Comic Book Artist #11 Preview by TwoMorrows Publishing

CELEBRATING THE ART & LIFE OF ALEX TOTH!

No.11 Jan. 2001

$6.95

Batman © DC Comics. The Fox, Jesse Bravo © Alex Toth.

In The U.S.

INTERVIEWS • ART • APPRECIATIONS • CHECKLIST

—

NUMBER 11

Publisher

CELEBRATING

Editor/Designer JON B. COOKE

‘

THE

LIVES & WORK

OF THE

GREAT CARTOONISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS

’

JANUARY 2001

DEPARTMENTS: THE FRONT PAGE: LAST MINUTE BITS ON THE COMMUNITY OF COMIC BOOK ARTISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS On a new fanzine devoted to the Derby, Conn. publisher, Charlton Spotlight, and other stuff! ............................1

TWOMORROWS EDITOR’S RANT: ALEX TOTH—PICTURE PERFECT

JOHN & PAM MORROW

Ramblings on the subject of this very special issue and the glorious truths revealed in the artist’s work ............3

Guest “Sugar & Spike” Editor BILL ALGER

CBA REVIEW: IN WONDER OF THAT WOMAN Editor Jon B. Cooke takes a gander at Les Daniels’ latest, The Complete History of Wonder Woman ..................4

Contributing Editors ROY THOMAS JOHN MORROW

MARGINALIA: GOSSAMER WHITE, FILLED WITH FRIGHT In part two, David A. Roach concludes his look at the rise and fall of ’70s Gothic Romance comics ....................5

Associate Editors DAVID A. ROACH CHRIS KNOWLES Proofreaders JOHN MORROW ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON Cover Art ALEX TOTH Production JON B. COOKE GREAT SWAMP GRAPHICS Transcribers JON B. KNUTSON BRIAN K. MORRIS Logo Designer/ Title Originator ARLEN SCHUMER Mascot WOODY by J.D. King Issue Theme Song UKULELE LADY

ALEX TOTH—’BEFORE I FORGET’ SPECIAL SECTION FRED HEMBECK’S DATELINE: @!!?* Our Man Fred quizzes brilliant young scientist Bruce Gordon on his dark side as Eclipso!....................................7 HIS OWN WORDS: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY BY ALEX TOTH In his own irrepressible handwriting, the master artist discusses his early years as a budding professional ..........8 CBA INTERVIEW: A TALK WITH ALEX TOTH CBA talks to the renowned artist on his influences and opinions in a recent interview ......................................12 GALLERY: MUCH ADO ABOUT ALEX Rare art by the master storyteller ........................................................................................................................20 PROFESSIONAL COURTESIES: PAYING HOMAGE TO THE MASTER Joe Kubert, Walter Simonson, Jim Lee, Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons and others pay their respects ..................30 CBA Q&A: “…SMOKE ACROSS A CLOUD”—THE TOTH METHOD Artist-to-artist, Paul Rivoche quizzes Alex Toth on the craft of continuity art ....................................................32 DEPT. OF ANAL RETENTION: ALEX TOTH—A COMIC ART INDEX Jim Vadeboncoeur shares his exhaustive—and definitive—checklist of the artist’s work ....................................46 APPRECIATION—ALEX TOTH, 1973: SUPER MENTOR Paul Power on learning from the legend..............................................................................................................53 TOTALLY TOTH: TOTH’S FORGOTTEN MAVERICK WORK A look at an Alex Toth treasure: The artist’s two-tone illustration for a 1959 TV adaptation children’s book ....54 SPECIAL SUGAR & SPIKE GIANT EXTRAVAGANZA! Our special flip section features a look at Sheldon Mayer and his most famous creation ..........................FLIP US!

COMIC BOOK ARTIST™ is published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-833-8092. Jon B. Cooke, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 USA • 401-783-1669 • Fax: 401-783-1287. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT the editorial office. Single issues: $6.95 ($8.00 Canada, $10.00 elsewhere). Yearly subscriptions: $30 US, $42 Canada, $54 elsewhere. First Printing. All characters are © their respective owners. All material is © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © their respective authors. ©2000 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. PRINTED IN CANADA. Cover acknowledgement: Batman ©2000 DC Comics, The Fox, Jesse Bravo ©2000 Alex Toth.

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His Own Words

An Autobiographical Essay Alex Toth on his early New York City years

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Above: Rick Roe contributed the panel sketches, while Alex sent us the other doodles that accompany this essay. ÂŠ2000 Alex Toth. Jan. 2001

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CBA Interview

A Talk With Alex Toth CBA converses with a master of comic book art

Above: Paul Rivoche shared a ride with Alex Toth from the master’s Hollywood home to a San Diego comic convention in the early 1980s. Paul took this shot of the artist (beside Alex’s Impala rag top). Courtesy of & ©2000 Paul Rivoche.

In considering the most influential and important comic book artists of all time, Alex Toth’s name is never far from the top of anyone’s short list—indeed many of today’s industry professionals wouldn’t hesitate to call him simply the best there ever was. Few artists of his calibre contemplate and study the art form as intensely—and with such obvious love for the form—as our interview subject, as passionate (and often, angry) today as he was as one of the first true comics fans back in the late 1930s and early ’40s. CBA had the pleasure of interviewing the artist in his Hollywood home in February 2000 and Alex copyedited the transcript. Comic Book Artist: Is it fair to say that your great desire was to be a syndicated newspaper cartoonist? Alex Toth: Yes. Being a creature of my time, then, the big deal was, “God, I want to be Milton Caniff.” I didn’t discover Noel Sickles and what he did with strips until long after he’d left Scorchy Smith (for AP Features), and I found him in those little reprint pages in Famous Funnies, five tiers of much-reduced Sickles artwork. [It was]

succeeded by Bert Christman, who left the strip after a year or so for a stint at National Periodical Publications (DC) to do “The Three Aces” and “The Sandman,” and then left to become one of the first hundred AVG Flying Tiger pilots flying against the Japanese in China and Burma, and then died there in action—all this before Pearl Harbor, mind you! But, yes, it was my dream to do what Caniff, Raymond, and Foster had done, and to be an illustrator as well, because I loved what I saw in the Saturday Evening Post and Liberty, and all the other slick weekly and monthly magazines. CBA: Collier’s. Alex: And Collier’s. CBA: But you don’t regret that you toiled in a different medium? Alex: I do and don’t… as Charlie Schulz put it just before he died: “I didn’t want to let go, it was taken away from me.” Well, that’s what happened with strips (and slick magazine illustration, too!). By the time I was “ready,” they were already dying, being throttled, squeezed, and distorted, and the whole concept of hero/heroine/ adventure had been tainted, spoiled by the war. Gritty realism had shattered an awful lot of those fantasy dreams. The strip medium had changed. The Big Squeeze was on to force it out, not give it the area and respect it once had. CBA: But you were able to take your love of that and put it into the comic book medium. Alex: Well, it was a wonderful training ground. It was “on-the-job training,” is what it was. To be able to (during World War II) when the old-timers were drafted away fighting the war, and left slots open for others to draw these silly things, so I was given a chance, as a kid of 15, still in school. So it was an after school-hours thing for me, which was far better than schlepping wet bulk laundry or dry cleaning or some of the other odd delivery kid jobs I had. It was terrific, the ego thing, to see one’s name in print… my God! Who’dathunkit? But then, the appreciation for it came through the material and being paid. But still, a syndicated strip artist had a certain respected position in those days. It was a position of mystery. CBA: Also, Caniff was treated like a movie star. Alex: Well, he was very good at promoting himself, and the Chicago Tribune/New York News Syndicate helped a lot, too. Yes. It helped sell the strip to more papers. CBA: Why wasn’t Sickles received the same way? Alex: Well… from all I’ve heard, AP didn’t treat Sickles well. They cheated him when he found out how many papers… and income Scorchy Smith was bringing in, against his $125 a week (I think he finally got it up to that). In the ’30s, that was good money! The dailyonly strip was earning $1,500 a week! And he just got fed up with it. He might’ve stayed, had he been treated well, and that would be true for a lot of cartoonists and people, everywhere, in all kinds of jobs. So I missed having that goal, and reaching it, except as a “ghost” or as an assistant—the Warren Tufts thing, which was a few months, here, and there, then a brief stint on Roy Rogers, subbing for Mike Arens when he was ill. CBA: Young comic book cartoonists look at Caniff and Sickles, and COMIC BOOK ARTIST 11

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don’t get it, don’t understand it. They think it’s antiquated! How can they see what’s really there? Alex: Well, they probably won’t, until maybe another 10 years of living and seeing: assessing things. Because their heads are filled with the hot artist in comic books, today. They can’t see beyond admiring [Jack] Kirby and [Neal] Adams and whoever else was the hotshot 30 years, 20 years, 10 years ago, that’s as far back as they go in time, and everybody keeps regurgitating Kirby/Adams! CBA: And Miller. Alex: And Miller… well, that’s another story. But Caniff, Sickles, etc., the syndicated strips’ best pastpasters’ works are quiet compared to comic book art, storytelling, characters and whatever. It’s unfortunate that because you like chocolate, you can’t like vanilla, that you can’t appreciate other things than what you happen to be very hot about at the moment. It’s a big blind spot that young people have about their favorite artists or whatever craze they’re locked into which turns them off and on! This tunnel-vision, which I find very strange. They see only that, and nothing else! “Don’t confuse me with facts, just let me do my thing, I love this type of art, and only that type of art.” When they’re older, more mature, if they’re lucky, they’ll come to appreciate a whole century of newspaper strip art, Sunday pages and dailies, to admire, to be entertained by, to just read… the funny stuff as well as the straight! CBA: And fine art, and photography. Alex: Of course! Yes! CBA: Sickles and Caniff are grouped together so often, can you distill the difference between them? Alex: The younger, Noel Sickles, was the teacher of the older, Milt Caniff. Illustrator/”reporter” is what Sickles was. He didn’t exaggerate. He didn’t cartoon things. He played it very straight. He was an illustrator! Period! He drew beautifully, had a great eye for perspective, aerial perspective, the whole ball of wax. What he did with figures and lighting and storytelling, the movie techniques he brought into his strip! Black-&-white photography, being 95% of movies in those days, excited him, and he adapted it into his work on Scorchy Smith, using one graytone in his b-&-w art to indicate patterns, light sources showing their effects, in snow scenes, night scenes… remarkable stuff. He was brilliant! Caniff, on the other hand, was more the

cartoonist, capable of the bigfoot stuff (although Sickles had that in him, too; both of them much appreciated Roy Crane from the getgo, admired what he could do with simple lines. But, also, that marvelous caricaturist/fantasy artist, T.S. Sullivant). What turned-on Sickles must’ve turned-on Caniff, re the works of certain artists, cartoonists, painters, because Sickles was keen about impressionists— Monet, Sisley, the political cartoonist David Low, who had lush, wonderful lines and spotting rich blacks, way of drawing and staging! His political cartoons were works of art! Sickles was strongly influenced by Sullivant’s distortions, realistic and fantastic, at once. Plus the influence of the Simplicissimus German artist-caricaturist-illustrator Thony and Blix, Gulbransen. He took it all in. Some of it infected Caniff’s work, echoes of that influence through Sickles. But Caniff was aware of self-promotion, and how important it would be for a strip, like Terry and the Pirates! I don’t know what he may have done to promote Dickie Dare for AP Features, ungenerous with its money or their own promotional material?! But he was helped by deep pockets of the Chicago Tribune/New York News Syndicate, when he got Terry, and they made the most of it. I’ve got clips from Mini-Cam Photography, a little slick magazine of World War II, and it’s spread with lots of photographs of Milt in Chinatown, New York, with his models for the Dragon Lady, Burma, and Pat Ryan. How he took his own photographs with his Rollie twin-lens reflex camera, at his High Torridge home in New City, New York. There was an issue of a fashion magazine, Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar, a big spread. Some fashion designer had used Caniff’s drawings of evening-gowned women—from his strip, literally—made the gowns for models who looked like his characters! How Caniff drew them, and the gowned photo models! It was

Above: For Al Dellinges’ fondlyrecalled Near Mint magazine, Alex composed this tribute to the legendary influential cartoonist, Noel Sickles. Courtesy of Al Dellinges. ©2000 Alex Toth. Below: We confess to be featuring very little of Toth’s 1940s and ’50s artwork but we’d be loathe to forget his fine rendition of the Emerald Crusader in this panel from All-American Comics #92. ©2000 DC Comics.

