Comic Book Artist #14 by TwoMorrows Publishing

TOWER COMICS: YEARS OF THUNDER!

No.14 July 2001

™

$6.95 In The U.S.

WOOD ADKINS BROWN SKEATES IVIE DITKO PEARSON TUSKA STONE JONES

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

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

www.twomorrows.com TM

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

Last-minute bits about the Community of Comic Book Artists, Writers and Editors

CARBONARO: T.H.U.N.D.E.R.’s AGENT!

Above: John Carbonaro tries to breach T.H.U.N.D.E.R. security, exclaiming, “Hey, can I try again!” Courtesy of John Carbonaro.

John Carbonaro, the mastermind behind the 1980s revival of this issue’s celebrated group, the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, and their current trademark owner, is one helluva nice guy. Not only has he given us carté blanche to use the characters in this special Tower issue, but he also shared tons of material from his personal files, from pertinent documents regarding the publicized trademark squabble with David M. Singer in the ’80s, to stats of the ’60s material, to photocopies of both JCP and Deluxe Comics pages. You are the man, J.C.! Thanks for the support! Now, instead of slapping his trademark notice on every one of his images in this 112page issue, John suggested we put a big ol’ notice up front, explicitly stating that it’ll cover all John Carbonaro-owned trademarks within (unless, of

Right: The Clan Cooke. From left, first row: Danny, Beth, Josh; second row: Ben and Jon.

course, otherwise credited). So here goes: All T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and related characters are ™ & ©2001 John Carbonaro. Reader Mike Egan recently e-mailed us, writing, “I hope your treatment of Tower Comics can reach beyond the memories of those associated with those bygone days and supply us with some future hope the line of Tower titles will live again.” Well, we’d like that to happen, too, Mike! And we especially hope that some ambitious publisher seriously considers having a talk with Mr. Carbonaro about packaging archival volumes that reprint the original T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents material. Such gorgeous artwork deserves a new look. Paul? Joe? Mike? How ‘bout you, Morrow? Drop us a message and we’ll happily forward it to John C.

R.I.P.: DENNIS THE MENACE’S DAD

Hank Ketcham writer Fred Toole and artist Al Wiseman (who also On May 31, 2001, America lost one of its drew most of the early Sunday strips). These finest cartoonists, Dennis the Menace originator unjustly overlooked books represent some of the Hank Ketcham. Those of you who are only familiar finest children’s comics ever published. with the Dennis panels that have appeared in the Ketcham, a former Disney animator, was a comic pages for the last 50 years or so may be respected magazine gag-cartoonist at the time of wondering why Ketcham’s creation was so revered. Dennis’ syndication. His artwork displayed a masOnce upon a time, before he relinquished all tery of line and composition that only deepened as the art duties to assistants—Ketcham retired in the strip progressed. By the late-1970s, his draw1994—before the bad movies, before the uninings had reached a level of sophistication that more spired animated cartoons, and even before the than made up for the increasingly lame gags. watered-down early-1960s television show, Dennis Anyone wanting to see examples of Ketcham at his was a force of nature to be reckoned with. Not best, look for Dennis books from the 1950s or go content to merely spout the Hallmark Card litanies to Shane Glines’ Web site at of his latter days, the early Dennis behaved <http://www.shaneglines.com> which almost like a real kid. Well, like a real kid with features a selection of Ketcham's extreme behavioral problems, but a real kid early Dennis (and non-Dennis) work. nonetheless. He committed acts of vandalism, The blow of Ketcham’s death cursed (off-panel) and once told the milkman after a long illness is softened by the that the family had switched to beer. It wasn’t knowledge that he lived a long, that Dennis was being purposely malifull life. In his final years, Ketcham cious; he was in fact an innocent cursed relaxed by doing what he loved— with a dangerous mix of honesty and golfing, painting and spending hyperactivity. Dennis’ path of time with his third wife and their destruction was pushed even two children. further in a series of —Bill Alger comic books created by the excellent team of ©2001 North America Syndicate

like a phoenix… the atlas/seaboard story After our “vacation” issue next time—focusing on Dave Stevens, Los Bros. Hernandez, Sandy Plunkett, Dean Motter and Matt Wagner—look for our next history-intensive theme on Martin Goodman’s short-lived company, Atlas/Seaboard (1974-75) in November! We’ll have the usual blanket coverage of the subject, including interviews with Larry Lieber, Jeff Rovin, Sal Amendola, and others, including a career-spanning talk with the delightful Ernie Cólon, who also contributes a splendid new cover! Atlas lives again! Right: Preliminary designs for his creation, The Phoenix, by Sal Amendola. The artist has shared a plethora of neat stuff for CBA #16! Art ©2001 Sal Amendola.

Keepin’ My Eye on the Prize! Man, has it been a wicked busy Spring at Casa Cooke! Ben’s done with elementary school, moving onto the new Middle School in September; Josh is getting ready for his big big ninth B-day in July (and the accompanying gifts, no doubt!); Danny’s through with kindergarten and itchin’ to take on first grade; never mind how busy Beth is with her career and raisin’ three kids, two dogs, a cat, a guinea pig, a frog, and a comicsobsessed husband! Which leaves said hubby, Jon, who is burning the candle at both ends, rushing to get a zillion projects ready for the 2001 Comic-Con International: San Diego! But if Cooke doesn’t have everything ready for July’s show, please have a little patience as he’s gotta keep his eye on that what is most important—not only trying to achieve dreams in publishing, but to appreciate what life is truly all about: Nurturing the love of family. So thanks, Beth & “da boyz”: I haven’t been easy to put up with, but you do all matter most to me.

NUMBER 14

CELEBRATING THE LIVES & WORK OF THE GREAT CARTOONISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS

Editor/Designer JON B. COOKE Publisher

TWOMORROWS JOHN & PAM MORROW Associate Editors CHRIS KNOWLES DAVID A. ROACH CHRISTOPHER IRVING Contributing Editors ROY THOMAS JOHN MORROW

JULY 2001

DEPARTMENTS: THE FRONT PAGE: LAST MINUTE BITS ON THE COMMUNITY OF COMIC BOOK ARTISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS Remembering Hank Ketcham, gassin’ up the TwoMorrows’ hype machine for San Diego, and other stuff! ........1 EDITOR’S RANT: THE GREAT SUPER-HERO REVIVAL In the midst of the ’60s Marvel Age and Batmania, Wallace Wood makes an impact on American comics ........4 CBA COMMUNIQUES: LETTERS FROM OUR READERS Wolfman on Stephen King, Kupperberg on Duffy Vohland, Barr on Charlton’s “copyrights,” and more..............6 CBA COMMENTARY: ALEX TOTH—’BEFORE I FORGET’ The master artist discusses the work of the under-appreciated Ogden Whitney ..................................................8

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: $9 postpaid ($11 Canada, $12 elsewhere). Six-issue subscriptions: $36 US, $66 Canada, $72 elsewhere. All characters © their respective owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © their respective authors. ©2001 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Cover acknowledgement: T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents ©2001 John C. Productions. First Printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

Proofreader ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON Cover Art WALLACE WOOD, front DAN ADKINS, back Cover Color GRAY MORROW, front SCOTT LEMIEN, back Production JON B. COOKE GREAT SWAMP GRAPHICS Transcribers JON B. KNUTSON BRIAN K. MORRIS SAM GAFFORD Logo Designer/Title Originator ARLEN SCHUMER

TOWER COMICS: YEARS OF THUNDER! FRED HEMBECK’S DATELINE: @!!?* Our Man Fred raves about Manny Stallman’s Raven, T.H.U.N.D.E.R.’s most underrated agent ..........................11 TOWERING ACHIEVEMENT: THE RISE & FALL OF TOWER COMICS New associate editor Chris Irving examines the impact of the memorable—if short-lived—comics company ....12 WALLACE WOOD INTERVIEW: TALKING WITH WOODY A vintage 1982 interview with the artist legend by fan legend Shel Dorf............................................................18 HERO WORSHIP: T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS 101 Lou Mougin gives us a tutorial on the history of Dynamo and his fellow super-spy cohorts ..............................22 SAMM SCHWARTZ INTERVIEW: WORD FROM THE TOWER A light but informative 1966 chat with the late editor/artist on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents......................................30 DAN ADKINS INTERVIEW: DYNAMITE DAN’S DAYS OF T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Wally Wood’s onetime assistant (and the real killer of Menthor!) talks about his days at Tower Comics............32 LEN BROWN INTERVIEW: OF TOPPS AND TOWER On being named Dynamo’s alter ego, working at Topps and his tale of two Woodys ........................................40 ARTIST SHOWCASE: JERRY ORDWAY’S T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS CENTERSPREAD Wow! One of our favorite super-hero artists gives us a brand-new double-page pin-up of our fave agents! ......56 BILL PEARSON INTERVIEW: THE OLD WORLD HEROES The Wood friend and collaborator on his T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents work and life with Woody..............................58 CBA ESSAY: IVIE LEAGUE HEROES Larry Ivie discusses his contributions to T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents in this 1997 article ............................................64 GEORGE TUSKA INTERVIEW: THE TUSKA TOUCH Mike Gartland talks with the legendary artist about his 1960s Tower contributions ..........................................70 LIGHTNING ROUND: UP IN THE TOWER Tower writer Steve Skeates on his wonky, wonderful script work for Wally Wood’s T-Agents ............................72 RUSS JONES INTERVIEW: A MAN CALLED JONES The Monster Mania Man on his days with Woody, Warren, and Tower Comics..................................................76 HERO INDEX: THE TOWER COMICS CHECKLIST With the help of Dan Adkins and others, a thorough listing of the line’s adventure titles with creator credits....90 TEENAGE TOWER: TIPPY TEEN AND TOWER, TOO! Terry Austin examines the history of the most popular character at Tower Comics ............................................98 ENDGAME: T.H.U.N.D.E.R. STRIKES TWICE! The trials and tribulations of the 1980s revival of Wally Wood’s unforgettable super-hero line........................100 DRAWING INSPIRATION: THUNDERSTRUCK! Jay Stephens, Dean Haspiel, Bill Wray, James Kochalka, and John Backderf render their T-Agent visions ........106 CLOSING SCENARIO: DON’T LOOK BACK IN ANGER! Blake Bell presents a CBA first: fiction depicting an imaginary meeting between Steve Ditko & Wally Wood ..108 FINAL ASSESSMENT: MY GUILTY PLEASURE John Hitchcock on enjoying the work and friendship of Manny Stallman, glorious artist/writer of the Raven..112

Mascot WOODY by J.D. King Issue Theme Song I’M LIKE A BIRD Nelly Furtado Visit CBA on our Website at: www.twomorrows.com /comicbookartist/

Contributors Dan Adkins • Shel Dorf John Carbonaro • Brian C. Boerner Bill Pearson • Larry Ivie Steve Skeates • Russ Jones Len Brown • Bob Layton George Tuska • Dan DeCarlo Terry Austin • Rocco Nigro Jeff Clem • Steve Cohen Michael T. Gilbert • Mike W. Barr Lou Mougin • Mark Evanier John Hitchcock • J. David Spurlock Jerry Ordway • Gary Brown Fred Hembeck • Brian K. Morris John Borkowski • John R. Cochran Alan Kupperberg • Daniel Tesmoingt cat yronwode • John Harrison Jeff Gelb • Bill Schelly • Alex Toth Chris Irving • Andrew Steven Paul Gulacy • Dave Gibbons Jay Stephens • Dean Haspiel Batton Lash • John Backderf Bill Wray • Marc H. Kardell J.D. King • Dave Elliott Roy Thomas • Jerry K. Boyd Ray Kelly & Kelly’s Comics Bill Alger • Mike Friedrich James Kochalka • James Guthrie John Workman • Neal Adams Mike Zeck • Mike Gartland Steve Mitchell • Ina Cooke Emil J. Novak • Buffalo Nickel David A. Roach • Merlin Haas Dedicated to the Memory and Artistry of the Great

WALLACE WOOD

Opposite page: Courtesy of Bob Layton & CPL/Gang Productions, Wally Wood’s great Dynamo frontispiece from Heroes, Inc. #2, 1978. Above: Detail from T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #7. T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents ©2001 John Carbonaro; opposite art ©2001 the Estate of Wallace Wood.

and in memory of

Rich Morrissey Henry Boltinoff Hank Ketcham

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

July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

—

! 3

Editor’s Rant

The Great Super-Hero Revival Ruminations of the ’60s comics mania and a legacy of Wood

Above: This unused T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #6 cover is a variant of the printed piece and has never been published before! DAN ADKINS had finished a superb new cover for us but with the arrival of this find, Dan kindly allowed us to use his piece as our logo-free back cover! Collector MARC H. KARDELL bought the fully-colored (by Gray Morrow, so say Roger Hill and Andrew Steven) cover art at a convention about five years ago and very recently contacted Michael T. Gilbert (in response to MTG’s great contributions to the Wood retrospective in Alter Ego #8). Above is the unaltered version. Thanks to MHK & MTG! 4

It was the Super Decade, years of promise tinged with despair. The iconic super-President John F. Kennedy opened the ’60s with an invigorating hope—however real or delusional—for much of the country to grow beyond the fears of the Atomic Age and aspire to better the nation. Super-spies, super-rock ’n’ roll groups, super-cars, super-drugs, and—of course—super-heroes all became rages with kiddie consumers in those days, each category cultivating the same pattern of becoming hot trends, followed by frenzied Baby Boomer consumption, and just as quickly boring artifacts of last week’s mania. Hot today, not tomorrow. Try as they might, comics publishers just could not identify lasting trends with their increasing fickle young readers in the 1960s. Hot genres were always difficult to anticipate in the medium but historically, once the “Next Big Thing” was identified, the entire industry simply jumped on board, flooding the stands with knock-offs— whether strip reprints, costumed characters, kid groups, teenage, crime, romance, horror, or satirical comics—and everyone shared in the profits, just as quickly draining the novelty dry. And that thinking—when in doubt, why pursue originality when one could more easily just rip something off—remained steadfast among all comics publishers going into that turbulent decade. But the times they were a’changin’. For all the hoopla given by fans over the rise of Marvel’s selfconscious super-heroes of the ’60s, the entire comics industry was in desperate shape during those years, severely wounded by Wertham & Company in the previous decade. Readership continued to plummet with TV and film offering increasingly fantastic entertainment (once the exclusive purview of funnybooks). Entrepreneurs and savvy manufacturers competed wildly, courting the Baby Boomer culture for the pocket money of every American kid. And, instead of innovating— trying something new to salvage the ailing business—the comics people did what they did best: Copied a rival. It would be a mistake to assume that the Great Super-Hero Revival of the 1960s was singularly a result of the Batmania craze of ’66, though the William Dozier-produced TV sensation was a huge factor in the barrage of “high-camp heroes” flooding the marketplace. More properly, credit—or blame, if you prefer—needs to be given to

Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and all the Marvel Bullpenners who perhaps brought comic book entertainment to a new level of selfawareness and pure joie de vive. As beautifully delineated as DC’s super-hero and war books were, they were humdrum compared to the sheer exuberance of the Marvel Age of Comics. And the kids responded by paying their 12¢ to Martin Goodman’s House of Ideas. So whether due to Lee & Co. or Adam West’s Caped Crusader, a flood of costumed tights paraded across the stands, much of it pure drek—remember the short-lived Captain “Let’s Split!” Marvel published by the notorious Myron Fass?—but some titles held more than a hint of inspiration. (Interestingly, 1965’s most important comics innovator, James Warren of Creepy and Eerie fame, resisted the temptation to exploit the trend—at least in sequential form, if not in merchandising!) It was a former Bullpenner (albeit joining Stan Lee’s ranks for mere months) who gave Marvel a real run for their money, if only creatively. Irregardless of the legendary artist’s professed disdain for costumed characters, Wallace Wood accepted Tower Comics publisher Harry Shorten’s directive to create a totally-new super hero comics line with vigor and obvious enthusiasm. Melding the then-au currant James Bond 007 spy craze with the Marvel Method, Tower’s art director— and, importantly, the line’s de facto editor—gathered the best available artists (Reed Crandall, Gil Kane, George Tuska, Mike Sekowsky, neophyte Dan Adkins, Chic Stone, later Steve Ditko and Al Williamson, among others) to create the unforgettable T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Woody’s comics could be grim (featuring the first-ever death of a leading super-hero!), funny (the antics of headliner Dynamo’s alter-ego, Len (ahem) Brown, still evoke a chuckle today), sexy (sometimes decidedly on this side of s&m, judging by the femme fatale to beat them all, the Iron Maiden), angst-ridden (every time Lightning ran at super-speed, he shaved minutes off his life), wonky (I’ll leave it to Hembeck to describe the indescribable Manny Stallman “Raven” strip!), and just plain great fun! Whether plagued by distribution problems—the excuse Tower publisher Shorten gave to Woody—or the ambivalence of America’s youthful reading public, the line folded in 1969, a mere four years after its promising debut (though the publisher did limp along until 1970 with the 27th issue of his final—and longest-lasting—title, Tippy Teen, an Archie wannabe). But what a 96-month stretch! While the true innovation of the decade proved to be not New York’s hipster heroes or b-&-w horror stories, but Wally Wood’s own witzend and the astonishing underground comix coming out of San Francisco, Woody and his friends gave the genre their all, creating memorable, unforgettable comics. We hope you enjoy this heartfelt retrospective. As Rich Kreiner noted in his CBA review in the latest Comics Journal, we continue to suffer the “too much stuff/too little space” syndrome. This time we haven’t room for Jim Amash’s great interview with Archie editor Victor Gorelick on the ’60s Mighty Comics Group, or the Fatman, The Human Flying Saucer overview. We’ll fit ’em into the next ’60s retrospective. Thanks and apologies to Jim, Wayne DeWald, Gary Brown, Terry Austin, Rocco Nigro, Steve Cohen, and Bill Alger. I confess to having a blast taking this look at the swingin’ ’60s; would our kind readership welcome an issue—at least a flip-section— devoted to Richard Hughes’ American Comics Group and the aforementioned funnybooks? Give us a shout, effendi! Enjoy the thunder and lightning, folks! —Jon B. Cooke, editor P.S. Now, you don’t think I’d let you go without suffering another plug for PRIME8™, my first bona fide comic book, did you? It’s on sale now with a brand-spankin’-new Neal Adams cover! Check it out! COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

