisting heroes. He ended up converting faux versions of the old Charlton action heroes for his purposes, but his initial impulse had been to open his story with the body of the original Shield being fished out of the water….

[See Interlude #3 on following page.]

A Mighty Wind A vintage Paul Reinman drawing—probably for promotional purposes—of the 1960s incarnation of The Mighty Crusaders, repro’d from the original art, courtesy of Michael Dunne. [©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

Those Mighty, Mighty Crusaders

INTERLUDE #3 by Offenberger & Squires The Fly returned at the beginning of the Direct Market in the 1980s under the Red Circle Comics Group banner. (Archie was one of the first publishers to allow direct distribution.) The stories were written by Jack C. Harris and Rich Buckler, with art by Steve Ditko, Jim Steranko, Buckler, and others. While initially successful, the series was moved from direct market only to both direct market and newsstand distribution (under the “Archie Adventure Series” logo). Unfortunately, The Fly couldn’t find a large enough audience after being missing from regular newsstands for fifteen years, and the comics were cancelled after only 24 months. But you can’t keep a good hero down! In 1991, a mere seven years later, DC Comics licensed several Archie super-heroes and launched the Impact Comics line. The comics were intended for pre-teen audiences as part of DC’s attempt to attract new readers. This time, the adult attorney was gone. Once again a young boy could transform into The Fly, with his new

secret identity being that of high school student Jason Troy. While the order numbers were good (and outstanding by today’s standards), the series was launched at the same time as the Image and the Valiant brands. (Image easily sold millions of copies of its first issues.) In comparison, the Impact line and The Fly struggled. After two years of moderate sales, DC decided to revamp the Impact Universe, making it a darker and grittier place in the pages of Crucible; however, the concept did not sit well with Archie publisher Michael Silberkleit, who declined to renew the license with DC for a fourth year. Archie planned on bringing back its heroes as part of the proposed Spectrum Comics line. Steve Englehart had finished two scripts and Michael Bair had done some preliminary artwork when Archie decided that those attempts were (again) too dark and gritty and not in harmony with The Company’s wholesome image. In 1997, The Fly was pitched as an animated series to be produced by Michael Uslan. Robert Zemeckis optioned the rights for a motion picture of The Fly in 2000. Ultimately, neither project was produced.

All The Way (Again) With MLJ! All New Adventures of The Mighty Crusaders #2 (May 1983) sported an action-packed wraparound cover penciled by managing editor Rich Buckler and inked by Frank Giacoia. It was a good-looking comic book! Note that their opponents were the “Malevolent Legion of Juggernauts”! [©2010 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

The Rise And Fall—And Rise And Fall And Rise—Of Archie’s 1960s Super-Hero Group

Adventures of The Fly #2 to Archie Comics to help produce their trade paperback. While Rik and Chris wrote this article together, Rik invited Chris to share a little of his passion with all of you. He writes:

Archie never again published a new story with The Fly. In a move not usually seen in the comics industry, Joe Simon asked Archie Comics to restore the rights for “The Fly” to him. Without a lawsuit or animosity, Archie Comics returned the character (as well as “Lancelot Strong,” the identity of the revived Shield of the late 1950s) and the rights to the first four stories to Simon. (Archie still retains the reprint rights for all published Fly comics except the original four issues, as well as retaining the copyrights to all heroes and villains not featured in the comics produced by Simon.) In 2004, Archie Comics, as “Red Circle Productions,” published a trade paperback of the original Simon & Kirby Fly issues, fully authorized and in cooperation with Joe Simon. Coming full circle, Simon most recently licensed The Fly to French publisher Organic Comix. It produced a “Fly” story featuring Tommy Troy as both The Fly and the original Spiderman. It was the first new “Fly” material in nearly 25 years! To date, Organic Comix has produced two “Fly” features for its quarterly anthology series Strange, Le Journal des Superheroes, with more planned for future issues. Lastly, we would like to share a personal note. As a member of a writing team, each writer tells part of the story. When Roy Thomas approached Rik Offenberger to write this piece on The Fly, Rik immediately involved his colleague at First Comics News, Chris Squires. While Chris professes to love all things related to The Mighty Crusaders, he is more passionate about The Fly. He even loaned a copy of his own

“The Fly is my all-time favorite comic book character. I searched for the comics and was always thrilled when a new issue came out. I still have several issues of Adventures of The Fly that I bought as a child. Adventures of The Fly #27 and #28 were purchased at a small market in Oceanside CA when our family was vacationing there. I found #29 and #30 at liquor stores in Bakersfield (when those establishments used to have massive comic book racks). My original copy of Adventures of The Fly #31 (Fly Man), with the debut of The Mighty Crusaders was picked up at Panorama Market on River Boulevard in Bakersfield. My Mighty Crusaders #1 was bought with pop bottle returns at Thrifty Drug Store in the Hillcrest Shopping Center in East Bakersfield. How many collectors my age (59) know the history of their original books as well as that? It shows how much fondness I have for the comics and how I appreciate all the talents behind them. It wasn’t until years later that I found out The Fly was co-created by Jack Kirby. What a thrill! I remember seeing “The King” at a comic book store in Studio City, California, in the ’80s, and all I could say was “Hi.” I so wanted to tell him how much I enjoyed The Fly.”

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“Toby Press Was My College” The Comic Book Career Of MELL LAZARUS, Creator Of Miss Peach And Momma Conducted by Jim Amash

Transcribed by Brian K. Morris

ince 1957, Mell Lazarus has tickled our funnybones with his Miss Peach and Momma newspaper comic strips. But few readers know that Mell’s previous job was being the editor at Toby Press, a comic book company which was owned by Al Capp of Li’l Abner fame. Mell oversaw a lot of good comics during the four-plus years he worked there, from the various Li’l Abner spin-offs to John Wayne, The Black Knight, Billy the Kid, and many more. Mell even wrote a satirical novel about his time at Toby, titled The Boss Is Crazy, Too! But, just for us, Mell here takes a more serious look at his time there, for which we thank him. We also appreciate his patience in waiting as long as he has for us to get his interview into print. Thanks go also to Mark Evanier for giving me Mell’s phone number several years ago. —Jim.

“Nobody Had Any Money—Everybody Stayed Home”

MELL LAZARUS: I was born in Brooklyn, New York, during the Great Depression. Literally, socially, there was nothing to do. Nobody had any money—everybody stayed home. When I say “nothing to do,” there was nothing exciting or expensive to occupy our interests, but we had great times. I had a marvelous older sister and parents: intelligent, funny people. I had no toys, so I had to do something . I discovered pencils, and they would take a little extra money, and we had a lot of newspapers in New York at the time. My dad used to buy me the Sunday newspapers every week, which only cost a few pennies each. I read them and copied them, and learned to read before starting school from comics such as The Katzenjammer Kids and Slim Jim. What grabbed me in the first place was the idea that somebody drew these strips. I had no sense of the business of it all, but I knew somebody had to draw them. At the age of five or six, it occurred to me that when you grow up, you have to have something important to do. And drawing newspaper strips was what I wanted to do. JIM AMASH: You were born in ’27, so you were the right age to see comic books when they started coming out. LAZARUS: Yes, but to be honest, they never fascinated me. In terms of comic books, I was more intrigued by the anthology comics— like Famous

Mell Lazarus—From The ’50s To Last Week Mell Lazarus, circa the 1970s—flanked by a half-pager he wrote and drew for a 1950ish issue of Toby Press’ Al Capp’s Li’l Abner comic book, and his Momma newspaper strip for May 11, 2010. Thanks to Mell for the daily, and to Bruce Mason for the photo and “Li’l Yuk-Yuk.” [Momma ©2010 Mell Lazarus; other art ©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

The Comic Book Career Of Mell Lazarus, Creator Of Miss Peach And Momma

Funnies—wherein the syndicates United Features or King Features would publish a comic book dedicated to reprinting their own strips, as opposed to super-hero features, which never grabbed me. I don’t know whether it was because I couldn’t really draw that well, or I just enjoyed the “comic” comic books. JA: Nearly every humor cartoonist I’ve interviewed told me the same thing. And nearly every adventure artist I’ve talked to preferred adventure strips. LAZARUS: I knew I was never going to be flying to Mars or trudging through the jungle. Of course, Tarzan fascinated me, but no, I was a bigfoot cartoonist even before I knew I was.

I Like “Iceberg Ike”—“Little Willie,” Maybe Not So Much!

JA: You graduated from high school in ’43?

Mell Lazarus may have felt he was “overpaid” in getting paid at all for his “Little Willie” gags—but he needn’t apologize for cashing checks for both it and “Iceberg Ike.” Both appeared in Holyoke issues of Blue Beetle, the former in #22 (June 1943). Note that the cartoonist then spelled his first name with just one “l.” [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

LAZARUS: I spent two years in high school. I would have graduated in ’45, but I quit high school in ’43. There was a rather large war going on… it was in all the papers. [Jim laughs] It was a given that, two years from then, if the war was still on—and we had no indication that it wouldn’t be—I knew I’d be in the military one way or another. So I quit high school. My parents allowed me to, which is astonishing. They were incredible people, both self-educated. They both had a high school education—everything else they learned, they taught themselves. My mother was a great grammarian. Although she was born in Eastern Europe, she came over when she was young, and spoke perfect English. She gave me a real love for language and taught me how to speak it properly. Then along with a couple of very stern English teachers in the New York City system, which was quite good at the time, I became fascinated by words and funny pictures, a great combination.

“I Endeavored To Freelance” JA: What did you do when you left high school? LAZARUS: I freelanced. Actually, I endeavored to freelance. I had a couple of little jobs, like delivering packages and things, but essentially, I wanted to draw the filler pages for comic books. I felt at that time that practically everyone else of age was in the service, and there seemed to be a shortage, because a lot of the stuff that was being done in the comic books was really crappy. So I started drawing things like “Little Willie” and took a couple of pages to Holyoke Press, who published The Blue Beetle. I actually sold a couple of pages of “Little Willie” to them at three bucks apiece. I was overpaid. They were terrible; totally simplistic and very badly drawn. The jokes were simple and silly, but I saw my stuff in print and was hooked. I loved every step of the process. I wanted to see the engraving plates that they made! I thought, “My God, what a career. Draw a picture, it gets turned into metal, and then it’s printed on paper. In color, no less.”

JA: I have you as doing three series for Holyoke: “Little Willie,” “Mister Grouch,” and “Iceberg Ike.” LAZARUS: I don’t remember “Mr. Grouch” or “Iceberg Ike.” Isn’t that odd? JA: Not really. I’ve interviewed a lot of people who don’t remember every feature they did. And of course, we’re talking 60 years ago, so I can understand that. Who hired you at Holyoke? LAZARUS: S. Philip Steinberg. My impression of him was that he was not really in that business, that he was doing a friend a favor. I mean, this is just based on his appearance. He was so different from anyone that I tended to bump into in that business. He was very quiet and very refined; impeccably dressed and very conservative. He just came in and sat there. He was there every time I went up. He was very nice, a real gentleman, a real old school gentleman. He came from Boston, and had a small office in the Graybar Building in New York City. I think he felt sorry for me. JA: Well, he was also going to get something and get it cheap, even if it wasn’t that great, which would help their profitability. LAZARUS: Probably. Yeah, three bucks—I went wild. “I’m getting paid!” It was a real step for me, because I remember saying to my mother, “Now, when I go to the syndicates, I’ll have a leg to stand on.” [laughs] JA: Well, there’s truth to it, because you could always have gotten hired as an apprentice, if nothing else. The features you did for Holyoke: did you letter them, too? LAZARUS: Yes, and they didn’t last very long, I must tell you. I think Blue Beetle was bi-monthly. I was only in a few issues. JA: Did you meet anyone else at Holyoke?

“Toby Press Was My College”

LAZARUS: No. I would bring my stuff in, show it to them, and pick up the check. But it was not an ongoing job. They never invited me to do more, nice as they were. But it’s odd. My father gave me a part-time job, knowing I would need time to be drawing. He was a very small manufacturer in Brooklyn. I was delivering packages and stuff like that. That was my backbone for those two years, but I also did a little artwork for neighborhood printers. All were three- and four-dollar jobs. I discovered the Brooklyn Weekly, which was a newspaper. It was actually published in Brooklyn, and I drew a cartoon, went to a photoengraver, and had my own plate made. It cost about $7, I think. I went over there and asked them if they would run it, and they were delighted to run it, so that was a kick. I was published in a newspaper! But I couldn’t keep that up... couldn’t afford the cost of the metal.

“The Only Time I Saw Joe Shuster…” JA: How did you get to work in an office at DC for a couple of weeks? LAZARUS: I think I just went up. I was knocking on a lot of doors, looking for anything that sounded like a job in comics, and DC offered me a job in the mailroom. And every Monday morning—or both Monday mornings, I should have said—I had to pick up all the empty glasses in the executive offices and wash them. My sense was that they worked all weekend.

JA: Harvey wasn’t given any editorial direction, was he? LAZARUS: Oh, no. No, you don’t direct a guy like that. He didn’t need direction. He was brilliant, funny as hell—very quiet, modest, a little reticent in terms of his personality—but unmistakably gifted. JA: But he only did a few things for you. I guess that must be when he started up with EC. LAZARUS: Yes. He fancied himself, I think, at the time, more of an editor than an artist. He wanted to create a magazine and did so. JA: Why did you leave DC after two weeks? LAZARUS: I just didn’t like doing it any more. I thought I’d be surrounded by artists and writers. But no, that wasn’t the case. I was in the mailroom all the time. The only time I saw Joe Shuster is when he happened to come into the mailroom, and I almost fell through the floor when he introduced himself. The office itself was not exactly a magnet job. It was very ordinary, very businesslike, for me, at least. JA: What did you do after that?

I wanted to hang around where the cartoonists were. I don’t think I met Henry Boltinoff, but I saw his drawings around, and was astonished at how beautiful they were. I actually saw Joe Shuster, and I may even have seen Jerry Siegel, whom I got to know later on when I grew up. JA: What did you think of Siegel? LAZARUS: Well, he was very nice. I wasn’t seeing Jerry at the height of his career, unfortunately. I don’t believe he was working in comics at this point. I know that when I was editing at Toby Press, Jerry was my opposite number at Ziff-Davis. We just touched base on the phone once in a while. “I need a letterer, I need an artist,” that kind of thing. It never occurred to me not to do that. JA: You two were editors at different companies, but you’d call for that. So you had a little cooperative thing there when you needed somebody, right?

LAZARUS: Well, it didn’t happen every week, but once or twice, at least. I needed a story lettered in a hurry, somebody would not be available for me, so I’d call Jerry and he’d recommend somebody. I called Harvey Kurtzman once for the same reason, and Harvey said, “I think I would be making an indiscretion. We use our guy all the time.” JA: He meant Ben Oda. LAZARUS: Ben Oda eventually lettered Miss Peach. [laughs] He would come to my house in Brooklyn, and letter the strip. He was like an itinerant letterer. He would drive all over the metropolitan area. He worked for Stan Drake, then he’d come from Connecticut and go to this guy, he’d go to that guy. I was one of his clients. He’d spend about three hours with me, letter a week’s stuff, and go home. JA: So Harvey didn’t give you the letterer’s name? LAZARUS: No, he held out on me. I never forgave him! [mutual laughter] I knew Harvey because earlier, when I was at Toby Press, I bought some stuff from him… “Little Genius,” I think. That was not Harvey’s title. Elliot Caplin named his character “Little Genius,” because Harvey’s work was brilliant, and he considered Harvey a genius, and so insisted, “That’s the name of the character.”

A Genius By Any Other Name The name of the gag feature by Harvey Kurtzman that Lazarus recalls buying as “Little Genius” was actually titled just plain “Genius”—but what’s in a name? Besides, Mell recalls publisher Elliot Caplin, not Kurtzman, as naming the strip. This page from John Wayne Adventure Comics #12 (Dec. 1951) is reprinted from the black-&-white 1992 Kitchen Sink volume Hey Look! Along with eight other “Genius” pages, that book also reprints three Kurtzman “Pot-Shot Pete” features originally printed in Toby comics. [©2010 Adele Kurtzman.]

The Comic Book Career Of Mell Lazarus, Creator Of Miss Peach And Momma

LAZARUS: In the spring of ’45, I joined the Navy, which didn‘t need me very long, so I soon was back in New York trying to sell cartoons.

“[Toby Press] Hired Me…. About A Week Later, I Was The Editor” JA: I have you in the late ’40s assisting on Li’l Abner, and I have you in ’49, starting at Toby Press. Which came first? LAZARUS: No, I never did anything on the Li’l Abner strip. I’ve heard that before, but it’s not true. JA: Okay. From ’45 to ’49, did you do any drawing at all? LAZARUS: Virtually none. I tried, but it was just a different world at the time. There was a lot of competition. A lot of guys were coming back [from military service], and I really wasn’t good enough. But what happened was I got married in 1949, and there was a guy living on the same street as my wife-to-be who was in the public relations business. His name was Bill Richman, and he had a connection with the Capps. He was doing some work for them, and heard they were setting up Toby Press. Capp Enterprises and Toby Press were created around the same time, and Toby, of course, was the comic book division. Bill heard they needed somebody in their art department and told me to go up and get the job. He paved the way somehow, because they hired me. I was astonished that they hired me. I mean, the first day, I was somebody in the bullpen, and about a week later, I was the editor of the comic books. [chuckles] JA: That quick? LAZARUS: Yes, art director and editor Milt Story hired me. He was the only artist up there at the time, and he put in the entire staff. That was the most exciting time for me, because I was suddenly in the business, and immersed in cartoons and cartoonists. I didn’t do much of the drawing myself. But I was soaking it up. JA: What did you start out doing?

LAZARUS: I was taking Photostats of Al Capp’s work, and preparing them for merchandising accounts. If somebody wanted to do an Abner bedsheet, for example, I would find [drawings of] the Shmoos, and the Daisy Maes, and the Pappys and the Mammys, and lay them out in a pattern that could be repeated. In general, I was among those doing packaging design, but I didn’t do any actual drawing. I never drew Li’l Abner in my life. I drew a Shmoo once or twice. JA: So you were in the bullpen for two weeks before you became the editor? LAZARUS: Yes. Elliot Caplin, who was the publisher, had just left Parents Institute. He was the publisher of Parents Magazine, which was a great magazine. Jerry Capp [his and Al Capp’s brother] also came over, and Benton Resnick, their cousin, and Harry Resnick, their uncle, and Madeline Gardner, who was the sister, and some really extraordinary people who were all out of Yale and Ohio State—places like that—and they dressed in gray flannel suits with button-down collars. They introduced me to Brooks Brothers clothes. I haven’t changed since. Toby Press was my college. JA: What were the offices like at Toby? LAZARUS: We had half the fifth floor at 17 East 45th Street, which was between Fifth and Madison. Great street, right near Grand Central Station, and an elevator where you could push the elevator operator out of the way and run it yourself, because it had those handles like on a ship. So he let us drive the elevators all the time, which was a big, big attraction. The offices were rather nice. JA: Were there many people working in the art department? LAZARUS: Eventually, we moved out of the original room I was in, and into another part of the suite. We had a bullpen that was large enough to be separated, so we had the art directors in one and the staff cartoonists, so to speak, in another. I think I worked alongside a guy named Joe Sapinsky. “Sap-in-sky,” which is interesting because he was a Reserve Naval aviator. In fact, he became a captain. He claimed he was the highest-ranking Jewish naval pilot. [laughs] He probably was. JA: Who worked in the art department?

Capp(lin) America Cartoonist Al Capp (nee Caplin)—and an ad for Li’l Abner Orange Juice, which was advertised in various Toby Press comics (including 1951’s Billy the Kid #7). This ad spotlighted some of the cast of Capp’s classic American comic strip Li’l Abner: Abner Yokum his own self, his galfriend (and future bride) Daisy Mae, Pappy & Mammy Yokum, young Washable Jones, and a Shmoo. The photo of Capp was used on the back cover of the 1978 hardcover volume The Best of Li’l Abner, published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, and is credited to Michael Pierce. We only regret we’ve no photos of his brother Elliot Caplin, or of their sibling Jerry Capp. [Photo ©2010 the respective copyright holders; Li’l Abner art ©2010 Capp Enterprises, Inc., or successors in interest.]