Left: Alex labeled this drawing “The Cord that binds,” recalling both his devotion to aviation and the superbly designed 1937/38 Cord automobile (the latter so nicely celebrated by the artist in his opus, “The Case of the Curious Classic,” in Hot Wheels #5, a tale Alex also wrote). From the cover of APA #23. ©2000 Alex Toth. Jan. 2001

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Above: Yow! Previously-unpublished “Johnny Thunder” pencils by Alex Toth. This arrived courtesy of Frank Giella, and his father, frequent Toth inker, Joe Giella. Thanks, guys! Art ©2000 Alex Toth. Johnny Thunder ©2000 DC Comics.

into a page, pages, and call it a story, continuity! It ain’t! CBA: What did you think of Harvey Kurtzman? Alex: Brilliant! A “solo act” who, for some reason, needed a troupe behind, under, around him. He would’ve been best left alone. He should’ve had a newspaper strip 1,000 years ago. As soon as his Mad thing fell apart, he should’ve jumped right into a strip, as opposed to the cockamamie years with Hefner, Trump, Humbug, and all other stuff which didn’t work. He was deserving of being a very successful newspaper gag cartoonist—whatever he wanted to do, but do it all himself! Not have to deal with “committee-think” and talk and impressing his way on anybody else’s. Do it solo. I told him that when we bumped into each other in Vegas, in ’70 or ’71? Put up as house-guests by University of Nevada Las Vegas personnel in their home. We hadn’t talked to each other since that 1952 incident, on that “Sabrejet” job, because I dared to change one or two panels! I told him then, “Harv, I won’t be dictated to by you or anyone else! I respected you, and went through the “Dying City” with you, “Thunder-Jet” with you, climbed all over the planes on Republic’s production line, made my sketches, took my notes, I was a good boy, for $28 a page (meanwhile getting $40 at DC). I did it out of respect and affection for you, and for the subject matter. I can’t make a living or a career out of working over your roughs and layouts, being locked-in so tight, and not being allowed to think, for me, to change this, do that,” because everything was already lettered, borders inked in, before you got the pages. It was all done except for the art. “Just pencil in and follow directions.” Follow the yellow brick road! CBA: Do you think he squandered a big chunk of his career on “Little Annie Fanny”? Alex: I hated it! Here, you’ve got this fat magazine, loaded wall-towall, with beautiful, nubile women… round, plump, full-bosomed

women, fannies, thighs, the works… What the Hell do you need “Little Annie Fanny” for? To me, it was like “gilding the lily,” what’s the point?! I never understood it. And it became a very complex production problem, I told you about the multiple tissues of vellum overlays, each one color-coded, as it went through the Hefner “editing process,” change this, change that… good God Almighty! I would’ve just tore everything up and thrown it at them, and told them to go to Hell! Either you do it, or I do it, we can’t both do it! But that’s exactly what Harvey did live with, all those years he was connected. It paid very well, but he had to spend that money, paying Frazetta, Elder… God, everybody in the world helping him do that damn thing. So many people. CBA: You’re a big Frank Robbins fan. Alex: I commented on Frank’s work in Manuel Auad’s Toth book, and also in Comic Book Artist, about being the wrong guy to do The Shadow and Batman. I loved his simpler Scorchy Smith. He shaped-up fast on that strip. He came in knowing nothing about strip technique when he took that over, taught himself, studied everybody—Sickles, his predecessor on that strip, then Bert Christman, then Robert Storm briefly, and then BANG! in came Frank, who stayed with it until ’43, ’44, left to start his Johnny Hazard for King Features. CBA: You really liked Johnny Hazard? Alex: I liked Scorchy more. CBA: Why? Alex: Because he tightened-up, slicked-up, so much on Hazard… He was loose, fast and loose on Scorchy, and simple. He got very shiny, glitzy, overdoing it to make King happy, to earn his keep. Not necessary! Didn’t have to do that. It wasn’t until years later, that he relaxed that a bit, but only on his Sunday pages. The daily remained quite “tight.” But his last two years on Scorchy Smith were just great. I wish I had a collection of that. There’s a Russian sequence he did in those last years, with the Russian and Nazi ski troopers at night, snow scenes, stark black-&-white. He did a helluva job, beautiful stuff, simple, stark, design of the panels, four across, in those days, just great! I had clips of that sequence and lost it in my travels, from East to West and back and could not find a source to get that sequence back again. Gorgeous work in there! Him at his best. Wonderful. It’s why he didn’t need glitzy schtick, habits formulaic, on Hazard. CBA: You still keep up with the animation world. Alex: I try. CBA: What have you seen that you liked? Iron Giant? Alex: Iron Giant was marvelous, and this Rubén Procopio sent me a copy of Mulan, which I didn’t expect to like, but there were a lot of very good parts in it. And I got a print of Pinocchio, which I hadn’t seen in many years. I enjoyed that, and 101 Dalmatians animated, which I always liked. CBA: Wallace and Grommit? Alex: Well, that’s something else again, totally different. Apples and watermelons. Wonderful, that one… he did three with those COMIC BOOK ARTIST 11

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Gallery

Much Ado About Alex

Below: We’ve dedicated this issue to contributor Steve Cohen because, despite severe health restrictions, he put in a lastminute, herculean effort to get us examples of his Toth and Mayer holdings. Thank you, Steve, and we wish you well. Kudos to Tom Field for his assistance. Above, courtesy of Steve, is an extraordinary example of Alex visualizing a sedate, mundane subject—here, a model sheet of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, Super Friends—and rendering it so vividly and handsomely. The artist has just awesome chops! ©2000 HannaBarbera and DC Comics. Right: 1972 drawing for Shel Dorf published in a San Diego Comic Con souvenir book. Courtesy of Paul Power. ©2000 Alex Toth.

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Professional Courtesies

Paying Homage to the Master Some of comics’ best & brightest talk about Toth Joe Kubert writer/artist/editor Alex is a devotee of this particular artform and is more knowledgeable about what it takes to execute good comic book art than anyone I know. He’s so multi talented, everything he does sets the mark for everyone else to jump at.

Jim Lee writer/artist/publisher There are few artists who have the ability to tell so much with one line or shape. He gets to the point and makes it stick, all the while making it look effortless. Alex Toth’s work is a constant reminder to me what needs to be in any drawing for it to work; the rest is simply obfuscatory window dressing.

Kevin Nowlan artist Please forgive me if I get a little carried away, after all, we are talking about TOTH… the one universal absolute in the eyes of all who love the medium. It’s funny, once in a while, during a conversation about Toth, someone will confess that they don’t really see what all the fuss is about and we have to just stare at them as if they’ve just announced that the Earth is flat. Look closely at “Daddy and the Pie” in Creepy #139. At the bottom of page four the family and the alien are looking at a star chart. Beneath the table you can just barely see details: the lines of the hardwood floor, the alien’s pant legs and shoes, the seat and legs of an empty chair. Toth drew all of this, then blacked it all out. The table is casting a shadow and everything below it is in darkness. A lesser mortal wouldn’t have the heart to cover up all those details, but the panel would’ve been less effective without that big shadow. The short, sad little story “Taps” is one of the most stylized and poetic stories Toth ever produced. The feeling of movement on the pages is simply transcendent. How in the world can he do that with just a few simple lines? On a more personal note, looking at old Toth stories is one of my favorite antidotes for the blues. He really does make the impossible look easy; the complex look simple. When I look back at the comics I loved as a kid, many of them just don’t hold up, but Toth’s stories look better and better with age. Above: In the 1960s, Alex Toth wrote some of the weird and wonderful Pete Millar CARtoons . Splash page to Drag CARtoons #7. Courtesy of Andrew Steven. ©2000 Millar Publications. MARK CHIARELLO, DC Comics Editorial Art Director, is one of CBA’s most favoritist people and we thank him for all of his enormous help on this special Toth issue. He’s also one helluva artist in his own right, not to mention his extraordinary co-editing job on one of the best recent comics anthologies, Batman Black & White. 30

compiled by Mark Chiarello

Walter Simonson writer/artist Alright, look: Everybody who works in comics with a modicum of sense and the ability to recognize talent already knows that Alex Toth is absolutely a genius. That’s a given. Here’s the evidence. Nothing to do with his brilliant draftsmanship, or astonishing sense of design, or even the warmth of his drawing (something, given the “simplicity” of his art, that is difficult to credit even when you’re looking right at the stuff)!! Nope. It’s his postcards and letters. Anybody who hand-letters his own missives, includes occasionally illustrations as needed, writes to character count to fill the exact space available, and is actually able to justify his margins, left and right, is a genius. Unbelievable! Don’t believe me? Try it sometime. Damnation! A genius. End of story.

Dave Gibbons writer/artist The first work of Alex Toth’s I saw was a reprint of a Dell movie comic called “The Land Unknown.” Back then, I just knew the storytelling was far better than any other movie adaptation I’d seen; it was, well, like really watching a movie. Years later, I look at the story with an even greater sense of awe; as a professional, I now understand the tremendous talent and skill required to produce such an effect. Toth’s work has always been more than flashy tricks to thrill the kids, although it certainly succeeds in doing that; it has the enduring quality and depth of true art.

Howard Chaykin writer/artist Most of us who’ve known Alex Toth have experienced his legendary temper and temperament. Words like difficult, obstinate, COMIC BOOK ARTIST 11

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CBA Q&A

“…Smoke Across a Cloud” Paul Rivoche quizzes Toth on the craft of continuity art PAUL RIVOCHE, freelance advertising illustrator, animation storyboard guy, comic book artist, and graphic designer is the proprietor of Toronto’s Smash Design. In addition to recently rendering Batman in a “Batman Black & White” back-up story, Paul executed covers for DC/Vertigo’s Brave Old World series. Back in the day, he also drew Mr. X.

Above: Courtesy of John Hitchcock, a Toth wash drawing— reportedly cropped by the artist because he was dissatisfied with the drawing of Batman’s lower extremities. Art ©2000 Alex Toth. Batman ©2000 DC Comics.