CBA’s Jon Cooke is back in April! Make ready for COMIC BOOK CREATOR, the new voice of the comics medium! TwoMorrows is proud to debut our newest magazine, COMIC BOOK CREATOR, devoted to the work and careers of the men and women who draw, write, edit, and publish comics, focusing always on the artists and not the artifacts, the creators and not the characters. Behind an ALEX ROSS cover painting, our frantic FIRST ISSUE features an investigation of the oft despicable treatment JACK KIRBY endured from the very business he helped establish. From being cheated out of royalties in the ’40s and bullied in the ’80s by the publisher he made great, to his estate’s current fight for equitable recognition against an entertainment monolith where his characters have generated billions of dollars, we present Kirby’s cautionary tale in the eternal struggle for creator’s rights. Plus, CBC #1 interviews artist ALEX ROSS and writer KURT BUSIEK, spotlights the last years of writer/artist FRANK ROBBINS, remembers comics historian LES DANIELS, sports a color gallery of WILL EISNER’s Valentines to his beloved, showcases a joint talk between NEAL ADAMS and DENNIS O’NEIL on their unforgettable collaborations, as well as throws a whole kit’n’caboodle of other creator-centric items atcha! Join us for the start of a new era as TwoMorrows welcomes back former Comic Book Artist editor JON B. COOKE, who helms the all-new, allcolor COMIC BOOK CREATOR!

80 pages • $8.95 All-color • Quarterly Digital Edition: $3.95 COMING THIS JULY: COMIC BOOK CREATOR #2 (double-size Summer Special) Former COMIC BOOK ARTIST editor JON B. COOKE returns to TwoMorrows with his new magazine! #1 features: An investigation of the treatment JACK KIRBY endured through FRANK ROBBINS spotlight, rememberreturns to TwoMorrows with his new magazine! #1 features: An investigation of the treatment JACK KIRBY endured through FRANK ROBBINS spotlight, remembertures: An investigation of the treatment JACK KIRBY ing LES DANIELS, WILL EISNER’s Valentines to his beloved, a talk between NEAL ADAMS and DENNIS O’NEIL, new ALEX ROSS cover, and more! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $17.95 (Digital Edition) $6.95 • Ships July 2013

4-issue Subscriptions • PRINT: $36 US with FREE Digital Editions • DIGITAL: $15.80 ($45 First Class US • $50 Canada • $65 First Class International • $95 Priority International) Subscriptions include the double-size Summer Special

TwoMorrows. A New Day For Comics Fans! TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 E-mail: store@twomorrowspubs.com • Visit us on the Web at www.twomorrows.com

CBA Communiques

On Charlton, Duffy & Stephen King Plus theme suggestions & the Charlton copyright conundrum YE ED’S NOTE: While mail is flowing in regarding our well-received “Marvel ’70s Horrorshow” theme, we’re rushing to get this issue early so Ye Ed can finish up THE WARREN COMPANION and PRIME8™. Please look for CBA #13 comments next time, friends!

Joe Staton [Regarding the character identification quiz for CBA #12’s cover, the cover artist himself writes:] You missed one. See that pile of gunk with the eyes and the teeth down around Arachne's feet? It should have been colored green. The first issue of Creepy Things didn't have a proper host but had a Tom Sutton blobby monster on the letters page. So I figure it's name was “Creepy Thing.” I'm really annoyed by the Eisner committee dropping the ComicsRelated Category. It seems to me that there is more good writing about comics coming out right now (especially between you and Roy) than since Bill Spicer was in his heyday. Macredoak via the Internet CBA #12 was quite nice. I really enjoy the then and now pictures of your interviewees. I realize that space considerations were probably responsible for the abrupt ending to the Bob Layton interview [in CBA #12], but as a Crusty Bunker geek, it frustrates me that it ended just when he was about to tell a story about Continuity Studios. No, no, no I’m not suggesting a third Charlton issue (although now that I think of it, you could do an entire issue on the b-&-w Six Million Dollar Man, Emergency!, and Space: 1999 books), but I would like to know if Bob Layton’s “I can ink an Iron Man story in four days” story will be finished in a future issue? […Umm, I dunno. Maybe you can ask the next letter writer.—Ye Ed.]

Above: Yeesh! You’d think Ye Ed might indulge in a little actual research with the source material every once in a while! Astute readers—including JEFF CLEM— responded to questions put to one-time Marvel editor-in-chief ROY THOMAS about the Tomb of Dracula #1 story apparently being originally formatted as a b-&-w magazine tale (a plan R.T. simply forgot about) by cluing us into the above Bullpen Bulletins page which appeared in Marvel’s July 1971 titles. But don’t blame my brother editor! He was editing a kazillion books at the time. Me? I was 12 years old and living in Europe during that year, hooked on Jack Kirby’s DC Comics! (But I know that’s no excuse…) 6

Bob Layton via the Internet Thank you so much for my copy of the second Charlton issue (#12) of Comic Book Artist. Wow—talk about a walk down memory lane…! As usual, you and your talented staff have compiled a definitive history of an entire era that has been generally overlooked by most chronicles of our fascinating and bizarre industry. I’m proud to have played a part in making it happen. It was great fun to read the interviews (in particular) with Byrne and Sterno, two guys I owe a lot to and respect very much (and their memories of those days proved to be infinitely superior to my own). Keep up the great work and you can always count on me to support your efforts. (However, since you’ve reprinted about every illo I ever published during the CPL/Gang days, I don’t know how much more I have to offer! <grin>) Beverly Martin via the Internet Could you please put the new Sugar and Spike website address in? <http://beam.to/sugarandspike> also known as: <http://members.tripod.com/~sugar_and_spike>

H. Krissoff via the Internet This is my first electronic letter to CBA, or to any magazine for that matter. I was pleased to see #12 was the continuation of the Charlton issues. It was unfortunate that when I was a kid here in New Jersey, that my exposure to Charlton was very limited. I had been brought up on DC Comics, my mother being a Wonder Woman fan since her college days—she starting college the same year of the Amazon Princesses’ debut—and she introduced me to DC Comics. So Charlton or any other publisher in those days was not always brought up, although kiddie comics were alright. I bought some of their Blondie, Dagwood, Flintstones, Popeye, Felix the Cat, Beetle Bailey and more in this vein. I had one issue of Tales of the Texas Rangers, my only non-funny Charlton. I don’t think the local newsstand even carried their super-hero books. I do remember though the awful paper they used. The lower edge was always jagged, like they cut them with the material scissors my aunt used. I do remember seeing but not buying magazine-sized books for Space: 1999 and Emergency! Am I right? I was so hoping the above items could be covered but I guess space limitations prevented it. I practically inhaled the two new pages of E-Man material. God, I miss that book dearly, even the incarnation from First Comics, along with Neal The Horse, Dalgoda, ‘Mazing Man, Masked Man and even Sugar and Spike. Well-written comics that said something to the reader will always be missed. Thank you for #9 and this one, for shedding light on a company that I never really knew. The articles about who owned the copyrights was wonderful. It’s too bad DC bought the super-heroes and not AC. DC has chosen to bury these characters, including Blue Beetle who probably had some Golden Age adventures worth reprinting in an Archive edition or somewhere. AC would probably have given him his own reprint book. Blue Beetle alone of all the characters, was the only one worth anything. I didn’t know that the reason that CBA Special was being done for subscriptions was to keep the magazine above water. I’m glad to see that you survived. A very special magazine like yours was out 1520 years ago, called Four Color and it didn’t survive past four issues. I didn’t subscribe, for a reason. I loved your “Independent” #8, and #9 and 11. I didn’t buy #2, 3, 4, 6, 7. Why? They were either about Warren or Marvel. I know nothing about Warren (good luck with your book on it), and I have never liked Marvel. I don’t know why, I just never got into them. So I don’t buy issues that I don’t care about. I have to go now and finish the issue. I did give it just a glance and saw how good it was. I can’t wait to read it. I look forward in the future to an issue about Tower Comics, including their book, Fight the Enemy, Skywald (whom I have only heard about vaguely), and Atlas/Seaboard and why they failed. Hopefully one day, we will see something dedicated to a cool and somewhat square artist, Curt Swan. I grew up with his rendition of Superman. Kurt Schaffenberger, Mike Grell and Mike Sekowsky are also good subjects. The reprints I have of DC stuff from the ’40s and ’50s have become as valuable to me as the originals. Now a new valuable magazine has joined my collection—Comic Book Artist. Thanks for the memories. [CBA pal ED ZENO is currently putting together the definitive book on CURT SWAN; look for an announcement in this mag. I have definite plans to feature separate issues on ATLAS/SEABOARD (with mini-looks at Gray Morrow’s RED CIRCLE imprint and SKYWALD’s color line) and GOLD KEY (with some emphasis on DELL COMICS), slated to appear in November and July 2002 respectively. If I can find enough material on the AMERICAN COMICS GROUP (hint-hint!), I’d love to devote an issue to the other ’60s comics publishers (including COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

HARVEY and M.F. PUBLICATIONS), which is a very long-winded way of saying, yes, I’d love to cover the great work of KURT SCHAFFENBERGER! We’ll cover Charlton’s b-&-w mags in the nonWarren b-&-w issue coming in the future.—Ye Ed.] David Martin Via the Internet This issue was well worth the wait (as all issues are)! As an E-Man fan from issue one way back that long ago 1974 Spring, I loved seeing the Cuti and Staton material. And words fail to express my pleasure at the E-Man story you included. I’m glad someone else remembered the Gods of Mount Olympus series. I sent away for the first two after seeing an ad in The Menomonee Fall Gazette. The third I never owned though I saw it briefly at a dealer’s table. As I recall, it was printed in a more traditional format, rather than the newsprint tabloid format of the first two. Also, they may have been printed in Star*Reach. Which brings me to an idea for some future issue of yours. While the format you’ve taken so far is perfect for covering big topics like the major companies and creators, it is unable to cover some of the other interesting things that were happening back then in comics. You may want to consider an omnibus covering the experiments and early independents occurring sporadically in the ’70s. Possible subjects include: witzend, The Menomonee Falls Gazette, The Gods of Mount Olympus, Star*Reach & Quack, and The First Kingdom. Also, seeing the reference to Estren’s fabulous Illustrated History of Underground Comix makes me wish you’d consider an issue on the Undergrounds. Here in Milwaukee, for example, was the site of Krupp Comix Works (one of the first underground publishers), whose co-founder Jim Mitchell still lives and works here (co-founder Denis Kitchen split off and transformed the company in Kitchen Sink). Jean-Daniel Breque Tournefeuille, France Just got Comic Book Artist # 12 in the mail. A wonderful informative issue that kept me from work for several hours. In his interview, Joe Staton wonders what happened to “Jason Drumm,” a Gil Kane graphic novel Joe did rough layouts for. Here is some information, culled from memory. “Jason Drumm” (or maybe it was “Drum”) was a series commissioned by the late Michel Greg, then editor of the Belgian weekly magazine Tintin (Greg had already introduced The Spirit in the magazine). Gil Kane produced two or three six- to seven-pages installments, and then (for reasons that are unknown to me) stopped working on the series, which was later on finished by a French or Belgian artist. Maybe there was an book, but I can’t find any trace of it in my reference books or on the ’Net. [See illos on pg. 111—Ye Ed.] Sorry I can’t be more specific, but this was a long time ago (the mid-’70s, I think), and, although I did subscribe to Tintin magazine at the time, I didn’t keep my collection. I hope another of your French readers can provide you more information about that obscure piece of Kane lore. On a more personal note, I wanted to thank Joe Staton, whose EMan I enjoyed tremendously and who was kind enough to draw me a doodle on his business card when I met him by chance at the 1979 World Science Fiction Convention in Brighton, England. John Backderf Via the Internet Really looking forward to your Heavy Metal and National Lampoon issues. Don’t forget some of the ’80s guys like Mark Marek and (especially) Buddy Hickerson, who did some marvelous stuff before he started the Quigman’s. Lampoon had some terrific years even after Saturday Night Live swiped all their best writers. Please do some digging and clarify what happened to Lampoon. As I understand it, the owner sold it to a guy who basically just wanted the name National Lampoon. He shut down the magazine, laid everyone off and makes money solely by selling the name to movies, thus we have National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation, even though none of the National Lampoon writers had anything to do with it. I understand there was quite a bit of bitterness over the sale, as you can imagine. I’d love to get the complete story. They still publish an issue of Lampoon about once a year just for copyright purposes. It is absolutely wretched, if you’ve not seen it. Horrible. The cartoons look like high school kids drew them. July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

As an “alternative” cartoonist myself (my strip The City appears in 70 weekly city papers) I lament the passing of Lampoon. We’ve had nothing like it since it went under. Especially for someone like me, there is no national publication that will publish “edgy” cartoons. I would’ve gotten in there by hook or crook. But dammit, I was just starting out when Lampoon folded. I’d like to see you do something with undergrounds, too. How about a Zap Comix issue??—good comix, colorful characters, it had it all. And the influence that title had on the art form still reverberates today. There’s lots of art you could pull out that’s not “dirty.” [John’s becoming a letter col regular! Thanks for your great NoMan cartoon appearing in our guest artist portfolio! As for our NATLAMP and HEAVY METAL retrospectives, please note these histories will not be regular CBA issues but rather separate books, with the HM volume tentatively planned for December.—Ye Ed.] Jeff Nettleton Springfield, Il. I just finished reading CBA #12 and have to say, great job again. I’ve been following along since #1 and am continually impressed. This is my era, although I didn’t read my first comics until about 1971-72. Nice to see Charlton getting their due. I’ve often seen them maligned in print and never understood why. Now, I admit I hadn’t seen all of their books, but, the ones I had read were fantastic. My first exposure to The Phantom in print was via a Jim Aparo issue. I was hooked. I was especially happy to see the (all too brief) piece on Don Newton. Don was one of the truly great artists who went, mostly, unnoticed. His painted Phantom covers and moody interiors really stirred my imagination. I am lucky to own a piece of original work that he drew; a pin-up of the Black Terror, arguably, the best costume of any Golden Age hero. My other prized possessions also are also products of Charlton: EMan #1, signed by Joe Staton and a sketch of Captain Marvel by that same Staton. I met him in Atlanta in 1991; a really nice guy. Beau coup kudos on the magazine; keep up the good work. I look forward to an issue about Tower Comics (another prize, cover signed by Gil Kane!). Chris Gage Via the Internet …Glad to see you’re still planning on doing spotlights on “The Other Guys.” I’d especially like to see a Skywald issue (or half issue). What a bizarre, unique company! Possible interview subjects would include Doug Moench and Tom Sutton, but above all I’d love to see an interview with Archaic Al Hewetson (what’s he doing these days)? Talk about a twisted genius! Apparently he was interviewed years ago in Comics Journal (I think #127) but I haven’t been able to find the continued on pg.110

CORRECTIONS: Both Assoc. Ed. David A. Roach and reader Chris Meeks tell me that Neal Adams & Marv Wolfman’s Dracula Lives! #2 tale was in fact reprinted in that title’s 1975 Annual. Neal and Kris Stone recently sent us the thumbnails for that wondrous tale, as seen above. [Art ©2001 Neal Adams.] Many apologies to TERRY AUSTIN for repeatedly featuring his submissions without credit. Last issue he shared the Robert E. Howard character thumbnail by Neal Adams. Also, mea culpa to MICHAEL ARNOLD for neglecting to credit him as the contributor of the unpublished Tomb of Dracula page in CBA #13, page 55. I try to keep track of who sends what but it can quickly get out of hand (being as disorganized as I am!). A plea: Could contributors please put their names on the back of photocopies sent? If possible, could electronic submissions be named for the contributor? Thank you! Finally, biggest apologies to RALPH ALFONSO whom was called "...the (surely) pseudonymous writer Ralph Alphonso…" last ish. RONN SUTTON writes, “Well, surely not. Former Montreal native Ralph Alfonso (note correct spelling) was much involved in the comic & fandom scene of the ’70s, moved to Toronto in the ’80s working in the music industry, and moved to British Columbia in the ’90s. He is a writer, reviewer and poet, who self-publishes books and CDs of his poetry. He regularly publishes his free monthly Ralph—Coffee, Jazz & Poetry 'zine, or I presume that its still going. The most recent one I have is #51 from 1999.” Oops. Sorry, Ralph! The misspelling was assuredly my error.—Ye Ed.