LAZARUS: Lou Lupu and Harold Betancourt. The last I heard, Harold lived in San Diego, and Joe Sapinsky lived in London. Lou Lupu, unfortunately, is no longer with us. We had a man named Paul whose last name I can’t remember for the life of me. We had a young cartoonist who was also a veteran, who’d had part of his hand shot off. Also, there was a young man named Nat Johnson, and we had Bernie Lansky for a while. Do you know Bernie? He’s from San Diego as well, but he worked for the Tribune down there for a while; a great cartoonist. We had a few people who came in and didn’t last long, but largely, I spent five years with the same people. JA: When you became editor, you got your own office? LAZARUS: No, I was in a room with Joe Sapinsky, who edited the “straight,” noncomic magazines. I think Lou Lupu was

“Toby Press Was My College”

there, too. He had some seniority. He’d been around for a while.

“Al [Capp] Was The Majority Stockholder” JA: How involved was Elliot Caplin on a day-to-day basis? LAZARUS: Highly involved. It was his life. I mean, he had such a good time in there. He loved the comics, and he started a line of so-called “straight” magazines, something called Popular Psychology—a digestsized magazine—there was U.S. Crime, there was a TV magazine designed to compete with TV Guide. I became their art editor, in a sense. I didn’t design the “straight” magazines; Joe Sapinsky did that. He was not a cartoonist. He was a great designer, though. I think he had previously worked at the HeraldTribune for a while on a section that became New York magazine. JA: Who officially owned the company? Was it Elliot and Al Capp? LAZARUS: I guess Al was the majority stockholder. In fact, I think he liked to introduce himself, “Hi, hi, I’m Al Capp, majority stockholder and fancy groceries.” [mutual laughter] This big guy with a head like a lion, walking in—lumbering in—because he had this pronounced limp. But that’s how he introduced himself to me: “Majority stockholder and fancy groceries.” I haven’t thought of that phrase in all these years.

“The Strip Comes First!” Photo cover from the first issue of Billy the Kid Adventure Magazine (Oct. 1950)—though we don’t recall the real Billy, alias William H. Bonney, alias Henry McCarty, standing still for that many snapshots—plus the issue’s back cover house ad that ballyhooed several of Toby Press’ comics. “Majority stockholder” Al Capp constantly reminded employees that his Li’l Abner comic strip had priority in importance—so naturally the reprint comic book version thereof got top billing. At that time, Li’l Abner was perhaps at the height of its popularity and influence—which is saying something. Thanks to Bruce Mason. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

JA: Was Al Capp very involved in the company? LAZARUS: No, he wasn’t. He had signs made all over the place: “The strip comes first.” Wherever you looked, that was the admonition: “The strip comes first,” because his feeling was we were out to protect the integrity of his strip. Whatever we do with the comic books, they have to reflect well on the strip. We did the reprint books, pasting up old proofs of the strip into comic book form. They had to be cut—he trusted me to do that, actually, to cut where it had to be cut and carefully. To cut panels out that were extraneous. It was like a jigsaw puzzle, you know—you make it fit. JA: But you were cutting out stats, not the originals, right? LAZARUS: Oh, absolutely! We never saw the originals. We were in charge of, among other things, binding the newspaper proofs as they came in every week into these big books. JA: I know that, years earlier, on those Famous Funnies comics, they actually would cut up the originals. LAZARUS: I’m not surprised. No, God, that was so awful. JA: Since you were editor/art director, tell me what you did editorially as opposed to what Elliot Caplin did.

LAZARUS: Elliot’s title was publisher. The comic books became my domain very soon. Elliot really trusted me. God knows why, but he did, and I really enjoyed that. I would buy the art, buy the scripts, edit the scripts, edit the art, and put the books together. There were complete magazines he never saw. I mean, if I had a cover and he was in, I would come in and show it to him. You know, it was nice to get his approval. But there were lots of times when it was indicated, one way or another, that he really didn’t need to see that stuff.

JA: Did you have an assistant? LAZARUS: No, not as such. We did have a couple of guys around if I needed something done that I couldn’t have done. JA: So you were the proofreader, too, then. LAZARUS: I was the proofreader. I did learn to read proof in that place. It’s funny that you mention that, because I’m still an inveterate proofreader. I’m always correcting people’s spelling and syntax. JA: While you were doing this, what was Elliot doing? LAZARUS: Elliot was selling ads for the straight magazines. He was very interested in building a magazine empire. That was the root core of his interest. The comic books were first in place because that was easy. That was a market they could get into with some weight because of the Abner characters and originally, those were our only properties. Then we created new magazines like John Wayne Comics, believe it or not, and Billy the Kid. If you have any old Billy the Kid comics, you’ll see the covers were old movie stills that were then super-colored, you know what I mean? Then we’d paste Joe Sapinsky’s face in. He was a good-looking, manly guy who became our Billy the Kid. JA: So Elliot pretty quickly concentrated on the magazines and left the comics up to you?

The Comic Book Career Of Mell Lazarus, Creator Of Miss Peach And Momma

LAZARUS: Yes, rather early on. We got to know each other and we shared views, both being interested in new titles. It was a lot of fun.

the “John Wayne” stories. They might have worked on the fillers. Do you remember Leon Winick?

JA: Toby Press was also known as Minoan Publications.

LAZARUS: Oh, sure. He had a good relationship with Elliot. Elliot thought he was funny, and they’d sit and gab from time to time. He had a certain air, a certain dignity.

LAZARUS: That was a separate corporation they set up. Minoan Themes, it was called. Minoan refers to the civilization on Crete in the sixth century [B.C.], or whatever the hell it was. There was a movie that came out about it, the name of which I don’t remember. It had a pretty good cast, and I think it was one of the first movies that anyone ever attempted to merchandize. And Elliot, or Capp Enterprises, somehow got the gig. So part of it was completely divorced from any of the Abner stuff. I don’t even know if Al was involved. I’m sure he was, but it was like a sub-corporation. It had all these Greek design themes and Cretan modes. Minoan Themes didn’t last very long. I don’t know how successful it was.

“Sometimes John Wayne… Didn’t Quite Look Like John Wayne”

JA: Well, I know he had a sad ending. He had suffered from clinical depression and ended up being institutionalized, and finally committed suicide. Did you have any indication of his problems? LAZARUS: No, I had no idea. JA: Jack Sparling drew some “John Wayne.” LAZARUS: Yes. We became great buddies. In fact, when he was jammed up, I and Joe Sapinsky and Lou Lupu would go out to his place on Long Island, and work with him at night. We would Lucey some of his stuff and pencil it. Believe it or not, it seems like this is ancient history. We had

JA: Now there’s a question I’m hoping you can answer for me, because I heard this and I don’t know if it’s true—but it’s a great story, if it is. [chuckles] I heard that John Wayne gave permission, of course, for the John Wayne comic book—but he didn’t want the artist to draw him on the inside. He could draw a character that was like John Wayne, but not be exactly John Wayne. Is this a true story? LAZARUS: I haven’t the slightest idea. I mean, if it is, I never heard it. It might have been something he said, “I want to make sure it’ll look like me.” I can’t imagine him not wanting it to look like him. [Of course,] there were agreements that Elliot might have made, that I wasn’t privy to. JA: I always wondered about that story, because sometimes John Wayne, inside, didn’t quite look like John Wayne. I take it that, for things like the Barney Google/Snuffy Smith comic, or the Buck Rogers or the John Wayne, Elliot was the one in charge of getting the licensing for these people. LAZARUS: Oh, sure. JA: I know Frank Frazetta did a little art on John Wayne. Charlie Sultan, too, I think. LAZARUS: Well, I know who Frank is. Charlie Sultan—the name sounds very familiar. A lot of these guys had reputations that I wasn’t even aware of at that time. They came in and out of the office. JA: I’m going to run down a list of some of the people that worked on John Wayne [Adventure Comics], and see if you remember any of them. Some of them didn’t work, necessarily, on

The Sultan Of The Sagebrush The covers of early issues of John Wayne Adventure Comics utilized photos of the screen star—usually in cowboy gear, but occasionally in flight togs or a military uniform because of all those combat movies. Seen here are the covers of #1 (Winter 1949) and #3 (1949, no other date). Perhaps the flyboy was supposed to be the cowboy’s grandson? Maybe Wayne wasn’t always as identifiable inside his comic as he was on the covers, but on the above page from #13 (1952, no other date), he came pretty close. Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., feels the artist was Charles Sultan—or else someone closely imitating his style. Thanks to Michaël Dewally. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

“Toby Press Was My College”

such a good time, though, because he was a funny, funny guy. He did a newspaper strip on the side called Claire Voyant. He was an awfully nice guy and quite a good artist, with a style of his own. He didn’t try to draw like anybody else.

Frank Frazetta

JA: There was also a well-known artist team of the time: Dave Gantz and Ben Brown.

LAZARUS: Dave did a strip about two years or three years after Miss Peach started. His lead character was called Lucky Old Mel, who looked somewhat like me. He thought I was the luckiest guy in the world. Brown and Gantz were a very good, very reliable team. After a while, you get to know who you can depend on, and when I gave them a deadline, they kept it. There was a lot of integrity in what they did, and they loved doing it. Some of these guys were schlepping around, and then dumped the stuff, and if you suggested a change, they’d grunt. But these two boys were really professional. Then they stopped working together for some reason. JA: I know they had a disagreement, but I don’t know the reason. Dave did tell me that Ben Brown had

Speaking Frank-ly (Left:) A Frank Frazetta-drawn filler from Billy the Kid Adventure Magazine #1 (Oct. 1950). (Right:) At roughly the same time, the young Frazetta drew, on a completely separate sheet of paper, this piece of art for a panel which was not used in John Wayne Adventure Comics #4 (Aug. 1950), in the story titled “The Panther Man!” Thanks to dealer Mike Burkey. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

The “Kids” Are Alright Splash pages by Leon Winick (near right) and Jack Sparling (far right) from Billy the Kid Adventure Magazine #4 (1951, month uncertain). Thanks to Gene Reed. Seen above is a caricature of Jack Sparling from a later ACG comic, with thanks to Michael Vance. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

The Comic Book Career Of Mell Lazarus, Creator Of Miss Peach And Momma

home and write it. It’d be on your desk the next morning, as perfect as it could possibly have been. We stayed friends afterwards. He was extremely literate, highly educated— that was obvious—and so was his wife. He also had a very cultivated speech pattern that I never really placed. I guess it stemmed from wherever he went to school. JA: Another writer you had was Lyle Stuart. LAZARUS: Lyle Stuart became a very successful book publisher. Lyle was fun, a nice guy. He wrote for us, but he was a personal friend of Elliot’s or Jerry’s, because he came in what we call the back door. Sometimes, people would be presented to me and say, “Why don’t you find something for him to do?” So I would endeavor to do that. He was actually doing hardcover books. I don’t know whether they were imprints for a major publisher, or whether he did the manufacturing, but he was quite an interesting guy. JA: So as far as dealing with the John Wayne people, that was all Elliot, right? You never dealt with them. LAZARUS: Well, I’m beginning to think that’s the way it was, because I knew so few of them. I was only there for five years.

A Cold Case Dave Gantz (photo circle at top) and the splash panel of a Brown & Gantz terror yarn from Toby’s Tales of Horror #4 (Dec. 1952). The early-1940s pic of Gantz is from a Timely bullpen photo seen more fully with his interview in A/E #13. Alas, we haven’t run across any photos of his erstwhile partner Ben Brown. Thanks to Jim Ludwig for the page scan. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

some problems, and I think they stemmed from his war experiences. But that’s as much as Dave ever told me about Ben Brown. Dave did write his stuff for you, didn’t he? LAZARUS: I think they did. Yeah, I think that’s part of why they were so valuable; they actually wrote and drew. It made my job easier. JA: Tom Gill did some Westerns for you, mainly in John Wayne. LAZARUS: I got to know Tom a lot better after the Toby Press days. We never reminisced about this time, for some reason. We had a lot of life in between. So no, I don’t remember anything about him from those days. He’s the original historian. He really has stories to tell. [NOTE: Tom Gill passed away shortly after this interview was conducted, but was interviewed in A/E #43. —Jim.] Frank Bolle was another artist who was very reliable. He had a lot of substance. There were people with substance and people who were insubstantial, I guess like in any field—so the really good guys stand out in my mind. JA: He was a young kid at this point, but he did some John Wayne comics: Al Williamson. LAZARUS: Elliot brought him in. He was quite a draftsman, and very young. JA: He was probably about twenty years old. LAZARUS: Well, I thought he was even younger. He was great. I was too busy to get to know all the people who worked for us. JA: There’s a few “John Wayne” writers, one being Carl Memling. LAZARUS: Yes, he was great. We once tried a comic strip together. We got an idea for something that we never really pursued. I met him at Toby Press. You told him, more or less, what you wanted in a story, and he’d go

Well, Nobody Ever Said Space Travel Wasn’t Dangerous! Just a couple of wild and crazy-talented kids! Al Williamson penciled and Frank Frazetta inked this exquisite splash page of a decidedly non-DC “Captain Comet” for a Toby comic titled Danger Is Our Business #1 (1953). Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

“Toby Press Was My College”

The Gill Man Tom Gill, who for years drew Western’s Lone Ranger comics, also illustrated such horse operas as this story (right) from Billy the Kid Adventure Magazine #16 (date uncertain, but early ’50s). He got a break from the “oaters” when he sketched the Cold War tale below for John Wayne Adventure Comics #21 (1953)—in which the actor acts as a trouble-shooter for an American oil company in the Middle East. On the story’s final page (panel at bottom right), the Duke captures the main villain, but realizes he’s not one of the locals at all. When “Farouk” wakes up, Wayne predicts, “I think he’ll answer to Ivan and pray to Moscow”—a line that would’ve fit perfectly into some of the star’s 1950s-60s movies. Yep, turns out the bad-guy’s a Russky in disguise! Thanks to Jim Ludwig for locating the scans. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

The Comic Book Career Of Mell Lazarus, Creator Of Miss Peach And Momma

JA: I have you there as being there from ’49 to ’53. LAZARUS: That’s probably correct. From June ’49, because I was hired a couple of weeks before I actually got married. And it allowed us to go ahead with the wedding, at least as far as my prospective mother-in-law was concerned. I was there almost five years to the day. So it would have been before, I guess, spring of ’54. I stayed in the office for a while. They gave me some space so I could freelance. JA: Since the John Wayne comic used photo covers, who picked the photos? LAZARUS: I did, essentially. We had files. I don’t know where the pictures came from, but there was a lot of reference material there. We’d fake a lot of things, too. We could take something from another movie, another character, and simply put his face on it. It was before Photoshop, so we really had to paste it up. JA: Did the Wayne people have to approve the books or at least approve of the photos on the covers? LAZARUS: If they did, I didn’t know about it, because I personally never had that experience. JA: You mentioned talking over plots with Carl Memling. How closely did you work with the writers?

LAZARUS: It depended on the writer. Sometimes, I’d have an idea for a story or a theme, and they would simply take that and work with it. Carl was distinctly a self-starter. He was a real writer. He’d written a lot of articles for magazines. JA: When writers came in with their own ideas, would they come in to you with a synopsis? LAZARUS: Sometimes they did. They’d send me a synopsis, and other times, we’d just talk about it. We didn’t have a set procedure. We didn’t require a synopsis. We knew the writers to begin with. Nobody ever walked in off the street. JA: Might there have been a case, sometimes, for certain people like Dave Gantz, who wrote the stuff he drew? Would you have to approve his stories before he drew them? LAZARUS: Yes.

“Elliot [Caplan]’s Plan Was To Follow The Market” JA: There was a Li’l Abner comic, of course, and one book called Al Capp’s Dogpatch, and there was a one-shot Li’l Abner Joins the Navy, and The Shmoo, which ran from ’49 to ’50. Then there was Al Capp’s Wolf Gal in ’51. I have you as doing some art in the Li’l Abner comic books. LAZARUS: Those were fillers. Oh, would I love to see some of that stuff! JA: You also did “Leroy Lunkhead.” LAZARUS: Did I? Was he a cowboy? JA: Beats me. Were there any other features or fillers that you remember writing or drawing? LAZARUS: I think I did something about an Eskimo. [NOTE: Mell’s probably thinking of the “Iceberg Ike” feature he’d done for Holyoke, as seen on p. 32. —Jim.] If I needed a page, I’d either draw it or take something out of my portfolio and stick it in. That was one of the perks. JA: I have to ask this question, because if I don’t, my editor will shoot me. Dave Gantz did a comic book for you called The Purple Claw, which he swore was the worst comic book ever printed. [mutual laughter] That’s what he said, and it was his book. LAZARUS: I remember the title, but I don’t remember what it looked like. JA: Well, I’ve seen it and to be honest with you, you’re not missing much. [laughs] I probably shouldn’t be saying that to you. LAZARUS: That’s no way to be talking about my product. JA: I know, but you can’t fire me. LAZARUS: Well, that’s true.

True Grit English reprintings of John Wayne Adventure Comics sometimes split the difference between photos and line art. Wayne’s facial features on this painted cover for the British “#81” are clearly based on a photo (or photos). Artist unknown. Thanks to Steve Whitaker. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

JA: Dave said, “That thing was terrible.” He hated it. But I think that’s maybe in retrospect, maybe not how he felt at the time. My editor, Roy Thomas, as a kid, liked that book, so I had to ask about it. Moving on, as far as your covers are concerned, not all your covers were photographs. Some were line art. When an artist did a cover for you, did you talk out what was going to be on the cover? Did they have to submit a cover rough? LAZARUS: You know, I just don’t remember that procedure any more. I know we were always hard-up for money, so I think from time to time, we may have lifted an introductory panel from one of the stories and used

“Toby Press Was My College”

Feathers In His Capp that as a cover. That’s sounds like something we did. I really don’t remember.

Al Capp’s famous Li’l Abner comic strip formed the major unpinning of Toby Press, beginning with Al Capp’s Li’l Abner #70 (May 1949), the first issue at the new company after two years as a Harvey title. Following it were short-lived series such as Al Capp’s Dogpatch (#1, June ’49), Al Capp’s Shmoo (#1, July ’49), and two issues of Al Capp’s Wolf Gal (both cover-dated simply “1951”). Li’l Abner (and perhaps some of the others?) consisted of reprints of the newspaper strip—but Shmoo was composed of new material. [©2010 Capp Enterprises, Inc., or successors in interest.]

JA: Do you remember what genres sold the best? LAZARUS: I think Elliot’s plan was to follow the market, and so when cowboys were doing well, we had cowboys. I never really knew. I knew in a vague sense which books were doing better than others, but never saw sales figures on the books. JA: You did a lot of Felix the Cat stuff, too. LAZARUS: Yes, we did. Pat Sullivan drew those books. JA: There was also a guy named Joe Oriolo [drawing Felix]. LAZARUS: Yes. It was essentially them, and I also freelanced on that book from time to time when they were stuck or pushing for a deadline. They’d farm some out to me. That was a perfectly good procedure. JA: And Otto Messner worked on some of those. Do you remember anything about these fellows from when they worked for you? LAZARUS: No. I think Pat Sullivan was an Australian.

Purple Haze Jim Amash says Ye Editor would’ve shot him if he hadn’t asked about The Purple Claw. Actually, Roy partly recalls the three-issue series of IW reprints circa 1958, but the one thing he found notable about the mag was its use of a continuing hero in a horror comic—whose power-wielding metal “claw” reminded him of Green Lantern’s ring at a time when there were way too few super-heroes on his horizon. The cover and origin splash panel of #1 (Jan. 1953) are by Ben Brown & David Gantz; scripter unknown. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

That’s about all I remember.

JA: There was a Felix the Cat 3-D book. I know that 3D comics became big. Do you remember working on those?

LAZARUS: I remember inventing a way to do it, but I don’t think we actually used it. I would line up two small cameras, two Brownie snapshot

The Comic Book Career Of Mell Lazarus, Creator Of Miss Peach And Momma

comics, yet he titled the book Seduction of the Innocent! JA: Did you get any flack from parental groups or Wertham at all? LAZARUS: Maybe Elliot did, but I didn’t.

“I Did [Adventures In Natural History] And Then I Was Gone” JA: Did you have a favorite book or a favorite genre that you were doing? I’d assume it would be humor.