Opposite page: Perhaps one of the best Batman stories of all time, here are two pages from the Archie Goodwin-scribed “Death Flies the Haunted Sky,” Detective Comics #442, featuring a quintessential Caped Crusader. Courtesy of Jim Amash. ©2000 DC Comics. 32

Conducted by Paul Rivoche As a boy, I had a sacred weekly ritual: The Great Friday Afternoon Pilgrimage, a fevered journey from home to spinner rack, in search of comic books worth buying. After school, Mom supplied me with just enough money for a few comics and a hamburger, and off I would go, anticipation building, the holy quest for the “good stuff” once more renewed. And so it was that I came across the artwork of Alex Toth. Even through the obscuring veil of crude printing, its truth and power was unmistakable. Enthralled, I collected every new story of his I came across: “Burma Sky,” “Soldier’s Grave,” “Dirty Job,” “The Glory Boys,” “The Tally,” and many others… a long list of titles, each unique, each still treasured.

Today, as a comics/illustration professional, I realize how much I owe Alex Toth: For setting such a consistently excellent example; for showing how to observe nature for lessons of truth, not merely copy the surfaces of others’ art; for communicating the raw graphic excitement of the endless wonders around us: the calligraphy of a face, the cascade of a wrinkled sleeve, the rhythm of raking shadows… And mostly, a debt is owed for Alex’s willingness to unselfishly pass on what he knows, to those willing to listen and learn, as he himself once listened and learned from the masters of his day. When you approach Alex for artistic advice, he is as direct, honest, accurate, and powerful as his artwork. That rarest of artists, Alex not only creates, but understands why and how he creates, and can explain it clearly to others. Unlike all too many “teachers” who only want ranks of imitators, Alex says: “Understand these principles, then go forth, and be yourself” …and that is why he can be trusted. The more one looks at his work, the more one finds. It is so well-crafted that it never bores. As anyone who has tried it discovers, it’s just about impossible to be as consistently excellent as he

was and continues to be. This, Alex Toth accomplished, through many years in a difficult business. This article, cobbled together from a Q&A correspondence I maintained with Alex over the last year or so, is for anyone who is interested to hear him speak, not about the ephemeral gossip of bygone days, but about the live inner workings of his craft of cartooning. Most of all, it’s for the student out there who just might give a damn…—P.R. Paul Rivoche: It seems that relatively few comics artists these days pay much attention to the overall design of a page. Many try to do flashy individual panels without looking at the page as a whole. What is your approach to laying out a page? How do you achieve the graphic unity that is a consistent feature of your work? Do you do many small breakdowns to sort out the graphic bold structures of the page in miniature? Alex Toth: Page design is, must be, very personal—it is always variable. No formula helps explain or create it. You can’t cobble up a template/overlay to impress upon any kind of story—ridiculous! Each story, type of story, each subject, each writer’s spelling-it-out in his own unique (or awful) way, needs special focus/care/thought/attention/styling shifts, to customize its art to serve it and ‘plus’ it. ‘A good script draws itself,’ sez me—love, romance, adventure, period costume, Western, futuristic, fantasy, sci-fi, crime, superjock or jill, mystery, suspense, horror, teen humour, kiddytales, spy, aviation, sea tales, ancient civilizations fare,historical, war, etc.… set in every corner of the world or universe, or undersea worlds, some more picturesque than others, demanding research, backgrounds, set designs (based on reality, fotoswipes, etc.) So, you see, trying to contain/ explain/display/exploit visual elements of all the above within a rigid, fixed, artificial framing of such stories, per panel or per page, in a “size 12EEEE,” is lunacy! A lazy man’s approach to the specific problems of our storytelling artform! “One size CANNOT fit all”!!! The cartoonist’s mind/imagination must be free to do the specific job at hand in its—and his—own way! In service to said story! ‘Genre,’ a word I loathe, so bloody effete and fey in the saying of it, explains “vivé là difference”! Tale to tale, writer to writer, subject to subject, approach to approach—finish to finish! We cast our characters like actors, make them personify a type (new or clichéd), and move them through gestural expressions, action, and emotional bits. We clothe/costume them to best define them as characters, we direct how they’ll act or be shown to best, worst, or telling advantage, to serve the story—tipping-off readers to the obvious, or (in reverse) being sly and subtle about them, their true or hidden character, motivations, and intentions. Thus, babyfaced bastards and bitches! Yes? Or ugly pussycats, nice good guys and gals! We design their settings, locations, light them, lens them, move them, to best advantage storywise, to reveal/conceal their characters—create interest in them— through word, deed, body language, expression, or lack of it—see? I used to make little page layouts per script page, up in the right hand corners, usually—in those long-dead days when writers could write out a six- or seven- or eight-panel page’s descriptions, dialogue, and captions on one double-spaced typewritten 8.5”x11” sheet— simple, yes? After two or three readings per page, I’d doodle my mini-layout for it. It was not locked down, but was up for grabs, later, during the actual full-page breakdowns. Every rereading deepened my savvy of the storyflow, scenes, shot to shot continuity, what to stress, frame for (or not), comparative yin-yang elements and how to balance them, add visual pique and interest, little asides/tips to readCOMIC BOOK ARTIST 11

Jan. 2001

ers, have fun with characters, moods, set pieces, action, time of day‚ or night, body language, gestural bits— this would make it more fun for me, so I could make it more fun for readers—‘plus’ that script—surprise even its writer, for getting the point, or adding my own bit to ‘plus’ his—or see it just off center, revealing more meat in his stew! There’s no substitute for thinking time! Think more, draw less—and ‘less-is-more!’ Dig? Clichés are but old truths! I tapped into all the faddist nonsense in my time, used and abused ‘em—badly or not—I’d let go, try another. But, best of all was to just let go all suppositions and formulaic self-limiting layout garbage re mechanics, and allot a scene the space it needed—and no more!!! And I’d use angles, up, down, tilts, around/through/over/under/inside things, like a ditzy Hollywood tyro-cameraman/director gone bonkers, with zoom lenses and special effects, ‘til I got bored with its artifice—over-stressing the mundane—and just took it a panel at a time: backing, filling, redrawing, shoehorning a lot—’til all pieces fit/read smoothly! A jigsaw puzzle—my worst (comic book artists’/cartoonists’ worst) dilemmas were too few panels per page!!! I’d rather deal with 10, than three or four! Rarely did panel copy/picture content warrant such large panels, so few—the scripts didn’t support such space waste, nor the action—so I’d rather not ‘float’ panels in page-space, trying to justify slim fixin’s! No, I’d prefer more story, needing more thought/care to squeeze into pages, demanding more thought about continuity and flow, and how to shoehorn it all in and be inventive! With too much content to fill, build, compose, montage a page, rather than too little, it forces you to more skillfully learn to assess space per storytelling panel(s) and pages! Which, in service to script/story, gives such pages a bigger chunk of it per—reading smooths it out, too, with more of it to be read, framed in a story thusly—almost like an old 12-panel Sunday comics page vs. a three- to four-panel daily… Much more continuity—graphic goodies—interest! Uninterrupted by two-page spread’s gutter, such pages of eight, nine, to 12 or more panels squeezed much into them, and all the fat/waste/excesses of over-scaled art out of them!! Given reasonable, lean dialogue, captions, and copy, the art would force its cartoonist/creator to get down to business and deliver worthy storytelling panels, interlocking into a pageful of what ought to be damn interesting scenes, varied in type and scale! Again: per-panel space assessment is too personal, too dependent upon story, plot points, and continuity-flow, to be set to formula. Each cartoonist responds or ‘sees’ in his own way—decides every panel’s dramatic value, apportions more or less space, and decides the size, vertical, horizontal, or square formats of panels—to get us through them best, without a look of ‘squeezing.’ Mort Meskin, Jack Cole, and others such as Will Eisner, did ‘loaded’ 10-, 12-, 14-panel pages skillfully, with no squeezed look at all! Andre LeBlanc, ditto, in his fun-festive ‘Intellectual Amos’ five-, seven-page tales. But, many 1930s/’40s/’50s classic comic book writers and cartoonists did it as a normal event—we readers, then, got our dime’s worth, no mistake!! All this forced the simplification of figures and scenes to still ‘read’ clearly and well, with no sacrifice of quality at all, by true talents. No ‘cheating’—just a needed economy! The colorists could, and did, enhance and clarify (or muddle) smallish panel content. Cartoonists had no control of the coloring, but hoped that their simple black-&-white art would ‘read’ clearly, no matter how badly it might be colored! It did! More so then, than now… As for the abstract or functional ‘design’ of such pages—it’s a process of ‘seat of the pants’ cutting and fitting into the final composite. It’s personal, case-specific, unique—instinctual—subject to taste/needs/a ‘mind’s eye’ additive/subtractive building-block process. Though I’m repeating myself, I do it to stress the truth of it all—that no formulaic approach or mechanics or tricks does the job of covering panel/page continuity design. It’s too big a job for lazy minds—which dote on predictable, reproducible results, irrespective of input variables. Their reductive aims are to make top sirloin steak dinners, beef tacos, and chitlins, all come out the same—mush! Line up ten cartoonists to illustrate the same script page, and see the differences—or similarities! Fascinating? Mebbe— My own experiences, wins, losses, good and bad results over many decades, boil down to ‘seeing’ with a ‘third eye’, and intuiting when/how an assemblage of panels/a page will come together rightly—best. After lots of erasure, scrubbing away, redrawing, scaling-up/down, shifting P.O.V., recomposing, slanting emphases this way or that to link up with previous panel content, add variety, visual interest, and clarity—the jigsaw pieces do, at last, begin to fit. Copy flow, dialogue, captions flow, connect, link up—yin-yang—ham ‘n’ eggs—copy and art coalesce, join into a cohesive and connective ‘whole’— voilà! Revelation! Then, we had to learn to fit all storytelling elements together! Copy and art! But, for 30-40 years we’ve had damn Stan Lee/Jack Kirby’s Marvel collaborations, the peculiar post-art writing style Lee poisoned the water with. It was imitated by every writer there, and then at DC, by crossovers ‘spreading the method’: the post-art writing of dialogue, captions, etc., shoehorning it all in, over, around, and under the art (making a mess of it, in my opinion!), ruining graphic and textual continuity and balance—interrupting the flow! And, since the ’50s/’60s, everybody’s doing it!!! We’ve seen writers who no longer write, as writers of my time did, nor do cartoonists compose (non-existent) copy into the art—so both crafts are ill-served, and have been for decades! A big part of the cartoonist’s job is no more—to design copy and art to fit/work/tell their written/drawn story. They’ve abdicated responsibility for it—so no one understands/demonstrates continuity story and art anymore, in print—they’ve deconstructed the whole damn form! Dummies write/draw comic books! Which is comic adventure continuity’s last stand! Thanks to Stan Lee’s overproduction needs, with five-pages-aday Jack Kirby!!! It was madness! It spread! Look at what it’s wrought! Guys who draw—but don’t know what to draw! Or what word/picture Jan. 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 11

Above: Few concepts are as “pure Toth” as his own Jesse Bravo, a character written, drawn, lettered, and fullyowned by the artist. A fan drawing of the Erroll Flynninspired hero, courtesy of John Hitchcock. Below: An unused panel(?) from Bravo for Adventure. Courtesy of Manuel Auad. ©2000 Alex Toth.