CBA Commentary

Alex Toth—‘Before I Forget’ The artist remembers the work of Ogden Whitney

Left: While perhaps not indicative of the mature work the artist was capable of, Ogden Whitney’s rendition of Herbie (here in the guise of the Fat Fury from Herbie #8) is his most fondly-recalled work. ©2001 Roger Broughton. Top right: Courtesy of Ron Frantz, Corporal Ogden Whitney illustration for editor Vince Sullivan’s American Air Forces #3 (Feb. 1945), a military magazine where Creig Flessel also served as art director. ©2001 respective copyright holder. 8

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

Above: In the twilight of his career, Ogden contributed nice work to the Tower “NoMan” strips. Splash panel from NoMan #2. Right: Panel detail from T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #15

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

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

2012 EISNER AWARD Nominee Best Comics-Related Journalism

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

ALTER EGO #107

ALTER EGO #108

DIEDGITIIOTANSL BL AVAILA

ALTER EGO #104

ALTER EGO #105

ALTER EGO #106

Celebrates the 50th anniversary of FANTASTIC FOUR #1 and the birth of Marvel Comics! New, never-beforepublished STAN LEE interview, art and artifacts by KIRBY, DITKO, SINNOTT, AYERS, THOMAS, and secrets behind the Marvel Mythos! Also: JIM AMASH interviews 1940s Timely editor AL SULMAN, FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, and a new cover by FRENZ and SINNOTT!

See comic art and script BEFORE and AFTER the Comics Code changes, with art by SIMON & KIRBY, DITKO, BUSCEMA, SINNOTT, GOULD, COLE, STERANKO, KRIGSTEIN, O’NEIL, GLANZMAN, ORLANDO, WILLIAMSON, HEATH, and others! Plus: FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY, JIM AMASH interviews Timely/Atlas artist CAL MASSEY, and a new cover by JOSH MEDORS!

DICK GIORDANO through the 1960s—from freelance years and Charlton “Action-Heroes” to his first stint at DC! Art by DITKO, APARO, BOYETTE, MORISI, McLAUGHLIN, GIL KANE, and others, Dick’s final convention panel with STEVE SKEATES and ROY THOMAS, JIM AMASH interviews Charlton artist TONY TALLARICO, FCA with MARC SWAYZE and ROY ALD, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, BILL SCHELLY, & DITKO/GIORDANO cover!

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

ALTER EGO #109

ALTER EGO #110

ALTER EGO #111

Big BATMAN issue, with an unused Golden Age cover by DICK SPRANG! Interviews SPRANG and JIM MOONEY, with rare and unseen Batman art by BOB KANE, JERRY ROBINSON, WIN MORTIMER, SHELLY MOLDOFF, CHARLES PARIS, and others! Part II of the TONY TALLARICO interview by JIM AMASH! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

1970s Bullpenner WARREN REECE talks about Marvel Comics and working with EVERETT, BURGOS, ROMITA, STAN LEE, MARIE SEVERIN, ADAMS, FRIEDRICH, ROY THOMAS, and others, with rare art! DEWEY CASSELL spotlights Golden Age artist MIKE PEPPE, with art by TOTH, TUSKA, SEKOWSKY, TALLARICO Part 3, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, cover by EVERETT & BURGOS, and more!

Spectre/Hour-Man creator BERNARD BAILY, ‘40s super-groups that might have been, art by ORDWAY, INFANTINO, KUBERT, HASEN, ROBINSON, and BURNLEY, conclusion of the TONY TALLARICO interview by JIM AMASH, MIKE PEPPE interview by DEWEY CASSELL, BILL SCHELLY on “50 Years of Fandom” at San Diego 2011, FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, PÉREZ cover, and more!

SHAZAM!/FAWCETT issue! The 1940s “CAPTAIN MARVEL” RADIO SHOW, interview with radio’s “Billy Batson” BURT BOYAR, P.C. HAMERLINCK and C.C. BECK on the origin of Captain Marvel, ROY THOMAS and JERRY BINGHAM on their Secret Origins “Shazam!”, FCA with MARC SWAYZE, LEONARD STARR interview, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

GOLDEN AGE NEDOR super-heroes are spotlighted, with MIKE NOLAN’s Nedor Index, and art by MORT MESKIN, JERRY ROBINSON, GEORGE TUSKA, RUBEN MOIRERA, ALEX SHOMBURG, and others! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, more 2011 Fandom Celebration, and part II of JIM AMASH’s interview with Golden Age artist LEONARD STARR! Cover by SHANE FOLEY!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

ALTER EGO #112

ALTER EGO #113

ALTER EGO #114

ALTER EGO #115

ALTER EGO #116

SUPERMAN issue! PAUL CASSIDY (early Superman artist), Italian Nembo Kid, and ARLEN SCHUMER’s look at the MORT WEISINGER era, plus an interview with son HANK WEISINGER! Art by SHUSTER, BORING, ANDERSON, PLASTINO, and others! LEONARD STARR interview Part III—FCA—Mr. Monster—more 2011 Fandom Celebration, and a MURPHY ANDERSON/ARLEN SCHUMER cover!

MARV WOLFMAN talks to RICHARD ARNDT about his first decade in comics on Tomb of Dracula, Teen Titans, Captain Marvel, John Carter, Daredevil, Nova, Batman, etc., behind a GENE COLAN cover! Art by COLAN, ANDERSON, CARDY, BORING, MOONEY, and more! Plus: the conclusion of our LEONARD STARR interview by JIM AMASH, FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

MARVEL ISSUE on Captain America and Fantastic Four! MARTIN GOODMAN’s Broadway debut, speculations about FF #1, history of the MMMS, interview with Golden Age writer/artist DON RICO, art by KIRBY, AVISON, SHORES, ROMITA, SEVERIN, TUSKA, ALLEN BELLMAN, and others! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER and BILL SCHELLY! Cover by BELLMAN and MITCH BREITWEISER!

3-D COMICS OF THE 1950S! In-depth feature by RAY (3-D) ZONE, actual red and green 1950s 3-D art (includes free glasses!) by SIMON & KIRBY, KUBERT, MESKIN, POWELL, MAURER, NOSTRAND, SWAN, BORING, SCHWARTZ, MOONEY, SHORES, TUSKA and many others! Plus FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY, and more! Cover by JOE SIMON and JACK KIRBY!

JOE KUBERT TRIBUTE! Four Kubert interviews, art by RUSS HEATH, NEAL ADAMS, MURPHY ANDERSON, MICHAEL KALUTA, SAM GLANZMAN, and others, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, BILL SCHELLY’s Comic Fandom Archive, FCA’s Captain Video conclusion by GEORGE EVANS that inspired Avengers foe Ultron, cover by KUBERT, with a portrait by DANIEL JAMES COX!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships April 2013

Towering Achievement

Rise & Fall of Tower Comics Chris Irving on the history of the short-lived comics publisher by Chris Irving Below: Courtesy of Larry Ivie, the original splash page to the first Dynamo story, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1, drawn by Wally Wood. Initially writer Len Brown named the character“Thunderbolt,” as evidenced by the logo, but he was subsequently renamed by Wally Wood.

Comic books have survived over six decades by being a resilient medium; despite any downfalls that may plague the industry and often devour whole companies, it seems that more companies sprout up in place once the industry hits another upswing. In the mid-1960s, the Marvel line of comic books made comics a commodity again, as even college students were now enjoying the exploits of super-heroes such as Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, and The Mighty Thor. Tower Books, a publishing line most known for

their inexpensive paperbacks, decided that the four-color medium may be worth pursuing. With the efforts of publisher Harry Shorten and editor Samm Schwartz, both formerly of Archie Comics, they started a new line of comics to hopefully cash in on the craze. The Tower paperback line had originally started under the World Publishing Company, a company acknowledged with the first book on Charles Lindbergh’s historic flight (titled Lindbergh, The Lone Eagle) in 1929. World was also the publishers of the Webster’s New World Dictionary. According to the World Publishing Web site, World established Tower Books in 1939, a paperback reprint line cover-priced at 49¢ each. The Tower line continued throughout the ’60s, when World Publishing was sold to Times Mirror in 1963. Although there is little information to be had on Tower Books, it is assumed Tower was part of a package deal with World. Whatever the case, the Tower line joined with Midwood Books, a publisher of mens’ paperbacks, in 1964. Midwood had published male-oriented books featuring scantily-clad women on lurid covers, many of which were beautifully painted by artist Paul Rader. Apparently, many of Midwood’s early novels featured pseudonymous works by established authors, such as Robert Silverberg, Lawrence Block, and Donald Westlake. It is very possible that, with an expanding base, Tower decided to do comic books, or was approached by publisher Harry Shorten. According to longtime Archie comic artist Dan DeCarlo, who worked for Shorten at Tower, the details were never very clear: “[Harry] was very secretive about that,” DeCarlo recalled. “We thought that it was his company and [that] he formed it.” The mid-’60s was also a boom period for comic books, the first one since the early ’50s, fueled on by the “hip” success of Stan Lee’s self-referential Marvel Comics. Tower apparently wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to join in this latest super-hero revival. “They decided to go into comic books in the mid-’60s, when other people decided to delve into them,” the late historian Rich Morrissey said. “With the Batman TV show and the Silver Age comics doing well, people were trying to get into the field. Publishers like Harvey and Archie, who had been doing non-super-hero comics, were trying to get back into the super-hero field. Tower’s superheroes were basically an attempt to combine the super-hero craze with the spy craze: James Bond and Man From U.N.C.L.E., and things like that.” The Tower Comics offices were located at 185 Madison Avenue, New York City, as part of the Tower Books office. Steve Skeates, one of the few remaining people involved with Tower recall the offices as a typical New York office. “There were one or two rooms in this wing of a floor where the Tower/Belmont books were done,” Skeates described. “Just a couple of rooms devoted to the comic book people. There were only two people there: Samm Schwartz, who was the editor of the whole line, and some assistant, a letterer.” Russ Jones, an infrequent freelance writer for Tower’s war title, Fight the Enemy, remembers, “The comics department was at the very end of a long dark hallway. Samm [Schwartz] and [his assistant Bill Vigoda] were the only two there all the time. It was not like any other company. Harry's father worked as the janitor. No kidding. This old guy with a broom and a mop and swab.” Shortly before Tower Comics’ inception, Shorten had served as a longtime editor at Archie Comics, a company formed in the late 1930s as MLJ with super-heroes such as The Shield and Hangman, characters who soon gave way to the company’s current flag characCOMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

ter and namesake, Archie Andrews, “America’s Typical Teenager.” Shorten began his MLJ/Archie career as a writer, churning out hundreds of scripts for such characters as Steel Sterling, The Web, Black Hood, Wizard, and many more. In fact, Shorten co-created the first patriotic hero, The Shield, in Pep Comics #1 (Jan. 1940), with artist Irv Novick. “We met at MLJ, which is now Archie Comics,” Irv Novick said in a recent interview. “Harry was a nice fellow. We were very friendly. As a matter of fact,” Novick said with a chuckle, “he would come to our house and take a shower.... We worked together at MLJ for quite a while. After I came home from the Army in 1947, Harry and I created a syndicated strip called Cynthia. He wrote it, and I drew it and inked it.” Somewhere in this chronology, Shorten wrote the daily newspaper comic gag panel There Oughta Be a Law. How Shorten attained the status of publisher remains a mystery as do the precise identities of the company’s owners. Russ Jones recalls the publisher fondly. “Harry looked like he could have played gangsters in ’30s Warner Brothers films. Everything he did was a knock-off of something. Even his comic panel had a Jimmy Hatlo look about it... a total swipe.” Samm Schwartz joined Archie as an artist in the late ’40s, working on their flagship teenage humor titles. By the 1960s, Schwartz attained an editorial position at the company, but teaming with fellow Archie editor Shorten, the duo jumped ship in 1965 to help helm the fledgling imprint of Tower Comics. “They had been giving Harry Shorten a hard time at Archie,” DeCarlo said. “…Harry Shorten did quit but, in the meantime before that, he had gone into the comic book business with the Tower Corporation. He got me, Samm Schwartz, and [artist] Harry Lucey to work for him. It was funny the way we used to do it: We were all a little nervous about getting caught by Archie and canned. Harry [Lucey] used to do the layouts, and I would do the finishes for a story or two, and then we’d reverse it with my doing the layouts and [Lucey] doing the finishes. Samm was the editor, and the books were coming along good, and expanding…. “Meanwhile, Harry [Lucey] and I were still working for Archie, and they were furious. They knew we were doing something, but we kept denying that we were doing it. [The editor] told me ‘I know you’re tickling the stuff.’ I said ‘Not me, but if you think it’s me, it’s somebody imitating me.’” Lucey, DeCarlo, Shorten and Schwartz worked primarily on Tippy Teen, an Archie-like teen humor comic book that premiered in November of 1965, and its companion title, Tippy’s Friends Go-Go and Animal (debuting in June ’66). While Tippy Teen has become a mere footnote in comics history, it is Tower’s inaugural “Action Series” title that the company is now remembered by: T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. While none of the titles would necessarily thrive as well as the Marvel or DC lines, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (and its spin-offs, Dynamo (August ’66) and NoMan (November ’66)) has been considered the resilient and the most celebrated of Tower’s books. This flagship title ran for 20 issues (debuting in the same month as Tippy— November ’65), while Tippy Teen surpassed it to 27 issues, Go-Go and Animal lasted 15, the war title Fight the Enemy (August ’66) lasted three, and Undersea Agent (January ’66) a mere six. Incidentally, except for an isolated filler story appearance in TA #13, Undersea Agent was never explicitly connected to the world of Dynamo & Co., even though its name hints at being a spin-off title. (Dynamo lasted four issues and NoMan reached two.) With neither Schwartz or Shorten versed in the super-hero genre, it was placed upon Wally Wood, the legendary EC Comics and Mad magazine artist, to develop and create a new super-team to compete with Stan Lee’s hipster heroes and DC editor Julius Schwartz’s resolute characters. Wood had only recently left a short but memorable stint at Marvel, redesigning Daredevil and inking Jack Kirby at the House of Ideas, and—when the Tower offer arrived—the artist was working on Harvey Comics’ newly-revived adventure comics, but Wood ran into editorial disagreements at Harvey. “Harry Shorten called me when he started to publish comics, and I had a dream setup,” Wood wrote J. David Spurlock. “I created all the characters, wrote most of the stories, and drew most of the covers. I did as much of the art as I could.” July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

The agents of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. were a cross between conventional super-heroes and Cold War spy television (the most commonly attributed spy inspiration is the then-popular The Man from U.N.C.L.E.). The long-winded acronym T.H.U.N.D.E.R. stood for The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves. When a scientist was killed by armies of the villainous Warlord (who, by no doubt, happened to be a Communist), three secret weapons were found by the non-descript, machine-gun toting T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents: A belt to increase one’s molecular density, an invisible stealth cloak, and a helmet that gave the wearer telekinetic powers. The three weapons were given to costumed agents Dynamo, NoMan (who also possessed android bodies he’d trade off when one was killed), and Menthor, respectively. The non-super-powered espionage team, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad (a crime-busting quintet riddled with stereotypes) took the thankless role of second-string players. Costumed characters Raven and Lightning would soon join the ranks. A line-up of then-established artists were recruited to draw the features, including Gil Kane, Mike Sekowsky, John Giunta, Ogden Whitney, Chic Stone, Paul Reinman, and even Blackhawk legend Reed Crandall, with most of the stories apparently by Wood himself. According to DeCarlo, Tower offered better rates than Archie, yet not as high as those of Marvel or DC. The T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents were conceived primarily by Wood. While serving as Tower’s art director in

title, Wood is universally considered the de facto editor for most of the TA material. But most freelancers still dealt with official editor Samm Schwartz at 185 Madison. One of those freelancers was none other than future comics innovator Jim Steranko who had just broken into the field in editor Joe Simon’s titles at Harvey Comics. According to Peter DePree in his article “Steranko: Narrative of Blood and Dreams” (Comic Book Marketplace #28), in 1966 the artist pitched a new title to Tower— Super Agent X—received approval, and subsequently delivered a 20page origin story and cover roughs to editor Samm Schwartz, who “savaged page after page, finally stating that he didn’t even like the shape of a female nose! (The woman scientist was patterned on Kim Novak; short platinum hair, straight nose.) Schwartz insisted it be

bobbed like Archie’s Veronica.” The young creator then grabbed Samm’s hand in a “paralyzing tight grip,” took back the pages, and promptly left the Tower editorial offices to make his visit to Marvel Comics, home of his most highly-regarded comic book work. (Ah, what could have been! The story, “The Exordium of X,” reportedly remains unpublished.) Comics historian Mark Evanier recalls cartoonist Manny Stallman “did the work with no contact with Wood and that he never saw the Tuska story that introduced the character [Raven]. He was called in by Schwartz and shown some sketches of the Raven.