Double Felix With Felix the Cat #20 (cover-date 1951), Toby Press began a 42-issue run of the popular feline, picking up (once again) where Harvey Publications left off. And yes, Virginia (and Mell), there was a Felix the Cat 3D issue, published in 1953, the year of the glut. Cover artists uncertain. Felix was an amazingly popular character in comic strips and movie cartoons for many years—for reasons which today escape all but a diminishing cognoscenti. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

LAZARUS: Yes, I loved the Shmoo comic, and I wrote a lot of that. When I told Elliot I had to resign, he was really kind of sad. He was sorry to see me go, but he said, “Look, if you stay on for another year, I’ll let you do anything you want and any pet ideas that you’ve had all these years.” I said, “Yeah, it’s a great offer. I will stay on just long enough to do one, and if it works, it’s yours. And maybe I’ll look in on it once in a while.” He said, “What is it?” I said, “Adventures in Natural History.” And he said okay. He was a little dubious, for it sounded a little bit too serious to sell, and he was quite right. But God, I loved doing that. It lasted one issue, and I remember the cover. The title was Adventures

cameras, and photograph the same picture from the two angles. And then ostensibly, we would print the art on one plate in red and one in blue, and then you’d have the glasses. Well, you know how that worked. There was a company called American Stereographics who sent us a threatening letter one time, saying, “We will vigorously defend our patent on this thing.” I showed it to Elliot, who said, “Aw, screw ’em.” [Jim laughs] But I don’t think we actually got into it very far. JA: I think there were only a couple of 3-D books from Toby, because that fad died almost as soon as it got going. LAZARUS: Yeah, it gave you a headache, for God’s sakes. JA: I never liked them, either. You had a lot of horror titles, like Tales of Horror. LAZARUS: Oh, yes. They were big sellers. I guess that was pre-Dr. Wertham. I mean he had a good gig, an easy target. Nobody was concerned until he started shooting his mouth off. He talked about the sensationalism in

Har-Har-Horror! Two Toby terror covers: Tales of Horror #1 (June 1952) by Myron Fass, and #4 (Jan. 1953) by Ernie Schroeder. Michael T. Gilbert analyzed the first issue back in A/E #65, and pronounced the story inside as not living up to the clever (or was it desperate?) cover gimmick. Thanks to Bruce Mason. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

“Toby Press Was My College”

What’s Shmoo? The Shmoos were introduced in the Li’l Abner comic strip on Aug. 31, 1948; seen above is the explanatory daily for 9-1-48. As detailed in the hardcover Li’l Abner, Vol. 14: 1948 (published in 1992 by Kitchen Sink Press), the little white critters quickly became a phenomenon, being both cute (in a cookie-cutter pre-Smurf/bowling-pin way) and basically a parody of socialism and Communism. But above all, the Shmoos turned out to be, for a brief time, ultramerchandisable… as toys, records, games, and, yes, comic books. (Seen at right, from an issue of Li’l Abner, is a paid ad for an “inflatable Shmoo”; with thanks to Bruce Mason.) Most art and story in the five issues of Toby’s Al Capp’s Shmoo was new. Seen below, from a coverless issue in Ye Ed’s collection, are a splash page from the ongoing “Super Shmoo” series (for some reason, DC didn’t sue!), and panels from one of that issue’s two tales featuring the Shmoos and Dogpatch young’un Washable Jones; probably none of these was drawn by Lazarus. In that same issue was this “Sheriff O’Shay” gag filler by Lazarus—though with no Shmoos in sight! [Shmoo & Washable Jones art & story ©2010 Capp Enterprises, Inc., or successors in interest; Sheriff O’Shay page ©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

The Comic Book Career Of Mell Lazarus, Creator Of Miss Peach And Momma

I haven’t revisited all of this stuff in years. You intend to read The Boss Is Crazy, Too? I think it might be fun to read before you submit the article because I think you’ll get some atmosphere of the office. It’s accurate, the physical description of the office, the atmosphere, the sounds, and the practical jokes that went on. Elliot was absolutely a remarkable lunatic. Let me put it this way: I knew two brilliant cartoonists. Walt Kelly was one, and Al Capp was the other. I met them almost at the same time. Al introduced me to Walt. Elliot, if anything, was smarter than Al. I mean, they were brilliant, absolutely brilliant people, and Elliot became a mentor of mine. I learned so much from him. Not only in a practical sense, but his manners, his English. He was quite a guy. JA: Do you remember how much you got paid as an editor?

It’s A Bird! It’s A Plane! It’s Super Brat! Clearly, publisher Elliot Caplin and/or his editor Mell Lazarus believed in plugging their product! Mell drew the illo above for Meet Merton #3 (April 1954) to go with a text story which mentions the company’s Super Brat comic (note copies of it and fellow Toby title Tell It to the Marines on sale at the newsstand). Thanks to Jim Ludwig. At right is the cover of Super Brat #1 (Jan. 1954), which is attributed to Dave Berg. This mag came out during the period when Dennis the Menace had suddenly become the hottest thing in newspaper comics, and every comic book company in town had its own Dennis clone. Toby went them one better by fitting out their mischievous moppet with a magical cape that gave him super-powers. But no, he never teamed up with Super Shmoo— though one “Super Brat” artist, Harry Betancourt, reputedly drew “Shmoo” stories, as well. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

in Natural History, but the cover story was called “Battle of the Titans,” and it had a whole story about a praying mantis and a garden spider, which are really quite big. They’re almost like black widows. They’re good-looking, they’re very attractive, and faced off in the web. It was all technically correct.

LAZARUS: As a matter of fact, I was just thinking about that. I think my highest salary was about $75 a week. The reason I remember that is there were three years during that period when I was doing magazine cartoons for The Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s, Redbook, and so on. The Saturday Evening Post paid me seventy for a cartoon. So effectively, if I sold them one a week, which I did for nearly three years, it almost doubled my income. JA: So you did that while you were an editor. How much freelance did you do on the side from Toby Press? LAZARUS: Well, like I said, for a couple of years, I’d been with the magazines and making the rounds on Wednesday. If I couldn’t, my wife made the rounds for me. Beyond that, no, there wasn’t a lot of freelance except the occasional page I would do as filler. Yeah, we had something else. Our TV magazine had a feature called “The Children’s Pull-Out Section,” which was like a six- or eight-page pull-out for kids, with little cartoons and stuff. So I did that every Thursday night. At five o’clock, I’d quit and then go into another room in the suite, order up a dinner, work on the book until morning, and start Friday morning’s work when everybody came in again. Actually, I would sleep for a couple of hours. It took me about four or five hours to put the thing together, but I was paid extra for that.

I looked up a guy who was a microcinematographer and an entomologist. He was the head of the Entomology Department at the Museum of Natural History in New York, and he did Walt Disney’s movie, God’s Half Acre, which is all about insects. He would speed up or slow down the photography; it was just a fabulous movie which I never forgot. And so I went to see him, and [chuckles] I asked him if he was interested in this idea. He said, “It’s a wonderful idea. I can’t do anything for you, but I would be happy to be an advisor to you.” So that was wonderful. He had an apartment on Central Park West. It was filled with glass terrariums that held insects. There was one story about a wolf above the Arctic Circle, and how he survived one winter. The stories had an adventure quality to them, but you learned something. I wish I had a copy of it. I would love it to see it again. I did that and then I was gone.

JA: I have you down as doing work for Collier’s and Redbook as well as The Saturday Evening Post. Was that the same time period or later?

JA: Why did you leave?

LAZARUS: Yes, mostly it was the Post, same time period.

LAZARUS: When I took the editor’s job, I told Elliot that I’d stay there for five years before moving in another direction. I developed a couple of freelance accounts to tide me over. Three years later, I was doing Miss Peach. This interview is a lot of fun for me. It’s like a trip down Memory Lane.

“The Boss Is Crazy, Too” JA: Tell me about The Boss Is Crazy, Too. LAZARUS: The book is a fictionalized version of my five years at Capp Enterprises. While I was writing it, Walt Kelly gave me a copy of Catch-22

“Toby Press Was My College”

to read. I read it that night and I couldn’t get back to work on The Boss Is Crazy, Too for about three months, I was so discouraged. [mutual chuckling] Because I thought it was the best thing I’d read in twenty-five years. Well, I actually met [Joseph Heller] in a restaurant. I introduced myself. I was doing a speech at the time, so I was fairly well-known, based in New York. We became friends and when I told him I was writing a novel, he said, “Well, let me see it.” So I said, “Well, I happen to have the galleys right here,” and he opens it at random, just a page in the middle. He reads one sentence and said, “That is the worst sentence I’ve ever heard.” [mutual laughter] He told me I had to rewrite it. Anyway, he read the book and his quote was, “Mell Lazarus is the second-funniest writer in America and has written the second-funniest novel. Joe Heller, author of Catch-22.” That was emblazoned on the back of the book. Well, six months later, whenever it got into print finally and it was reviewed, Publishers Weekly quoted that. You know, “Joe Heller says he’s the second-funniest writer there is.” And the reviewers finished by saying, “How high can Mr. Heller count?” [more mutual laughter] JA: So what was the funniest book? LAZARUS: Catch-22. Dave Gantz tried writing a novel somewhat later, very interestingly, about an art forgery. I don’t think he ever finished it. But he said, “When I get this published, I’m going to ask you to write the blurb for the back of the book and I want you to say, ‘Dave Gantz is the third-funniest writer in America and has written the third-funniest novel.” JA: That sounds just like Dave. Joe Heller is Roy Thomas’ alltime favorite writer, and Roy told me Catch-22 changed his life, and the way he thought. So for Roy, as much as for myself, I’d like to ask you about Joe Heller.

Maybe They’re All Crazy, Too! Mell Lazarus (or at least, a caricature of him drawn by Lockhorns/Howard Huge artist John Reiner) eyes the cover of a vintage paperback edition of The Boss Is Crazy, Too, Mell’s fictionalized account of his years in the comic book industry. At right is a 1961 photo of Catch-22 author Joseph Heller, who wrote a blurb calling Lazarus’ book “the second-funniest novel” ever. Ye Editor pretty much concurs with Heller’s choice of which was the funniest. [Caricature ©2010 John Reiner; book cover & photo ©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

LAZARUS: He was kind of a Brooklyn street kid. He taught English, I think, at CCNY [City College of New York] or somewhere like that, and so his English was perfect, but he delivered it in a Brooklyn street kind of voice. You know, “deese,” “dems,” and “dose.” But he was a wonderful guy. My God, he was funny. He loved his success with the book, enjoyed every minute of it. He was being lionized all over town and making friends and traveling in a whole different circle.

Unfortunately, he waited very long to write his second book, which was called Something Happened, and it didn’t do that well. Catch-22 is the great anti-war statement. It was wonderful. It was totally, incredibly funny, and the characters were magnificent. JA: Would you say Heller was a spontaneously funny person? LAZARUS: Yes, he was. He had a slow delivery, a sort of metropolitan drawl. He wasn’t a fast talker, but he was funny. He made me laugh, he made everybody laugh. I’m just remembering something else; one night, he and I were at P.J. Clarke in New York. I don’t know if you know it. It was sort of a hangout for writers. I was sitting at a table and in comes Mel Brooks. I didn’t know Brooks, and he and Joe knew each other only casually, but Joe recognized him and invited him to sit down. He sat down with us and we started chatting. But it turned out we all originated from Coney Island, and so on the spot, we founded the Mermaid Avenue Boy’s Club. That was the first and last meeting of a poor man’s Algonquin Round Table. In 1975, my wife and I were being divorced—but the last dinner party we had—we were living in Westchester County—Joe was our guest of honor, because he’d been invited to speak at the Friends of the Library in Scarsdale. I left for California like a couple of weeks later, so it was the last real connection we had. I remember spending evenings from time to time at this British comedy troupe called “Beyond the Fringe.” They had a place that they performed at, somewhere just east of 5th Avenue in Midtown. Joe and I went there once in a while. JA: You’ve talked a little bit about Elliot Caplin, and there are some crazy stories about office stuff like practical jokes or whatever, and I want to get some of those on tape. LAZARUS: Well, the essence of some of them are in the book. Whenever a good wrong number would come into the office, Elliot always wanted them personally. He had standing orders to direct it to him. Whoever they are, whatever it is, the more absurd, the better. Just say, “Hold on a minute and I’ll connect you with the right party,” and we’d put it through to his office and all listen on the extension. He always did something nutty with them, like someone called us looking for a job, but called the wrong number. So he played along with that and finally, she said, “Well, what’s the job like?” He said, “It’s very interesting work. It calls for a special kind of person and it pays very well.” She said, “Oh, I’m interested, but tell me about it.” He says, “Well, we have what we call a Schmuckmobile.” And she said, “A what?” He said, “A Schmuckmobile.” “What is that?” He said, “Well, it sounds silly, but it’s a large bus-like thing, and it tours the city, and we administer to sick tigers.” She said, “Sick tigers. Well, I don’t know anything about—I’m

The Comic Book Career Of Mell Lazarus, Creator Of Miss Peach And Momma

not a veterinarian.” He said, “No, you don’t have to be. We have our ways. We do it by talking to them spiritually—” [mutual chuckling] And finally, this woman begins to get a little suspicious and says, “You know, this sounds very fishy to me. I don’t know, I’m not sure I believe you.” He said, “Madam, look around you. Have you ever seen a dead tiger in the city of New York?” She said, “No, I haven’t.” “Well, there you go!” [mutual laughter] And then he hung up. He always knew when to quit. We overlooked a courtyard filled with pigeons. We called it “Pigeon Crap Canyon.” It was filled with pigeon guano. One time Elliot had a call from some guy and they’re talking. And all of a sudden, he puts the phone away from his head, and he screams bloody murder. He holds it away, screams at the top of his lungs, waits a couple of beats, gets back on and it’s like, “Oh, my God.” And the caller said, [excitedly] “What was that? What was that?” He said, “Somebody just leaped off the roof and hurtled past our fifth-story window, and crashed in the back courtyard.” “Oh, that’s terrible. Oh, is he hurt?” He said, “Who the hell knows?” The caller says, “Well, isn’t anybody going to look?” He said, “Nah. Who cares? Why?” The caller says, “Call a hospital! An ambulance!” Elliot said, “No! That’s nothing.” And he tries to continue his conversation on the phone and screams again, and then comes back and says, “There was another one! Another one just...” The caller said, “What the hell is going on over there??? You’ve got to call somebody.” He said, “Nah, why bother?” [mutual laughter] But I’m not even sure that was a wrong number. It might have been a guy calling up about artwork. And that’s the kind of stuff that went on all the time. JA: Did anyone play practical jokes on you, or you play them on somebody? LAZARUS: No, Elliot never bothered us. We had an affinity with him and he had an affinity for us. We were nuts and he was nuts. That’s why the title, The Boss Is Crazy, Too. He just created an atmosphere in that place that, at least for the first several years, made you want to come into work every day because you never knew what was going to happen on any given day.

created: Long Sam, drawn by Bob Lubbers. And The Heart of Juliet Jones for Stan Drake. So he had Lubbers, Drake, Van Buren, and Murphy, the cream of the crop. JA: He also had Lou Fine, Peter Scratch, in the ’60s. LAZARUS: Oh, that was after I left. Yeah, I know. I probably had lost some contact at that point. JA: Caplin was obviously a good idea man. LAZARUS: He was wonderful, and also, I think he came up with the idea for Broom-Hilda, which he presented to Russ Myers, of course. He was the agent on it and he got a full percentage. But he gave away a million ideas to people. He really understood the comics business at the time, and it’s great that at the beginning of the end of the Golden Era, there was still room for people, and your work was presented properly in a decent size and new ideas were encouraged. And the newspaper attitudes about comics were much, much healthier than they are now. JA: Because he was so busy with all this other stuff, that’s why he pretty much let you have full control then. LAZARUS: Yes, basically. No, he didn’t bother me at all. I don’t think he bothered anybody. Jerry Tax was the editor of our U.S. Crime magazine; he later went on to Sports Illustrated. Elliot brought Jerry over from Parents Magazine, I think. So Elliot would meet with Jerry once a day, he’d meet with everybody once a day. He was the publisher, essentially. I’m sure he stuck his nose in a lot, more readily to the straight magazines than he did the comics, which were basically less important to him. JA: Were there many editorial conferences with Elliot or anybody else? LAZARUS: Yes, but I’m sure from time to time, he met with Jerry Tax and he met with the guy who edited Popular Psychology, Larry Goldsmith. A tall, thin guy who was terribly funny. They were all funny. And I’m sure he met with Joe Sapinsky, who was the art director on the straight magazines. It was a busy little office and there were a lot of people running around. And since we shared space with the merchandizing department of Capp Enterprises, it was quite lively.

“[Elliot Caplan] Had The Best Artists In New York Working For Him” JA: Did he write a whole lot of comics for Toby? Did he write anything for them? LAZARUS: No, the writing he did at that time was for the Big Ben Bolt newspaper strip with artist John Cullen Murphy. Elliot also wrote Abbie and Slats, which was another creation of Al’s, you know, and that was drawn by Raeburn Van Buren, a fabulous illustrator. God, he had the best artists in New York working with him. These guys should have been these magazine illustrators in a business that was already dying, so they went into comics. JA: Did he do much writing, or any writing, on Abner? LAZARUS: Not that I know of. But he did also write that other strip that Al

JA: Herb Rogoff, who was an editor at Hillman, told me that their comic books were really what kept Pageant and the other Hillman magazines afloat, because the comics were making the most money. I was wondering if there was a similar situation at Toby or do you even know?

Jon/Don Juan One of the odder Toby comics was Jon Juan #1-and-only (Spring ’50), with a cover bylined “Al Reid”—which is curious, since the interior art is credited to Alex Schomburg, known primarily as a cover artist! “The World’s Greatest Lover” (obviously adapting aspects of the persona of Don Juan) was scripted by Jerry Siegel. Thanks to Bruce Mason. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

LAZARUS: No, I’m sure it was because none of the other magazines ever really took off. And they went through a succession of them for a couple of years. A slow succession, but nothing lasted terribly long. There was no competing with TV Guide, even though our book was better in a lot of ways. There was no competing with the psychology magazines that were out. There was a

“Toby Press Was My College”

spate of those things, and the crime magazines. And it was very, very hard to launch a magazine, but they kept trying. I was always astonished by the limitless opportunities Elliot grabbed. He wasn’t afraid of anything. Elliot was very, very valuable, very funny, very, very literate. He was interested in politics; a real renaissance man. I think the best dinner guest anybody would ever want. Al put Elliot through college. Al never went to college, himself. Al lived in Cambridge, Mass and the story within the family was he had a red light in his kitchen, and whenever they needed a speaker at Harvard, they would push a button and the red light would go on, and he’d jump in the car and drive over there. [Jim chuckles] Which I suspect is pretty close to the truth. But his dinner guests some weekends were the faculty of Harvard and then some.

“Authority Is Not Given, It’s Assumed” JA: For the most part, I take it you got along with your creative help. But were there instances where you didn’t?

Did He Have A Girlfriend Named Tripoli Shores? Monty Hall, longtime host of TV’s Let’s Make a Deal (seen in photo above), was intrigued to learn that Toby had a Monty Hall of the U.S. Marines comic. The name of the latter, of course, was taken from the first few words of the Marines’ hymn: “From the halls of Montezuma….” The artist of the cover of #5 (April 1952) is unknown. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

LAZARUS: With the artists? We got along very well. Professionally, I was way beneath any of them. They were all much more experienced than I. No, it was just a lot of fun. I can’t remember a single moment when there was a problem, although I’m sure there must have been during five years. JA: So things ran smoothly most of the time. LAZARUS: There was never a day when I thought, “I wish I didn’t have to go in today.” First of all, I got to the point, very early on, where I stopped coming in at nine o’clock or leaving at five. At a certain point, you’re not given that kind of authority, you just assume it. In fact, that’s a line right out of The Boss Is Crazy, Too. He’s telling his art director, “Authority is not given, it’s assumed.” And like in any office, you become friends. You didn’t punch a clock. I did my work. It was a wonderful environment. It was funny, interesting, even when there was nothing funny going on. By the way, I’m currently adapting The Boss Is Crazy, Too as an illustrated novel. JA: Some artists signed their names, but most of them didn’t. Was it a policy, or did you care?

LAZARUS: I don’t think it was a policy. And in terms of the books like John Wayne or Billy the Kid, or the house inventions, I just don’t remember. I am thinking maybe there was a policy that wanted everybody to kind of draw the same character pretty much alike, a style norm. But I don’t remember that ever being an issue.

JA: Do you remember Alex Kotzky from this time period? I know he worked for you. LAZARUS: Yes, of course. I think I met him when I got into the same business he was in. I may have seen him from time to time, but he became Alex Kotzky to me when [his comic strip] Apartment 3-G was launched. JA: Sam Burlockoff had an original of “Red, White, and Blue,” pencil drawings by Alex Kotzky, and it had stamped on it a Toby Press stamp with the name of the company and the address. I don’t think this feature was ever published, and I figured you probably wouldn’t even remember something like that after all this time. LAZARUS: Well, let’s see, we did a strip about the military, Monty Hall of the U.S. Marines, drawn by Mel Keefer. Speaking of Monty Hall [the TV personality], I met him at a friend’s house out here. I told him about the book Monty Hall of the U.S. Marines, and he went crazy. He said, “I’ve got to see it. I’ve gotta have it.” At the time we did the comic, there was no Monty Hall. He wasn’t even in public existence. But I did get him a copy of the book from Mel Keefer.