Alex: Composition—it’s learned by the doing of it, through years, thousands of lousy drawings, before 2 + 2 = 4 and it clicks in your mind/eye, the third one too, mind—it looks, works, and feels right! As I’ve writ before, I fly by the seat of my pants—most of us do— intuitively, reflexively, lazily, industriously, seriously or not-too. We react to our script, story, characters, and settings, to the flow and action and spirit of same. Our weather-eye sees more, in time, experience, through bad and good and so-so stories and our art for same. Motivated or not, angry, pissed-off, happy, etc., we try to find a ‘hook’ in our script/characters to hang our enthusiasm on, to do the job. If found, it can bloom, and change the story for us, give it value, and we can be charged-up enough by our own vision of what’s innately possible in it, contributing our twist to it, in the spirit of it, to ‘plus’ it more than its author may have envisioned him/herself! It’s happened! ‘A good story draws itself,’ I keep saying—it’s true! If I find my own ‘hook,’ so I can match picture to word and tell that story, my attitude proper for it, my mindset ‘open’ for fresh, nonformulaic concepts and ideas, to make it mine, give it what’s needed—to make it work/fly—quietly! ‘Composition’—page layout/panel design—copy/art meshing nicely, fittingly, intelligently—page to page, to the end, leaving writer and reader well-served and satisfied (and maybe me, too!?) It’s happened, too—on occasion—not that often, tho’, damn it! Try viewing, seeing (really ‘seeing’), studying, questioning, assessing, movies, TV, videos old and new for their storytelling graphic lexicological continuity techniques—which adds fun to the process—watch them two, three more times, discovering what you missed before! Composition is walking around your actors in the setting to find the right place to set up your camera, mentally, visualizing it, deciding what lens to use, how close to your actors you’ll shoot, who is more important, whose line is the punchline, how many crosscuts you’ll use, how long the scene is, are the actors static or chatting, is there physical ‘bizniz,’ what bizniz, gestures, walking about or through the room/rooms, anta/prota/gonist, who’s who, wotzwot, is one the heavy, other hero/sympatico/neutral/a woman/old, young, pretty, not, short, tall, heavy, thin, how dressed, setting-wise, large/small room(s), what’s our time frame/period, where in the world of rooms are we, nation, city, town, ethnic, regional, cultural set pieces, etc., etc… Every element in a shot has a priority-value, keyed to what a scene is about. From whose P.O.V. should we bias it? Is it a crucial scene—or just a ‘bridging’ scene between other, key, shots? So, if it’s a quiet moment (short or long), give it its needs, but no more—‘cuz it sets up the (maybe) stronger next scene. Since dialogue reveals character and motive, play to that—will they react to offscreen biz? Sounds—sudden walk-on of ‘new’ character—or an alarm—or—will the two cross/exit—left to right, or vice versa—hi/low, overhead, floor level, neutral, up to or away from camera? Y’see, Paul, how it is? Each scene has a head/tail—enter/exit/or cut/dissolve—a link, one, in a chain of ’em. They must make a chain, maybe differing in size /length/width, but each serves its own purpose in the context of story parts making up a whole (be it video, film, animation, live action, comic strips, comic books, ol’ Time/Life magazine serial foto storytelling, storyboards, etc.—the whole 9 yards!!!) On a pageful of vari-sized panels/links, try to give the right amount of space/size per panel, and not too much! Each end is as bad as the other—the copy, captions, dialogue balloons dictate much of space usage—it is part of composition! It must be! Creating the flow through words and art and out again, to the next panel, is a crucial skill to be learned—and used well! But we’ve a generation of comic book artists and cartoonists bred of the goddamned abuse— separation of parts of the whole, started by the Stan Lee-inspired and much-imitated “post-art dialogue-and-caption writing/insertion/ cramming/jamming/overlapping/chewing-into-art” system—wherein “finished” pages are without any copy! Paste-ups, etc., done later by other hands/minds’ll do all that! It stinks! Copy must be written-out, edited, and fixed, so said cartoonist will just have to think, work it in, design it into, around, over, and thru the art of the panel, page, story, book!! But we’ve poisoned the well, with this post-art-scripting horror! So writers/cartoonists don’t produce all they should, per Jan. 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 11

assigned job—dumbing-down the process to its current inept state! The old traditional way was the best. It made sense! It made us dinosaurs think about much more than filling up space! It was fun, sweaty, hard to learn—and the learning should never stop! To our last gasping breath! Primary always: Tell the story. Reread the script a few times until the bits of the puzzle fit. Thumbnail panel and page compositions to best serve it, expanding and reducing them into the ‘right’ balance, creating pages full of correctly-sized/composited/continuitysmooth story-reading—for readers, even curious editors—possibly! As you compose panels and pages, and pace the art to story needs, balance “busy” establishing scenes (needing set piece construction) with others, like dialogue-heavy expository key or bridging scenes (‘walky-talkies’, I call ‘em). They need no distracting background/foreground surroundings or settings, which you’ve established previously so that readers will know where ‘we’ and characters are! So, as many strip/book cartoonists showed us decades ago, a blank, white, or black background (or some combination, like a drop shadow slanting across, indicating a wall behind, beside, or in front of our ‘actors’—or as Roy Crane did it, drawing a framed picture behind ’em, also indicating ‘wall’! Solid!) is all that’s needed, quietly serving the dialogue going on. Hollywood’s ‘cheating’ techniques

couldn’t get to do that, tho’—I did try, was discouraged to—so, let go! Studying such woes and how to work thru, around, and past them, the positive/negative silhouette led to more involved revelations about shapes, within and without the envelope to be haphazardly-colored by disinterested staff colorists with or without heavy daily workloads! A silhouette can mean more than just the b/w of it! It can and does include subdivisions of the whole! I began to appreciate the abstract element of color shapes, as interlocking overlapping puzzle-pieces, each (its edges) helping define the others around it, its ‘surround.’ Studying figures, objects, and settings, it opened up for me: the abstract, the silhouette, contrast, light against dark, dark against light, and/or middle-valued bits in the mix—so the black haired, olive skinned man wearing a chocolate brown sports jacket, white shirt, yellow/white check tie, tan slacks, two-tone brown and white loafers, descending gray stone steps to his pale blue convertible, with dark blue-gray top and seats and whitewall tires, is an assembly of colored shapes/silhouettes of light, medium, and dark colors, and black bits. To ‘see’ the subjects thusly, to me, is a way to simplify them, and their whole. Thus, everything you see around you, lamp, TV, table, papers, ashtray, wall blinds, furniture, is a color silhouette! See it all? Keep trying! Worth it! Break it all down, separately, as flat color shapes. Paint them as just shapes—they’ll need little embellishment! Paul: Sometimes it seems (speaking very generally) that comic book artists fall into two camps: there are the very tight, stiff, often photo-based “realists.” These are often over-concerned with detail, “exact” anatomy, super-nailed-in perspective, and so on. At the other extreme are the looser “stylists”—cartoonists who don’t worry much about detail, realistic anatomy and structure, and so on, but go for the broader strokes (sometimes going over the borderline from “loose” into “sloppy”). Often these have more feeling of “life” and expression, but not much conviction. Your work always fascinated me because it seems to straddle both camps: it is very “loose”—relaxed-looking in its execution, not over-labored and noodled—but still seems very true and accurate—not faked. You take an imaginary scene and make us think that you were really there, doing sketches of it. Yet, it doesn’t look at all “photographic.” Anything you can say about how you achieve this? And why do we see so few today that follow this path? Jan. 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 11

Alex: Must be my Sickles studies at work—it took a long time before it showed in my work. Sickles, with his remarkable memory for American history costume/uniform/hardware/weaponry/saddlery leather items/the works, did a top half two-page spread for the old Saturday Evening Post, which had over 100 Old West figures, street, square, horses, riders, women, and men, etc., of all types. He drew it all from memory/imagination (he told me, in the late ’40s/early ’50s) —amazing! No ‘repeats’ either, mind! He’d studied, set it all to memory—‘til needed! Voilá! I’m sure he took liberties—once into it, on a roll, options of costume, etc., must’ve been exercised—within proscribed period dress parameters, though! ‘Creative-cheating’, faking

Above: As a gift for inker Terry Austin, Alex rendered this exquisite pin-up of Dinah Lance, the heroine we know as Black Canary. Courtesy of Terry Austin. Art ©2000 Alex Toth. Black Canary ©2000 DC Comics.

Dept. of Anal Retention

Alex Toth: A Comic Art Index Jim Vadeboncoeur’s Exhaustive Checklist on the Work of the Master

SOME NOTES ON THIS CHECKLIST: As we hope you’ve ascertained already upon reading this issue of CBA, we firmly believe Alex Toth is one of the very small handful of great comic book artists whose work can be heralded as truly genius. And, because his work is scattered—gems among the rough—in myriad titles spanning the history of the art form, we feel a definitive index of Toth work is of paramount importance. We hope you’ll use it on your collecting adventures. #

STORY TITLE (WITH INKING CREDITS)

AARDVARK-VANAHEIM SWORDS OF CEREBUS 4 inside front cover

PAGES

DATE

FA/82

ACE (’80s) THE COSMIC BOOK 1 UFO and the Perts vs the Experts

12/86

WHAT IS… THE FACE? 3 cover

8/87

ATLAS/SEABOARD SAVAGE COMBAT TALES 2 Warhawk

4/75

THRILLING ADVENTURE 2 A Job Well Done

8/75

8 8

10/84

CATALAN COMMUNICATIONS TORPEDO 1936 1 If I’d killed her… (Thelma) There’s no such thing… (I’m Luca/Luke) (b&w reprints of Spanish strips) CHARLTON MY ONLY LOVE 3 The Loveliest of All

11/75

REAL WEST cover cover

1 1

12/72 4/73

YELLOWJACKET 7 Little Laffs

1/46

COMICO SPACE GHOST 1 Afterward (two model sheets)

12/87

CONTINUITY ECHO OF FUTUREPAST 6 Torpedo ’36 Her name was Thelma… episode 8 (color rep. of European strip, retranslated.) 7 Torpedo ’36 The name’s Luke, the Torpedo.. 8 (color rep. of European strip, retranslated.)

7/85 8/85

DARK HORSE MADMAN 3 back cover pin-up 1 1994 A card from the Dark Horse card set 1994 DC-NATIONAL ACTION COMICS 406 The Challenge of the Expanding World 13 11/71 (rep. BRAVE AND BOLD #53-part 1&2) 407 The Challenge of the Expanding World 13 12/71 (rep. 2nd half of B&B #53 with one additional page comprised of art from first half.) 413 The Man Who Destroyed Eclipso (rep. HOS #65)13 6/72 616 cover 1 9/6/88 ADVENTURE COMICS 418 Black Canary 46

4/72

Though this is probably about as complete a checklist of Alex Toth’s work as you’ll ever find, there is little doubt some errors and omissions slipped in, mostly due to Ye Ed and not CBA contributor Jim Vadeboncoeur, who very kindly donated use of his exhaustive index to us. Please note this version is more properly an adaptation of Jim’s work as some attributes of his research were edited out for space and clarity (though I’ve retained as many of Jim’s editorial comments as possible), and I’ve alphabet419 Black Canary 425 The Wings of Jealous Gods 431 Is a Snerl Human?