They had in mind a Hawkman imitation, he said, but he asked if he could take the strip in different directions… and that was it. He wrote all the ones he drew.” Evanier remembers acclaimed artist Mike Sekowsky told him of a similar experience with the publisher. “His recollections were pretty much the same thing as Manny's. He didn't deal with Wood and was under the impression that Schwartz was assigning him work because Wood's studio was not delivering the quantities of work they were supposed to. Lightning was, of course, intended as a Flash imitation and Sekowsky drew a few pages (never printed) of a script that he said might as well have been a Flash story. He said he was thinking of quitting the strip because he was afraid DC would get mad at him but then Tower stopped him on that script and gave him a new one (by Steve Skeates, I think) that took the character in enough of a different direction.” But the super-hero best identified with Tower, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, and Wally Wood remains Dynamo, a joint creation of Wood and moonlighting writer Len Brown, who then worked as assistant creative director for Topps Chewing Gum Company. “Dynamo was a mutual creation,” Brown said. “I named the character because of the belt. I was going to call him Thunderbolt, and have him wear a ‘Thunderbelt.’ I came up with the name T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, and Wally liked it a lot. The reason I know… [is that] when I was a kid, I was in love with this Gene Autry serial called The Phantom Empire. The bad guys in it were called the Thunder Riders. I thought that was a great name, so I remember maybe even suggesting Thunder Riders, and Wally suggested T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. My hero’s name was Thunderbolt, and Wally changed it to Dynamo, who was originally the name of the villain.” (Interestingly, Dynamo is mistakenly referred to as “Thunderbolt” in one panel of the character’s debut story.) [Please refer to Larry Ivie’s article on pg. 64, which presents a different version of the “origin” of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents—Ye Ed.] “He was such a gentle guy,” Brown said of Wood. “He talked so softly that, when you were on the phone with him, you would almost have to strain to hear him.” “Nice guy,” inker Mike Esposito said. “You thought he was John Wayne, he talked with slitty eyes, real cool. I met him a couple of times at parties and at Joe Orlando’s house. He was there, Wally Wood, and he had his girlfriend with him. He played the guitar, he loved to play. I don’t know how good he was… I was pretty drunk at the time.” Wood often met with artists at his 74th Street studio, where he did a majority of the work, editorial and creative, on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. and its spin-off titles, NoMan and Dynamo, with the aid of his numerous assistants and studio-mates Dan Adkins, Bill Pearson, Ralph Reese, Tim Battersby-Brent, Tony Coleman, Roger Brand, and Richard Bassford, among others. As for the non-super-hero books that Tower did, Judomaster creator and artist Frank McLaughlin has recollections of doing an aborted job on Tippy Teen. “I penciled a job for [Schwartz], and had just worked with him over the phone,” McLaughlin remembered. “I didn’t get paid for the thing. I called him up, and we tried to track it down. It was a complete fiasco. I finally got a hold of him, and asked him ‘What happened to that Tippy Teen story?’ He said ‘Well, somebody who worked here left it on the cutting board and, guess what? It got cut up.’ If I recall correctly, he paid me a cut-rate price that we settled on. I didn’t do any more work for them.” “Hilarious,” was the word DeCarlo used to describe Schwartz. “You never could have met a funnier guy. He had a very dry sense of humor, but everything was fun to him.” “Nice guy,” Russ Jones recalls. “Dark hair, heavy black, hornrimmed glasses. There was another guy at Tower, [who had been] the artist of 'Super Duck.' He was Samm's assistant, Bill Vigoda, who always had a smile on his face, the only grin in the office.” It seems that other Tower freelancers had little interaction with the Editor-in-Chief. “I maybe met [Schwartz] one time,” Brown said. “Harry Shorten was the publisher, and I never met him. I got the feeling that he didn’t get that involved with the editorial content of the book.” COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

“He was, in a way, sort of lost doing super-heroes. He didn’t understand the form, nor did he particularly like the form,” Steve Skeates recalled of Schwartz. “But the good thing was, he knew that he didn’t know what was going on. It wasn’t one of those situations where he thought he knew, but didn’t. I really liked the guy, and he really helped me along, giving me a lot of work. I also worked on the Undersea Agent book, which [Wally Wood] had nothing to do with. It was Samm alone who was editing that one.” While Schwartz had minimal contact with the super-hero line, it was Shorten who had next to none, according to Skeates. “The only conversation I ever had with Shorten was when he stopped me in the hall. He had read my Lightning versus the Warp Wizard story, and had liked it,” Skeates said. “The fact was that the Warp Wizard’s real name was Richard Wizard, and Shorten said ‘That’s not hokey enough. It’s got to be something like Gizzard the Wizard.’ Generally Shorten would drop by every once in a while and see Sam and check up on how things were going, but I don’t think he read that stuff, and I was surprised he read that one story of mine.” While Skeates worked directly for Schwartz, many of the writers and artists on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents worked through Wood from his studio. Gil Kane was drawing the debut “Menthor” strip (in TA #1), and actually had someone working in turn for him: inker Mike Esposito. “Gil Kane came to me with stuff to do,” Esposito remembered. “There was a job, and Gil came to my house and asked if I’d do it because he was backed up. I helped him. There were pencils, but they were not the kind you’d get from Gil down the line, when he’d do stuff that was more detailed. I did a couple for him, and he evidently liked them.” While Tower boasted so many luminary artists, what has become the most obscure T.H.U.N.D.E.R. agent, Raven, was completely taken over by one of Tower’s most obscure cartoonists: Manny Stallman. It seems Stallman’s material may have been too mature and advanced for Tower’s younger audience. “Manny did the whole thing, writing and art,” Skeates said of Stallman’s Raven, a character Skeates had earlier created. “His stories were very different from the rest of the book, and most of the regular readers did not like that. Most of the pros that I knew liked the stuff; maybe it was more adult than the rest of the book. It rang a bell with older readers, while the younger readers were left cold.” The Tower comic books were different than the ones then inhabiting the newsstands; while the average comic book was 36 pages for 12¢, Tower’s titles were 68 pages at 25¢ an issue. Stories were around a maximum of ten pages in length, with dialogue kept to a minimum, the lettering larger in size than the competitors’. The higher price tag was apparently the result of the glut of comics on the stands. Mark Evanier said, “As I understand it, the distributor insisted on that format. There was the feeling that the newsstand was supporting as many comics in the smaller format as it could handle, so anything that was added would cut into those sales unless it was in a more expensive package.” (Rumors were heard that it was comics-as-paperbacks that lured Shorten into producing comic books in the first place. Russ Jones said, “His paperback line was what kept the company going,” and in fact, the company released four paperback collections of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents reprints, Dynamo, NoMan, Menthor, and The Terrific Trio, all published in 1966, the heyday of Batmania when Signet, Lancer and other competitors were bringing out their own paperback compilations of super-hero reprints.) “I felt it was kind of a backlash to the Marvel thing, which was at that point, getting very heavy in the dialogue,” Skeates said. July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

“Tower was trying to capture the market in the opposite direction with all the people who didn’t want to read all that heavy Marvel stuff, but wanted the interesting artwork and the fun stories. Now they had an alternative.” “I felt they made a big mistake,” Brown said of Tower’s format. “Back then, books were selling for 12¢ to 15¢, and [Tower] was trying to make it for 25¢. A quarter doesn’t sound like much now, but it was double the price of a typical comic book. I think the price worked against them.” The page count was cut to 52 pages with T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #17 (December 1967), which opened with a reprint of the origin story from #1. T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents was then the second-tolast title (before Tippy’s Friend Go-Go and Tippy Teen) published by Tower, and went on hiatus until September 1968’s #18, which weighed in at 52 pages (including the inside covers). It seems that Tower may have wanted to recoup any purchased

The Secret Origin of Tower Comics A Short History of Harry Shorten by Michael Feldman [At the very last minute—after this issue went out for proofing—Michael contacted me to say he had some info on the origins of Tower Comics. Our thanks to Michael for the split-second turnaround! Opinions expressed are Mr. Feldman’s and not necessarily CBA’s P.O.V.—Ye Ed.] Harry Shorten, the man behind Tower—a brief rundown of his achievements: Born 1912, sports pulp writer, editorial director for Archie/MLJ Comics from around 1941 into the ’50s, writes a panel newspaper strip called There Oughta Be a Law with art by Al Fagaly (1945-70?). Shorten seems to be involved with sleazy paperback publishing company called Graphic from 1949 to ’57. He starts a new company, more likely just a transformation of the former, into Midwood Books in 1957-58. After a brief attempt at respectable beginnings, Midwood publishes exclusively hardcore sex novels (by standards of the day) into the mid-’60s. Among the people who pass through the door, names that will make fans’s eyes light up are: Frank Frazetta, Gardner Fox, Lawrence Block, and on and on. Shorten is simultaneously co-publisher with Louis Silberkeit (partner in Archie, the “L” in MLJ) in Belmont Books. They are a more respectable, only moderately sleazy, paperback publisher in the 1960-67 period. One can only speculate how long Silberkeit and Shorten were partners, though probably longer than is generally acknowledged. Silberkeit makes a renewed effort in paperbacks when his pulp-turned-magazine line, Columbia Publications, is killed in Feb. ’60 by his distributor. Starting in the mid-’60s is a new publishing imprint called Midwood-Tower, published by Tower Publications. It veers more towards respectability. Lacking time to elaborate here, readers will have to use their interpolation skills. It is the confident opinion of this author that the Tower Comics line was a brief and essentially last-gasp effort on the part of the two publishers Shorten and his silent partner Silberkeit when they found their paperback lines were going down the tubes. With the censorship laws in the U.S. becoming liberalized in the mid-’60s, they could see the writing on the wall. Everybody, from legitimate publishers to johnny-come-lately new entrants started porn—now called “erotica”—lines and Midwood Books lost their dominant share of the marketplace. Belmont was just sleazy, cheap and lousy, dying of natural causes. Shorten with Silberkeit—perhaps hiding in the background to protect his Archie image— were just one of many quick-buck artists who got back into super-hero comic publishing around 1965, spurred by a renewed interest in nostalgia and pop culture. This was further escalated by the Jules Feiffer article in Playboy that became the book The Great Comic Book Heroes. Hugh Hefner started showing old Batman serials at his famous quasi-orgy parties at the Playboy Mansion. The publicity lead ultimately to a successful matinee theatrical release of them in 196465. This led to the TV show, and the rest is history.

stories by sales of remaining issues of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, especially when one considers how November 1968’s #19 (which featured a collage cover culled from previous covers, possibly as a solution to avoid paying for new cover art). It take a year when the cover-dated November 1969 T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #20 would hit the stands, featuring all reprints, save for a Chic Stone-drawn reprise of the group’s origin. A letter from the editors was printed on the title splash, containing these ominous words: “We have also received a great deal of mail asking ‘Will T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents still continue to be published?’ The answer to that quite frankly depends on sales and letters… Sales of this magazine and its response from you, the reader.” With only Stone’s three pages of original material in the entire issue, it seems apparent that Tower had pretty much thrown in the towel. According to Skeates, Tower’s demise was quite obvious to all of the talent involved. “There were rumors all over the place, and people were rushing to get their jobs in so that they could get that last paycheck. For example, the last Lightning story that Chic Stone did had a lot of stats in it, just so he could get it done.” Wood explained the demise of the “Tower Action Series” in a letter to J. David Spurlock: “By the time we had a Dynamo book, and a NoMan book I was spread pretty thin. But it was fun… I ran 16

into Harry Shorten years later, and asked him [why Shorten cancelled the comic line]. He told me the books always made money. He was forced out by his distributor [PDC], who also handled comics for a big company [Archie]. I was glad to hear that my books weren’t a failure.” (Interestingly, though Tower Comics raided Archie to be its publisher and editor (along with some humor artists) and Wood alludes to distributor PDC’s proprietary relationship with Archie as the cause of the Tower’s demise, mother company Tower Books merged with the Archie Comics-associated paperback imprint Belmont sometime in the mid-’60s, proving business is a strange world indeed.) With the cancellation of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, Tower Comics continued publishing Tippy Teen, whose last issue (#27) was coverdated February 1970, sounding the death knell for the line. (Oddly, the inventory for Tippy Teen would later be acquired by Martin Goodman’s Atlas/Seaboard comics, and reprinted under the title Vicki in 1975 for four issues.) “Harry Shorten sold the company, without telling Samm about it,” DeCarlo said. “When he did tell him, he said ‘This is your last day, because I sold the company and I’m leaving.’” If Shorten was only a partial owner of Tower Comics, selling his share to Tower Books, the real story behind who exactly ran the line appears lost to the ages. Unfortunately, our investigation revealed scant information on the exact business arrangement between Shorten and Tower Books. Tower Comics were most likely on the downslide, caused by anything from poor distribution to an overabundance of titles. “I think they overextended themselves,” Skeates theorized. “They didn’t have a proven track record that would enable someone to extend a line as quickly as they did. They ran into trouble with that. The T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents book wasn’t around that long before they came out with the Dynamo book. Quickly on the heels of that was a NoMan book, and they even had plans for a Lightning book. I think they were going too far too fast, and didn’t have the proven sales record, a lot of the records weren’t even in yet. They also kept going with books that didn’t sell well; Undersea Agent never sold well, but they kept going for six issues.” Russ Jones recalls, “I actually had a title in the works with them when they folded. I pitched a yarn about a meek little guy who gets abducted by aliens and becomes a very different person when he is returned. I actually wrote and laid out the first issue, but Tower was in collapse.” Dan DeCarlo says that Shorten was able to retire shortly after leaving Tower Comics, possibly off profits from any shares he may have sold in the end. Shorten eventually moved to California. “I understand he was into publishing books there,” DeCarlo recalled. “Most of the time, he was just travelling around the country.” Schwartz, on the other hand, struggled as a freelancer, and eventually wound up back at Archie. “At first he just left Tower and Archie, and was doing a teenage girl book for DC,” DeCarlo said. “When DC dropped it, Samm was left without anything, so he went back to Archie… When he died, he was broke, living in poverty alone.” Schwartz’s life ended when a cancer he thought he’d beaten came out of remission. According to DeCarlo, Schwartz didn’t let it affect his humor: “Even at the end of his life, he was funny, calling up all his friends. I couldn’t understand why he was calling, but what he was saying (reading between the lines) was ‘This is goodbye, I’m dying.’” Tower-Midwood Books had joined with Belmont books in 1964, a line that included everything from unauthorized biographies, to novels featuring The Shadow. The resulting company was christened Belmont-Tower. Tower soldiered through the ‘70s and into the early 1980s, entering into bankruptcy on August 18, 1982. The T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents would return to comics a year later, courtesy of John Carbonaro’s imprint, JC Publications. Despite numerous revivals with a variety of talent, it is the initial Tower Comics run that has been regarded as the most memorable and defining, books that contained often innovative stories, spectacular artwork and quite simply, purely fun stories, uncomplicated by obtuse continuities or over-developed personalities, perhaps a lesson which would benefit the field today. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

THE RETRO COMICS EXPERIENCE!

Edited by MICHAEL EURY, BACK ISSUE magazine celebrates comic books of the 1970s, 1980s, and today through recurring (and rotating) departments like “Pro2Pro” (dialogue between professionals), “BackStage Pass” (behind-the-scenes of comicsbased media), “Greatest Stories Never Told” (spotlighting unrealized comics series or stories), and more!

Go to www.twomorrows.com for other issues, and an ULTIMATE BUNDLE, with all the issues at HALF-PRICE!