“Our ‘Discoveries’”

JA: What happened to the original art afterwards? Was it just destroyed?

JA: Too bad he didn’t make you dress up in a costume. Since you mentioned Mel Keefer, what do you remember about him working for you?

LAZARUS: My God, I don’t know. It went to the engravers. I know I would send it to the engravers when a book was finished, and the guy would come up from Koppel Photo and Engraving, the same guy all the time. He would go over each page with me, looking at the color guides. And what happened when it came back? I don’t know. I’m sure it was stored somewhere. I’m not sure, but it was probably the matter of the general policy at the time, which I don’t remember.

LAZARUS: Well, he’s still a friend. He lives in California. I met him while working there, and he began to freelance for us. He was another one of our “discoveries” who’d never had much experience. But then he did a strip for a while, a newspaper strip based on Ellery Queen, and then he did another one called Mac Divot, which was a golf strip, and that was the extent, I think, of his syndicated career, but he went on to do comic book art for a long time.

JA: Did you guys supply paper for the artists, or did the artists supply their own paper?

JA: You also had a book called The Black Knight. Do you remember that book?

LAZARUS: The artists used their own paper.

LAZARUS: Vaguely.

The Comic Book Career Of Mell Lazarus, Creator Of Miss Peach And Momma

Keefer Combat And Creatures Artist Mel Keefer (seen here in a photo taken a few years later) drew at least two stories in Toby’s Tell It to the Marines #11 (Jan. 1955)… and this creepycrawlie from Tales of Horror #3 (Oct. 1952). Surprisingly, since he probably never saw the latter splash, Roy Thomas drew a very similar pose (of a huge fanged serpent curled around the Empire State Building) as the cover of 1961’s Alter-Ego [Vol. 1] #2… only with The Spectre flying to the attack. Keefer’s version is a wee bit better. Thanks to Gene Reed and Jim Ludwig for the art scans, and to Mel Keefer & Alberto Becattini for the photo. We have on hand Alberto’s lengthy interview with artist Keefer that we’ve been wanting to run for a long time—and we’ve just gotta get to it, one of these days! [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

JA: You did Captain Tootsie, which is an odd comic book for you to have done because “Captain Tootsie” was [earlier] used as filler ad pages, and then you guys did a couple of issues. LAZARUS: I wasn’t there at the time. How long did it last? JA: It only ran two issues. In 1950, Jerry Siegel did some writing for you.

JA: Do you remember a guy named Ellis Chambers? LAZARUS: Yeah, I do. Not well, but I remember he did some stuff. I forget what he did. JA: Chambers did “Two-Bit, the Wacky Woodpecker” for you, and other cartoon, funny animal strip features.

LAZARUS: That’s possible. He may have freelanced with me, though he was making more money at Ziff-Davis than I was at Toby Press. He should have given me work.

JA: Do you remember Myron Fass?

JA: [laughs] Do you remember Bernard Baily? He did horror and some romance for you.

LAZARUS: Yes. He did, I think, among other things, a book about psychiatry... maybe Doctor Anthony?

LAZARUS: Bernard Baily. I know the name. He was well known.

JA: I have him doing some John Wayne, but it could have been feature fillers, not necessarily “John Wayne” himself. And he did horror, romance, and war for you.

JA: On the Al Capp comics, like Dogpatch, Shmoo, and all—were new covers done, and if so, who did them? LAZARUS: They were pieced together. Shmoo was written and drawn in house. I wrote some of them, Lou Lupu did some of the drawings, and Harold Betancourt—I think he had the definitive stuff. Those covers were drawn by Harold, mostly, but some of the Dogpatch covers, and stuff like that, were just pieced together, because nobody ever was allowed to go near a drawing of Al’s characters, with the exception of the Shmoo.

LAZARUS: That’s possible. I think Elliot found him and brought him in.

LAZARUS: Yes, he did a lot of stuff. JA: Did you spend much time in the office with the writers and the artists? Would you go out to lunch with them, maybe plot a story? LAZARUS: Not a lot. I’m sure it happened later on, toward the end. First of all, I didn’t have an expense account, and that would have been

“Toby Press Was My College”

The Knight Time The single issue of Toby’s Black Knight comic (1953), featuring a knight who’s come home from the Crusades, was drawn—and probably written—by Ernie Schroeder (seen in photo). Schroeder was finally ID’d by Hames Ware and Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., in an earlier issue of Alter Ego, and was interviewed in #43. The Black Knight cover and another splash page were seen in A/E #80 & #83. Thanks to Jim Ludwig for the art scan. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

customary, I think, if we went out to lunch. But no, lunch was just usually the bullpen guys. But once in a while, we’d go to a special restaurant we considered swanky—but it really wasn’t swanky—it wasn’t Chock Full O’Nuts. On one occasion, we paid the check, we all got up and by prearrangement, one of the guys pretended to have food poisoning. He’d gasp for breath, [chuckles] so we each grabbed a leg, and carried him out of the restaurant. He’d lie there with his head lolling, and his tongue hanging out. JA: That’s funny. Who did that? LAZARUS: Probably Lou Lupu. He was the least inhibited one of us and yeah, I picture Lou being carried out by the four of us. No, it was just funny, crazy, irresponsible, and we shocked the restaurant. The manager was out of his mind when it happened, “Can we help you? Can we give him something?” He was worried about a lawsuit. JA: Did the company have Christmas parties? LAZARUS: We had fabulous Christmas parties. I think those things kind of went out of style towards the end, but we had great Christmas parties. We had everybody in the world, a lot of Al’s friends, Elliot and Jerry Capp’s friends. Jerry had a big contingent of friends and it was fun. JA: Would freelancers be invited, too? LAZARUS: Oh, sure. We’d invite anybody we want. We always sent some junior artists down to Katz’s Delicatessen down on the Lower East Side to pick up food. It really started the holidays in the right mood.

JA: We don’t know too much about Jerry Capp. Would you tell me a little about him? LAZARUS: Jerry worked exclusively with Capp Enterprises and he was, I guess, the chief executive. He was in charge of the merchandising, and hired an incredibly beautiful socialite named Lila Hadley. She did public relations for Al, and for the whole merchandising division. Jerry was also hilarious, but he wasn’t as subtle as Elliot. His practical jokes were funny, but he was a little more self-conscious than Elliot. Elliot could scream like a madman. Jerry was a little more careful about it. JA: Who was the youngest? LAZARUS: Jerry was the youngest. That was always my assumption. Elliot was 36 when I went to work for him, because I remember he was twelve years older than I am. He was 36, Al was in his 40s, I would say; middle or late 40s, so Jerry could have been in

Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Goodbye! Captain Tootsie was a super-hero originally drawn by “Captain Marvel” co-creator C.C. Beck in a series of comics-style full-page ads for Tootsie Rolls—but in 1950 Toby Press actually published two issues of a Captain Tootsie comic book with science-fictional adventures. This is the cover of #1. Art by Bill Schreiber, who drew the post-Beck “Captain Tootsie” ads. Thanks to the GCD. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.] The writer of the Captain Tootsie issues, according to comics historian Will Murray, was Charles Spain Verral, seen above. According to his son Charles, Jr., who provided this photo: “One time, my dad was in the offices on a day when a newspaper had mistakenly listed their phone number as being that of some dog shelter, perhaps the ASPCA. All day long, merriment ensued as Elliot and the rest jerked around various callers. At one point, after giving some poor women an emotional third degree about her planned castration of her pet, he unexpectedly handed the receiver to my dad, telling her that, luckily, he had the Reverend Verral at hand to render her grief counseling over her dog’s loss of his testicles.”

The Comic Book Career Of Mell Lazarus, Creator Of Miss Peach And Momma

and the Photostat house. I paid for everything I did, but a lot of courtesies were given me. He was just a terrific guy, and we stayed friends for years and years and years after that. He was just very important in my life. JA: I have a credit here that says after you left Toby, that you did some art-directing for Marvel Comics. Is that true? LAZARUS: No, I had nothing further to do with the comic book business. I never drew any, I never edited any. JA: I have you being a writer/artist in the early 1950s of Wee Women. It was a single-panel strip. Can you pinpoint when you did it? LAZARUS: Let’s see, I left in ’54, and I had the office at Elliot’s for a while. Bill Richman, the man who actually got me that job, opened up an office in the same building, and he invited me to use that space. It was somewhat bigger, so I did. I was doing Wee Women at that period for General Features, which was George Little’s syndicate, and then I did another one for them called Li’l Ones. So I was doing these two tiny, little

Fass And Furious Myron Fass, remembered as the publisher of schlock black-&-white horror comics in the Comics Code days, drew this splash page for Tales of Horror #3 in 1952. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

between. He didn’t look appreciably younger than Elliot. JA: I meant to ask you a little more about Milt Story. LAZARUS: It was Milt who actually hired me at Toby, my first real entrée into this business. I’ll always be grateful to him. Then he went on to work for Walt Kelly. That didn’t last too long. Then I don’t know what the hell he did for years. Then I saw him once out here in California. He looked me up and came out to visit me. We spent a half an hour chatting, reminiscing about the old days. I think he was teaching art and cartooning.

“I Sold Miss Peach In 1957…” JA: Did you have the feeling when you left Toby that they weren’t long for being in business? LAZARUS: No, not particularly. Before I left, Elliot invited me do the magazine of my choice. I did Adventures in Natural History, which died on the vine, and there were no strings attached. But it was time for me to go. They gave me space for I think it may have been almost a year. And then my wife and I had a baby, and I wanted to be around the house. I set up a little workplace at home so I could watch my daughter grow up. But Elliot was very generous. He gave me an office, and I was able to use their phone and take advantage of their pickup and delivery services,

Go West, Young Vampire! With the popularity of cowboy comics fading fast and horror mags a growth industry, leave it to some enterprising lads to come up with the notion of combining the two to put a little life—or maybe death—into both genres, as per this splash page from Tales of Horror #13 (Oct. 1954)—apparently the title’s final issue. Inker Sal Trapani would go on to a long comics career at Charlton and DC, but penciler Medio Iorio is credited only with working in the field in 1953-54, with his only non-Toby work listed by the Who’s Who as being a Wild Bill Hickok special for Gilberton/Classics Illustrated—though Gene Reed tells us that he may have drawn an issue or two later of Nukla for Western. Thanks to Jim Ludwig for the scans. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

“Toby Press Was My College”

JA: Considering how tough it is to get syndicated, then and now, did you try other features and have them rejected before you this? LAZARUS: No, I didn’t. I never tried anything. I thought about features. I was always trying to invent one, but I never did, and then along came United Features with a contest. They were looking for a new strip, and the winner would be given a contract. It’s the kind of thing no syndicate would do any more. No thinking cartoonist would ever Pre-Peach get involved in the whole notion because the Before selling Miss Peach, Lazarus placed syndicate would own it, and all that crap. But I numerous cartoons with The Saturday said, “What the hell? What can I lose?” I was a Evening Post (as per the example at left great admirer of Peanuts, and realized there were from the Feb. 18, 1950, issue)—and no strips about schools, so I invented this thing did the newspaper panel Li’l Ones (above, and decided I’ll do it as one long panel, as opposed the panel for July 27, 1955). Thanks to Alberto Becattini. [©2010 the respective to the usual frame-by-frame-by-frame thing, and copyright holders.] sent it into the contest. It didn’t even place in the one-column by one inch features, which meant I show, but I had three weeks or four weeks of it, so I had to do twelve a week for about eighty bucks. sent it to King Features, United Features, NEA Service, a lot of places I That’s about what it came to. Then I sold Miss Peach in 1957, and was never would have gone to. But it was rejected by everybody, and the last already working at home. I was with the Herald Tribune Syndicate with syndicate on my list was the New York Herald Tribune Syndicate, which Miss Peach, and General Features with the other stuff, and they both was almost moribund at the time. objected to the fact that I was working with another syndicate. So they asked me to use a different name on one of them. I was using “Mel I sent it to them, they called me, and Ben Martin, a really nice guy, Lazarus” with one “L” on the General Features thing, and just “Mell” on invited me to come up. He said, “We really love this. We’d like to give it a Miss Peach the first year or so. shot. Mr. Barnett wants to talk to you about a contract.” Well, I walked into Barnett’s office and he said, “Oh, hey, how are you? We love your You know Jim Whiting? He was a magazine cartoonist at the time, and comic strip, and we’d like to syndicate it in the Herald Tribune. We’ll run a good friend. He took over Wee Women and Li’l Ones, doing a much it, and then we’ll go out and get you more papers.” He said, “This is our better job than I did, and it got me out of my contract with General standard agreement.” Then he handed me the contract. Features. JA: So you did Li’l Ones for how long? LAZARUS: It couldn’t be more than a year or a year and a half. I started Miss Peach in ’57, and I ended Li’l Ones a few months later. I think maybe a year and a half or two years at the max. Miss Peach changed my life. It absolutely changed my life. It was a dream come true. I’m looking at a truck poster right now hanging on my studio wall. The Herald Tribune has trucks with posters on them like all newspapers did at the time.

Peaches And The Cream (Clockwise:) Mell Lazarus’ Miss Peach strip for Feb. 18, 1976—a photo of Mell (on left) with fellow cartoonists Alfredo Andriola (Charlie Chan) and Dik Browne (Hagar the Horrible) enjoying themselves at New York’s Plaza Hotel sometime in the 1970s—and a spoof daily apparently done by Mell and Steve Canyon creator Milt Caniff for Mad #89 in 1964. Thanks to Mell for the photo and Miss Peach strip, and to Alberto Becattini for the Mad specimen. [Miss Peach TM & ©2010 Mell Lazarus; Steve Canyon TM & ©2010 Estate of Milton Caniff; Mad art ©2010 E.C. Publications, Inc.]

I took it outside to the reception room, and read it very carefully. Now I’m a good reader and I have a knack—my wife’s an attorney and she tells me I also have that knack—for reading legal boilerplate. I can see through the extraneous language. I came back in with it and said, “I can’t sign this.” He said, “Why

The Comic Book Career Of Mell Lazarus, Creator Of Miss Peach And Momma

hope you haven’t made other plans, because I would like you to come in tomorrow. I’m going to have a new contract drawn for you, and I’d like you to see it before you make any decisions.” I said, “Fine.” [laughs] The next day, I went back and I read the new contract, and it was a five-year contract with no strings attached. I mean a contract that ends. There are no performance clauses, no options, a five-year period, at the end of which, all rights, title, and interest reverted to the artist. I’m thinking, “A five-year contract, that’s not very long if the strip is successful. It means renewal if both parties wanted it. So every five years from that day on, until 20 years ago, there was a completely new contract. I drew up the same terms of my contract with every syndicate I’ve been with. I never really left a syndicate. They either folded or were absorbed around me, sold, amalgamated, one by one. There used to be like 14 syndicates, now there’re probably five. But every time I’ve renewed my contract, I’ve improved the percentage, earned more money than the number of papers would normally provide. And I even had colleagues who had many more papers than I who didn’t make as much money then. I think I wrote the best contract any cartoonist ever had in history. I spent about ten years of my life, in the ’80s, trying to convince every other cartoonist to get his rights back from the syndicate, and every new cartoonist not to sign his ownership away. Anyway, that was that. It’s an amazing story. It was like a dream. An astonishing piece of luck. not?” I said, “Well, first of all, it’s a 30-year contract.” He said, “No, it’s 15 years.” I said, “Fifteen years is long enough, and this is actually 30 because you say ‘at the end of 15 years,’ it automatically renews unilaterally if you want it to. You can renew it on your own, and the fact that I have nothing to say about it means I’m signing a 30-year contract.” He said, “Really?” [mutual laughter] I don’t think he knew what the hell was in it. And I said, “Secondly, ‘I give you all the rights, title and interest, in and to the property,’ it says here. And at the end, when the contract ends, there’s nothing about you giving me back all the rights. He said, “Oh, well, nobody does that.” I said, “Well, I just can’t sign it.” I was not bluffing. I did not want to sign it, pure neuroticism on my part.

JA: But it sure worked out for you. LAZARUS: It worked out very well. Momma was launched in 1970 under the same terms. They had become “The Lazarus Terms.” They were like nobody else’s terms. I retired Miss Peach in 2002, so it ran 45 years, one of the longestrunning comic strips ever. Momma has now run 40 years, which gives me 85 comic strip years. I think I’ve written and drawn more gags, by myself, than any cartoonist in the world. I think—I don’t know—it comes to over 17,000. That’s why my memory’s so bad! [mutual chuckling] But don’t judge my age by these facts!

I picked up my drawings and went home, broken-hearted. We needed this job, man. I told my wife what happened. She said, “I understand.” This was my then-wife. She’s no longer with us. But anyway, she said, “Why don’t you call Elliot [Caplin]? Tell him the deal and see what he suggests.” So I called Elliot, told him what happened. He said, “Mell, don’t you know that’s the same deal everybody has? Al has that deal, Peanuts has that deal, Milton Caniff... there isn’t a case on record of a cartoonist doing a comic strip he didn’t want to after doing it for a certain number of years. Why do you care?” And he was talking me into it. I Works Of Art explained the way I felt about it. He Examples of Mell’s two most successful strips—the Miss Peach daily for Feb. 3, 1976, and Momma for Jan. 9, 1990— said, “Well, that’s the way it works. and (at top left of page) another of his favorite productions: namely, he and several other proud papas are seen That’s the nature of the beast.” I with their lovely daughters at a 1960s Reuben Awards dinner given by the National Cartoonists Society. From left to right are Bob Dunn (They’ll Do It Every Time, Little Iodine), Jerry Robinson (Still Life, Life with Robinson), thanked him, and my wife and I talked Dick Ericson (Stewart the Steward for a multitude of church papers, et al.), and Mell (with daughter Margie). about it. I decided, “Well, I’m going to Thanks to ML. [Strips ©2010 Mell Lazarus.] call Mr. Barnett back.” And, Jim, I’m reaching for the phone when it rings, and a strange voice says, “Mr. Lazarus? This is Bob McDonald. I’m the President of the Herald Tribune. I just had a meeting with Sylvan Barnett, downstairs. He told me what happened. I was so upset. How the hell can they ask you to sign a contract like that?” He continued, “I

“Toby Press Was My College”

MELL LAZARUS Checklist [NOTE: The following Checklist is adapted from information contained in the online Who’s Who of American Comic Books (1928-1999), established by Jerry G. Bails; see ad on p. 20. Names of features listed below which appeared both in magazines with that title and in other publications, as well, are generally not italicized. Mell Lazarus was the source for some of the data below. Key: (w) = writer; (a) = full art; (p) = penciler; (i) = inker; (ed) = editor; (ad) = art director; (S) = Sunday newspaper comic strip; (d) = daily comic strip.] Name: Mell Lazarus (b. 1927) (artist, writer, editor) Education: Art Students League; New York School of Industrial Arts

Pen Names: (in syndication) Mell; Fulton Family in Arts: No relation to Harry or Sid Lazarus Member: National Cartoonists Society (president) Print Media (Non-Comics): writer of novel The Boss Is Crazy, Too (1964) Performing Arts: writer (stage) Commercial Art & Design: owner, commercial art service, early 1950s Honors: Inkpot Award (San Diego Comic-Con) 1976; Reuben (NCS) 1981 Syndication: Li’l Ones (d)(S) (w, a) 1955-65 panel for General Features; Miss Peach (d) (w)(a) 1957-84 for New York Herald Tribune and successors in interest; Momma (d)(S) (w)(a) 1970 to present for Field Enterprises; Pauline McPeril (ghost w) 1966; Wee Women panel (w)(a) 1950-56

Teevy Or Not Teevy A key panel (from a two-panel page) in a rare three-page “Li’l Teevy” by Mell Lazarus which was reprinted from a Toby comic in the IW Super Brat #10 (1963). [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

Comics in Other Media: gag cartoons (w)(a) for magazines Collier’s, Redbook, Saturday Evening Post; Arthur, Isn’t the Atmosphere Polluted Enough? (w)(a) 1981 graphic album, Byron Preiss Visual Publications; I Guess He’ll Do Until the Right Man Comes Along (a) 1982 graphic album, BPVP; Mad magazine (w)(a) 1958, 1964; Miss Peach (w)(a) 1958 graphic album reprint; Miss Peach (w)(a) 1962 graphic album reprint,

Ace Periodicals; Miss Peach (w)(a) 1973 paperback collection, Grosset & Dunlap/Tempo Books; Miss Peach, Are These Your Children: (w)(a) 1982 graphic album Promotional Comics: Miss Peach Tells You How to Grow Flowers, Vegetables and Weeds (w)(a) 1969 for Union Fork & Hoe NOTE: Mell Lazarus worked as “support” staff at National/DC Comics for two weeks in 1944. COMIC BOOK CREDITS (Mainstream US Publishers): Holyoke Publications: Iceberg Ike (w)(a) c. 1943; Little Willie (a.k.a. Willie) (w)(a) c. 1943-44; Mr. Grouch (w)(a) c. 1944 I.W. Publications: Channel Y-O-U (w)(a) 1958 & 1963 reprints; Li’l Teevy (w)(a) 1958 & 1963 reprints; The Line-Up (w)(a) 1963 reprint Toby Press: Al Capp’s Li’l Abner (ed/ad) 1949-55; Al Capp’s Shmoo Comics (w)(a)(ed/ad) c. 1949-50; Al Capp’s Wolf Gal (ed/ad) 1951; Billy the Kid Adventure Magazine (ed/art director) 1950-55; covers (i) 1953; Danger Is Our Business (ed/ad) 1953-55; Felix the Cat Summer Annual/Winter Annual (ed/ad) 1953, 1954; fillers (w)(a) 1959-53; Great Lover Romances (ed/ad) 1951-55; illustrations (a) 1959; John Wayne Adventure Comics (ed/ad) 1949-55; Johnny Danger (ed/ad) 1950; Leroy Lunkhead (w)(a) 1950; Li’l Yuk-Yuk (w)(a) [filler] no dates; Pat Sullivan’s Felix the Cat (ed/ad) 1951-55; Sands of the South Pacific (ed/ad) 1953; Sheriff O’Shay (w)(a) 1949; Tales of Terror (a)(ed) 1952; Young Lover Romances (ed/ad) 1952 [NOTE: The Who’s Who lists some 1950s Timely/Atlas work for Mell Lazarus, but the artist/writer said he did no further work in comic books after leaving Toby Press.]