8 8 8

5/72 12/72 1/74

ADVENTURE COMICS DIGEST 491 Black Canary (rep. ADVENTURE #418) 492 Black Canary (rep. ADVENTURE #419) 495 Yesterday’s Clues (w/ F. Giacoia) 496 Tomorrow’s Answers (with Frank Giacoia) 497 All Together Now (with Dan Adkins)

8 8 9 9 9

9/82 10/82 1/83 2/83 3/83

ADVENTURES OF REX THE WONDER DOG 1 cover (with Sy Barry) Trail of the Flower of Evil (with Sy Barry) Rex—Forest Ranger (with ??) 2 cover Rex—Hollywood Stunt Dog (with Sy Barry) Four-Legged Sheriff (with Sy Barry) 3 cover (with Joe Giella?) Rex-Circus Detective (with Frank Giacoia?)

1 8 8 1 10 8 1 8

1/52

ALL-AMERICAN COMICS 87 How Dr. Midnight Captured Big Shot Barnes 88 Tarantula Unmasks Dr. Midnite 92 cover The Icicle Goes South 96 cover Mystery of the Emerald Necklace 97 cover 98 cover The End of Sports 99 cover Nest of Terror 100 cover Johnny Thunder 101 cover Masquerade at Mesa City 102 cover The Bridge of Peril

6 7 1 12 1 12 1 1 12 1 12 1 10 1 8 1 12

ALL-AMERICAN WESTERN 103 cover City Without Guns 104 cover Unseen Allies 105 cover Hidden Guns (with Frank Giacoia) 106 cover Snow Mountain Ambush 107 cover Cheyenne Justice (with Frank Giacoia) 108 cover Vengeance of the Silver Bullet 109 cover Secret of Crazy River 110 cover Ambush at Scarecrow Hills (with Joe Giella) 111 cover The Gun-Shy Sheriff (with Joe Giella?) 112 cover is by Gil Kane Double Danger 113 cover Johnny Thunder Indian Chief (with Joe Giella) 114 cover

1 10 1 10 1 10 1 10 1 12 1 12 1 10 1 10 1 10

3/52 5/52

7/47 8/47 12/47

The End of Johnny Thunder (with Joe Giella) 8 115 cover 1 Cheyenne Mystery (with Joe Giella) 10 116 cover 1 Buffalo Raiders on the Mesa (with Joe Giella) 12 117 cover is not Toth (Infantino & Giella ??) Johnny Thunder vs. Black Lightning (w. J. Giella) 12 118 cover is not Toth Challenge of the Aztecs (with Joe Giella) 12 119 The Vanishing Gold Mine (with Frank Giacoia) 12 120 Ambush at Painted Mountain (with Sy Barry) 12 121 cover 1 The Unmasking of Johnny Thunder (w/S.Barry) 12 122 cover 1 The Real Johnny Thunder (with Sy Barry) 10 123 JT’s Strange Rival (with Sy Barry) 8 124 cover (with ??) 1 The Iron Horse’s Last Run 6 125 cover (with Sy Barry) 1 Johnny Thunder’s Last Roundup (w/ Sy Barry) 8 126 no Toth

8/50 10/50 12/50 2/51 4/51 6/51 8/51 10/51 12/51 2/52 4/52 6/52

ALL STAR COMICS 37 Justice Society of America chapters 5 & 6 38 cover 1st & last chapters (pages. 1-12 and 35-38) 40 The Plight of a Nation, part 3 41 cover

10 1 16 12 1

10/47 12/47

ALL-STAR WESTERN 58 Gunlords of the Panhandle (w/ B. Sachs) 59 Code of a Ranger (with Bernard Sachs) 60 The Nest of the Robber Rangers (w/ B. Sachs) 61 The Roving Ranger 63 Find My Killer (with Bernard Sachs) 64 The Riddle of the Rival Ranger (with ??)

8 8 8 2 6 6

4/51 6/51 8/51 10/51 2/52 4/52

AMERICA AT WAR (Fireside paperback) nn The Glory Boys (rep. OAAW #235)

1979

BATMAN ADVENTURES 25 one page poster

11/94

4/49

BIG TOWN 8 cover 9 cover 10 cover 11 cover 12 cover 13 cover

1 1 1 1 1 1

8/51 9/51 10/51 11/51 12/51 1/52

6/49

BLACK CANARY ARCHIVES V1 Black Canary (reprints ADVENTURE #418-419) 16

2000

8/49

BLACKHAWK 260 Barnacle Bill (with Frank Giacoia)

7/83

THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD 53 The Challenge of the Expanding World

4/64

COMIC CAVALCADE 23 cover 26 Forecast: Danger 27 cover April Fool’s Day Crimes 28 Treasure of Plateau City

1 12 1 13 12

10/47 4/48 6/48

4/48 5/48 6/48 7/48 8/48 9/48 10/48

11/48 12/48 1/49 2/49

10/49 12/49 2/50

10 1 12 1

ized the publishers differently. As he last updated the listings in 1997, I have done my best to bring this up to the present day and, as aforementioned, mistakes are bound to be found so please contact CBA if you have any corrections. My enormous gratitude—and profound apologies for the liberties taken—to Jim V. for his contribution and continuing support. Also, thanks to The Mad Peck, Bill Alger, Dylan Williams, Arlen Schumer, Don Mangus, and Les Daniels for their help.—JBC

4/50 6/50

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 11

4/48 6/48

8/48

Jan. 2001

GIANT WINTER FUN! IT’S THE SUGAR & SPIKE EXTRAVAGANZA!

No. 11 Jan. 2001

$6.95 In The U.S. U.S. In The

Sheldon “Scribbly” Mayer

Merrily “Sugar” Mayer Harris

Lanney “Spike” Mayer

CELEBRATING SHELDON MAYER, MASTER CARTOONIST!

EXTRAVAGANZA!

NUMBER 11

CELEBRATING

THE

LIVES & WORK

OF THE

GREAT CARTOONISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS

JANUARY 2001

DEPARTMENTS: GUEST EDITORIAL: MUSINGS ON SHELDON MAYER Visiting helmsman Bill Alger on the development of this Sugar & Spike issue ................................2-B CBA COMMUNIQUES: MORE CHARLTON CLARIFICATIONS Letters to Ye Ed clarifying Charlton copyright ownerships and discussing CBA #10 ........................3-B CBA COMMENTARY: ALEX TOTH—‘BEFORE I FORGET’ Our “flipside subject” discusses the importance of Sheldon Mayer, Toth editor and mentor ..........6-B SPECIAL SHELDON MAYER AND SUGAR & SPIKE SECTION: CARTOONIST CHRONOLOGY: SHELDON MAYER TIMELINE The year-by-year highlights of the great artist/writer/editor’s career ............................................10-B BEFORE SUGAR & SPIKE: SCRIBBLY JIBBLET, BOY CARTOONIST Rocco Nigro examines Mayer’s other masterpiece, his semi-autobiographical Scribbly ..................12-B MERRILY MAYER HARRIS INTERVIEW: SUGAR’S DADDY Bill Alger talks to the daughter of Sheldon Mayer on her father’s life and art ..............................14-B LANNEY MAYER INTERVIEW: SHELLY & SPIKE Candid and revealing talk by Bill Alger with Shelly Mayer’s son on his dad’s complex nature ......34-B COVER GALLERY: 99 ISSUES OF SUGAR & SPIKE Repros of the 15-year run of Sugar & Spike courtesy of Beverly Martin and Jon Ingersoll ............46-B A LIFE WITH SUGAR & SPIKE: …AND EVERYTHING NICE Longtime S&S fan Beverly Martin gives a personal take on our loveable duo of tiny tots ............50-B ALEX TOTH—’BEFORE I FORGET’ SPECIAL SECTION Celebrating America’s greatest living comic book artist with interviews, checklists & more! ..FLIP US! COMIC BOOK ARTIST™ is published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-833-8092. Jon B. Cooke, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 USA • 401-783-1669 • Fax: 401-783-1287. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT the editorial office. Single issues: $6.95 ($8.00 Canada, $10.00 elsewhere). Yearly subscriptions: $30 US, $42 Canada, $54 elsewhere. First Printing. All characters are © their respective owners. All material is © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © their respective authors. ©2000 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. PRINTED IN CANADA. Cover acknowledgement: Scribbly, Sugar & Spike ©2000 DC Comics.

N E X T

I S S U E

—

C H A R L T O N

C O M I C S:

1 9 6 9 - 8 6

Visit CBA on our Website at: www.twomorrows.com All letters of comment, articles and artwork, please mail to: Jon B. Cooke, Editor, Comic Book Artist, P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 Phone: (401) 783-1669 • Fax: (401) 783-1287 • E-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com

CBA Commentary

Alex Toth—‘Before I Forget’ The Master on His Mentor and Editor, Sheldon Mayer

6-B

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 11

Jan. 2001

Cartoonist Chronology

A Sheldon Mayer Timeline Overview of the artist/writer/editor’s many accomplishments Compiled by Don Mangus, Bill Alger, Robin Snyder, Steven Rowe, Jon Ingersoll, Bob Herr, and Rocco Nigro [All dates referring to publications are cover dates, traditionally three-four months ahead of actual on-sale date.] Apr. 1, 1917: Sheldon Mayer born in New York City. 1932-35: Mayer works as assistant to various New York newspaper cartoonists. Dec. 1935: Mayer’s first comic book work is published in National Periodical Publication’s New Comics #1. 1936: M.C. Gaines packages Popular Comics for George Delacorte, who publishes it through the McClure Syndicate. Mayer is hired by Gaines to edit and paste-up the book. (Popular Comics #1, Feb. 1936). 1936-39: Mayer works for the McClure Syndicate. 1936-38: Mayer becomes an editor at Dell Comics. 1936: Mayer edits Popular Comics and The Funnies for Dell. Below: From the Mayer biographical text page in Sugar & Spike #85, a self-portrait by Sheldon Mayer. Courtesy of Charlie Roberts. ©2000 DC Comics.

1936: Mayer’s character Scribbly appears in Popular Comics #6 (first appearance?). 1937-38: Mayer ghosts Bobby Thatcher comic strip for George Storm. Strip’s run ends in 1938.