BACK ISSUE #54

BACK ISSUE #55

DIEDGITIIOTANSL BL AVAILA

BACK ISSUE #51

BACK ISSUE #52

BACK ISSUE #53

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “AllInterview Issue”! Part 2 of an exclusive STEVE ENGLEHART interview (continued from ALTER EGO #103)! “Pro2Pro” interviews between SIMONSON & LARSEN, MOENCH & WEIN, and comics letterers KLEIN & CHIANG. Plus JOHN OSTRANDER, MICHAEL USLAN, and longtime DC color artist ADRIENNE ROY! Cover by Englehart collaborator MARSHALL ROGERS!

Bronze Age Mystery Comics! Interviews with BERNIE WRIGHTSON, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, GERRY TALAOC, DC mystery writer LORE SHOBERG, MARK EVANIER and DAN SPIEGLE discuss Scooby-Doo, Charlton chiller anthologies, Black Orchid, Madame Xanadu art and commentary by TONY DeZUNIGA, MIKE KALUTA, VAL MAYERIK, DAVID MICHELINIE, MATT WAGNER, and a rare cover painting by WRIGHTSON!

“Gods!” Takes an in-depth look at WALTER SIMONSON’s Thor, the Thunder God in the Bronze Age, “Pro2Pro” interview with TOM DeFALCO and RON FRENZ, Hercules: Prince of Power, Moondragon, Three Ways to End the New Gods Saga, exclusive interview with fantasy writer MICHAEL MOORCOCK, art and commentary by GERRY CONWAY, JACK KIRBY, BOB LAYTON, and more, with a swingin’ Thor cover by SIMONSON!

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

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

BACK ISSUE #56

BACK ISSUE #57

BACK ISSUE #58

“Liberated Ladies” eyeing female characters that broke barriers in the Bronze Age: Big Barda, Valkyrie, Ms. Marvel, Phoenix, Savage She-Hulk, and the sword-wielding Starfire. Plus a “Pro2Pro” interview with JILL THOMPSON, GAIL SIMONE, and BARBARA KESEL, art and commentary by JOHN BYRNE, GEORGE PEREZ, JACK KIRBY, MIKE VOSBURG, and more, with a new cover by BRUCE TIMM!

“Licensed Comics”! Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Man from Atlantis, DC’s Edgar Rice Burroughs backups (John Carter, Pellucidar, Carson of Venus), Marvel’s Warlord of Mars, and an interview with CAROL SERLING, wife of ROD SERLING. With art and commentary from ANDERSON, BYRNE, CLAREMONT, DORMAN, DUURSEMA, KALUTA, MILLER, OSTRANDER, and more. Cover by BRIAN KOSCHACK.

“Avengers Assemble!” Writer ROGER STERN’S acclaimed 1980s Avengers run, West Coast Avengers, early Avengers toys, and histories of Hawkeye, Mockingbird, and Wonder Man, with art and commentary from JOHN and SAL BUSCEMA, JOHN BYRNE, BRETT BREEDING, TOM DeFALCO, STEVE ENGLEHART, BOB HALL, AL MILGROM, TOM MORGAN, TOM PALMER, JOE SINNOTT, and more. PÉREZ cover!

JENETTE KAHN interviewed by ROBERT GREENBERGER, DC’s Dollar Comics and unrealized kids’ line (featuring an aborted Sugar and Spike revival), the Wonder Woman Foundation, and the early days of the Vertigo imprint. Exploring the talents of ROSS ANDRU, KAREN BERGER, STEVE BISSETTE, JIM ENGEL, GARTH ENNIS, NEIL GAIMAN, SHELLY MAYER, ALAN MOORE, GRANT MORRISON, and more!

“JLA in the Bronze Age”! The “Satellite Years” of the ‘70s and early ‘80s, with BUCKLER, ENGLEHART, PÉREZ, and WEIN, salute to DICK DILLIN, the Justice League “Detroit” team, with CONWAY, PATTON, McDONNELL, plus CONWAY and GEOFF JOHNS go “Pro2Pro” on writing the JLA, unofficial JLA/Avengers crossovers, and Marvel’s JLA, the Squadron Supreme. Cover by McDONNELL and BILL WRAY!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

BACK ISSUE #59

BACK ISSUE #60

BACK ISSUE #61

BACK ISSUE #62

BACK ISSUE #63

“Toon Comics!” History of Space Ghost in comics, Comico’s Jonny Quest and Star Blazers, Marvel’s Hanna-Barbera line and Dennis the Menace, behind the scenes at Marvel Productions, Ltd., and a look at the unpublished Plastic Man comic strip. Art/comments by EVANIER, FOGLIO, HEMPEL and WHEATLEY, MARRS, RUDE, TOTH, WILDEY, and more. All-new painted Space Ghost cover by STEVE RUDE!

“Halloween Heroes and Villains”! JEPH LOEB and TIM SALE’s chiller Batman: The Long Halloween, the Scarecrow (both the DC and Marvel versions), Solomon Grundy, Man-Wolf, Lord Pumpkin, Rutland, Vermont’s Halloween parades, and… the Korvac Saga’s Dead Avengers! With commentary from and/or art by CONWAY, GIL KANE, LOPRESTI, MOENCH, PÉREZ, DAVE WENZEL, and more. Cover by TIM SALE!

“Tabloids and Treasuries,” spotlighting every all-new tabloid from the 1970s. Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man, The Bible, Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles, The Wizard of Oz, even the PAUL DINI/ALEX ROSS World’s Greatest Super-Heroes editions! Commentary and art by ADAMS, GARCIA-LOPEZ, GRELL, KIRBY, KUBERT, MAYER, ROMITA SR., TOTH, and more. Wraparound cover by ALEX ROSS!

“Superman in the Bronze Age”! JULIUS SCHWARTZ, CURT SWAN, Superman Family, World of Krypton miniseries, and ALAN MOORE’s “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”, art & comments by ADAMS, ANDERSON, CARDY, CHAYKIN, PAUL KUPPERBERG, OKSNER, O’NEIL, PASKO, ROZAKIS, SAVIUK, and more. Cover by GARCÍA-LÓPEZ and SCOTT WILLIAMS! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

“British Invasion” issue! History of Marvel UK, Beatles in comics, DC’s ‘80s British talent pool, V for Vendetta, Excalibur, Marshal Law, Doctor Who, “Pro2Pro” interview with PETER MILLIGAN & BRENDAN McCARTHY, plus BERGER, BOLLAND, DAVIS, GIBBONS, STAN LEE, LLOYD, MOORE, DEZ SKINN, and others. Fold-out triptych cover by RON WILSON and DAVE HUNT of Marvel UK’s rare 1970s “Quadra-Poster”!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(84-page TABLOID with color) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

Vintage Interview

An Interview with Woody Shel Dorf’s 1981 talk with the master comic book artist Conducted by Shel Dorf

Above: As artist Mike Zeck related in his CBA #12 interview, he was a frequent photographer of the master storyteller Wally Wood. An uncropped version of Zeck’s picture appeared in Alter Ego #8. (We’ll try not to be redundant with the images in A/E, but believe you me, pix of Woody are hard to come by!) Courtesy of Roy Thomas and Richard Pryor. Below: CBA’s mascot by J.D. King was designed and named for Woody in homage to the renowned artist. ©2001 J.D. King.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview by comics fan legend Shel Dorf appeared in The Buyer’s Guide #403, August 1, 1981, scant months before the death of Wallace Wood. While a mere two questions deal with our issue’s theme, a Wood interview is as rare as a honest comics publisher and we are delighted CBA compadre Shel Dorf contributed this most welcome piece. Shel’s original introduction follows. This interview is ©2001 Shel Dorf. “This interview with Wallace Wood is long in coming because every question and answer had to be carefully extracted from a very poor quality tape. My regular typist missed every other word in ‘Woody’s’ replies. Therefore I had to replay the tape myself, electronically strengthening the volume. It was of great importance to get every word, because I’d promised Woody it would be accurate. So with loving care I present what is an exclusive (he told me that his only other printed interview was in Marv Wolfman’s old fanzine) and I hope informative visit with one of our most admired craftsmen in the world of cartooning. “Wally Wood himself is very quiet-spoken and modest about his status in the field. He almost seemed embarrassed to speak about himself. Perhaps this prevented me from really probing, but we both enjoyed the interview. It was made the last day of the 1980 San Diego Comic-Con, and Woody was about to leave. He agreed to a 15-minute interview, but we stretched it to 45 minutes. I hope I have the chance to speak with him at greater length next time. There are always those ‘Damn! I should have asked him…’ thoughts. “So here it is, dear reader… just for you!”—Shel Dorf Shel Dorf: Thanks for coming to the San Diego Comic-Con, Woody. Did you enjoy it? Wallace Wood: Oh, it was nice. It’s the best convention I’ve been to! Shel: Were the fans polite? Woody: A couple of them asked for drawings. I told them I wasn’t doing any, and they just went away. Shel: I’ve never read much about your background, your early influences. Were there any artists in your family? Woody: My Uncle Wallace was an artist, but he was just a natural. Shel: Did he encourage you to draw as a youngster? Woody: I don’t remember. I think so. Shel: Where were you born? Woody: I was born in Minnesota, but I grew up in Wisconsin and Michigan. I’ve been living in New York now for about 25 years. Shel: How early in life did you show talent as an artist? Woody: I discovered cartoons when I was six years old, and I drew them. Shel: Which cartoons did you copy? Woody: Always liked science-fiction.

Shel: When did you start drawing in ink? The pros always called the kids “blue-inkers” because they used fountain-pen ink in their early attempts. Woody: Well, I did use a fountain pen! And without pencil—direct pen. Shel: Wow, that’s confidence! Did you impress your instructors in school? Woody: No, I always got bad marks in art. I always had the attitude toward art teachers that if they were such hot shots, why were they teaching art in a jerkwater high school? I guess it showed. Always got a “C” in art. Shel: Really? Well, I guess it’s true that, a bad art teacher can do damage to a budding career. Do you remember your first professional job? Woody: The first professional job was lettering for Fox romance comics in 1948. Shel: Did you have to move to New York for that? Didn’t you sell any work in your hometown? Woody: I came to New York right after I got out of the Merchant Marine. Shel: While you were in the Merchant Marine, did you do any drawings for the camp newspapers? Woody: Yeah, I did drawings for a couple of Army papers. Mimeograph stuff. Sexy gals. I still have a copy around somewhere. I got in trouble with my boss. Every issue in the camp was suppressed by the authorities. Shel: How long did your lettering work last at Fox Publishing? Woody: About a year. I also started doing backgrounds, then inking. Shel: And this was for the romance type of comic? What did it pay? Woody: Most of it was the romance stuff. For complete pages, it was $5 a page. Shel: Could you live on that? Woody: I was sharing a double room for three bucks a week. Shel: Did you develop speed at that point, so you could earn more money? Woody: Oh yeah. Twice a week I would ink ten pages in one day. Shel: When did you start doing the more creative work, where the Wood style came through? Woody: It wasn’t until EC with the science-fiction. Although I did finally get to draw some romance books for Fox. Shel: What was it like working for Bill Gaines in those classic days? Woody: It was always pretty good. Got paid right on the spot, got a check right away. He gave us presents at Christmas time. I remember once he gave us a movie camera and projector set, which I’m still using. Shel: I know Gaines kept all the original art, which Russ Cochran eventually used for his EC reprint volumes. Do you get a percentage of those book sales of your early EC work? Woody: Yeah. Shel: Then Gaines continues to be a great boss to his talented crew! It seems he’s always been a terrific publisher to work for. Too bad the comic book artists of recent days don’t have a better shake! Do you think you’d work for Gaines again? Woody: No, I don’t want to work for anybody else now…. Shel: Why not? Woody: I just do my own stuff. Publish it myself. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

Shel: Has this been a successful approach for you? Woody: Yeah, we’re just about sold out of the first printing of The Wizard King; 8,000 copies at $10 apiece! Shel: Was it expensive to publish that book? Woody: Yeah, well, the binding cost the most: 60¢ to print it, but a buck for the binding. Shel: Well, it’s a beautiful product. In face, everything you do has a built-in quality to it. The Wood style of inking is so meticulous, so detailed—your figures took sculpted… I could go on and on! I know you were fast, but you must have spent hours and hours of careful work on your comic book pages. Woody: Well, I worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for years. Being a comic book artist is like sentencing yourself to life imprisonment at hard labor in solitary confinement! I don’t think I’d do it again. Shel: Really? It was enjoyable, though, wasn’t it? Woody: Yeah, but I couldn’t do anything else. Shel: Who were some of the people in the business whom you admired? Woody: Everybody. Raymond, Foster, Caniff, Roy Crane, Eisner, Hogarth… everyone. Shel: Did you know Alex Raymond? Woody: No, I never met him. I joined the National Cartoonists Society a couple of years after he died. Shel: Did you study anatomy very intensely? You have such a skill at figure drawing. Woody: I went to art school in Minneapolis for one term, and I went to another art school for one term, but I can’t say I learned anything about technique. I really didn’t learn to draw until I got into the Merchant Marine. Shel: So you’re basically self-taught, and you just observed your July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

contemporaries. Did you ever work for Hal Foster? Woody: Yeah, I did one page of Prince Valiant in 1970. Shel: Why just one page? Woody: Well, I was just trying out for it. John Cullen Murphy and Gray Morrow were trying out for it, too. Murphy got it. Shel: Would you like to do a comic strip of your own these days? Woody: I want to make one of The Wizard King. Shel: That would make a beautiful Sunday-only strip, in full-color. What a treat that would be for the comic section. You certainly have a large following here for your work. Woody: Well, not only here… but in Europe, too. They’re translating Sally Forth into foreign languages, so it’s going to be worldwide yet. Shel: Didn’t you do Sally Forth and Cannon for The Overseas Weekly? I once had a subscription to that paper, as did many fans, just to get your work. How did you get the job? Woody: I think they wrote to me requesting a strip, so I worked up two of them. Shel: And now these are being reprinted in booklets. So far there are four volumes of each title. They were more for adult audiences, weren’t they? Woody: Yeah, bare breasts, more adult. Shel: What was it like to work for Will Eisner? Woody: Oh, he was okay. Shel: What did he pay? Woody: About $30 a week. Shel: For doing what? Woody: Lettering and backgrounds on The Spirit. Sometimes he paid me $40 when I did the drawings, too. Shel: That was when you were ghosting? Those stories are being reprinted with much fanfare in Denis Kitchen’s Spirit magazines.

Above: The things we do for love. Len Brown takes on an army to rescue his beloved Alice in this panel from T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #2, “D-Day for Dynamo,” executed by Wally Wood, Dan Adkins and Tony Coleman. Reproduced from the Alan Class b-&-w British reprint published in Uncanny Tales #91. Courtesy of David A. Roach.