Some Pictures Are Worth 1000 Words—Others Leave You Speechless Maybe you can’t read the dialogue in this Jack Sparling pinup of Terry the Torch from Monty Hall of the U.S. Marines #5 (April ’52), edited by Mell Lazarus, scripter unknown— but she was clearly the Korean War equivalent of Rosie the Riveter! Thanks to Gene Reed. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

Now out!!! Bill Schelly’s new book!!!

FOUNDERS OF COMIC FANDOM! Profiles of 90 Collectors, Dealers, Fanzine Publishers, Writers, Artists and Other Luminaries of the 1950s and 1960s In the 1950s and ’60s, a grassroots movement arose to celebrate comic books and strips, which were becoming an increasingly important part of American popular culture. This broad group of ardent readers and collectors of comic books had little formal structure until the 1950s. As the art and literary form grew in popularity, a dedicated core began building an organized network. Profiled here are 90 people at the heart of the movement, from dealers to convention organizers to fanzine publishers. Also listed are the writers, artists, and industry professionals who have helped build an evergrowing movement of pop culture. Schelly has done new research, and this book is ALL-NEW! Each person profiled has a photo, and the personal information is more in-depth than has appeared anywhere before. Includes EC Fandom! Contains about 80 photos, glossary, appendix, notes, bibliography and index.

Published by McFarland & Co., Inc. ISBN 978-0-7864-4347-5 Softcover (7 x 10)

Buy Now: $35.00

www.amazon.com or www.mcfarlandpub.com

In Memoriam

Valerie Barclay (1922-2010) “The Glamorous Girl Inker” by Trina Robbins

alerie Barclay, who died on February 26, 2010, is probably best known to Golden Age comic fans as “Violet Barclay, Glamorous Girl Inker.” This is how she is described by Stan Lee is his priceless 1947 book Secrets behind the Comics.

Born in Manhattan on November 5, 1922, Valerie attended the School of Industrial Arts, after which she went to work as a restaurant hostess for $18 a month. In an interview with Jim Amash, for Alter Ego #33, she describes how fellow schoolmate Mike Sekowsky discovered her working there at the age of 18 and “decided to save [her] from this life of degradation as a restaurant hostess” by finding her work as an inker at Timely comics for $35 a month. For several years, she inked over Sekowsky’s and other artist’s pencils on various funny animals and teen comics.

The atmosphere at Timely under Stan Lee’s editorship, as described by Valerie, was relaxed. Lee gave his artists two hours in the morning to go through magazines and cut out pictures for their swipe files. Valerie tended to downgrade her talent because she used swipes, but so did, and do, most cartoonists. Similarly, in the interview she belittled her inking skills, preferring instead to dwell on her tangled romantic relationships with Mike Sekowsky and other men at Timely: “I didn’t know anything about inking. [Staff artist] Dave Gantz taught me—just by watching him.“ Yet both Adele Kurtzman and Timely Comics artist Allen Bellman remember that Valerie used to put her eye makeup on with an inking brush and India ink. To avoid putting an eye out while applying her makeup, she would have needed skill and a steady hand! After leaving Timely in 1949, Violet changed her name, which she had always considered too girly, to Valerie, and it was as Valerie Barclay (and sometimes Valerie Smith) that she drew love comics. Her style—and her talent—can readily be recognized, and I’ve had the fortune to find at least two romance stories fully drawn by her. After leaving comics when, as she told me, “The bottom just dropped out,” Valerie briefly worked as a fashion model, then went into commercial art and fashion illustration. Not coincidentally, some of her best commercial work took the form of comics. Valerie continued to take classes at the Art Students League until, in 2002, suffering from osteoporosis, she tripped over an easel and broke most of the bones in her feet and legs. Her favorite artist was John Singer Sargent; and, because she could never afford an original, she painted excellent copies of his work for her own enjoyment, always carefully signing her own name to them so that she wouldn’t be accused of forgery. Trina Robbins is a former underground comix artist who currently writes and/or edits biographies and art histories, such as The Brinkley Girls: The Best of Nell Brinkley’s Cartoons from 1913-1940 (Fantagraphics Books, 2009).

Valerie In Love (Clockwise from top of page:) Caricature of Violet Barclay from the 1947 Stan Lee book—a 1987 photo of Valerie Barclay—and a rare 1950s page she both penciled and inked for Nedor/Standard’s Intimate Love comic, the original art autographed for Trina by the artist. [Art ©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

In Memoriam

Goodbye, Billy De! A Tribute To BILL DUBAY (1948-2010)

by Bill Schelly n April 15, 2010, Bill DuBay succumbed to a year-long illness, bringing a premature end to the energetic, indefatigable comic fan and creator.

Although Bill did most of the ditto-process art for YSJ, he was more engaged in the production of VoC, creating the layouts and pasting up the pages for offset printing. The latter carried first daily-style, then Sundaystyle newspaper strip installments. His creation “The Web” (apparently inspired by Will Eisner’s Spirit) was the first he drew in ink on Bristol board, and enabled him to gain confidence in using pens and zip-a-tone. He also played a big part in the production of Fandom Presents, a 100page publication featuring a “who’s who” of the amateur super-heroes then appearing in fanzines. “I loved the Julie Schwartz-edited books,” he recalled. “I always loved anything produced by superior artists. So, when I discovered the EC line, a decade after they were no longer published, I went out and found them all.” He also collected original art. His fannish days ended abruptly in 1966 when he was drafted into the US Army and soon found himself editing The Ft. Bragg Paraglide. “It was a good training ground,” he recalled. “Newspapers teach you to perform quickly and accurately and to respect a deadline.”

William DuBay (who didn’t capitalize the “b” in his last name when he was involved in early fandom) was a highly energetic and prolific fanzine publisher from 1963 to 1967; but he is probably best remembered from his fandom days for his effective, carefully-rendered artwork for nearly all the top fanzines.

He’d been doing that for more than a year when Roy Thomas invited him to write and draw a four-page spoof for Marvel’s humor title Not Brand Ecch. This was his first professional assignment doing both writing and drawing. (His very first pro work had been art for Charlton’s Go-Go Comics in 1966, during his senior year in high school.)

DuBay was born in 1948 in San Francisco, the first of seven siblings. During the summer of 1963, a copy of Ronn Foss’ Alter Ego #5 found its way to his mailbox. Suddenly realizing there had been comic books and super-heroes published long before his current favorites, Bill immediately began treasure-hunting for old comics in the Bay Area, and planning to publish his first amateur magazine. He was joined in this effort by his friend since first grade at St. Paul’s, Marty Arbunich.

After finishing his military stint, Bill studied journalism in college, while moonlighting for Warren Publishing’s Creepy and Eerie magazines as a writer and artist. Upon completing his education, DuBay moved to New York and spent the next decade editing and designing Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, The Spirit, and The Rook. After that, he worked as an editor and writer for Western Publishing and Red Circle (an Archie imprint), and did occasional assignments at DC and Marvel.

In September 1963 he printed Fantasy Hero #1 on a ditto machine at Sacred Heart High School. It offered three amateur comic strips; the first, which demonstrated Bill’s penchant for putting himself (and Marty) into his strips, was “Billy De” (Bill’s nickname for himself). It wasn’t long before he and Marty formed Golden Gate Features (with Rudi Franke and Barry Bauman) and launched the two fanzines for which they would be best remembered: Yancy Street Journal and Voice of Comicdom.

Bill moved into the animation field and was involved in various aspects (writing, storyboarding, directing, producing) of more than 100 TV and film projects, including The Simpsons, Ghostbusters, Jem, GI Joe, Transformers, Peter Pan, and The Incredible Hulk. In recent years, he launched Time Castle Books to reprint his work on “The Rook,” et al. DuBay was living in Portland, Oregon, when he passed away. He is survived by his wife Venessa Hart and his children Crystal, Lisa, Bill, Daniel, and Leina. Bill DuBay is one of many fans profiled in Founders of Comic Fandom, Bill Schelly’s new book from McFarland Publishing.

Bill Me! Bill DuBay (in a recent photo) muses over two early specimens of his work: his 1963 cover for Fantasy Hero #1, done when he was 16—and a page from “The Girl on the Red Asteroid,” one of the last stories he illustrated for Creepy before moving to New York to take over the reins of Warren’s graphic-story magazines. Photo by Venessa Hart. A 1972 photo of DuBay was seen last issue, along with panels of his work for Not Brand Echh. [Art ©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

In Memoriam

Jim(1919-2008) Mooney “One Of The Nicest Guys You’d Ever Meet”

by Eddy Zeno

ames Noel “Jim” Mooney lived to be 88 years of age. He was born August 13, 1919, and died March 30, 2008. He and his beloved wife Anne resided in Port Salerno, Florida, in later years. She passed away in 2005. Mooney’s first listed comic book work is for Victor Fox’s Mystery Men Comics #9 (April 1940) on the “Moth Man” feature. He soon migrated to the Eisner-Iger Shop, Ace, Quality, Harvey, and Fiction House. At Timely Comics Jim began drawing funny animals for the Terry-Toons title while working with a young Stan Lee. The two would remain good friends for over 60 years.

One of the best anecdotes about Mooney and Lee came from Jim himself in a 1999 interview, conducted by Chris Knowles, which appeared in Comic Book Artist #7: “I met Stan the first time when I was looking for work at Timely. I came in, being somewhat young and cocky at the time, and Stan asked me what I did. I said I penciled; he said, ‘What else?’ I said I inked. He said, ‘What else?’ I said color. ‘Do anything else?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I letter, too.’ He said, ‘Do you print the damn books, too?’ I guess he was about two or three years my junior at that point. I think I was about 21 or 22.” Starting in 1946 at National Periodical Publications, Jim began as a “Batman” artist and was soon illustrating solo “Robin” tales for Star Spangled Comics. A big science-fiction fan, he also drew early Strange Adventures stories for editor Julie Schwartz. After reading how much Jim enjoyed meeting sf author Robert Heinlein, I wondered if, growing up in Los Angeles, he had met the area author as a young man and if, perhaps, Heinlein had introduced him to friend and fellow sf author Edmond Hamilton, whose life I was researching at the time. When I phoned him, though, Mr. Mooney stated he did not meet Heinlein until much later at a convention. He was most helpful, as he had been earlier when I was compiling the book Curt Swan: A Life in Comics (Vanguard, 2002). Not only generous with his time, Mooney always

Mooney & Friends Jim Mooney (left) and Stan Lee c. 199x—and a lovely Mooney commission drawing of Supergirl, Streaky, and Comet the Super-Horse, with thanks to John G. Pierce & Kevin Tomaszewski. Thanks to Jon B. Cooke for the photo, originally sent to him by Mooney for Comic Book Artist [Vol. 1] #7— and to Eddy Zeno for pointing it out to us. [Supergirl & Streaky TM & ©2010 DC Comics.]

autographed and enclosed related art prints as a bonus whenever his fans commissioned a drawing. “Captain Joel” Kilmer, owner of Big Dog Comics and Collectables in Fort Pierce, Florida, called him “one of the nicest guys you’d ever meet.” Jim stayed with National (DC Comics) until 1968, taking over the “Tommy Tomorrow” feature from Curt Swan in 1952 and segueing into his well-known stint on “Supergirl” starting with the Maid of Might’s second story (Action Comics #253, June 1959). He loved cats, and a favorite memory was designing Streaky the Supercat with a lightning-bolt birthmark on his side to accompany the Girl of Steel. Jim also drew exploits of “The Legion of Super-Heroes,” “Superman-Batman” team-ups for World’s Finest Comics, and the “Dial H for Hero” series during the Silver Age. In 1968 Mooney moved to Marvel Comics, where he received the “Gentleman Jim” moniker from his old pal Stan. In 1975 he signed a contract which allowed him to move to Florida and continued to work for the company for another decade. Initially finishing John Romita, Sr’s., layouts on The Amazing Spider-Man, he would go on to pencil, ink, or fully render “Ms. Marvel,” “Thor,” “The Defenders,” “Ghost Rider,” “Sub-Mariner,” “The Incredible Hulk,” “Son of Satan,” and many more adventures about a certain web-slinger, to name but a few. He even drew a non-pornographic good-girl feature called “The Adventures of Pussycat” for Marvel publisher Martin Goodman’s men’s magazines. Mooney loved illustrating tales written by the unconventional Steve Gerber, working on the writer’s scripts for Man-Thing and Omega the Unknown. One of the most prolific illustrators in comics history by the time he “retired” from Marvel at age 65, Jim returned to freelance work on assignments that included Thundercats for Marvel’s Star imprint, Superboy the Comic Book for DC, and Soulsearchers and Company and Elvira Mistress of the Dark for Claypool Comics. He received an Inkpot award during his last Comic-Con International appearance in 2006 and continued producing commissions for his many admirers until shortly before he died.

In Memoriam

Dick Giordano (1932-2010) “He Was Meant To Be An Artist In This Medium” by Pat Bastienne A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Artist Dick Giordano, who passed away in Florida due to complications of a long-standing bout with leukemia on March 27, was a well-known and beloved figure in the field. He began freelancing for Charlton in 1952, and from 1965-67 served as the company’s editor. Moving to DC Comics, he spent two years there as an editor. In 1971 he and Neal Adams founded a commercial art studio, Continuity Associates, though Dick also continued to draw for Marvel and other comics houses. In 1980 he returned to DC as an editor, and in 1983 was named DC’s executive editor. He left that position in 1993 after the death of his wife Marie, and returned to the world of the freelance artist with his own company, DikArt. Alter Ego #101, in May 2011, will deal in detail with his career through 1970, while a complementary edition of our sister mag Back Issue! will cover his later work. For that reason, we asked Dick’s longtime friend and associate, Pat Bastienne—who worked for him for years as editorial coordinator at DC and later as his assistant at DikArt—to write a more personal recollection of him for this issue of A/E.

ick was editor at Charlton Publications when I first met him. I was working a summer job there while in high school. Dick was always the one taking chances, much to the dismay of the powers that owned the company. He hired unknown artists and writers as well as tried and true ones. At that time, comics were considered a passoff for kids and nothing more. Dick searched for talents, finding them in places far and wide.

Since Dick and his family lived on the same street as my family and I did, he often gave me a ride to the office. It was in those car rides that I grew to know the man. Not just for his talent, but as a stand-up guy, as well. Flash ahead to when I again ran into him years later. Dick had been working at DC as an editor but had only stayed a couple of years, as he longed to be back at the drawing-board. So he and Neal rented a small studio on 48th Street, NYC, which grew into what later became Continuity Graphics, with them at the helm. They eventually took over the entire third floor and turned it into a place where those in the comic book world could come and be welcome. But he continued drawing and inking for DC and others. Around the late ’70s, Dick decided to go off on his own, so he and Neal dissolved their partnership. Now working alone (busy, but away from the ambiance of NYC), Dick labored on quite a few comic books. He called these his “Marathon Years.” After a few years, he got itchy feet again, so when DC publisher Jenette Kahn phoned and offered him a position on staff, he was ready and able. Being an editor and also an artist was quite a day’s work, but he never complained. Loved every minute of it. Loved the people, the artists and the writers, the world of telling a story the comic book way. He was meant to be an artist in this medium. Loved it till the day he passed.

He Knew Art… And He Knew What He Liked Dick loved drawing women, so we’ve peppered this mini-tribute with illos of two of his favorites: Wonder Woman (as part of a self-portrait) and the splash panel of the “Red Sonja” tale in Marvel Feature #1 (Nov. 1975). Thanks to John Lustig for the latter art. [Wonder Woman TM & ©2010 DC Comics; Red Sonja TM & © Red Sonja Properties, LLC; self-portrait ©2010 Estate of Dick Giordano.]

Man And Super-man (On this page:) The Acme Novelty Library #10 features a scene inspired by a famous sequence in Action Comics #1. The cover of Acme #8 shows a godlike Super-Man and his devoted fans. That’s him, too, holding the flashlight from issue #2, and a portrait from the first issue. Since turnabout is fair play, the Chris Ware pose at top center has even been adapted by MTG as Mr. Monster! [Acme Novelty Library art & story ©2010 Chris Ware; Mr. Monster TM & ©2010 Michael T. Gilbert.]

Mr. Monster's Comic Crypt!

Super-Man: Unmasked! by Michael T. Gilbert

hris Ware burst upon the comics scene in the early ’90s like a strange visitor from another planet, who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal cartoonists. Illustrated with a finely-detailed art style from decades past, Ware’s scripts brimmed with pathos and pitch-black humor. Faster than a speeding bullet, he won enough awards to make Superman’s Fortress of Solitude bulge!

But even Superman has his dark secrets, and so does Chris Ware. More dish on that later. For those unfamiliar with Mr. Ware’s comics, here’s a brief recap. He made his debut while still in college, with Eclipse’s 1987 one-shot comic, Floyd Farland - Citizen of the World. Ware reemerged in 1994, courtesy of Fantagraphics Publishing, with his first continuing comic book, The Acme Novelty Library. It featured a revolving cast of robots, lowlifes, and characters like Big Tex. but most famous among them was Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. Actually, The Most Depressing Kid on Earth would be a better title. Bad things happened to Jimbo. Really bad things. Really, really, really bad things. Enter Super-Man.

Everything’s Super, Man! Ware’s obsession with Superman was evident right from the start. In Acme #1, a godlike Super-Man floated on a cloud as he scolded a middleaged Jimmy. In the same issue, a younger Jimmy sees his idol in person at a seedy movie theatre. This Super-Man, a washed-up TV actor, finagles a one-night stand with Jimmy’s floozy mom. Nice, huh?

Ware develops his Super-Man character in succeeding issues. Initially, innocent Jimmy thinks the heroic figure will save him from his miserable life. Fat chance! Time and again, SuperMan lets poor Jimmy down—as do his mother, various “uncles,” and other adults. But Ware’s SuperMan is the worst banana in a rotten bunch. Ware’s Man of Steel (known as Superman or Super-Man) tortures him mentally and physically. Quite a change from Fantagraphics’ usual light-hearted fare!

Superman Or Super-Man? (Bottom left:) Panel from The Acme Novelty Library #1. (Upper right:) Super-Man (from Acme #4) holds the cover to Acme Novelty Library #1 (1994). (Bottom right:) Flying Super-Man from issue #10. [Art & story ©2010 Chris Ware.]