1938: Gaines and Mayer recommend that National/DC Comics publish Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster’s Superman comic strip. Mayer recognizes potential of strip while working at the McClure Syndicate. National/DC editor Vincent Sullivan accepts “Superman” from Gaines, and is published in Action Comics #1 (June 1938). 1939: National enters into an agreement with M.C. Gaines to produce comics line under the “All-American” imprint. Mayer becomes an editor at All-American Group (1939-1948). 1939: Mayer’s work appears in Movie Comics for National. 1939-44: Mayer’s character Scribbly appears in All-American Comics. Jan. 1940: Mayer and Gardner Fox create The Flash and Hawkman for All-American’s Flash Comics. July 1940: Mayer edits Green Lantern’s first appearance in AllAmerican Comics #16. 1940: Mayer brings in brings renowned comics writer Bill Finger to work on the super-hero line. Winter 1940: Mayer and Fox create the Justice Society of America for All Star Comics #3. 1940: Mayer’s female super-hero character, the Red Tornado, makes her first appearance in a “Scribbly” story from All-American Comics #20. 1941: Irwin Hasen takes over the art on “Green Lantern.” He and Mayer introduce GL’s humorous sidekick Doiby Dickles. 1941: M.C. Gaines hires William Moulton Marston to create Wonder Woman. Mayer edits book. 1943: Mayer produces work for All Funny Comics. May 13, 1943: Mayer marries Ruth Armstrong. Dec. 24, 1943: Mayer’s daughter, Merrily, is born. 1944: Julie Schwartz is recruited to become Mayer’s story editor. 1944: Mayer develops new titles Buzzy and Funny Stuff (featuring the first version of “The Three Mouseketeers”). Funny Stuff #5 contains all Mayer story and art. Nov. 19, 1944: Mayer’s son, Lanney, is born. 1945: Mayer edits Leading Comics. Mid-1940s: Mayer hires Lawrence Nadell as an editor. 1945: Mayer hires artist/high-school student Joe Kubert to draw “Hawkman” for Flash Comics. 1945: Mayer hires Robert Kanigher as an editor. 1945: M.C. Gaines sells National his interest in All-American Publications. The two companies are consolidated under the name National Comic Publications. 1946: Mayer hires artist Carmine Infantino (who illustrates “The Ghost Patrol” feature with Frank Giacoia). 1947: Mayer hires Alex Toth, who draws “Dr. Midnite” and “The Atom,” and later, “Green Lantern”). 1947: M.C. Gaines dies in a Lake Placid boating accident (after forming EC Comics the previous year). 1948: Mayer resigns as a National Comics editor returning full

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Before Sugar & Spike

Scribbly Jibbet, Boy Cartoonist A Look at Sheldon Mayer’s Semi-autobiographical Strip

Above: Sheldon Mayer’s seminal teenage character—and one loosely based on the writer/artist’s life—was finally awarded his own title in 1948, lasting 15 issues. Today the title is one of the most sought-after series by Golden Age collectors who know better. Courtesy of Rocco Nigro. ©2000 DC Comics.

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by Rocco Nigro Sheldon Mayer’s place in comic book history cannot be overlooked or underrated, if only for being there to help two guys by the names of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster re-format their unsold strip into the fairly new format of comic books. That creation was Superman and we know what happened to the entire comics industry from that point. Then there is Mayer’s special relationship with the people he worked with, including the father of comic books, Max Gaines, and Max’s son, Mad magazine’s William Gaines. While editing comic books for All-American/National/DC, Mayer worked with some of the best talent in the industry: Julie Schwartz, Alex Toth, Irwin Hasen, Joe Kubert, Mort Weisinger, Carmine Infantino, Bob Oksner, Paul Reinman, H. G. Peter, William Moulton Marston, Harry Lambert, and many more. Mayer was more than just an editor at DC; to many breaking into the comics industry he was a mentor. Toth, Kubert, Infantino, Johnny Craig, Bob Kanigher, Lee Elias, Gil Kane, Oksner, Schwartz, Sheldon Moldoff, Weisinger, and Jack Schiff—basically the foundation that would shape DC Comics for decades to come—were all hired by Mayer. However, Mayer’s most personal work was not his superlative efforts as one of the great comic book editors but his accomplishments as a comic book writer and artist. Mayer worked on a vast number of characters for DC: Sugar & Spike, The Three Mouseketeers, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Bo Bunny, J. Rufus Lion, Funny Stuff, Dizzy Dog, Doodles Duck, and Leave It To Binky, just to name a few. And quite possibly, Sheldon Mayer’s most important work as an artist/writer was Scribbly Jibbet, “Famous Midget Cartoonist.” Scribbly was the creation of Sheldon Mayer, a feature that followed the artist/writer to the many different publishers he worked for in the early days of comic books. It was easy for Mayer to get ideas for this strip, since it was based on his own experiences. Many have called Scribbly the earliest autobiographical comic book, but that is only partly true. His life experiences were the base that he started from, but he built upon that with stories and gags coming directly from his imagination. Mayer’s work is more similar to a television or radio situation comedy (such as The Jack Benny Show or Seinfeld) as opposed to the comparatively realistic stories told in most current autobiographical comic books. The fact that Mayer’s stories appeared at all and with different publishers shows the high regard Mayer’s bosses had for him. There is a certain charm to the “Scribbly” stories, with the humor stemming from Mayer’s interest in many areas, including cartooning, newspaper work, movies, slapstick, romance, and family situations. The latter subject may be the most important ingredient in the genesis of “Scribbly” and perhaps Mayer himself. Throughout the run, there is a strong sense of the importance of family. “Scribbly” is the story of a young adolescent boy who dreams of being the best cartoonist in the world. Wanting to impress his family at such an early age, Scribbly ends up working more as a copyboy than cartoonist at a city newspaper, but in fact, he becomes much more: a veritable

jack of all trades. Often set away from Scribbly’s job, the one-page strip introduces us to his family, focusing especially on the misadventures of his younger brother, Dinky Jibbet. Dinky and Scribbly get into plenty of sibling conflicts and Mayer gives these episodes a showcase in the “topper” strips in the early years of “Scribbly” (single-panel gags accompanying the logo on the top tier of each “Scribbly” page). This strip-within-a-strip was titled “‘Why Big Brudders Leave Home’ by Scribbly” and most of the jokes have little brother getting in the way of big brother—similar to many single panel newspaper gags at the time. There was an important aspect to this device that put Mayer in touch with his readers. Very cleverly, Mayer paid $1 for every gag idea he used from a reader’s suggestion, with the lucky contributor’s name appearing in the strip. This personal approach is something Mayer would use to even greater advantage years later in another series he created, Sugar & Spike. In S&S, there are pin-up pages, write-your-own comic pages, letters page, and even the main stories—always dedicated to faithful correspondents—involving the reader in the creative process. As early as “Big Brudders,” Mayer understands the importance of intimately involving the reader. He learns from it and even feeds off it, seeming to get great joy out of receiving fan mail. Surely the response meant people were enjoying his work and they were interested enough to offer ideas, criticism, and support. When Scribbly receives his own comic book, Dinky appears in his own stories where the younger brother has adventures with his little gang of friends, often involving being chased by his girlfriend. Another important addition to the “Scribbly” cast is the Hunkel family, in particular the matriarch, Ma Hunkel. In 1940, Ma takes on the secret identity of the Red Tornado (All-American Comics #20). Before the first appearance of Wonder Woman (a character Mayer edited), Mayer created the first female super-hero for DC in the Red Tornado, albeit a satirical character. The Hunkels (introduced in the strip before Ma went super-hero) are the kind of family you would often see in the strips of the time: Large and boisterous, never short on trying to help but usually just getting in the way. But they sure know how to have fun! Ma Hunkel’s role in the series grows when she starts working at a small grocery store and becomes a costumed heroine in response to all the criminal activity around her. Humorously, no one knows who she really is, not even Scribbly! And they can’t even tell she’s a female! The Red Tornado is just pure fun and different from any other super-hero DC had at the time, with her adventures more resembling those in C.C. Beck’s “Captain Marvel” stories. Sadly, not much became of the Red Tornado—with the exception of appearing with the JSA in All-Star Comics #3. Once Scribbly was published in his own title, the Red Tornado was gone and so was the Hunkel family. In Scribbly, the boy cartoonist once again becomes the focus of the stories. It was almost as if the youngster was given a fresh start after being overtaken earlier by the Red Tornado in his All-American Comics feature. In 1948, Mayer gives up his duties as a DC editor to devote time to writing and drawing comics, his real love. In that same year, Scribbly #1 is published. Mayer really sinks his teeth into the early issues, as they were, quite possibly, the best work he ever did. Containing superb covers and splash panels, more open and fluid story layouts, the issues featured slapstick humor kicked up to a higher level. Issue #1 begins with Scribbly taking his rightful place as the well-respected king of cartoonists and is shown working on his famous super-hero strip, Speedy-Man. We soon find out that this is only a dream, but this scene sets up Scribbly’s desire to be a great COMIC BOOK ARTIST 11

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CBA Interview

Sugar’s Daddy Talking with Merrily Mayer Harris, Shelly’s Daughter Conducted by Bill Alger I originally got in touch with Sheldon Mayer’s daughter, Merrily, a few years ago through her brother Lanney, who suggested that she might be able to help with some questions I had about their father. I was pleased to find that Merrily is an enthusiastic admirer of her father’s work and a limitless source of information pertaining to his life.When I began gathering material for this issue, Merrily supplied me with copies of family momentos including a cache of previously unpublished family photos, for which I am eternally grateful. This interview, copyedited by Merrily, began with a series of e-mails, was continued through the post and concluded with conversations conducted over the phone. Thanks again to Merrily for going well beyond my expectations in helping me to make this issue a reality.—Bill Alger Comic Book Artist: Let’s start by getting a little information about your father’s childhood. Could you tell me when and where Sheldon was born? Merrily Mayer: He was born on April Fool’s Day in 1917 in a poor Jewish neighborhood in Harlem, New York. He was born at home. His parents were separated at the time of birth (and I’m not really sure if it was in his mother’s or grandmother’s apartment where he was born), but I remember him telling me he was stillborn, and that it was his grandmother (his mother Jennie Grossman Greenberger’s mother) Hannah Grossman, who in desperation painstakingly brought him back to life. I think she wrapped him in wet, cold and then warm towels over and over until he started breathing. CBA: Was there a medical reason given for his being stillborn? Merrily: I don’t remember if a doctor ever showed up, or if there was a “medical reason” given for his being a stillborn. But I do remember him telling me that his mother was embarrassed and afraid when she was in labor and wouldn’t give into it, trying for some reason to keep him in there. Having been at that stage of delivery too long, he apparently ran out of air and just stopped breathing. CBA: Can you give me some background on Sheldon’s parents, such as when they were born and what they did for a living? Merrily: His mother’s name was Jennie (I’m not sure what that was short for) Grossman. 14-B

She would never tell anybody her real age, but one day let it slip that she was 18 when my dad was born. So that would put her birth date somewhere around 1899. My paternal grandfather’s name was Samuel Greenberger and he was a shoemaker in Lakewood, New Jersey. My grandmother remarried (when my dad was about four years old) to a man named Leo Mayer, and he was a meat-cutter in a butcher shop. Leo’s family was from Germany, but I’m not sure which generation it was that came over. My dad’s father remarried, and I think dad only saw him once or twice after that. I remember dad saying that his real father was very special and that he thought a lot of him, but to keep peace with his mother, dad didn’t make an effort to contact him. CBA: Was your father’s last name originally Greenberger? Merrily: I haven’t been able to find his birth certificate yet, so I don’t know if he was born Grossman or Greenberger. But I remember my dad telling me that the kids in his school teased him for having a different last name than his mother Jennie, Mrs. Leo Mayer. For that reason, and for the fact he had grown to love his new father, Leo, he wanted to let Leo adopt him. At that time not being able to afford an expensive adoption process, they just changed his last name to Mayer. Grandpa Leo died of cancer in around 1959, and it was after that when my mother looked up my dad’s real father, Sam Greenberger and went to visit him in Lakewood, New Jersey. I now regret never having gotten the chance to meet him, but when my first daughter was born (in 1967) I got a very nice letter from him, and shortly after that my dad called him and I got to talk (briefly) with him on the phone. In any interviews with my dad that you might read, when he referred to “my dad,” he was talking about Leo Mayer; when he said “my father,” he meant his real father, Samuel Greenberger. I never once heard my father refer to Grandpa Leo as his stepfather; he chose to use the words “dad” and “father” to make that distinction. CBA: What was Sheldon’s middle name? Merrily: I remember him telling me that he never had a middle name, and for some reason, when he wrote his full name out, he would include “N.M.I.” between his first and last name, which meant Sheldon “No Middle Initial” Mayer. I’m not quite sure why he took the trouble to do that, but those who knew him knew he was a stickler for details, and given his sense of humor, it wasn’t really all that atypical of him. CBA: Did your father have any brothers or sisters? Merrily: Yes, his mother and Grandpa Leo had one more son, Monroe. The baby brother was born when Sheldon was about eleven. He never once referred to Monroe as his half brother, he was his “kid brother” and he took the role of being a big brother very seriously. He also did mention to me one day that after his real father had remarried, they had a son, too. His name was Billy. Apparently, Billy had been seriously injured during World War II, and for some reason, wound up being institutionalized. I’ll never forget the day he told me about my Uncle Billy. He said, “You know, he’s just as much my brother as Monroe was” (but Sheldon never got to meet Billy). CBA: Was your father very talkative about his childhood? I was wondering what his relatives were like and if they influenced his sense of humor and his love of cartooning. Merrily: Yes, he talked quite a bit about his childhood and life in New York City in general. His family was quite poor when he was growing up, so at first they thought his drawing pictures everywhere was just a waste of time. (He did draw them everywhere—on the back of his homework assignments, on walls—everywhere.) As I COMIC BOOK ARTIST 11