Woody: That’s what I heard. Haven’t seen them yet. Shel: There’s a story going around that you once had some work stolen in New York. Is that true? Woody: That was in France. They had several Wizard pages on display under glass—about four of them disappeared. Shel: You did a series for Tower Comics. Was that a good deal for you financially? Woody: It wasn’t that great, but I had a lot of freedom. I wrote most of the stories and drew them all myself. We had mostly superheroes: Dynamo, Noman, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents…. Shel: Your run of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents lasted for about two years. Why did it end? Woody: That’s a long story. I talked to Harry Shorten about that (he owes me money), and he said that he was squeezed out by his distributor. Shel: It does seem some books were held back. I know several years later large amounts of those books turned up at discount prices. Sounds like dirty pool to me! Do you think you would have done better if you’d had comic book stores to sell them as we have today? Woody: It would have been a different thing, yes. Shel: I think comic book stores have the potential to save the industry. I’ve heard of many horror stories where brand-new comic books were put right into the shredder machines because the distributor couldn’t be bothered with pennies in profit, and on the “honor” system would get his money back for them anyway. The stores put a stop to that kind of waste. That practice also gave inaccuracies to sales figures, with the distributor claiming that certain issues didn’t sell. Knowing all the care and talent that go into a new comic, not to mention the expense of producing one, I think it was criminal to destroy them before they even got onto the stands! Woody: I once lost 50 copies of witzend #1! They just disappeared from a warehouse. They’re selling for around $50 now. It was also pirated: A printer copied it and then sold it. Shel: This has also happened with George Olshevsky and Tony Frutti’s Marvel Comics Index #1. George discovered copies being sold at this year’s San Diego Con. I hope the crooks get exposed and go to jail! This is such an underhanded thing. Fans should really try to avoid buying these copies if they can. Dealers should be on guard and check with original publishers before investing in such dupes. Well, at last you have a good-selling project all your own with the Wizard King book. Are you selling these through comic book stores? Woody: They’re all sold out! I sold most of them through mailorder. Now they have the color version out, and that’s selling very well. Fershid Bharucha of France put that version out. Shel: You once did a comic strip for a short time with Jack Kirby called Sky Masters of the Space Force. How did that come about? Woody: Well, Kirby started it. He wrote and penciled, I inked. We did that for a couple of years. Shel: How many papers did you have and what syndicate handled it? Woody: I don’t know how many papers. Not too many. I think it was the George Matthew Adams Syndicate. Shel: I recently got a copy of your Bang magazine, and WOW, Woody! There’s no doubt about it that you are doing the most sexually explicit work you can do, showing fornication and all the other

aspects of porno. This is all beautifully drawn in the Wood style of early Mad magazine, and in the styles of various famous comic artists. How do you feel about this “underground” chapter of your career? Woody: I was a little ashamed of it at first. I wouldn’t sign it. But the next book I felt all right about. The reaction’s been pretty good. Times have changed. A few years ago Phil Seuling got busted for selling underground comix, but that wouldn’t happen today. In about five years we’ll probably be seeing Deep Throat on television! Shel: Several years ago, The Realist magazine printed an illustration spoofing Walt Disney’s characters. The artist had them engage in every sexual act imaginable, plus some bodily functions done only in private. This drawing was done in the Disney cartoon style and was very skillfully done. It eventually became a poster and was reprinted in all forms—black light, day-glo, etc. At first it was a very funny satire… really cut through all the cutesy-poo animated cartoons. It was strictly for adults, but the Disney people were not amused! Now the rumor got out that it was so good that it had to have been drawn by Wally Wood. Do you have any idea as to who actually did that drawing? Woody: I’d rather not say anything about that! It was the most pirated drawing in history! Everyone was printing copies of that. I understand some people got busted for selling it. I always thought Disney stuff was pretty sexy… Snow White, etc. Shel: Did you ever work for Disney? Woody: No. Shel: I would think the Wood style leant itself naturally to animation. Have you ever done animation? Woody: I once did a couple of commercials, one for Alka-Seltzer and one for a wine. I did the characters and storyboards. Shel: It would be kind of nice to see an animated cartoon version of The Wizard King. Woody: I’d rather see it in live-action, with Harryhausen doing stop-motion animation. Shel: Have you ever wanted to get into animation? Woody: I tried to sell several Saturday-morning shows to TV, but all that happened was that they wound up stealing one of my characters and using it in Wizards. Shel: Do you have any stories you feel you’d like to do in comic book form? Woody: Well, I just want to finish The Wizard King right now. Shel: Woody, what is your penciling like? I’ve never seen it. Is it tight and detailed? Woody: I usually ink over roughs. I pencil faces and bodies tighter. Shel: You and Frazetta are really masters of the sensual figure. You both do the sexiest women I’ve ever seen! Is this from, ahem, personal research? Woody: Well, Sally Forth is my dream girl. The closest thing to her would be Britt Ekland. Shel: Do you know Frank Frazetta well? Woody: Fairly well, but I haven’t seen him for years. It was about 20 years ago. I did some of the penciling and inking on his strip, Johnny Comet. Shel: Have you done much of that? You seem to be able to work in many different styles. Woody: Oh, yeah… The Spirit, Flash Gordon, Terry and the Pirates (for Wunder), Robin Malone for Bob Lubbers, Dark Shadows for Ken Bald. Shel: I think the fans would love to track down that one Sunday page of Prince Valiant that you did. Can you describe it? Woody: It was in the early ’70s. It’s where Aleta got jealous and left Val… he stands by the window and catches a cold. Shel: When those ghosting assignments came, was it usually an emergency? Woody: Yeah, deadline stuff. I always had a reputation for being fast. Shel: Fast and good! Woody: Thanks. Shel: Woody, it’s been a delight talking with you. Enjoy your stay in sunny California. I hope you find yourself a few “Sally Forths” out in Malibu! Woody: Thanks, Shel. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

WALLY WOOD’S ANDOR & ANIMAN Aside from NoMan, perhaps the most innovative character in the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents milieu is the Subterranean-raised Andor, who travels from strip to strip, sometimes a hero, sometimes not. Nurtured to physical and mental perfection, he is ultimately a tragic figure. Word is that creator Wally Wood wanted to take this character a step further—outside Comic Code restrictions—so the artist created Animan, who appeared as Wood’s contributions to the first two issues of his legendary prozine, witzend. Animan ©2001 Estate of Wallace Wood. Andor ©2001 John Carbonaro.

July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

Hero Dossier

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents 101 Lou Mougin’s history of Tower’s comic book heroes by Lou Mougin This fine overview of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and the Tower comics line appeared in slightly different form in The Comic Reader #197 back in 1982. Please note it contains some personal opinions some may not agree with—Ye Ed takes exception to Lou’s characterization of Manny Stallman’s delightfully bizarre artwork—but it is a clear and thoughtful retrospective of the high points (and low) of Wally Wood’s glorious super-hero comic books.—JBC

Above: Thundermakers. Panels from the first T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents story, “First Encounter,” from the debut issue, depicting the respective gadgets of Dynamo, NoMan, and Menthor.

Let us turn back the clock to that Wonderful Year, 1965. A new comics company was about to be born. DC had, for the past nine years, shown that super-heroes were once again a viable market. Marvel Comics had sparked a revolution that made their books prime college-age reading fodder. Archie had retooled its Adventures of the Fly title to feature an Avengers-like team of revived heroes. Best of all, news had leaked about a new TV show to debut in early ’66, featuring Batman. Nobody knew if it’d be a hit yet, but the fact of its existence proved that attention, favorable attention, was finally being paid to comic books. Considering the fact that the industry had almost gone belly-up ten years earlier and were only saved by the advent of the Comics Code, that wasn’t bad news at all. So, in this era of the Beatles, Sean Connery’s James Bond, Lyndon Johnson, and early renewed commitment to the Vietnam War, a paperback publisher named Tower Books decided to hit the racks with a new comic series. Its publisher was Harry Shorten and its editor was Samm Schwartz, both of them veterans of the Archie comics group. For a chief artist, they hired away a mainstay of the EC/Mad bullpen from Marvel, where he was winding up a short but acclaimed run of Daredevil. Given the freedom to write and design characters, Wally Wood came over, and brought others with him. And the product of their labors soon became available on spinner racks across the country, in a hope of challenging Marvel, DC, and the competitors who were shortly to flood the market with new super-hero books as soon as the Batman TV show debuted. Its title was T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents # 1, dated November 1965, hit the

ground running. With a 25¢, 64-page package of six superbly-drawn tightly-plotted stories, the book packed in three new super-heroes, a horde of secret agents, mystery men, super-villains, monsters and action, action, action! One look at the book and the reader could tell that here, indeed, was the king of the backseat comics; it was the only mid-’60s title to successfully compete with Marvel and DC super-hero fare. It set the pace for two years of giant-sized comics that most fans of that period recall as fondly as anything from the two major publishers. Basically, Tower Comics, which published T.H.U.N.D.E.R. and the several spin-offs, boiled down to one person: Wally Wood. As creator of the series, major artist and writer and self-admitted freelance editor, Wood produced his best commercial comics work of the ’60s while at Tower. The nearly twodozen books he worked on during the 196668 period showcase some of the finest superhero art of the Second Heroic Age, particularly his numerous Dynamo stories. As a result, Tower became the only third-force publisher to equal, and at times, surpass Marvel and DC in art quality. Others who wielded the pencil and brush at Tower were equally renowned. Gil Kane, Reed Crandall, Steve Ditko, Dan Adkins, John Giunta, Al Williamson. Few super-hero books would ever boast such a distinguished crew. “I was not only Tower’s top artist, I created the characters, and wrote most of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents stories,” admitted Wood. “As to why Harry Shorten (head of Tower Books) decided to publish comics, I don’t know. But he came to me and asked me to work up a super-hero book. I then functioned as a freelance editor and did as much of the art as I could.“ The concept of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. was a skillful blending of two separate genres that had each, in 1965, been proven sure-fire successes. Secret agents had ridden a wave of popularity since the first James Bond films of the early ’60s, and the Bond/Flint/Solo cult was never bigger. (The popularity of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in particular seemed to have the greatest impact on this book.) And superheroes were the rage in comic books; that went without saying. Well, then, why not a cloak-&-dagger type who wore a costume beneath the cloak? That line of thinking resulted in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1. The cover, drawn by Wood, introduced a triad of new arrivals to the super-hero biz: a blue-clad Superman-type lifted an armored villain overhead, surrounded by a complex of machinery. He was flanked by a cloaked, transparent man on his left, and on the right was a latecomer who apparently had ripped off the Atom’s uniform. The cover, colored only in various shades of red, blue, and yellow,and devoid of any blurbs, was perhaps less flashy than it should have been. Compared to Marvel’s slam-bang broadsides of the period, it looked positively static. But it served to showcase Dynamo, NoMan and Menthor for their first public appearance. And the greatest backseaters of the mid-’60s were born! Page one opened with a battlefield scene as we glimpsed a squad of landing UN paratroopers through shattered glass. A caption informed us: “A team of special U.N. agents lands at a remote mounCOMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

tain lab…“ In the space of two pages we learned that the unit was on a rescue mission, intent on saving the life of Dr. Emil Jennings, the greatest scientist of the Western world. As fate would have it, the bad guys escaped unharmed in a helicopter, and Jennings was cold meat on his laboratory floor. “This has to be the work of the Warlord!“ muttered a squad leader. “Just who is this Warlord, sir?” asked a soldier, thus allowing us to be introduced to the villain of the piece. The Warlord proves to be the mysterious leader of a SPECTRE or THRUSH-like organization, with every available criminal and spy at his beck and call. His objective: The theft of every scientific development on Earth. Masked by a purple hood, the weird spy-chief held congress only with his top lieutenants, and not even they had seen his true features. “Now he’s gotten to this experimental station and our most advanced research, and since the professor never kept notes, all these devices will be his sole property… we can never duplicate them!“ finishes the officer. “They didn’t have time to get everything, sir,” says another crewman. “Look at these!“ The scene immediately shifts to a high-level conference room in New York. A wall is decorated with a figure of the Western Hemisphere and the words, “The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves.” T.H.U.N.D.E.R.’s Inner Council stands assembled, considering the three recovered devices from Jennings’ laboratory… a metallic belt, a blue-black cloak, and a rigid helmet in the form of a headmask. “The first is an electron molecular intensifier belt which will make the wearer’s body structure change to the consistency of steel!” says a speaker, holding up the belt. Next, he gestures to the cape, and explains its ability of becoming absolutely black, reflecting no light and rendering the wearer invisible. “And this one we’re not sure of,” he says, fondling the strange helmet. “It seems to be a cybernetic helmet… it could be dangerous, but it could amplify a man’s brain power many times over...” Quickly, the heads of the free world’s greatest semi-secret defensive organization come to an agreement. A full-scale assault must be led against the Warlord, spearheaded by three agents who will employ the inventions of Dr. Jennings against the man who ordered his murder. “…And so the search begins,” reads the final caption. The four-page introductory sequence fairly breathed clichés, from the doomed scientist who creates super-heroes to the opposed agencies locked in global Cold War conflict. But the plot was solid, the concepts didn’t stretch reality to the breaking point, and, of course, Wood’s art pulled the entire thing together. It set several conJuly 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

cepts that T.H.U.N.D.E.R. would follow to their final issue: Tight, pulp-like plotting, an economy of dialogue (word balloons were kept to two per panel most of the time) and believability. The T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, rather than gaining power from radioactive spiders or gamma bomb explosions, were human beings whose abilities were augmented by mechanical devices. It was a welcome touch of conservatism in a comics universe already top-heavy with sorcerers, omnipotent entities, parallel dimensions and heroes with every super-

Above: A quartet of pin-ups from T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #3 featuring the title’s main characters. Clockwise from top left: Dynamo, NoMan, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad, and Menthor, all drawn by Wally Wood and Dan Adkins.

Above: Lightning pin-up from T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #5 by Dan Adkins.

Above right inset: The late-arriving character, The Raven, was never honored with a pin-up proper in the titles so here’s a detail from Manny Stallman’s splash panel in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #9.

Below right inset: Perhaps the only memorable character in the Challengers of the Unknown-like T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad was William Wylie, better known as “Weed,” named for the ever-present (and decidedly unpolitically correct) cigarette dangling from his mouth. Reportedly the smoker was modeled after Wally Wood himself. This panel detail by John Giunta—with Weed atypically dressed in a skintight costume— appeared in the satirical story, “Wonder Weed, Super-Hero,” (a title we surmise giving a nod to Gilbert Shelton’s Wonder Warthog) from Dynamo #1. 24

power conceivable. T.H.U.N.D.E.R.’s biggest blockbuster was introduced two pages later with a one-page Wood splash panel. The blueand-white clad figure from the front cover grimly towered over a pile of rubble, hands on hips. Behind him was a hole he had made in a brick wall at least two feet thick. Dynamo was unleashed! Tower’s steely superman was originally dubbed “Thunderbolt,“ but a lastminute change substituted the name “Dynamo” instead and his new name was lettered over the old one. (Cf. the reprint of page 10, panel 2 in the Dynamo paperback, where the caption reads, “Even Thunderbolt’s iron frame is shaken by the concussion...“) Undoubtedly Charlton, whose Thunderbolt debuted a short time later, was grateful for the change. The 12-page origin story was scripted by Len Brown and drawn by Wood and opened with a waist-shot of our hero as a desk-bound administration official in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. H.Q. An obvious secret identity type you could recognize at 20 paces. “This paperwork isn’t for me!” he muses. “I’m afraid I made a mistake when I accepted this job!” Suddenly, his superior enters the room. “Leonard Brown, will you come with me, please?” (How’s about them apples? The above is the only case I can find in comics history in which a scripter named a major superhero himself! But, after all, Leonard Brown is at least as believable a monicker as Clark Kent or Peter Parker, so it was allowed to stand.) Unsuspectingly, Len Brown follows his guide through several checkpoints to Level Seven, the meeting place of T.H.U.N.D.E.R.’s Inner Council. Confronted by a semi-circle of the West’s top spy-chiefs, he is offered a chance at becoming an agent, and, in the best comic book hero tradition, accepts. One panel later, Brown is stripped down to blue trunks and boots and offered Jennings’ blue metal belt with the strange dial in the buckle position. “Because of your physical stamina, you’ve been selected to use the Thunderbelt,” says one attendant. “It will change your body’s atomic structure,” explains another. “Put it on!“ (Tower was never noted for excess dialogue, as you can tell.) After allowing the belt time to adopt itself to his metabolism, Brown turns the dial. Abruptly, a surge of electrical discharges bathe him in blue fire as the energy released rends the air with a spectacular CR-RACK! Shades of Captain Marvel! It was obviously derivative of the Big Red Cheese, and just as fun in 1965 as in 1940. With a weight of over 1,000 pounds, and a density approximating that of titanium steel, Len Brown was setup to become