Super-Man Unmasked!

Who Is Super-Man?? Ware’s Super-Man is drawn in the spirit of classic Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster stories from the late ’30s. Just compare the drawing from Acme Novelty Library #2 at right with the panel next to it, from the 1938 Action Comics #1. Am I right, or what? Okay, I know what you’re thinking. “So this is the big friggin’ exposé? So Chris was inspired by old Superman comics. Any idiot with an Action Comics #1 reprint can see that!” No way, reader. When Mr. Monster promises to reveal a sordid truth— HE...DOES...NOT...KID...AROUND! Patience, please!

Super Clues Before we expose the secret identity of Mr. Ware’s Super-Man, allow me to explain just how we cut through his Gordian knot of deception. The first clue was a bogus comic book advertisement from Acme Novelty Library #3. The image seemed familiar, so I dug through the Comic Crypt, searching for an answer. I struck gold on the back cover of Superboy #119 (Jan. 1965)––an old seed ad that Ware had swiped for his seedy parody. Superboy, eh? Now I was getting close! My second clue was the fact that Ware’s Super-Man wore a mask, while the real one never did. Or did he? The images seemed familiar, so I shuffled through another stack of musty DC comics—and there it was, right inside Superman #137 (May 1960). “The Two Faces of Superman” starred Super-Menace, a masked evil duplicate of the Man of Tomorrow. Close, but no cigar. Yet another dive in the pile turned up a second masked Superman in “The Death of Superman,” issue #118 (Jan 1958). This creaky plot revolved around a crook disguised as our hero. “Great stuff, that plastic surgery!” he gloats, shortly before the real Superman kicks him halfway to Krypton.

(Above:) Back cover ad from Superboy #119, and Chris Ware’s parody from Acme #3. (Far right:) Curt Swan’s cover for Superman #137, and Al Plastino’s “The Death of Superman” splash from Superman #118. [Superboy & Superman panels ©2010 DC Comics; Acme page ©2010 Chris Ware.]

Mr. Monster's Comic Crypt!

One Last Clue! But, mask or not, Ware’s Super-Man didn’t physically resemble the classic Superman as depicted by Joe Shuster, Curt Swan, Al Plastino, George Papp, or Wayne Boring. His mask-wearing hero was decidedly pudgy, with white hair that really aged him. And unlike DC’s Superman, this guy was pure evil. Ware depicted him as a god, capricious and vengeful, in the Old Testament mold. You never knew what he’d do next. Would he be your friend—or gouge your eyes out? No doubt about it, this Super-Man acted more like a super-villain. “Hold the bat-phone! I know where I’ve seen this guy,” I suddenly remembered.

Super Sacrilegious? Super-Man has a cross to bear in the top left panel from Acme #10, and is actually called God in the page from issue #7 seen at top right. (Descending three rows of panels:) Super-Man as a vengeful god from Acme #10. [All panels on this page ©2010 Chris Ware.]

Super-Man Unmasked!

Evil Twin Episodes? (Clockwise:) Bone-crunching panels from Acme #10 lead to the splash panel from Superboy #59, (Sept. 1957). Next, compare the pudgy Super-Man from Acme #7 with another panel from “Superboy Meets Amazing Man”! [Superboy page ©2010 DC Comics; Acme panels ©2010 Chris Ware.]

Unmasked At Last! Superboy #59 (Sept. 1957) marks the very first appearance of Chris Ware’s Super-Man. “Superman Meets Amazing Man!,” scripted by Jerry Coleman and drawn by John Sikela, introduces a mysterious new superhero in the town of Hadley, which is down the road a piece from Smallville. The townsfolk quickly become smitten with this swashbuckler, who uses his super-scientific genius to save lives and fight crime. Evidently having Superboy a stone’s throw away was just not good enough for this one-horse town. The Hadley-ites quickly decide that this Johnny-comelately is even better than the Boy of Steel. How’s that for gratitude? But Superboy is a real mensch and actually welcomes the doughy do-gooder. Despite that, the hicks from Hadley soon accuse Superboy of being jealous of their Boy of Flab. It all turns out to be an evil plot, which wet-blanket Superboy spoils in the nick of time. In the last panel, the masked villain (a spitting image of Ware’s Super-Man!) is finally revealed to be…

That’s Amazing, Man! (Bottom right:) Superman’s identity is revealed in this scene from the splash page of Superman #103. (Left:) And finally, note the remarkable resemblance between and Acme #14’s SuperMan and Amazing Man in the DC story. [Superman panels ©2010 DC Comics; Acme panels ©2010 Chris Ware.]

Mr. Monster's Comic Crypt!

What? HIM Again? …Superman’s arch-enemy, Lex Luthor! Even by 1950s DC’s standards, this makes no sense whatsoever. Both characters are supposed to be the same age, but here Superboy’s about nine, and Luthor’s 67 if he’s a day. But hey, it’s only comic books! So Chris Ware, your evil hero is finally “unmasked.” It actually makes sense when you think about it. Two bald, pudgy megalo-maniacs, each with a full-blown god complex.

And In Conclusion... Now, Chris may deny ever seeing this story, which may be the truth, for all I know. But if the good gentleman claims ignorance of the facts as presented, he’s only fooling himself. I implore you, Mr. Ware. Confess! If not for your own peace of mind, then for little Jimmy Corrigan. Lord knows, the poor pitiful wretch deserves a break.

Double Trouble! (Clockwise from left:) Evil Super-Man from Acme #10—a panel from Superboy #59—Super-Man from Acme #7—and Luthor revealed as Amazing Man in the final panel of Superboy #59. [Superboy panels ©2010 DC Comics; Acme panels ©2010 Chris Ware.]

Till next time...

Our thanks (and apologies!) to Chris. Seriously, his Acme Novelty Library series is one of my favorites. Superman fans will particularly want to order issue #10. It’s definitely not for the faint of heart, but I think it’s simply super, man!

Monthly! The Original First-Person History!

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

Comic Fandom Archive

Of Texas Trios, Wars, And Comics Shops An Interview With BUDDY SAUNDERS About His Fifty Years In Fandom Conducted & Transcribed by Brett Weiss Introduction by Bill Schelly, CFA Editor

Lone-Star-Studded Buddy Saunders in a recent photo taken at his Lone Star comic book shop— and (below) his 1968 Powerman cover for the 13th issue of Star-Studded Comics, perhaps the most important fanzine of the period that specialized in original “ama-comics.” [©2010 Buddy Saunders.]

him Jake, and he immediately said, “You should write under Jake Saunders; that has a good ring to it.”

BW: It’s funny that you should mention Harlan Ellison. Over the years, I’ve spoken with any number of comic book and science-fiction fans, retailers, dealers, and pros, and it seems that most everyone has a Harlan Ellison story. Were you ever friends with Ellison, and do you have any other anecdotes to tell about the fiery fantasist?

Fans who were around in the 1960s, however, will remember Buddy as one of the premiere artists in early comic fandom, and as a member of the legendary Texas Trio, publishers of the very popular Star-Studded Comics, perhaps the premier source of amateur comic strips of the day. Others may be familiar with Buddy’s writing, which has been substantial; he co-authored the paperback novel The Texas-Israeli War: 1999, wrote a number of stories for Creepy and other Warren magazines, and in 1976 was nominated for a Nebula Award for his short story “Back to the Stone Age.”

SAUNDERS: More like acquaintances than fast friends. The first time I ever saw Harlan was at the 1969 World Science Fiction Convention in St. Louis. I was a kid standing with the hoi polloi, watching from the back of the room during the awards banquet, expecting everything to be very serious and dignified, only to see Harlan get into a shouting match with members of the audience over how best to spend money raised earlier that day—Harlan wanted the money spent on a writer’s workshop, but his adversaries wanted it for beer. Goggle-eyed, I watch as Harlan dodged spoons and forks being thrown at him. I learned a lot about science-fiction fandom that evening!

oday, Buddy Saunders is best known as the owner of Lone Star Comics, an eight-store chain in the Dallas/Fort Worth Area. He also runs www.mycomicshop.com, an on-line comic book store that boasts the world’s largest selection of back issue comics.

Businessman… fan artist and publisher… successful professional writer. All these aspects of Buddy’s life are explored in Brett Weiss’s interview with the man, which begins anon! BRETT WEISS: In 1974, Del Rey published The Texas-Israeli War: 1999, which was written by “Jake” Saunders and noted science-fiction writer Howard Waldrop. Where did the name “Buddy” come from and how did it catch on? BUDDY SAUNDERS: Buddy is my nickname, given to me by my father. His name was J.D. (just the initials—for Jefferson Davis), but he went by Jake. When I met Harlan Ellison at a Southwestern Con and he learned I was an aspiring writer, he told me “Buddy” was no name for a writer. He asked me what my dad’s name was, I told

I first met Harlan several years later at a science-fiction convention in College Station, Texas, where he was the guest of honor, and next at a Dallas comic con where he was again our guest of honor and featured speaker. Because I was an aspiring writer and a member of the con committee in Dallas, I had a chance to talk with him. Harlan tells great stories and is fascinating to listen to. With the single exception of my longtime friend Howard Waldrop (another very successful writer), Harlan is unmatched in this regard. Although we’re miles apart politically, I like Harlan very much. BW: What is/was your relationship to Howard Waldrop?

Of Texas Trios, Wars, And Comics Shops

A Novel Idea The Texas Trio and friends. (Left to right:) Howard Waldrop, Gary Acord, Buddy Saunders, Howard Keltner, and (sitting) Larry Herndon, circa 1965. (Below:) The cover of Saunders and Waldrop’s 1986 novel The Texas-Israeli War: 1999. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

SAUNDERS: Howard and I met during our first year of high school. We’ve been friends ever since, from double-dating in high school to being fans of sf and each being an aspiring writer. BW: Please explain the collaborative effort that went into The Texas-Israeli War: 1999, from original idea to nuts-and-bolts writing to eventual publication. SAUNDERS: Howard and I originally cowrote a novella titled “A Voice and Bitter Weeping” (a quote from the Bible), an sf story that alternated converging storylines between two groups of soldiers who were in the process of invading Texas during the aftermath of World War III. We shopped the story around to several magazines with no luck. Then I edited it down to 10,000 words, hoping a short version might have better luck. The first magazine I sent it to, Analog, accepted it immediately. After publication in Analog, Howard and I received a call from Judy-Lynn del Rey (the wife of Lester del Rey and then sf editor at Ballantine Books). She asked us if we would be interested in turning the short story into a novel. It didn’t take us long to say yes. The first step was easy. We just put back in all the material I had cut out, then went from there, Howard writing some chapters, I the others, and we each editing the other’s chapters. Despite Howard’s tendency to procrastinate, we finished the novel on schedule.

And that was our intent—to sell a book with a good story. BW: In 1976, you were nominated for a Nebula Award for the short story “Back to the Stone Age.” What was that story about? SAUNDERS: That story sprang from one of the many friendly arguments Howard and I used to get into. I remember once we argued over what lane on a highway was the inside lane and which the outside. “Back to the Stone Age” came about when we argued over dropping the bomb on Japan to end WW II. Howard argued it wasn’t necessary. I said it was. But that got me to thinking. What if we hadn’t dropped the bomb? How then would WW II have ended? Told from the point of view of a cynical newspaperman, the story explains why we had no bomb to drop and the consequences that followed when the Allies decided to blockade the Japanese Islands rather than invade. The action takes place aboard a surplus B-24 bomber in the Bolivian Air Force, the only aircraft that poor nation can afford to provide as part of the Japanese blockade. Even then, to make ends meet, the plane has to take on paying sightseers on its bombing runs. The story revolves around what happens on a particularly eventful bombing run. The cynical newspaperman survives, but he’s missed the big story. BW: How were you notified of the nomination, and were you invited to a ceremony of any kind?

SAUNDERS: All that was low key. I don’t recall how I was notified, but I suspect I just read about it somewhere. All nominees were invited, but I wasn’t able to attend. I consider being nominated an honor, one I will always appreciate. BW: Do you recall who actually won the Nebula for short story that year? SAUNDERS: No, I’m sorry, I don’t. [NOTE: C.L. Grant won for “A Crowd of Shadows.”] BW: Talk a little bit about your days writing for Warren. SAUNDERS: I wrote for Warren while in college, submitting my stories to Archie Goodwin, then the editor at Warren. BW: How much did they pay per story?

BW: In The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction (1990, Pharos Books), David Pringle describes The Texas-Israeli War: 1999 as “a zany little idea which is here spun out at too great a length.” Do you think that is a fair assessment of the book? SAUNDERS: Nope. What do you expect from a man whose big claim to fame is putting potato chips in a can? BW: Heh, that’s a good one! What is the book basically about, and were you and Waldrop trying to convey a particular political message? SAUNDERS: The story was straight action/adventure with an sf backdrop. I really enjoyed researching the military hardware and laser technology. And I got a fan letter asking if I was Jewish, so I guess I did a good job developing my Jewish mercenaries. As to a political message, there wasn’t any intended, and I don’t think any seeped in. I always chuckle when some idiot reviewer suggests that all the giant monster movies of the 1950s are metaphors for our Cold War fear of communism (a reasonable fear, by the way). The only thing the makers of those neat old movies had in mind was bringing an audience into movie theatres.

SAUNDERS: I was paid $25 per story. Stories usually ran six pages. BW: About how many of your stories did they publish? SAUNDERS: I can’t give you an exact count, but the number of stories I did for Creepy and Eerie (not for Vampirella) was right at 25. BW: Do you recall a favorite story that you wrote for Warren? SAUNDERS: My all-time favorite story for Warren appeared in Creepy and was titled “The Comet’s Curse.” The story was a rework of a fanzine story I had written and illustrated for, I think, one of Biljo White’s fanzines. The original story featured The Demon, one of my super-hero creations. The Demon was gone in my Warren version, but otherwise the story was much the same—about a Roman soldier who died under a curse, only to rise from the grave many centuries later to exact revenge on the immortal wizard who had originally cursed the soldier. It’s a good story, but what made it so special was Frank Brunner’s rendering and the story behind it.

An Interview With Buddy Saunders About His Fifty Years In Fandom

When I received the issue of Eerie containing the story, I was startled upon looking at the pages—I knew I had seen those pages before—but an instant later I knew that was impossible. The explanation? I had written a very detailed script with plenty of layout instruction, etc. (like Alan Moore is noted for), and Frank had so perfectly followed my every direction that it had perfectly duplicated the story as I had drawn it in my own mind. I still love that story! Years later, I met Frank Brunner at a San Diego Comic Con and recounted the experience I just described. Turns out that he was as new to comic story illustration as I was, and, just as I thought I needed to write complete scripts with detailed artistic direction, Frank likewise assumed then that he was expected to follow that direction as precisely as possible. And that’s just what he did! BW: Describe the sensation you felt at first seeing your words brought to life by a Warren artist. SAUNDERS: Seeing one’s words printed as in the case of a text story, or seeing them printed and rendered as well into images as in comics, is always a thrill that no writer ever completely forgets. But the first time, just knowing that you’ve done it and thus can do it, is always the most special of all. BW: Who was your favorite Warren artist? SAUNDERS: My favorite Warren artist was Frank Frazetta, but beyond covers, he did little for Warren. Al Williamson did a lot more for Warren and I thought he was great—easily a favorite. My least favorite was Tony Williamsune. I had the hard luck of getting him as artist for my first story published by Warren.

art. My interest in art, in fact, was what caused me to fall in love with comics. While at my grandmother’s one summer, I bought a Donald Duck comic at a Ben Franklin five-and-dime, not to have something to read, but to have something to draw from. But since I had it, I read it. I bought a few more comics, discovering quickly the super-hero, sf, and the Atlas big-monster books by Kirby/Ayers and, before I knew it, I was buying all those comics to read, although I continued to study and copy the art, first reproducing the covers, then creating covers and stories on my own. My parents, observing my artistic interest and wanting to encourage it, approved by letting me take the Famous Artists course advertised in many comic books and magazines. And in junior high school and high school I took all the art courses I could, although I mostly found them unsuited for my needs as an aspiring comic artist. My discovery of comic fanzines provided me with greater opportunities and outlets for my budding talents, such as they were. BW: Did you know Rocket’s Blast editor G.B. Love? If so, what was your impression of him? I understand that he suffered from cerebral palsy. SAUNDERS: I first “met” G.B. via an exchange of letters. That was how virtually all comic fans “met” in the first, early days of fandom. We were few and far between in the beginning. I developed dozens of fannish friends—Bernie Bubnis, Richard Weingroff—too many to mention and not all the names remembered. G.B., who lived in Florida at the time, started the Science Fiction Club of America (SFCA), which was really one of the first Silver Age comic clubs, although we shared an interest in sf as well. The club’s monthly newsletter was dubbed by G.B. The Rocket’s Blast. The first several issues were produced via typewriter using carbons,

BW: Describe your relationship (if any) with publisher James Warren? SAUNDERS: That’s easy, as I had no contact with him, leaving me curious to this day as to what he was like. All my dealings were with Archie Goodwin, who was a pleasant and helpful editor. BW: Did you ever submit a story to Marvel, DC, or any other comic book company? SAUNDERS: Never submitted to DC or Marvel. Had I continued with comics, they would have been my ultimate target, but as my interest in writing continued, it moved toward novels. Today, given an opportunity to write, I’ll write novels, as I prefer the much broader range they offer— just not enough room in comics and short stories for the stories I want to tell. BW: Lone Star Comics was founded in 1977, the year after your Nebula nomination. Did that pretty much end your writing career, or did you still find time to write? SAUNDERS: Yes, Lone Star Comics did indeed end my writing career. At that time I was teaching school and expanding Lone Star Comics (which had been a mail-order business and was now expanding into brick and mortar with our first store, which in time would become eight and an Internet business as well). However, I have written one novel I haven’t had time to do much with (as yet) and have others outlines in my mind. It remains to be seen if I’ll one day have the time to return to writing. If so, I’ll be writing just what I want to write, as I’ll be writing first to please myself, although always with the presumption that what I write will have enough broad appeal to find a market. BW: In addition to being a writer, you were an artist, as well, contributing to such fanzines as The Rocket’s Blast and Fandom’s Agent. Did you take art classes in school, and did you ever consider drawing professionally? SAUNDERS: While in junior high and high school, I did very much want to become a comic book writer and artist. I grew up being interested in

Hmm… Where Have We Heard That Name Before? Buddy’s cover for Star-Studded Comics #4 (1964), which introduced fandom to “The Liberty Legion.” Read the entire story in Bill Schelly’s 2005 volume The Best of Star-Studded Comics, still available from Hamster Press. [©2010 Buddy Saunders.]

Of Texas Trios, Wars, And Comics Shops

a viable process because club membership numbered only eight people including G.B. But as the club grew, G.B. scraped the cash together for a mimeograph machine which made larger print runs possible, then switched to a spirit duplicator, which made artwork much easier to reproduce and simple, crude color possible. Early on, I did some writing, but mostly art, including many covers for Rocket’s Blast, for a time being the publication’s “official artist.” G.B. later moved to Texas and became an integral part of Houston fandom until his death. Fandom was lucky to have G.B. for so long, as he embodied all that makes the fan side of fandom so much fun for us all.

newspaper and running a little mail order comic business that would one day become Lone Star Comics. Apart from my writing and cover/story illustration, my primary duties as a Star-Studded co-editor was to make up the issues for publication and then deal with the printer—Shegog Printing in Dallas. BW: I understand that a man named Steve Schleef was once a co-owner of Lone Star Comics. How did you know Mr. Schleef? What was your primary job with the company, and what was his? Did you guys usually agree on matters related to Lone Star? Do any particular disagreements stand out?

BW: Your days as a Texas Trio member have been fairly well chronicled, but I’d like touch on a relatively new development: the closing of Remember When, the comics and movie poster store run by Sharon Herndon (widow of Texas Trio alumnus Larry Herndon). When I spoke with Sharon, she attributed the closing of the store to exorbitant operating expenses and increased competition from the Internet. When you heard about the closing of the store, what were your thoughts? Did Sharon contact you about purchasing the store’s inventory?

SAUNDERS: Not long after Lone Star Comics opened, I took Steve Schleef on as a 10% partner. Steve, a bit younger than I, was one of the DaSFS members and a good friend. Initially, our partnership went very well.