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understand it, my grandmother’s (his mother Jennie’s) parents were Hungarian immigrants. Life was a struggle for them. And from his accounts, his mother (unlike his grandmother) seemed to view everything as an obstacle rather than a challenge. So his being different posed a “problem” for her. I remember him telling me that when he was quite young, people noticed his talent and urged her to enroll him in an art school. I don’t know where she found this particular one, or whether it was part of a public high school that had an emphasis on art for those who qualified, but she was told that his talent was beyond what they taught there. Instead of being proud, she was furious. “Now what do I do with you?!?” was her screaming attitude. So no, I don’t think he had a whole lot of encouragement at that point. His mother meant well, but she was young, uneducated and scared—viewing most things as a threat. She was a bit volatile and would yell and scream in most instances rather than access a situation and then clearly deal with it. His grandmother Hannah became his hiding place, a sort of safety/comfort zone. I never got to know my real grandfather (Sam Greenberger) very well, but for the most part the rest of my dad’s family appeared to me to be ignorant and greedy. Did they possess any talent? None I ever noticed…. You asked me where my dad got his sharp sense of humor from and I really had to think about that one. He really was unique and unlike the rest of his family. His grandmother Hannah died when I was very little and I don’t remember her, but I do recall my dad telling me of the loving and playful relationship he had with her. Maybe that’s where he got it; I’m not sure. No one else in his family seemed to have as much going for them as he did, sense of humor or otherwise. CBA: What comic strips did your father enjoy as a child? Did any particularly inspire him to become a cartoonist? Merrily: I don’t remember him telling me about what he liked to read or whom he was influenced by when he was growing up, but he did love drawing cartoons at a very young age. Things were tough for him growing up in New York City. Money was tight and to his mother, any new thing was a problem that she wished she didn’t have to deal with. And the way she dealt with most situations, initially, was to get hysterical and then yell, scream and complain. My dad had an incredible sense of humor and found a way of making fun of the ridiculous. So for him, it was making fun of what could have been an uncomfortable situation and drawing cartoons became a kind of escape. CBA: Did your father ever joke about being born on April First as contributing to his sense of the absurd? Merrily: Oh, that was sad. He didn’t joke about it… well, yeah, he did a little bit. He said things like, “I was my mother’s April Fool.” But the thing that was sad—and he never talked about it, but I know—I remember he was very sensitive, and if you told someone it was your birthday, and it was April first, they wouldn’t believe you, and they were mean in those days. They were so mean. I know he had a hard childhood. He did joke a little bit about it. I think it was really sad that

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COMIC BOOK ARTIST 11

he was born on that day, because he couldn’t tell anybody it was his birthday… you’d say that, and then people in those days, not only wouldn’t they believe you, but they would do something mean. I think that was kind of sad he was born that day… CBA: So “Happy birthday!” and then they’d be cruel to him? Merrily: Well, no. It was like, “It’s my birthday,” and nobody would believe him. “Yeah, sure, right, yeah, here’s an April Fool’s joke for you!” And they’d do something mean. He was really sensitive. I mean, he really thought everything had to be so perfect and had to be a certain way. He didn’t like Archie Bunker, because he was really afraid people would believe that was the way to think. He didn’t think that show should be on TV because people might take it seriously. He was very worried about things, even in the comics. CBA: Was he also influenced by animated cartoons? In 1934, Sheldon worked as an opaquer at the Fleisher animation studio. Did he ever consider going into animation as a career instead of drawing comic strips? Merrily: When I was about sixteen and we still lived in Rye (not far from New Rochelle— about 25 miles north of New Yok City), most of my friends were

Opposite top: The brains of the tots (before Bernie appeared, that is), assertive Sugar Plumm in a detail from an unpublished Sheldon Mayer newspaper strip sample. Courtesy of Robin Snyder. Art ©2000 The Estate of Sheldon Mayer. Sugar ©2000 DC Comics. Opposite below: Young Merrily Mayer trying to keep within the lines in this 1945 picture courtesy of the budding colorist. ©2000 Merrily Mayer Harris. Above: Merrily, the inspiration for Sugar, exploring the wonders of life in a circa 1946 photo. Courtesy of and ©2000 MMH.

to like me, so I acted stupid so I would fit into all the rest, so he’d laugh and enjoy that with me. [laughs] I had to be a goody-two-shoes for my mom and be funny for him. It was weird! [laughter] CBA: Did your dad mention meeting any of his fellow cartoonists at DC, such as Jim Davis who drew the Fox and the Crow comic? Merrily: Now, I do remember Fox and the Crow. I remember my dad saying… when someone took advantage of my brother, my dad would say, “He Fox and Crow’ed you!” But I don’t remember Jim Davis. [laughs] I remember reading it and my dad talking about it, but I don’t remember the names (I’m ashamed to admit) of who created it. CBA: Did your father read any non-DC humor comics? Merrily: I’m not sure what he read, but I know he was impressed with Charlie Brown [Peanuts]. And remember he could draw anything that anyone else drew. But he could never do Charlie Brown. He never could figure it out. I remember him saying, “I don’t know how he does it! It’s so simple—it looks like a circle— but I can’t do it like he does!” CBA: So he never really checked out the competition, as far as other comic books were concerned? Merrily: I don’t think so, not that I know of. CBA: Was your dad pretty excited about Sugar & Spike being a hit? Merrily: Oh, he was proud. Yeah, he was. He seemed to enjoy The Mouseketeers a little bit more, now that I think of it. He really got into that. But he was happy doing Sugar & Spike, and he was very proud that it was a hit. He enjoyed being the celebrity when my friends came over and talked to him. He loved that. CBA: Before Sugar & Spike was published, did your father tell you he was working on a comic book based upon you and your brother?

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Merrily: No, I don’t remember that he did. All of a sudden, it just appeared on his drawing board, and he was telling me about it, and he was very proud of it. “What do you think? Isn’t this cute? What do you think of this? What do you think of that?” And for some reason, I didn’t like being in the studio, because I always got yelled at. I’d touch something and tick him off somehow, so I really didn’t want to be in there, and so I said, “Yeah, that’s great, dad,” [laughter] and I’d leave. If you turned around and breathed on something, you never knew what you were going to get yelled at, and I just didn’t really want to be in there. He really didn’t say anything about the comic being based on us. But I did get the idea it was about us, even though it was called Sugar & Spike, and I remember being really offended that our names

Above: The tiny titans meet. Sugar and Spike’s first encounter from S&S #1. ©2000 DC Comics. Below: Both in the early 1960s and in the early 1980s, Shelly attempted to break into the syndicated newspaper strip market by adapting S&S. Here’s the opening strip to his 1980s version. Courtesy of Bill Alger. Art ©2000 the Estate of Sheldon Mayer. Characters ©2000 DC Comics.

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CBA Interview

Shelly & Spike A Conversation with Lanney Mayer, Son of Sheldon Conducted by Bill Alger Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson I was able to contact Lanney Mayer a number of years ago when Robin Snyder (editor of the monthly newsletter The Comics) was kind enough to supply me with Lanney’s address. I wrote Lanney your average fawning fan letter concerning the impact his dad’s work had upon me and he responded with a wonderful letter and photocopies of an article he had written for Overstreet’s Gold and Silver magazine. At the time, I mulled over the possibility of someday interviewing him at length concerning his father, but went no further with it. After getting the go-ahead for this issue from Jon Cooke, I approached Lanney, who okayed the idea, and we conducted this interview over the phone on the morning of July 29, 2000. It was a pleasure speaking with Lanney, who I found to be friendly, intelligent and very frank with his opinions. He is justifiably proud of his father. My thanks go out to Lanney for providing us with these memories of his father and letting us get a glimpse into the creative process behind the genius of Sheldon Mayer. Lanney also copyedited the transcript.—Bill Alger.

Comic Book Artist: Thanks for speaking with me today. I wanted to start by asking about your dad’s childhood. Did he talk about this much? Lanney Mayer: What I recall is that his dad left home when my dad was about seven. Apparently, he was a fairly wellto-do guy in the shoe business. They had come out of Hungary, I think. That side of the family was leather-workers, and saddle-makers, and apparently quite well off. I don’t know how much you know about Judaism, but while that side of the family was certainly living in a village shtetl and was ghettoized, they were different from the socialistic mystics. The socialistic mystics wandered around, in some cases begging for money, and gave their life to religious experiences. I think my grandmother’s side of my family came from that. They were part of the Austria-Hungarian Polish conglomeration, and I’m not sure exactly what their ethnic roots are. The leather side of the family was the Greenbergers, and the other side was Grossmans. There was some tension between the two factions. The leather workers would say to the 34-B

socialistic mystics, “Why are you coming to our house begging for money? Go get a job!” [laughter] I would love to go back to Hungary and see if the village, Yedliva, still exists. I’m guessing they all went to Treblinka. It’s Hungary and early on in the Second World War it was pretty well devastated. Many of those villages were simply herded up and just vacated. When the leather workers came to this country, the use of the horse was in decline, so they got in the shoe business and apparently did quite well. That man—my dad’s dad— and his name is escaping me right now… CBA: Samuel? Lanney: Yeah, I believe that’s right. He kept watch over my dad from a distance, but I don’t think my dad saw him personally at all until my dad was fully-grown. And I think they only had two or three contacts over that period of time. I think that close to Sam’s death, probably when Sam was in his 50s or 60s, they had some contact. I don’t know a lot about that, except that it was important for my dad. I have no real knowledge of my dad’s life before his father left, except I have a picture of him as a two-year-old on a pony with his grandmother standing next to him. He looks remarkably like my fouryear-old today. I have three boys that are grown and I’ve started another family. I’ve got a six-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy, and the boy looks just like my dad. It’s almost reincarnation. [laughs] My dad was raised on the Lower East Side of New York City and moved once. I’m not sure how far up on the East Side they moved, but it was after my real grandfather left home. The things I remember most about my dad’s childhood have to do with his fondness for his grandmother. Grandma Grossman was his mother’s mother. She was the one that he found as a resource— from what I wasn’t able to articulate. I gather there was some tension in the family. His mother and her sister, Sadie Grossman, raised him essentially. Within four years, his mother married a butcher, Leo Mayer, and my dad took his name. And when my dad was 11 his younger brother Monroe was born. CBA: Was there any reason why his father didn’t have contact with Sheldon? Lanney: Well, I don’t think he wanted to interfere with the new home, once it was established. I think Jenny, in effect, drove him out of the house. But it’s always a three-sided coin, you know. CBA: How did your father relate to his younger brother Monroe? Lanney: Well, he was always the big brother. I think he took care of Monroe, and I think saw him through school and through law school. He’s successful today partly because my dad was a good big brother, who created a stable environment in which he could grow up. He was 11 years older and he was in effect not only a big brother, but in many respects a father. Although Leo was kind of a passive soul, but a good, nurturing soul, my dad was the breadwinner. CBA: Was your father very close with his mother? Lanney: Yes. As I knew her, she was a very kind lady. She was many-sided and I found her good company, and enjoyable, and she was something of a good resource for me. But I remember some tension, and I think a lot of my dad’s early years were lived under the kitchen table, drawing and playing, somewhat hiding out from the adults. I sensed that by the time he reached school, he was somewhat like my sister, a high-energy, creative soul. He had vision problems so he wasn’t able to get into the athletic side of things, which was often stickball and other games in the streets. He wasn’t able to do much of that because he didn’t get glasses until he was 12. So, I suspect that affected his social life in some measure, although he had a cadre of close friends through high school. Of course, there were COMIC BOOK ARTIST 11