T.H.U.N.D.E.R.’s first super-agent. The attendants instruct Brown to take a poke at a wall target with an impact gauge attached. “Okay… here goes. I’ll probably wind up breaking my hand… WHA…!?” KRUMF! One panel later, Brown steps into the adjoining office through the hole he has just made in the wall. Instant super-hero! In the final steps of the super-hero ritual, Brown is informed of the necessary Achilles Heel: That prolonged use of the belt can so drain his physical energy as to be fatal. (In later stories, the belt would be outfitted with a timer to turn itself off after a half-hour had passed.) The brown-haired Brown is provided with a blue-and-white costume of metallic fabric and dubbed “Dynamo,” for obvious reasons. And none too soon… for, at the bottom of the page, the Warlord strikes again! A pair of armored trucks proceeds to blanket New York City under a dense fog composed of iron particles (?). Under cover of the mist, teams of armor-clad raiders stage snatch-and-grab raids of radioactive materials. At this point, the reader first glimpses Dynamo’s longest-lived ally and adversary… the Iron Maiden, Tower’s version of the Dragon Lady. A beautiful redhead who wore a suit of gleaming metal that hugged her curves like a body-suit, the Iron Maiden played Catwoman to Dynamo’s Batman. In over nine separate clashes with T.H.U.N.D.E.R.’s big blue blockbuster, she represented the ultimate and unattainable love interest; by issue #4, she was as much smitten by Dynamo as he with her, yet she steadfastly refused to let it get in the way of her criminal career. One must, indeed, admire such dedication. Besides, it kept her coming back time and time again when most other villains usually made one-shot appearances. But in this first clash, Iron Maiden was more hellcat than harlequin. In the meantime, Dynamo is dispatched to rid the city of the fog (which he does) and capture the raiders (one out of two isn’t bad). The four-page fight looked like a 1942 Siegel and Shuster Superman outing; Dynamo merrily demolished a truck, shed bullets like peanut shells, bounced back from a grenade explosion and took on the Iron Maiden’s metal-clad thugs, only to be beaten when his power drain forced him to turn off the Thunderbelt. Dynamo is captured and taken to the Warlord’s island, where the Iron Maiden prepares to dope the secret of his belt out of him. Part One ends with Dynamo in chains, to be resolved in the last story of the issue. In the main, Dynamo did bear resemblance to an early Golden Age Superman figure. He was powerful and as durable as a tank, but never invulnerable. Adventure after adventure ended up with a scene of his hospital bed, where he recuperated; he was hospitalized three times in one month alone. Moreover, Dynamo carried a spirit of boyish buffoonery into his stories: he was fun. Never bested in battle, Len Brown would regularly report in for a ritual chewing-out by the Chief, a combination of Perry White and J. Jonah Jameson and one of the funniest Big Boss caricatures COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

of that period. In one particularly funny ending, Dynamo’s mother called up the Chief to complain about the way he was treating her little boy! After Dynamo nervously phoned back to beg his mother to please, please never do that again, he received a familiar tap on the shoulder. “There you are, Brown. Step into my office, please…” Brown, about as effective with girls as Captain Marvel, fumblingly carried on a love interest with the strip ingenue, Alice Robbins, the boss’s secretary. More than anything else, Dynamo was the picture of the junior executive super-hero. It was Tower’s most entertaining strip, and Dynamo rated several stories per issue in the earliest and latest T.H.U.N.D.E.R.s, besides spinning off into four issues of his own book. Dynamo was backed up in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents by Tower’s number two super-star, who debuted immediately after him in issue #1. In the “android hero” department, Tower beat the Vision and the Red Tornado to the punch by more than three years. Enter the Android Agent… NoMan! The blue-skinned humanoid with the darkened eye sockets was another Wood creation, introduced in his initial story with art by Reed Crandall. Without a doubt, NoMan was one of the unique super-heroes of his time, and became their most fully-rounded character as well. In the origin story, Dr. Anthony Dunn volunteers to have his mind transferred into an android body he created jointly with the late, lamented Dr. Jennings. Dunn, as we first see him, is the diametric opposite of Dynamo: An aged, infirm, balding scientist bound to a wheelchair. He may have been the most unlikely alter ego ever considered for a super-hero. Dunn gives up human existence a page later to enter a synthetic body. “For the first time in years I feel young and strong!“ The catch was, Dunn had more than one body at his disposal. In fact, he had an army of mass-produced androids, each of which he could transfer his mind-essence into at will. Whenever one body was destroyed, he just shuttled his mind into a new one. This led to the cliché of having him killed at least once each issue, but as clichés go, it was pretty unusual! (Once, when his last spare was destroyed, his July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

line was, “If they kill me now I’m dead!“) This power was augmented by the invisibility cloak of Dr. Jennings. “From now on, call me NoMan,” he declared on page three. It fit. The rest of the story pitted NoMan against Demo, “the Warlord’s most formidable underworld agent,” who commanded an army of simian “Sub-men.“ The fight that ensued allowed NoMan to strut his stuff by defeating the caveman gang, using his invisibility

Above: This time the Bad Guys. Clockwise from top left: Overlord (Wood & Reese, TA #8), The Iron Maiden (Wood & Adkins, TA #7), The Red Star (Sekowsky & Giacoia, Dynamo #2), and Doc Savage… I mean, Andor (Adkins, Dynamo #2). 25

Above: We’re still not absolutely certain that Davey Jones, Undersea Agent, was a part of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents milieu proper, but the strip was fun while it lasted. Written and drawn by onetime Milton Caniff assistant, Ray Bailey, who—according to Ron Goulart—drew the syndicated strips Vesta West, Bruce Gentry, and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, then he worked as a comic book artist for Dell and Charlton comics. Another source tells me that Bailey drew the Steve Canyon comic title (though it is said that Caniff drew the faces and hands on the final art). Born in 1913, Bailey passed away in San Francisco in 1975. Thanks to Ron for illuminating the career of this little-known artist. Here’s a full-page treatment of the character by Bailey from Undersea Agent #1. 26

cloak, and transferring to another body when Demo shot him in the chest. While he made his way to the scene of the crime in his new corpus, the villains took it on the lam. The pattern was set for all of NoMan’s subsequent adventures. T.H.U.N.D.E.R.’s synthetic super-hero was the least derivative of the entire lot. Naturally, the gimmick of placing a human mind in an artificial body had been around at least as long as Frankenstein, and had a clear pair of genre antecedents in DC’s two versions of Robotman, but NoMan was clearly not a copy. And he soon gained the best characterization of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. cabal as writers began to play up the psychic crisis of adjusting to life in a non-human body. (Oddly enough, nobody in the series except NoMan seemed to notice the difference! To Dynamo, Menthor and Lightning, he was just “one of the boys.”) NoMan’s character was subtly hinted at in several issues—in particular, #4, when he ogled a pretty blonde and gave thought to being human again—but the understated tensions finally come to a head in #7’s “To Be or Not To Be.” This story was one of the few Tower pieces that centered on character development rather than good-guy-vs-bad-guy plot. NoMan rebelled against his own android identity, and against T.H.U.N.D.E.R., which he held responsible for creating it. He recklessly drove his excess bodies on a suicide binge around the world. Trying to fit into human society again, NoMan

even proposed marriage to a girl. She turned him down, not because of his android form, but for his failure to face life’s realities. NoMan subsequently become involved in a plot to destroy his remaining spare bodies, only to realize his error, turn on his co-plotters and rejoin T.H.U.N.D.E.R. As NoMan prepared for a space mission at the end of a ten-pager, he mused, “The only thing I regret is Trudy… I guess it was impossible… but whatever I am, my soul has a destiny as valid as any… and I must play out the role I’ve chosen.” It was about as close to a statement of the human condition as Tower ever got, and the blue-skinned android become Tower’s most threedimensional figure as a resuIt. As T.H.U.N.D.E.R.’s number two hero in popularity, NoMan earned a two-issue try-out in his own magazine and rated one story per issue in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents right up to #19, the last nonreprint issue. He was cover-featured more times than any other character except Dynamo. The offbeat character of his strip accommodated weirder villains than his fellows, such as aliens, a reincarnated Egyptian princess, and a number of mad scientist types. Besides Reed Crandall, who handled the first three issues, Gil Kane, Steve Ditko, Ogden Whitney, John Giunta, Mike Sekowsky, Wally Wood, and Paul Reinman lent their artistic hands to NoMan’s adventures. The third member of T.H.U.N.D.E.R.’s triad debuted in the next story, with pencils by Gil Kane and George Tuska and inks by Mike Esposito. Menthor appeared in a Jack Kirby pose, legs four feet apart and on the verge of throwing a haymaker. Since Kane was also drawing the Atom at the time, the similarity in their costuming was made even more evident. And, strangely enough, T.H.U.N.D.E.R.’s third hero started his career as a traitor. “The Enemy Within” introduced John Janus, whiz-kid applicant, who passed T.H.U.N.D.E.R.’s initiation exams with the highest scores ever. (Janus: “This is child’s play!” Other applicant: “You have to be a genius to answer these questions!“) On the side, he moonlighted for the Warlord as a double agent. (In this story, the Warlord wore a green headmask and had a human face!) His assignment: Shut down the defenses in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. H.Q. preparatory to an invasion. Meanwhile, when the Council seeks volunteers for a test of Jennings’ mysterious cybernetic helmet, Janus plays apple-polisher by offering himself. Not only did the blue-mask device endow him with psychokinetic power, it also changed Janus’s personality, making him a staunch supporter of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. (Initially, whenever he removed the helmet, Menthor could remember nothing that occurred under its influence.) T.H.U.N.D.E.R. dubs him “Menthor” and gives him custody of the device. Predictably, after Janus lets the Warlord strike force in, he dons the helmet, does a Jekyll-Hyde split, and beats the enemy squad and a giant monster single-handedly. Menthor used his psycho-powers sparingly in the fracas, limiting himself to mind-reading and sapping the strength of his fallen opponents. The rest was a typical Kane fistto-chin punch out. The Warlord was ignorant of Menthor’s direct involvement and still held him as a trusted agent at the end of the story. The series concept began to change with the next issue. The scripters decided to take the easy way out and make T.H.U.N.D.E.R.’s telepath a full-time hero. Janus becomes predominantly good, renounces the Warlord (“I must help T.H.U.N.D.E.R. stop this fiend!“) and shambles through an action-filled but pointless episode. It was one of his few weak outings, as Menthor’s stories soon surpassed the rest in intricacy of plotting. A two-part story, which ran in #3 and 4, involved the loss of the helmet to his evil brother Conrad, who promptly imitated Menthor and hypnotized Dynamo into running amok at full power through T.H.U.N.D.E.R. headquarters. The phony perished when his bullet ricocheted from Dynamo’s body back into his own chest. He failed to reveal John Janus’s whereabouts. The next story, rendered by Giunta and Wood, had the thickest plot of any Tower ten-pager ever published: Menthor develops amnesia and is rescued by the Great Hypno, a carnival mentalist, who discovers the residual powers in Janus’s mind and hypnotically causes him to steal back the helmet. Menthor eventually regains his memory and the story climaxes with a helmetless Menthor and a helmeted Hypno playing human pawns against each other in Fort Knox. After that, the helmet would be stolen twice; it become as big a cliché as NoMan’s mandatory COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

“death” per story. (In issue #6, Menthor lost the helmet and still hadn’t recovered it by the end of the story. One character remarked that they “had a good lead on (the thief’s) whereabouts.” It must’ve been a great lead; he had the helmet back in the next issue with no explanation whatsoever.) Menthor ran for seven stories in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. #1 through 7, and his series ended in one of Tower’s most excellent climaxes. But that’s a tale for later on in this piece. At the other end of the spectrum, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1 introduced the fourth and final feature that was anything but spectacular. It was derivative, dull, and poorly done. Tower must have gotten the message quickly, because it only ran four issues. Of course, the feature was the “T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad.” The weak sister of an otherwise excellent group of strips, the Squad was drawn in all four issues by Mike Sekowsky. It starred a group of five (later four) non-super specialists who cooled off hot spots around the globe. Each one was pretty stereotyped: Guy Gilbert was the squad leader and matinee idol; “Dynamite” John Adkins (renamed Dan Adkins in #11) played Big Dumb Muscleman and demo expert; “Kitten” Kane, a girl, was the token sexpot and software expert; Weed Wylie, the most engaging of the bunch, was a weasel-like, chain-smoking, shifty-eyed safecracker short on intellect but long on cunning; and Egghead… well, his name says it all. He ended up by being snuffed unceremoniously in the second issue. Nobody in the story seemed to notice. On their own, the group was about as exciting as white bread. They were soon phased out and become fairly interesting supporting characters in other strips. The first adventure set them against the Warlord and his zombie army to recover a stolen laser gun. They were successful, but the Warlord boasted of his capture of Dynamo to them, allowing a tie-in with his earlier story. Finally, in Dynamo’s second outing in the book (he was to have two stories per issue until #5), the entire cast and crew assembled in Justice Society-fashion to reunite Dynamo with his belt and drive the Iron Maiden from her island base. The last caption in the book promised, “See the criminals brought to justice in the next issue of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents!” All in all, it was one of the best-illustrated first issues of the mid-’60s, and even if the dialogue was wooden, the art was Wood. It was to set the format for the next 18 issues of the book. Issue #2, like issue #1, was largely a four-part novel centering on the Dynamo story. Len Brown and company took on the superrobot Dynavac, Iron Maiden, Demo and a horde of zombies; T.H.U.N.D.E.R. headquarters was destroyed; and a final confrontation was had with the Warlord. Unmasked, he turned out to be a bugeyed, green-skinned humanoid who committed suicide with an atomic bomb. (Now, that’s committing suicide!) In #3 it was revealed that the Warlord was but one member of a subterranean race who had it in for the surface world; one of their cities had been devastated by an underground nuclear test, and in the finest Sub-Mariner tradition, they were about to return the compliment. Dynamo disposed of the Warlord’s first successor by neatly sandwiching him between ceiling and floor. By this time, having introduced the next evil counterpart to T.H.U.N.D.E.R., the book’s storylines were independent of each other. New costumed villains like the Red Dragon and Vibraman owed no allegiance to any organization. At this point, it is pleasant to reflect on several trademarks of Tower scripting. The restraint displayed in avoiding the supernatural had already been discussed. Tower characters were little more than two steps away from reality, and their world was not beset by the super-hero population explosions of Marvel and DC. Also, the good guys were not tied down to Metropolis or New York City. As members of an international peace-keeping force, they ranged over the entire world. Dynamo, NoMan, Menthor and their chums traded punches in the Middle East, Vietnam, island chains, the Himalayas, and even that strange and half-mythical land the ancients call Texas (and I’m still burned up about that one, so don’t ask me about it!). It provided an interesting contrast within the strip, and convinced the reader that T.H.U.N.D.E.R. was indeed “international,” more so than, say, the American-based S.H.I.E.L.D. ever did. (Curiously, though T.H.U.N.D.E.R. was a U.N. taskforce, aIl the member agents chosen July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

to become super-heroes were Americans. Tower couldn’t quite escape provinciality completely.) The few stories utilizing alien (meaning from other worlds) beings were great. The situation was handled credibly, with the feeling of First Contact that has long since been lost in these days of Skrull-Kree Wars and Galactic Federations. The well-done Dynamo “alien-trilogy” (Dynamo #1, 3, and 4) by Wood is a case in point. The eeriness of the encounter is played to the hilt by never letting the reader actually see the invaders until the last page of the third story; nor do they communicate with man until the very last panels. The object lesson, that man is a stronger in a hostile universe, was made more chillingly effective in this fashion than if a billion invading Skrull fleets had been shown. Also, Tower was never afraid to be fun. Dynamo and Weed played it for laughs every time they got the chance. “Now to get back up to the penthouse… in a single leap!“ thought Dynamo in one story as he took a single bound from street level. He landed on a ledge halfway up: “Hmmm—might take two leaps.” In the some issue, Len Brown jumped through the roof of a getaway car: “I’ll just put me in the driver’s seat!“ (parodying a popular car rental commercial

Above: Superb Gil Kane penciled and inked page from Undersea Agent #4. Below: Artist and writer Manny Stallman contributed the short-lived character Merman to the Undersea Agent milieu in #5.