SAUNDERS: The first comic store opened in Arlington, but soon vanished. Another opened in Arlington and lasted longer, closing upon the death of its owner, Ray Files. Lone Star Comics came next. Not many months later, Larry Herndon opened Remember When in Carrolton, a suburb on the northern edge of Dallas. Over the years literally hundreds of comic shops have opened and then vanished. But we were the first, there at the beginning, when the number of comic shops nationwide could be counted on little more than one’s fingers and toes. Hearing that Sharon, who continued Remember When after Larry’s death, was closing the store was sad, like a piece of fannish history passing from the scene. Remember When had been there a long time, almost as long as Lone Star.

SAUNDERS: Things were going well until Steve got married. His new wife somehow got the idea that Steve and I were equal partners. She soon made it known that she planned to make a few changes in how we operated. I had to point out to her that I knew more about the business than she did and that with 90% of the business, I called the shots. That put Steve in a bad spot because, at least at that point, he was still pretty taken with his new wife even as I found her to be more and more unpleasant. The upshot of it all was that I bought Steve out. A divorce followed not long after, and I think the ex-wife got most of Steve’s share. Today, Steve and I are still friends, and he shops in our store regularly.

BW: Regarding Larry Herndon, one of the movers and shakers of early comic book fandom, his boyish enthusiasm for comics and sf was evident in his various fanzine articles (for such publications as Batwing and OAF). Did he exude that type of personality in person? Describe your friendship with Larry. How did you guys meet? SAUNDERS: Larry had a wry sense of humor and an acute business sense. He and I met when we joined Howard Keltner of Gainsville in forming the Texas Trio. In a meeting at Larry’s house, we put together plans to publish an amateur super-hero comic, StarStudded Comics. Out of our group there soon formed a local comic fan group similar to the OAFs of Oklahoma. Our fan group became the Dallas Area Science Fiction Society (DaSFS). Larry was heavily involved in a great many aspects of early fandom, both locally and through voluminous correspondence. At the time, he was still living at home and due to a handicap—he was wheelchair-bound— he had a lot of available time in which to develop his interest in comics and fandom. Howard and Larry did most of the corresponding with the writers and artists who shared creative duties with the three of us. I had less time. I was still in high school and then college and was all the while working for a

BW: When did you become sole proprietor of Lone Star, and how did that transpire? Was the separation with Schleef an amiable experience? Do you know if he is still involved in comics and/or science fiction?

BW: Do you remember the first comic book you ever read? SAUNDERS: Easy. Remember the comic I mentioned earlier? That was Donald Duck #70, June 1960. The cover depicts Donald getting his tail feathers burned by a telescope pointed toward the sun and acting as a magnifying glass. Hanging from the telescope is a sign that reads “See the Sun. 5 cents.” As a kid, it never occurred to me that paying five cents to look at the sun through a telescope wouldn’t be such a good idea. BW: What about the first comic book you ever sold?

SAUNDERS: Two of the first comics I ever sold were Brave and the Bold #30 and the first issue of Fantastic Four. The B&B was a used copy, but when FF #1 came out, I bought four copies, thinking it was something pretty special. I just wish I’d known how special, because I kept one for my collection, and soon sold the other three (all mint, mind you) for 25¢ each through my budding mail order business. It was a nice markup at the time, but imagine the markup in today’s market! Even so, I doubt there’s any comic retailer around today who can say he’s sold mint copies of Fantastic Four #1 at 25 cents each. BW: When did you decide you wanted to sell comics for a living?

An Interview With Buddy Saunders About His Fifty Years In Fandom

The first day we took in $12. I told my wife Judy that I’d stay with my teaching job until I was making as much via comics as I was teaching. That happened in the first year, which was a relief, as, in addition to teaching, I was working at the store, in the afternoon (I had hired a friend to run the store during the day), then staying up until 2:00 AM filling and packing mail orders.

SAUNDERS: I began selling comics in 1960, soon after I discovered comic fandom. My initial purpose in selling comics was to get cash to buy more comics. My allowance was 25¢ per week, enough to buy two comics. I supplemented that with a $12-a-month paper route and by skipping lunch at school and using the 35 cents per day to buy more comics. That more than covered my new-comic buying, but wasn’t enough to cover my buying from ads in the various fanzines that were cropping up, chief among them the Rocket’s Blast ad section.

Because the first store went so well, we took a big chance and opened our second store, that one in Dallas. It was successful as well. Others followed until we hit eight. We’re temporarily down to seven pending the relocation of our Irving store, the only store that has never relocated. BW: Other than good old-fashioned hard work, to what do you attribute the continued success of Lone Star Comics and mycomicshop.com?

BW: Did you start off by setting up at conventions? SAUNDERS: Conventions came later, because I started mail order several years before there were any comic conventions to go to. But even after the advent of comic shows, they were never that important to my evolving comic business. In the early days comic cons were rare (only one per year in Dallas), and I lacked the funds and mobility to hit shows on the coast or in Chicago. With mail order I was doing business every time the mail man delivered to my mail box.

Oklahoma, OK! Bill Schelly and Buddy Saunders at the 2008 OAFCon” (“OAF” stands for “Oklahoma Alliance of Fandom”), held in Oklahoma City—and Buddy’s splash page art for the Defender & Changling chapter of the JSA-style story in Star-Studded Comics #4. The Changling’s the little protoplasmy thing on The Defenders’s shoulder. And yeah, we know the dictionary says the word should be spelled “Changeling”—but hey, it’s Buddy’s character! [©2010 Buddy Saunders.]

BW: Talk a little bit about your transition from comic book reader to retailer. Where was your first store, and what was it like? Did you come up with the name “Lone Star Comics”? SAUNDERS: As I mentioned, my mail order business began as a means of making extra money to buy more comics. In the early days of fandom, there was a lot of trading being done, as even most of the nascent dealers were more fan than dealer. But trading via letters seemed inefficient, and was certainly tedious. My plan was to sell my comics and then use the money I earned to buy the comics I wanted. Just seemed like a lot less work. By the time I started college, I was making enough to support myself. I quit my newspaper job, and focused my efforts on selling comics. By then I was supporting more than my comic habit with comic sales. I’d open an especially nice order during the week and think, “Ah, here’s enough to cover dinner and a movie for my Friday night date.” While in college, I always had a two-bedroom apartment, one room for myself and the other for my comic business. I graduated from college with a degree in art education. After teaching for a couple of years, I opened the first Lone Star Comics store on a dead end street in Arlington—the least expensive location I could find. We were already calling our mail order business Lone Star Comics, a name I settled on because I’m proud to be a Texan and thought the name was a good fit in other ways. In retrospect, I think I chose well and, starting as early as I did when there were literally no comic stores in Texas, the name was still available and free for the taking.

SAUNDERS: Good old-fashioned hard work can’t be avoided in any successful business, and we’ve sure put in our share, right up to today! Beyond that, Lone Star’s success can be attributed first to the people who joined the Lone Star family over the past three decades. Steve Schiavo has been with us 30 years. Other key people have been here 10 to 20 years. Without their accumulated knowledge and experience, we’d not be where we are. Another factor that has contributed immensely to our success is the advent of the computer. Computers now make it possible for us to manage an immense amount of detail and data, something that was impossible in the earlier days of pencil and paper systems—which is just what we started out with.

BW: Thanks for your time, Buddy, and for your thoughtful answers. Is there anything else, a parting comment, perhaps, that you’d like to relate to readers of Alter Ego? SAUNDERS: Just one thought. I first began collecting comics in 1960 and became a mail order retailer at just about the same time, so that, today, I’ve watched and experienced comics both from the perspective of a collector and from that of a professional in the comic book business. During that time, I’ve seen hundreds of individuals, comic stores, comic creators, and publishers come and go. Not everyone who departed left still loving the medium. Doing what began as a hobby as a business can in the end destroy one’s love of the hobby if too many things go wrong. The circumstances that bring this about are as varied as the individuals involved, and having seen so many ups and downs in the industry over the years, I understand how it can happen. But that said, I’m happy to say that my deep involvement in the business side of comics has never dampened by love and appreciation of the medium as a fan and collector. For that I’m most thankful. Bill here, expressing my own thanks to Brett for interviewing this stalwart of fandom, and for making it available through the Comic Fandom Archive in Alter Ego. It only remains for me to add that the Hamster Press book The Best of Star-Studded Comics is still available from my own Hamster Press, and at the discount price of $18.00. You can place your order through my web site at www.billschelly.com, or send a check made out to “Bill Schelly” to P.O. Box 27471, Seattle, WA 98165.

that was the work of another artist? The Baker scan is taken from my book Confessions, Romances, Secrets and Temptations, page 87. You’ll find another example of a cold swipe by Walter Johnson on page 81. The story there, from Authentic Police Cases #6, also contains cold swipes from Eisner which I didn’t mention.

re: S

hane Foley, who as in most issues drew our “maskot” illo above, refers to it as a “pretty uninspired submission (taken from the uninspired Reinman cover of Mighty Crusaders #1.” The funny thing is, as we noted back on p. 12 (and as Nick Caputo detailed in A/E #42), Paul Reinman had done some quite good work in the 1940s & ’50s… though probably his work on Fly Man and Mighty Crusaders wasn’t a career high. Maybe he was just getting tired. [Alter Ego hero TM & ©2010 Roy & Dann Thomas; costume designed by Ron Harris.] We’re really limited on space this issue (so what else is new?) and most of the missives regarding the sword-and-sorcery overview in Alter Ego #80 were of a general nature, so we’ll save letters re our ongoing s&s history for a few issues from now, when we discuss #83, and concentrate on the Don Cameron interview and, surprisingly, items related to #80’s letters section! We begin with John Benson, who’s contributed to our issues on Harvey horror comics and 1950s Mad imitations, and who also conducted some of the earliest serious interviews ever with comics artists:

Also, on p. 44 [of A/E #80], the photo is not Matt Baker but his older brother John. You had sent me this photo for my Confessions book, and I was sure it was not Matt and sent it on to Fred Robinson, and he confirmed that it was John. I then informed you that the pic was of John. That was way back in July 2006, I realize. In the letters page, it’s a shame you changed my statement “Eisner caught Manly Wade Wellman doing some pretty close plagiarism in his Spirit strips” to “some pretty close copies.” I don’t see what’s wrong with the word “plagiarism,” since both men are dead. (And by the way, the more I think of it, the more I’m sure it was Eisner himself who told me that.)

I’m really enjoying the interview with Lou Cameron, by the way. He mentions Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht. I once sat next to her at a dinner put on by the Oral History office of Columbia University. I had used the Oral History office transcribers for some of my comics interviews, and, as part of my job, I helped them handling the finances on some of their grants, so I was invited to this dinner celebrating a milestone of the office. I told Feuerlicht about my comics oral history projects and she told me that she had been editor at Classics Illustrated. I asked her if she’d be interested in talking about her time there and she said yes and gave me her phone number. I never followed up, because I knew nothing about CI and wasn’t really all that interested, and there never seemed to be the time to do stuff like that then. (And where would it have been published?) John Benson

Alas, John, you have a point—since I recall that your groundbreaking late-’60s interview with Gil Kane was published in Alter Ego [Vol. 1] #10

Dear Roy, The caption on page 41 of Alter Ego #80 should have been labeled “Johnson & Baker,” not “Johnson & Johnson,” since the principal figure is a cold swipe from a Matt Baker panel in Teen-Age Romance #8 (Feb. 1950). Johnson obviously used a light box or swipe projector, since every line and detail from the Baker original is there, from the folds in the clothing down to the stripes on the pillow. You can drop one over the other and they match exactly. Some artists will mask the swipe with their own style, but not Johnson. I note that your caption says that Johnson signed the story in the first story panel, not the splash. Maybe he felt embarrassed to sign a panel

To Sleep, Perchance To Be Traced ’Twould appear that artist Walter Johnson (who drew the splash panel at left for Story Comics’ Mysterious Adventures #1, March 1951), which was printed in A/E #80, “borrowed” the girl, her clothing, and her bedding, down to her striped pillow, from the panel above, which was drawn by the great Matt Baker for St. John’s Teen-Age Romances #8 (Feb. 1950). Thanks to John Benson for the Baker art, and to Chris Brown for the Johnson art—or perhaps we should say, the other Baker art. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

re:

largely because there was no other place to publish it then unless you’d published it yourself. Fortunately, Alter Ego and Back Issue! and a few other mags have jumped into the breach since then, but, unless one is content to include it in a blog or website (the current equivalent of selfpublishing, in some ways), venues for in-depth comics interviews are still rare. Very little ever published about comics by the mainstream press is of much value, though there are a few reporters who strive to do more than skim the surface. Glad to get your corrections and comments into print at last—and, perhaps surprisingly, there’s more about plagiarism in the non-Eisner Spirit strip of the World War II years in the second half of our very next letter, from veteran comics scribe Mike W. Barr: Dear Roy, In A/E #80, Carl Gafford is quoted on the discovery in the DC offices of “some original Bob Powell [art] for a comic strip he did starring a teenage girl.” I own three Powell pages from a strip about a teenage girl, called Teena, which I may have obtained at that time. (As Julie Schwartz observed, “The mind is the second thing to go.”) The pages show signs of having been published, with editorial notations made in the borders of the pages. The pages deal with Teena in the midst of a complex plan to meet the Beatles. Bobby Rydell, we hardly knew ye! The Teena pages I own were intended for magazine reproduction, but even a cursory web search elicits the info that Bob Powell did draw the syndicated strip Teena à Go Go, written by Bessie Little, in the late ’60s. Our colleague Ger Apeldoorn mentions that the strip appeared in the magazine Teen Life. I have read that a run of the strip can be found at newspaperarchive.com. John Benson writes: “I heard… that [Will] Eisner caught Manly Wade Wellman doing some pretty close copies of his Spirit strip.” I’ve no info on that, but I do know that the script for the Spirit section of July 18, 1943, usually referred to as “The House of Darkness,” which was produced while Eisner was in the Army, was a direct, blow-by-blow swipe of a 1935 Ellery Queen story, “The Adventure of the House of Darkness.” I asked Eisner about this in 2002; he confirmed that the offending episode was written by William Woolfolk, and that the EQ people (mainly the cousins who created and wrote the stories, Manfred B. Lee and Frederic Dannay) were threatening a lawsuit, which was settled out of court; Woolfolk repaid [Quality publisher] Busy Arnold, who was tending shop while Eisner was in the service, for legal costs with a $1000 bond. One wonders what Woolfolk was thinking, since in those days Queen was immensely popular. In 2002, Eisner said Woolfolk claimed “author rights” to all the Spirit stories he wrote, causing Eisner to reply that everything bought by Arnold was on a “work-for-hire” basis, and reminding Woolfolk of the Queen incident. Woolfolk replied that he hadn’t copied the Queen story; he had merely “used a concept.” Maybe in the way a mugger uses the concept of a gun to obtain money. Mike W. Barr Mike Barr, meet John Benson! Actually, we dislike “accusing” talents like William Woolfolk and Manly Wade Wellman of plagiarism, even years after their deaths, partly because they aren’t here to say a word in their own defense… but Will Eisner does seem to have told such stories, and since they didn’t reflect great credit on his Spirit strip, we feel there was no reason for him to have been intentionally falsifying. Another comics historian, Alberto Becattini, writes from Italy about the interview with artist Lou Cameron… Dear Roy: I was really pleased to see the Lou Cameron interview in A/E #7980. Cameron is one of my favorite artists, and it was pleasant to see that he still remembers a lot about his career and the people he worked with. Let me offer a few additions to Cameron’s credit list: DC/National Comics: covers (a) 1942-45; Picture Stories from the Bible

From The Day When Comic Book Crime Still Paid Since so many letters about A/E #79-80 dealt with the work of Lou Cameron, we thought we ought to show you one more sterling example of same: his signed splash page for Ace’s Crime Must Pay the Penalty #40 (Sept. 1954). We’re not sure who sent it to us—but it’s a beauty, despite its somewhat sordid subject matter. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

– Old Testament (a) 1942-43; Picture Stories from the Bible – New Testament (a) 1944-45 EC Comics: covers (a) 1946-47; Happy Houlihans (a) 1947; Picture Stories from Science (a) 1947 Fiction House: Famous Fighters (a) 1952 (this filler ran in Fight Comics, Jumbo Comics, Rangers Comics, and Wings Comics) St. John: Strange Terrors (a) 1953; Weird Horrors (a) 1953 I hope you will find a spot for my “Nembo Kid” article in one of the next issues. Alberto Becattini I keep trying, Alberto—honest! Had hoped to get it into one of the recent Superman-oriented issues, but it just hasn’t worked out—nor will your article make it, most likely, into A/E #98 at year’s end, which will be full to the brim with articles about the Man of Steel connections of Mort Weisinger, Whitney Ellsworth, and Alvin Schwartz. But we’ll get there yet… if you don’t find some other place to publish the piece first, that is!

[correspondence, comments, & corrections]

Now, a few short-and-fast comments, and we’re outta here:

Editors come and go—but publishers seem to endure forever.

David George, who’d written in A/E #66 about his years as an editor at Magazine Management, 1960s parent company of Marvel Comics, was “delighted with Bud Plant’s kind comments” on his article… but mentioned that his late colleague George Penty’s book Kennedy in Power came out in 1961, not in the 1950s as he’d written. George’s widow Edith had asked for the correction, since David says it was the “first revisionist history of the Kennedy administration.” David’s book Stardust Dads was published in 2008-9 by Brightside Publications, and we wish him well with it.

Bill Croskey wrote in likewise to compliment Jim on his interview work in general, saying “it is easy to take Jim’s interviewing and your editing for granted until one sees it done badly.” And he says in answer to my question somewhere in #80 that, yes, he remembers the lyrics to the 1950s song “Witch Doctor”—and he proceeded to type them out from memory. The most soulful part, of course, is “Oo ee oo ah ah, ting tang, walla walla bing bang/Oo ee oo ah ah, ting tang walla walla bing bang!” (Or is that last part “bang bang”?)

Bob Brodsky pointed out that he believes that I (Roy) may have been “the first writer to use the term ‘sword & sorcery’ in a comic book… on page one of your ‘Black Knight’ one-shot story in Marvel Super-Heroes #18 back in late 1968!” Could be, Bob… but I wouldn’t dispute anyone else’s claim to that “fame.” What was I gonna call it—“chicken fat”? Jake Oster adds his congrats to Jim Amash on his two-part interview with Lou Cameron, “one of the most interesting and informative you’ve ever run,” but wonders: “On page 45, where [Cameron] talks about Roberta Strauss doing her ‘All about Eve’ thing at Classics Illustrated, does she replace Al Kanter (the publisher)? Or Mike Kaplan (the editor)?” Surely the latter, Jake.

Magazine Managers David George forwarded, from Mrs. Edith Penty, this photo of her late husband George Penty, who was a major editor at Magazine Management back in its heyday. The inscription scrawled beneath it (by whom, we don’t know) reads: “The Master of Sly.” If you haven’t yet read David’s article on Martin Goodman’s “men’s sweat” mags in A/E #66, you’re missing some real perspective on the early days of the Marvel Age of Comics, as it was seen from just down the hall!

Left over from comments re A/E #79: Alan Hutchinson writes that, on p. 40 of that issue, the cover of Weird Mysteries #4 was run with a caption saying the artist was unknown. “Actually,” he says, “the cover is signed, but you can’t see it in that scan. Running along the ground just to the right of where the knife is sticking in, and just below the skull’s jawbone, is the name Bernard Baily.” Guess you just have to know where to look, Alan! Send your bouquets and brickbats (as we’ve said before) to: Roy Thomas e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com 32 Bluebird Trail St. Matthews, SC 29135 See you come Halloween!

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[FCA EDITORS NOTE: From 1941-53, Marcus D. Swayze was a top artist for Fawcett Publications. The very first Mary Marvel character sketches came from Marc’s drawing table, and he illustrated her earliest adventures, including the classic origin story, “Captain Marvel Introduces Mary Marvel (Captain Marvel Adventures #18, Dec. ’42); but he was primarily hired by Fawcett Publications to illustrate Captain Marvel stories and covers for Whiz Comics and Captain Marvel Adventures. He also wrote many Captain Marvel scripts, and continued to do so while in the military. After leaving the service in 1944, he made an arrangement with Fawcett to produce art and stories for them on a freelance basis out of his Louisiana home. There he created both art and stories for The Phantom Eagle in Wow Comics, in addition to drawing the Flyin’ Jenny newspaper strip for Bell Syndicate (created by his friend and mentor Russell Keaton). After the cancellation of Wow, Swayze produced artwork for Fawcett’s top-selling line of romance comics, including Sweethearts and Life Story. After the company ceased publishing comics, Marc moved over to Charlton Publications, where he ended his comics career in the mid-’50s. Marc’s ongoing professional memoirs have been a vital part of FCA since his first column appeared in FCA #54 (1996). Last time we re-presented Marc’s 2nd column from FCA #55 for the very first time in the pages of Alter Ego, where the artist took us back to the end of his second day at Fawcett, when he and C.C. Beck talked shop at a nearby café after work. In this issue we premiere for AE readers Marc’s third column, from FCA #56 (1996) where he explained how he liked to “do it all.” —P.C. Hamerlinck.]