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the city pressures, and the fighting—the kind of ghetto culture that all people pressed together experience. So, he hung out with his friends, but as I suspect because of his vision, the creative urges had to find an outlet outside of things social and athletics. My father was something of a problem at school, because while his teachers liked him, he was so high-energy, I think he was not an easy child to manage in school. My mother (who has her own perspectives on these things) said that an IQ test at some point in his early experience indicated he was a pretty bright kid. But my mother tended to be rather grandiose about those things, so her comment was that he had the highest IQ score in the history of New York City is somewhat suspect. [laughter] By 14, he had already developed some ability to draw. I have a diary of his at 18 and his drawing was fairly rudimentary. It was not polished by any means and by his own admission, he was not a great artist. But he worked so hard at his craft that, as a cartoonist, he developed a wonderful, simple line. He could get an awful lot into very little. His real gift, in my estimation, was faces, and the amount of emotion and pathos he was able to put into that part. The rest of his drawing isn’t the focal point, in my view. I think most things, whether he’s drawing animals or people, was body language and faces. CBA: I’ve always thought that his storytelling ability was also particularly strong. Lanney: Yeah, but what I see in the images that dominate, in his story telling, was the human interaction. It’s a very Jewish kind of thing, almost like Rob Reiner’s films. You get into human relationships. Whether it’s Scribbly or other projects my father worked on, it was the interplay between people, and issues of anger and sadness and disappointment and hurt. All these childlike kinds of things that perhaps had been unresolved from his own childhood came out in his drawings. That was his vehicle. By 14 I think he had already hooked up with Major Nicholson, or… Who did the Inkwell stuff? Koko the Clown? CBA: The Fleischer studio. Lanney: I think he did some inking for them early on. CBA: Yes. In 1934, he was supposed to have worked as an opaquer in the Fleischer animation studio. Lanney: That’s when he was 16 or 17, but he’d started at 14. He was already beginning to support the family by that time. His father, Leo, was disabled at some point. I don’t know what the issue was, but he could not take the freezers in the butcher shop anymore. My

knowledge of Leo was that he was not able to really work on a fulltime basis during the whole time I knew him. Leo was a very kindly soul, had a gentle spirit. He always had a deep, slow laugh, and he was just always receptive, and I enjoyed him. I remember sitting on his foot with his legs crossed, and him bouncing me up and down as a child. He was just a very kind soul, and I think my grandmother pretty much dominated him and beat him up verbally from time to time. Having children was his idea, and as soon as she gave birth, she said, “Never again!” [laughs] So she was pretty strong, perhaps she was even a somewhat emasculating woman in some respects, although I didn’t experience that. CBA: Did you dad ever say what it was that attracted him to cartooning? Lanney: Well, my guess was that he didn’t have other resources. He had picture books and maybe the Sunday funnies, and I think it hooked him early on. He found himself living more and more in that world, emulating it, maybe with his friends. He was always the comedian in school, so that kind of thing was a vehicle for him. It was a way of performing. CBA: Did he ever mention anybody else in his family being interested in comic strips? Lanney: No, not that I know of. I think as soon as he started drawing, there were those who celebrated it. He got strokes out of it and pursued it even more vigorously. Later on, he would play piano and guitar and even later, the mandolin and violin—never very well, but enough to perform. CBA: Do you think he ever considered going into performing instead? Jan. 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 11

Opposite top: Cecil—a.k.a. Spike—himself. From a sketch by Sheldon Mayer. Art ©2000 The Estate of Sheldon Mayer. Spike ©2000 DC Comics. Opposite below: Lanney Mayer as infant in a 1945 picture courtesy of his older sister, Merrily. ©2000 Merrily Mayer Harris. Above: Lanney, the inspiration for Spike, examining an ornament during Christmas, 1945. Courtesy of and ©2000 MMH.

Sugar & Spike Cover Gallery 99 Covers of S&S to Enthrall! Courtesy of Beverly Martin & Jon Ingersoll

1956

1957

All covers ÂŠ2000 DC Comics.

1958

1959

A Life With Sugar & Spike

…And Everything Nice The World’s Greatest S&S Fan on the Influence of Mayer’s “Kids”

Inset right: Tammi Martin (left) and her mom, Beverly, share some time reading their favorite comic series, Sugar & Spike. Courtesy of Beverly.

50-B

by Beverly Martin would understand things as if they were indeed new to our world: Rugrats… Look Who’s Talking… Baby Geniuses. Determining how their bodies worked in regards to grasping objects, Over the last 20 years or so, Hollywood has featured babies standing upright, and even figuring out the fundamentals of gravity! and toddlers in movies and television shows who talk A concept, which Mayer mentions, took the grown-ups amongst themselves and perform fantastic feats as a long time to understand until Newton explained the children explore this New World they’ve it to them! been thrust into. But Sheldon Mayer did it Mayer closes the essay by first in 1956—and far better—than did reminding the reader, “The next time your any of those decently animated televibaby brother or sister pours pabulum all sion shows and unbelievably lame over your arithmetic homework, try not movies. to complain. Just remember that the His terrific twosome, Sugar fault is probably yours—you had no Plumm and Cecil “Spike” Wilson, business getting in the way of an (yes, Cecil is his real name! No wonimportant scientific experiment! Just der he liked “Spike” better!) starred who do you think you are, anyway!” in the bi-monthly humor title for DC That, in a nutshell, explains why Comics in 1956. Sugar & Spike feaSugar and Spike get into so many mistured many amazing adventures and adventures: If it wasn’t for all those big mishaps—the duo could not only talk to people getting in the way of their various each other in “baby-talk”—which naturally experiments and such, all would have turned no adult could understand and always figured out well and their fun would have been comthey were just “jabbering”—but also to other plete! But, no! Instead, big people misunderstand babies and toddlers, some slightly older children and all of S&S’s best intentions and mess up the kids’ plans even baby animals. for the day. In Peanuts-like” fashion, we almost never get to see their parSometimes, I reflect on how it’s a tad bizarre that I adore a IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, ents’ faces, even though we do see the grown-ups’ legs and arms comic that was created before I was even born. I came along into the CLICK THE LINK TO ORDER THIS and—unlike Charlie Brown & Co.—we get to hear (via dialogue balworld in 1962. Like many kids, I enjoyed cartoons and stuff and was ISSUE IN PRINT OR DIGITAL FORMAT! loons) the parents’ (usually very confused) point of view about what already an avid reader and aspiring artist when comics came into my they think their toddlers are up to. life 10 years later. Unlike Schulz’ Peanuts, in this world Mayer also let us see all of It was 1972 and my first two comics were DC titles: Teen Titans the other grown-ups in the toddler’s lives: (ooh, love that Nick Cardy art!) and Sugar & Spike (#90 with the cool Sugar’s favorite Uncle Charley—a kindpink dragon-like “Flumsh”!). A little while later, my parents and I vishearted policeman who always seemed to ited a local used bookstore and I had found Sugar &Spike #59. I was get into as much trouble as they did! just 10 years old at the time, already a science-fiction reader. I had There was Sugar’s Granpa Plumm—who started with some Tom Corbett hardcovers in third grade and my understood the kids’ lingo—and the duo dad’s juvenile Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke editions. From those, even met Santa Claus, the only other along with his original Pogo and Peanuts collected editions obviously, grown-up who could (naturally!) underI was well on my way to becoming a science-fiction and comics stand and expertly speak baby-talk! enthusiast. Now, at the age of 38, I still am. They started out innocently and Like many comics fans, today my reading tastes run the gamut ended their run innocently—their many of the entire DC line, a little bit of Marvel, and all sorts of indepenadventures amassing an amazing 98 dents but, no matter what, I always had a soft spot for my Sugar & #11:basis ALEX MAYER issues on a bi-monthly from TOTH 1956 & SHELLY Spikes. Maybe it was because they were so darned hard to find but I with ALEX TOTH, Toth tributes by KUBERT, SIMONto ’71. (A specialInterviews “Silver Age Classics” know it’s because I enjoy their simple innocent charm as well. SON, JIM LEE, BOLLAND, GIBBONS and others, TOTH on conissue, S&S #99, was released ’92 after put, I am a bit of a “Renaissance Fangrrl”: I love tinuity art, TOTHinchecklist, plus SHELDONBasically MAYER SECTION with a lookmany at SCRIBBLY, interviews with Mayer’sscience-fiction, kids (real-life Mayer’s death, featuring tributes comics, cartoons, fantasy, toys, and now the even inspiration for SUGAR & SPIKE), and more! Covers by TOTH and from his colleagues in the comics commu“new and more fun” toys like computers and DVDs. Technology is MAYER! nity and—with the exception(108-page of the interthe same time, I also am blessed to have my own little magazine) fun! SOLD At OUT (Digital national stories he completed during theEdition) $3.95 “Sugar” in my life, our daughter Tammi who I watched explore her http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_56&products_id=527 1980s—#99 showcased his final Sugar & world solo when she was a babe and toddler—often, I would be restSpike tales. ing with an issue of Sugar & Spike in my hands trying to equate Mayer explains his basic some of her adventures with theirs—sometimes it worked and someapproach to Sugar & Spike in the very times it didn’t. In any case, I have brought another diehard Sugar & first issue, in an essay entitled “Safety-Pin Spike lover into the world! She loves reading them with me when I Scientist,” wherein he asks the reader to get them out of my collection for our comics reading time. place themselves in their baby sibling’s Over the years as a collector, there was a common question I shoes (or booties). He explains the worldasked at just about every comics con or comics shop around Texas: view of a baby, trying and achieving “Do you have any Sugar & Spikes?” Usually I got completely bewilempathy with the reader so that they dered looks and a round of “Sugar and wha..? Never heard of it.” It COMIC BOOK ARTIST 11

Jan. 2001