I have nothing but pleasant memories of Fawcett Publications. The management seem to have gone out of their way to see that my rates were satisfactory and that I had free rein in producing the assignments. The people were generous and courteous, and I made wonderful, lifelong friends there. Wendell Crowley, the Rod Reeds, the C.C. Becks have been our guests a number of times, and there were others with whom I lost contact that I think of fondly: Jess Benton, who introduced me to The Three Suns, famous musical group … Andy Anderson, who invited me to the first hockey game I ever saw … Bob Civardi, who helped me learn to ice skate … Vic Capalupo, who played nice clarinet in our combo … Irwin Weill, who welcomed me to share his apartment until I found a place … Mac Raboy, who insisted that I use his Manhattan studio when in New York … and all those other wonderful people I knew. I wouldn’t take a million for having known them! In an earlier issue of FCA (FCA/SOB #19-FCA #30, May-June ’83), there appeared a group photo captioned “Golden Age Fawcett Artists in 1941.” The caption might have been misleading, for of the twenty individuals pictured, only about three were in comics, the majority being layout artists on the non-comics magazines. The photo might have been taken in 1940, because when I arrived in 1941 the art staff included several more layout men. In reference to the Fawcett art department, the term “layout” could be confusing. In non-comics publications the layout artist plans each page, determining the size and position of every title, body of copy, illustration, and so on. It is a specialized field within the commercial art profession. In comics the layout artist transfers the story from typed page to art page, sketching roughly the characters, dialogue balloons, and major background features with regard to size and position. It is the leastpraised but, in my opinion, a most important phase in the production of comic book art.

was affiliated with Fawcett Publications thirteen years, on the art staff until entry into the military service late in 1942, and freelance-writing Captain Marvel stories until my discharge in 1944. That year, by special arrangement with editorial director Ralph Daigh, I returned to the South with The Phantom Eagle, doing all the art and as much of the writing as I could handle. When Wow Comics was discontinued in 1948, I drew Fawcett romance comics until the comics line was dropped in ’53.

One Big Family “Golden Age Fawcett Artists in 1941,” said the caption for a vintage photo in the C.C. Beck-edited FCA/SOB #19/FCA #30, May-June ’83. Marc Swayze points out that the photo might’ve actually been from 1940 prior to his Fawcett arrival, and that the majority pictured were mostly layout artists on the non-comics magazines. Front row, left to right: Cary Parshall, Frank Taggert, C.C. Beck (“Capt. Marvel”), Bob Kingett (“Lance O’Casey”), Mac Raboy (“Capt. Marvel Jr.”); 2nd row: Russ Peterson, Al Pauly, Al Allard (Fawcett art director), Ralph Mattison, Harold Noyes, Andy Anderson, Harry Taskey; 3rd row: Paul Pack, Fred Ripperda, Ed Hamilton (letterer and inker), Pete Costanza (“Golden Arrow”) Bob Laughlin (later drew “Monte Hale”), George Duree, Ed Richtscheid, Jack Rinder.

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

And trust me they did. An editorial assistant approached my desk a while later with a Captain Marvel script. “Mr. Herron said hand you this and get out of your way!” I liked that. It meant freedom to proceed from script to finished art, which was the way I worked from then on. Angelo Grasso came on as a letterer, and Chic Stone and others were added to assist with secondary characters and backgrounds, but the responsibility for each story assigned to me was mine. On that basis I believe I produced during that period more Captain Marvel material than anyone, considering that C.C. Beck was heavily involved with supervising the work of others being brought in for his assembly line staff.

“I Like To Do It All!” Marc Swayze let Fawcett’s executive comics editor Eddie Herron know early on that he liked “to do it all,” from penciled layouts to the finished product, which is how the artist always produced comic book stories for Fawcett. In addition to drawing, Marc also wrote many Captain Marvel stories, including “Captain Marvel and the Baron of Barracuda Bay” from Captain Marvel Adventures #30 (Dec. 1943). Art by Swayze. [Shazam hero TM & ©2010 DC Comics.]

In a way, layout art was the cause of a minor controversy that arose several days after I joined the staff. I had been handed the script and art pages of a Captain Marvel story that had already been laid out. The request was that I do finished or “tight” art on the pages and ink them. I had completed that job and was on another project when I was called to a meeting. As he spread out the Captain Marvel art pages before me, Eddie Herron, executive editor of the comics department, said that there had been a complaint that I had been changing the original layouts. Several panels were pointed out that had obviously been altered, some tremendously. Herron explained that it indicated a waste of time of the layout artist, or mine, or both. I suppose the idea was that I was to say I wouldn’t do it anymore. But the words wouldn’t come out. “Look at it this way,” I said. “Is the story better now or before I changed it?”

In retrospect, I wonder if the arrangement set well with Beck. All the artists working on Captain Marvel, though they may have reported officially to Al Allard or Herron, nevertheless were under his supervision. I was the one exception. Occasionally, I would do an illustration for one of the non-comics magazines. Although it never occurred to me at the time, I wonder now if such diversion rankled him. I think it would have me. But I didn’t think about that, and if Beck did, he didn’t reveal it. Our friendship and our talks about Captain Marvel and the comics remained solid, and when Fawcett layout artist Irwin Weill and I got together our little jazz combo, Beck immediately declared he wanted in.

The first Captain Marvel story I wrote came as an emergency. It was Friday at quitting time and I and the others were preparing to leave. John Beardsley was saying to someone, with some concern, that it would be impossible to start artwork on a story early the following Monday because a script they had expected hadn’t arrived. “I’ll bring in a story,” I said, surprised at having interrupted. The three turned.

“Would you rather do layouts?” asked Herron. “And have someone else finish them up?”

“Can you write?” asked Beardsley. “Sure,” I said. Then I tried to joke it off. “I thought everybody could!”

The office was quiet and I could feel the tension. “I don’t like for someone else to finish my layouts.” I said that to Herron. To myself I was saying, “Goodbye, New York!” I went on to say that I was not comfortable working in a system where all my effort was within a single phase of the comic art process.

Beardsley, on the other hand, was enthusiastic. “Bring it in,” he said. “Let’s take a look at it!” During my stay on the art staff I wrote several stories, rarely by request or assignment but rather when I felt like it. The only rejection I received was later when I was in the military and I submitted one that featured Steamboat, Billy Batson’s man-Friday. Steamboat, editor Wendell Crowley explained, was being phased out as a supporting character. The story was intended to be funny.

“I like to do it all!” I said. Eddie Herron was a cool character. Calmly he explained that, in having each phase of the process done by a separate artist, consistency of characters and art style could be more assuredly maintained. I knew that. “If you worked alone, or even with an assistant, how could we be certain that the Captain Marvel work you produced would match up with that done by others?” “Trust me,” I said.

All That Jazz Clearly, the music combo assembled in the Fawcett art department in the early 1940s reawakened an interest that lingered on into Marc Swayze's retirement years. Seen here is a photo of Marc from the ’70s or ’80s when he was playing music with his Dixieland combo. “They were awesome!” says his daughter Desha.

“We on the staff howled at it, though!” wrote Wendell. Wendell Crowley, one of the all-time greats in my book! More of Marc Swayze’s Golden Age memoirs next isue!

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The Mary Marvel Marching Society Continuing Our Look At The TV Career Of Cap’s Shazamic Sister by Darrell “Big D” McNeil FCA EDITOR’S NOTE: This article picks up from the previous issue, wherein animation artist Darrell McNeil discussed his lifelong fascination with Mary Marvel, his work for Hanna-Barbera, and his first goround both at Filmation and for a subcontractor to whom that animation house had farmed out work. Sometime in 1981 he left the latter place of employment and returned to Filmation to work on the Shazam! animated series at the behest of unit head David West….

Madam, I’m Adam …Black Adam, that is, on one of a pair of Mary Marvel scenes Darrell McNeil laid out for the Shazam! animated episode “Black Adam’s Return” … and a (below) BA cel from that episode. [Shazam characters TM & ©2010 DC Comics; art by Filmation - 1981.]

hen I happily made my way back to Filmation in Canoga Park, Dave West did indeed have a package ready for me with storyboards, layout guides, folders, model sheets, paper, etc. He and Wes Herschensohn had already done the bulk of the stock layouts of all the key characters (Billy Batson, Captain Marvel, Freddy Freeman, Captain Marvel Jr., and Uncle Dudley/Uncle Marvel); and Dave, while I was gone, roughed out most of the Mary Marvel/Batson stock positions for me to finish.

Dave also spoke to and worked out a deal with Wes (who didn’t mind taking on some extra work/bucks) for the two of us to pretty much split up the multi-character scenes, giving me the Mary Marvel set-ups to do, while Wes handled the rest (including the Mary Batson ones). On top of that, Dave arranged for me to get the full $25 per scene rate, even when the scene had, say, five characters and the only one I did in the scene was Mary Marvel! Too cool, that! (I had copies of Oksner’s “Mary Marvel” pages/poses taped up to my cubicle in the bullpen space we shared with four other layout people during my in-house year … guess he “remembered.”) This arrangement even extended to Mary Marvel’s guest appearance in an episode of companion series Hero High. (Now, if we could’ve found a live-action counterpart of her like we had of the HH kids … sigh!) And since I had previously done layouts of the animated Isis character in Freedom Force back in ’78, they offered me the opportunity to lay out her guest appearance in HH as well. I was even offered (but turned down) the opportunity to pitch some Shazam! story ideas, through meeting one of its then-fledgling writers, a Paul Dini (hmmm … wonder what became of him?). This was early in the show’s writing process; later that summer, at San Diego’s Comic-Con (let’s see if he remembers this!), I met certifiable Captain Marvel fiend Roy Thomas (who had written for Ruby-Spears animation house around that same time) and pitched to Lou Scheimer the idea of having a real Cap fan

writing the characters. (Not that series writers Dennis O’Flatherty, Fred Ladd, and Dini weren’t … and the scripts were pretty darn close, character-wise … but one more true Marvelite—and I mean Captain Marvel, not Marvel Marvel—wouldn’t have hurt.) Unfortunately, by that time, all 13 scripts for the 13 episodes had been assigned and/or been written … of which twelve were then produced. Twelve? Yep … twelve. And why do I emphasize twelve? Because, back in those days, the average episode number for a series was thirteen. And, indeed, we did thirteen weeks of Hero High episodes, but only twelve of Shazam! Why that? That’s a mystery even to moi. I thought we might have only produced twelve episodes because of a quality issue, precipitated by then NBC toon-head Fred Silverman. Fred had a thing about the quality of the animated series produced under his regime at both NBC and his earlier tenure in the

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

Hard Cel Marvels Animation cel set-ups of Mary Batson and Mary Marvel (based on McNeil’s layouts), and of Captain Marvel Jr., Uncle Marvel, and Captain Marvel (based on Wes Herschensohn’s layouts)—courtesy of Filmation art purveyor (and all-around good guy) Steve Schanes, whom you can contact at popking@cox.net to inquire about purchasing vintage animation artwork. [Shazam characters TM & ©2010 DC Comics; art by Filmation - 1981.]

’70s at ABC … enough that, if he saw early episodes of a new series come into the studio with what he saw and judged as inferior animation quality, he’d have no qualms about (1) cutting a series order by one or two episodes, and (2) using the money that would’ve gone into producing those episodes to redo the earlier existing episodes in production … which would then “hurt” the studio, as they’d have fewer episodes to sell in syndication. (Two previous examples of this: he reduced the order of ABC’s AllNew Super Friends Hour from 16 to 15 episodes—with the money used to repair/redo earlier segments—and, in one more extreme case, reduced the order that season of NBC’s Space Stars from 13 to 11 episodes for the same reason.) Could this have been the reason we only did 12 Shazams!? I asked Lou Scheimer and, while he didn’t remember why we only did 12 Shazam! episodes, he was sure that an episode cut wasn’t the reason. “Hell, no!” he replied when I brought it up. “That may’ve been what Hanna-Barbera did to please the networks, but they knew we didn’t play that game!” So that’ll have to remain one of animation’s unsolved mysteries for now. (And if anyone has a solution … write P.C. Hamerlinck. It’s his problem now!) [PCH: “Oh, gee … thanks!”] Even more interesting (from my viewpoint, anyway) than the fact that we did twelve episodes, was the fact that we did any episodes of Shazam! at all … seeing how the owners of The Marvel Family … DC Comics … had a couple of years before … in tandem with usual rival Marvel Comics (ironic, huh?) … sued Filmation!

Why? ’Cuz the two publishers felt that the Filmation-created and -owned Super 7 heroes were deliberate rip-offs of DC’s Plastic Man (Superstretch), The Atom (Microwoman), Aquaman (Manta and Moray), and Marvel’s Spider-Man (Web Woman). And this was while Filmation still had licensing rights to DC’s Batman. Lou Scheimer: “It was interesting that, after all the work we did with DC/National over the years, they would turn around and sue us. Marvel … we never worked with those guys at all. But DC? Maybe it was because we didn’t license their heroes but created our own. And, as far as we

The Mary Marvel Marching Society

Big D & Big Lou McNeil: “When I told Lou [Scheimer] that I was including this photo of us taken a couple of years ago, he wanted me to “make sure they know that I’m the black guy and you’re the white one!” “Er … anything you say, boss!” [Photo ©2010 GMP.]

to the kids’ audience that had thrilled to his previous live antics. Unfortunately, not enough of Cap’s old viewers tuned in to his new adventures, and The Kid Super Power Hour with Shazam! only lasted one season on NBC (1981) … even though it had future powerhouse (and fellow debutante) The Smurfs as a lead-in. (The Smurfs a hit? Who knew?)

Super Power Hour McNeil’s Shazam! work for Filmation also extended to Mary Marvel’s guest appearance in an episode of companion show Hero High for the short-lived 1981 series, The Kid Super Power Hour with Shazam! [Shazam heroine TM & ©2010 DC Comics - art by Filmation, 1981; Hero High TM & ©2010 Classic Media Inc.]

thought, you could copyright a super-hero, but you couldn’t copyright a super-power. I mean … who owns super-strength?” Unfortunately, the courts didn’t see it that way and ruled that Filmation had infringed on DC’s and Marvel’s copyrighted characters and forbade them from producing any new material with those characters. (Isis, of course, was Filmation’s already.) Ironically, it was due in part to Super 7’s ratings on CBS that rival network ABC bought animated Plastic Man and Spider-Woman series for their Saturday morning schedule the following season (1979).

Well … I may have. It’s funny because, over 35 years as an animator, and 45 years in Hollywood altogether, I’ve done shows that I’ve truly been proud of, shows that I’d watch a thousand times over (and have), and shows that have truly sucked. On ice. Where does Shazam! fit in? After reviewing all of the episodes while writing this (the second time; I’ll reveal the first time in a minute), I admit I feel better about the show now than I did then. My stellar layouts of Mary Marvel notwithstanding (oh, brother!), the animation overall wasn’t

(And NBC had later re-ran the same package, minus Tarzan and Jason of the Star Command as Batman and the Super 7 on their network!) So why, with all the acrimony that a lawsuit would surely had brought forth then, would DC Comics then turn around and do another series with Filmation? “Because,” Lou answered, “despite the lawsuit and all that crap, they trusted us with their characters, when all was said and done. And Fred Silverman, who’d previously green-lit Shazam! as a live-action show for CBS, wanted us to make Shazam! a hit for this network [NBC] as well.” Also, remember that, since half of the Kid Super Power Hour consisted of previously unknown Hero High (which Filmation extrapolated from a previously-developed “Super-Archies” concept), the pre-sold, already known Captain Marvel would bring a familiarity

Re:Union McNeil (trouble instigator that he was back then [whaddaya mean, “back then?”]) showing the latest in strike attire to his buds at the one studio that wasn’t struck during the 1979 animation strike. Filmation had signed a deal agreeing to whatever terms the two sides settled on, therefore no “pickets charge.” [Photo ©2010 GMP.]

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

Mary Marvel Special Edition Our slipperized Mary Marvel illustration for last month’s FCA #154 cover was drawn especially for McNeil—and for this article—by Steve “The Dude” Rude [steverude.com]. Steve has done a number of commissions over the years, such as this one featuring a lightning-boltless Mary in a pose inspired by Fawcett’s Special Edition Comics #1 cover. When McNeil mentioned the slippered Mary to Steve, the artist confessed that he’d never seen that look of hers before, since all his previous reference of the character had been the “booted” version. [Shazam hero TM & ©2010 DC Comics.]

and with whom I watched all the Shazam! episodes for the first time several years ago. His basic response: mixed. He really didn’t like Uncle Marvel (I’d use his exact words, but this is a family magazine!), and would’ve preferred the animation closer to that of his all-time faves: the classic Fleischer Superman cartoons of the ’40s. (Like I wouldn’t have dug that!) He felt that we did the best we could with the tools we had … and agreed that, in comparison to most TV animation produced these days, we weren’t bad, y’know? And, in retrospect, friends, I gotta tell ya, it was extremely rare that you got to read a comic book about a character (that your mom had read years before you were born) that you’d get a kid’s crush on, then get to help guide that characters’ destiny when you’ve both grown up. Some might call it … a marvel. I called her … Mary. I usually end my writings with “laterz”… this one’s more fitting, though, so … SHAZAM! y’all!! Darrell McNeil began his career with various appearances as a child/teen extra on such shows as The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family, and from the 1970s on as served in animation as everything from an in-betweener to a writer to a model/prop designer to an executive producer/supervising director. His company Gold Medal Productions is currently developing several projects for TV animation and related fields. Darrell's book Alex Toth by Design will be published in 2011.

up to previous Filmation projects, the music tended towards the disjointed at times, and the animation in one episode (“Best Seller”) looked really rushed (and, knowing our deadlines, probably was). On the other hand, visually we kept for the most part amazingly faithful to the comics (with the network-mandated exception of Uncle Dudley/Marvel, whose bottom half didn’t really match his fat torso), and the scripts definitely kept that balance of serious and whimsy from the comics. That sentiment was not only felt by your not-so-humble, but by not-so’s best friend and mentor, “Unca” Alex Toth, who was a major league Captain Marvel fan

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

A plea from the publisher of this fine digital periodical: TwoMorrows, we’re on the Honor System with our Digital Editions. We don’t add Digital Rights Management features to them to stop piracy; they’re clunky and cumbersome, and make readers jump through hoops to view content they’ve paid for. And studies show such features don’t do much to stop piracy anyway. So we don’t include DRM in our downloads.

However, this is COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL, which is NOT INTENDED FOR FREE DOWNLOADING ANYWHERE. If you paid the modest fee we charge to download it at our website, you have our sincere thanks. Your support allows us to keep producing magazines like this one. If instead you downloaded it for free from some other website or torrent, please know that it was absolutely 100% DONE WITHOUT OUR CONSENT. Our website is the only source to legitimately download any TwoMorrows publications. If you found this at another site, it was an ILLEGAL POSTING OF OUR COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL, and your download is illegal as well. If that’s the case, here’s what I hope you’ll do: GO AHEAD AND READ THIS DIGITAL ISSUE, AND SEE WHAT YOU THINK. If you enjoy it enough to keep it, please DO THE RIGHT THING and go to our site and purchase a legal download of this issue, or purchase the print edition at our website (which entitles you to the Digital Edition for free) or at your local comic book shop. Otherwise, please delete it from your computer, since it hasn’t been paid for. And please DON’T KEEP DOWNLOADING OUR MATERIAL ILLEGALLY, for free. If you enjoy our publications enough to download them, support our company by paying for the material we produce. We’re not some giant corporation with deep pockets, and can absorb these losses. We’re a small company—literally a “mom and pop” shop—with dozens of hard working freelance creators, slaving away day and night and on weekends, to make a pretty minimal amount of income for all this hard work. All of our editors and authors, and comic shop owners, rely on income from this publication to continue producing more like it. Every sale we lose to an illegal download hurts, and jeopardizes our future. Please don’t rob us of the small amount of compensation we receive. Doing so helps ensure there won’t be any future products like this to download. And please don’t post this copyrighted material anywhere, or share it with anyone else. Remember: TwoMorrows publications should only be downloaded at

www.twomorrows.com TM

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