Above: Perhaps the most dramatic —and innovative—moment in the history of the T-Agents appeared with the death of leading character Menthor in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #7, drawn by Steve Ditko, Wood and Adkins. Below: The Lucky 7 headlined the first two issues of Fight the Enemy. Detail from #1. Art by Sekowsky & Giacoia.

of that time). Driver: “That hurts!“ Two paneIs later, he rolled the baddies home inside auto tires. Weed faced villains who gained super-powers after being bitten by radioactive moles (!), buried Dynamo under a vat of molten peanut butter, and stopped a fracas between T.H.U.N.D.E.R. and the Red Star by spraying both sides with stupidity gas. Tower held the humor down to a tongue-in-cheek level, rather than the excessive approach of Not Brand Echh! or The Inferior Five, and induced more belly laughs than both of them. It was, once again, the Captain Marvel approach retailored for the ’60s. But it wasn’t all fun and games in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Far from it. The seventh issue presented one of the rarest breeds of super-hero stories ever: The death of a major character in his own strip. The story, drawn by Ditko and Wood, was titled “A Matter of Life and Death!“ In the splash panel, Menthor, stripped of his helmet, faced two armed Subterranean Warlords. No cover blurb advertised this story, and grimmer splash pages can be found by the carload. The reader was pretty well unprepared for the following ten-page epic. A cadre of Warlords discover a means of jamming Menthor’s helmet and capture him, hoping to

lead the other super-agents into a deathtrap. “The machines you see here are a battery of laser guns trained on that doorway,” gloats Menthor’s captor. “When anything crosses that electric eye, it is blasted… instantly! Faster than even super-human reflexes can react! This time we put an end to T.H.U.N.D.E.R. ... for good!” Desperately, Menthor makes a grab for his helmet; a Warlord shoots him in the side. With the lives of his approaching friends at stake, Menthor stumbles across the room. Subterraneans from all sides pump hot lead into his body. “Must do something… can’t let them kill… Len… Kitten… Weed… NoMan… Guy… got to warn them….” Shot point-blank six times, the telepath forces his body to take one last step into the doorway, and in full view of Dynamo, NoMan and crew, a triple burst of ruby energy cuts through his body… and Menthor dies! The shocking death scene was the most violent snuffing of a super-hero ever recorded in the comics. Certainly, it was the most memorable scene in the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. saga. Consumed with mindless rage, Dynamo and company turn on the Subterraneans and wipe out the entire installation, herding their last victims into the doorway deathtrap. Grimly, the story closes with Menthor’s funeral; from here on in, the war against the green men is total. (Total war against aliens was nothing new for Wally Wood, though; from his participation in the famous ‘60s Mars Attacks trading card series through Gold Key’s Total War/M.A.R.S. Patrol, the idea of mankind vs. ruthless alien creatures was a recurrent one.) Many companies have used the death of a hero as a major springboard for a story. But in almost all cases, the victim is a cancelled character who meets the Reaper while guest-starring in somebody else’s strip. Menthor, a strong member of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. line-up since #1, met violent death in his own story and so increased the drama a thousand-fold. No more than a handful of death scenes in ’60s and ’70s comics can match the impact of Menthor’s, and none surpass it. The story was a foreshadowing: In the very next issue, the death of the Subterranean Overlord at the hands of NoMan brought the series to a close. By this time, two new super-heroes had been added to the book. Neither matched Dynamo in popularity or quality and both strips were eventually dropped. Lightning was Guy Gilbert of the illfated T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad. To combat a weapon that slowed human reactions to a standstill, he was outfitted with a costume which made him a hundred times as fast as a normal human. Accordingly, it aged him at the some accelerated pace. Obviously an imitation of the Flash, Lightning’s strip wasn’t half bad, but never attained greatness. Perhaps the fact that two artists who are rarely associated with drawing graceful, stream-lined humans, Mike Sekowsky and Chic Stone, handled the art may have been the reason. The Raven, who took over Menthor’s slot, showed promise at the outset. Originally a mercenary, Craig Lawson was recruited by T.H.U.N.D.E.R. to employ a jet-pack device against flying Subterraneans. He become a loyalist after Lightning saved his life. After the first strip, the art, (and it is charity to call it that) was handled by Manny Stallman. Stallman had drawn DC’s Big Town for the last five years of its run, but had been inked by John Giunta there; his mystery tales for Atlas during that period were pretty tightly inked though. For Tower, with its smaller original art size, though, Stallman switched to a heavy, brush-dominated style which was met with heavy dislike by the readership. (Stallman’s current occupation is drawing Adventures of the Big Boy—and he’s little better-suited to do that.) Tower dumped the strip in #13 to substitute an “Undersea Agent” filler drawn by Paul Reinman. In the next issue, a totally new direction was taken, as Gil Kane wrote and drew a ten-page Raven feature. He also did the cover, making this Raven’s only featured appearance. The airborne agent battled a Communist psychic-spy called the Prophet in this story; it was the last Raven outing to see print, and by for the best. After the fall of the Subterraneans, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. promptly found itself faced with another cliché-driven evil organization. This time the buddies called themselves S.P.I.D.E.R., which stood for the Secret People’s International Directorate for Extralegal Revenue. A military figure assured us in their first appearance that “This is an organization of professional criminals all dedicated to the destruction COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

of the American way of life.” “The rats! “ observes Dynamo with characteristic profundity. Eventually, Iron Maiden, Demo and all the rest of the Warlord’s old hirelings ended up in the pay of T.H.U.N.D.E.R.’s version of THRUSH. It was easier to keep S.P.I.D.E.R. around than to destroy it and think up a new Evil Menace. They were still around by the Agents’ last battles. The last important continuing character was Andor, a human child brought up under the evil auspices of the Subterraneans and who constantly suffered brainwashings by them so that he would attempt to destroy T.H.U.N.D.E.R. He guest-starred first in Dynamo #1 and made many appearances afterward, nearly taking over the focus of the strips he appeared in, usually battling Dynamo. He was an extremely tragic figure, losing his memory and his sight and constantly losing women he loved. The Subterraneans gave him superstrength enough to battle Dynamo to a standstill, the latter somewhat sympathetic to Andor’s plight and continually finding himself unable to finish Andor off for good. Had things progressed, it’s quite possible that Andor might have become a member of the group. Tower’s growing success caused a few spin-offs by 1966; all were 25¢ giants like the parent T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Dynamo had four issues of his own book, featuring some of Wood’s best art. NoMan, with slightly less excellent work, lasted for two solo outings. A war book, Fight the Enemy, stayed for three issues; and Tippy Teen, a nominal Archie-type offering, ended up outlasting T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Debuting the some month as T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents # 1, Tippy Teen eventually ran 27 issues, as it was able to weather the backlash period of 1968-69 which virtually wiped out the back-seaters. Undersea Agent proved to be the longest-lived nonT.H.U.N.D.E.R. adventure book from Tower with six issues between January, 1966 and March, 1967. Basically, the series was a rough cross between The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Sea Hunt. Lt. Davey Jones was featured as the crack agent of Undersea, an experimental domed city on the ocean floor. Jones battled various underwater menaces and gained magnetic powers in #2, but floundered due to poor art and worse writing. Gil Kane arrived by #3 to stage an underwater rescue mission; by #5 and 6 he had contributed some effective art and covers, especially the Wood-inked beauty fronting #6. But it just wasn’t help enough and the book went down for the third time when Tower devoted all its resources to shoring up T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Up to this point, emphasis has been placed on Tower’s good aspects. And T.H.U.N.D.E.R. was the highest-quality super-hero book from a minor company during this period. But there were weak points in the series: for one thing, the lead characters were never very deep. Personality development was minimalized in favor of plotting and action, so that the only heroes with a chance at well-defined characters were Dynamo and NoMan. Even in these cases it depended on the whim of the individual writer. Secondly, the existence of an entire monolithic organization working for “good,” such as U.N.C.L.E., T.H.U.N.D.E.R. or S.H.I.E.L.D., required a similar and equally-powerful organization dedicated to evil. Thus T.H.U.N.D.E.R. was always fighting the same enemy: The evil worldwide agency out to conquer Earth. The Warlord menace and S.P.I.D.E.R. had a dreary sameness, but the series could no more stray from the concept than can S.H.I.E.L.D. finally destroy Hydra. The good guys have to have someone big enough for them to fight. Naturally, the series suffered at times from poor continuity. All the writers were freelancers and thus were not encouraged to leave plotlines dangling at the ends of stories. After the first two issues, individual stories bore little relationship to each other. Perhaps this has to do with lack of editorial experience with non-humor material; Tower’s only other acknowledged editor besides Wood was teenage humor artist Sam Schwartz, who drew Tippy Teen, having served his apprenticeship by drawing Archie for years before that. Thus, Menthor lost his helmet and got it back without an explanation; NoMan undertook a space mission in #7 which was never so much as mentioned afterward; Lightning was injured by flak in the same issue and turned up hale and hardy in #8; Raven changed his flight gear and uniform twice without even a caption to acknowledge the fact; and Dynamo was shot, blown up and hospitalized many times during the some month. (Blue Cross must’ve loved him!) Footnotes were as rare as a purple dodo. July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

In an era in which continuity has become a Holy GraiI to fans and scripters alike, and the Omniversal Theory threatens to make comics-reading an Einsteinian task, Tower’s lack of cohesive storylines seems barren indeed. But it resulted in well-plotted, entertaining, self-contained short stories, at least five per issue in 19 issues. Only a handful of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. tales ran to two parts, and the only threeparter, the “alien trilogy,” was composed of three separate but related stories. Modern comics writers, with their penchant for stretching serials out for two years at a time, might do well to study Tower techniques. When Tower Comic, gave up the (new story) ghost in 1968, poor sales were not the reason. “Harry [Shorten] told me later that the books always made money,” wrote Wally Wood. “He was forced out by his distributor [PDC], who also handled another comic book company [Harvey].” The finger of suspicion is cast, however, more likely at DC and Marvel, who were said to have had something to do with the demise of Charlton’s action-hero line—despite the fact that Charlton was self-distributed. DC’s Independent News arm had apparently asked the largest wholesalers to overlook the competitors’ books which they felt were directly siphoning off their share of the super-hero market—and must have had the clout to achieve their goal. As Tower’s output spiraled down to two Summer issues in 1968, the talent had to look elsewhere to find work, and Wood, Kane and Ditko ended up plying their trade for DC leaving the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents to the hands of the likes of Mike Sekowsky, Paul Reinman, Chic Stone and Ogden Whitney. Not to mention the fact that the final issues were plagued by irregular distribution. There was a gap of several months between #10 and 11, during which most readers thought the book had been cancelled. At other times, particularly from issues #12 to 16, the books seemed to come out every three weeks. With the shelving of Lightning and Raven, the book’s line-up became too unstable, and Dynamo was forced to carry a disproportionate share of the comic. His stories (probably prepared for the by-then cancelled Dynamo title) increased from one to three per issue; in the last books, they were offset only by one NoMan story and a reprint. As Tower’s older and better artists moved on to other companies, the book become dominated by second-stringers. Finally, in 1968 they threw in the towel along with the other minor super-hero lines. T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #17 was dated December 1967; #18 bore a September 1968 cover date, and #19, for all intents and purposes the last issue, was dated November, 1968. A year later Tower made a half-hearted comeback with T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #20, a book of reprints with a four-page recap of Dynamo’s origin. Except for one more Tippy Teen reprint issue dated February 1970, this poorly-distributed issue was the last gasp for Tower Comics. Where do they stand in retrospect? Actually, more favorably than most. In T.H.U.N.D.E.R., Wally Wood unleashed his best postEC comics work; his run of Daredevil is hardly comparable. The Wood Dynamo still stands as one of the best-drawn super-heroes of that period. T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents also featured equally high-quality work by Crandall, Kane and Ditko. Too, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents was the first regularly-published giant-sized comic featuring original material to survive for an extensive run; Tower was the exception at the time when the 32-pager was king. In the increasingly complex world of super-hero scripts and soap-opera characterization, Tower, proved that solid plots, self-contained stories and ten-pagers could be effective. And, of course, they gave us Dynamo, NoMan and Menthor, whom most ’60s fans remember as fondly as most of the Marvel and DC horde of that time. Moreover, Tower had proven that a third-force comics company could compete with the two established super-hero publishers, and win. Most of the minors were willing to pick the crumbs from the DC-Marvel table; Tower Comics stood beside the two giants in terms of sales and quality. Of the second-string publishers, Tower Comics was the only first-rate group. [The author wishes to thank Wally Wood for information, George Olshevsky for inspiration, and Marvin and Elizabeth Slaughter for editing, advice, the loan of their collection, and much beer and good conversation.—LM]

Above: Lest we forget, Archie knock-off Tippy Teen proved to be the most durable character in the history of Tower Comics, lasting 27 issues (and an additional 15 spinoff issues of Tippy’s Friends Go Go and Animal, not to mention four issues of Teen-In, hosted by the ditzy chick, and a coloring book!). Below: Dick Giordano drew the debut Secret Agent Mike Manly story in Fight the Enemy #1, no doubt basing the character’s likeness on then super-agent Sean (007) Connery.

From the Archive

Word from the Tower A brief 1966 interview with Tower editor Samm Schwartz by Angel Marcana & William Bracero Below: Contributed by CBA pal Steve Cohen, the splash to the second T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad story (TA #2), beautifully delineated by Mike Sekowsky and Frank Giacoia. Many thanks to Steve for his hospitality and great submissions!

The following interview was originally published in the fifth issue of Bombshell, a 1960s fanzine and it features a talk with Tower Comics’ official comics editor (and resident Archie-type cartoonist) Samm Schwartz. Thanks to CBA pals Jeff Gelb, Bill Schelly, and Mike Friedrich for helping us track this one down. The article was original-

ly titled “We Face Tower!” and included a prologue and epilogue which we include below. (While this piece is 35 years old and assuredly in public domain, if anyone knows the whereabouts of Angel or William, please contact us so we can send ’em complimentary copies and our thanks!) PROLOGUE: When we reached 185 Madison Avenue at noon on August 19th, we were almost dead on our feet. We had gotten on the wrong train, took the right train to the wrong station, walked dozens of blocks in the wrong direction, and finally gave up and took a taxi to the place! Oh, how we fans suffer for our cause! But it was worth it all! Our fatigue left us as we entered the office of Tower’s editor. True, the place was not the bridal suite, but it was our goal, and we had reached it. There was the usual conglomeration of paper, ink bottles, T-squares, drawing boards, bulletin boards, finished and unfinished strips and the smell of ink everywhere; but it all reflected the energy and devotion of comicdom’s biggest new offspring. Schwartz, the man whom we would interview, motioned to us to sit down, then sat down himself. He was of medium build, white, with thinning black hair and glasses. He looked like a man in his late thirties, or early forties. He had a low, deep voice and a rather easy-going manner. Perhaps that’s why he wasn’t bothered by our being two hours late. “Fire away!” he said. Here’s what followed: Bombshell: How did Tower get started? Samm Schwartz: Well, Tower was in the publishing business for a while, then last year we decided to go into the comic book field. That’s all there is to it! Bombshell: What inspired you to create T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents? Samm: Inspired? No, that’s the wrong word. We didn’t need inspiration to create the characters. All we do is kick around some ideas—that’s all. We aren’t inspired to do anything. Bombshell: Who were the artists and writers on the first TA? Samm: The first T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents? Weeell, let’s see: There was Wally Wood, Mike Sekowsky, Lon Silverstone—they were all artists. Leonard Brown was our writer. Bombshell: We know that most of your staff is freelance, but are there any of them that have favorites? Samm: Well, Wally Wood writes and draws Dynamo. Beyond that, everyone does whatever’s handed to him. Bombshell: Besides Dynamo and NoMan, are there any more characters slated to appear in their own mags within the year? Samm: No-o-o. Bombshell: Are there any new characters on the horizon along with new artists and writers? Samm: Well, we’re always on the lookout for new artists and writers. Bombshell: Will Menthor be back? Samm: No. Gee, we got a lot of reaction in the mail to that. A lot of them wanted to bring him back while others wanted him to stay dead. Bombshell: What did the majority want?

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

Samm: Oh, it was pretty much split down the middle. Bombshell: Is it too early to ask how The Raven has been received? Samm: Yes, but so far what we’ve gotten has been favorable. Bombshell: Who’s The Raven’s artist? Samm: Manny Stallman. Bombshell: Do you plan to bring back T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad in their own strip? Samm: Occasionally, from time to time. Bombshell: Does that mean you’ll add extra pages for them? Samm: No, they’ll just replace somebody. Bombshell: Will we see more of The Iron Maiden? Samm: No, she’ll be wearing the same amount of armor. Bombshell: No, you misunderstood. What we’re asking is whether the triangle between her, Dynamo and Alice will be further developed? Samm: You mean you really think there’s a triangle? I never noticed it myself, so I can’t say. Bombshell: Since your regular mags are already giant-size, what will you do for an annual? Most companies do publish them. Samm: That’s an interesting question. I never thought of it before… Well, most of the annuals nowadays are merely reprints and, of course, we’re in no position for reprints just now. As you know, [page signatures are printed] in multiples of 16—so I suppose ours will have to be about 96 [pages] or something. Bombshell: Do you check on your competition? Samm: Certainly we do, and we’re sure they read our stuff. Bombshell: Well, since you say you check on the competition, and have guys like Mike Sekowsky and others who also

work for DC, shouldn’t you be familiar with The Flash? If so, how can you claim Lightning isn’t a copy? Samm: Well, look: The other companies have been around for a long time, while we’ve been around only for about a year. All super-heroes are basically the same, if you think about it. Besides, we feel that there are enough differences between Lightning and The Flash to make him not look like a copy. Bombshell: What are the general salaries for artists and writers? Samm: Well, we don’t have any “general salaries.” These guys are freelance; their income is never the same from week to week. As you know, their pay is based on the number of pages. Bombshell: What are your opinions of fandom, fanzines and stuff like that? Samm: Well, I don’t know too much about fanzines and stuff like that. Wally Wood, though, has started his own fanzine. He’s going to run into competition, though. But all of his friends are chipping in. Bombshell: What do you think of the comics industry as a whole? Samm: Well, it beats working for a living! Seriously, though, I think it’s a big, serious business—more serious than many people realize. It contains a lot of talented and hardworking individuals, and it’s all a very gratifying occupation to be in.

Left inset: The history of Tower Comics is hopelessly intertwined with that of Archie Comics from the fact that its publisher and editor were former Archie mainstays to the subsequent printing of John Carbonaro’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents revival by the publisher of “America’s Typical Teenager.” As if to underscore the strange bedfellowship, Rod Ollerenshaw contributed this cartoon of Dynamo’s chief villainess revealed as (gasp!) Archie gal-pal Betty Cooper. John Carbonaro featured this piece in the letter page of the first issue of the 1983 edition of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1. Courtesy of John Carbonaro. Betty ©2001 Archie Publications, Inc.

EPILOGUE: Our questions over, we were about to leave, but got into a private discussion with Schwartz. When that was over, we left, had some refreshments at a nearby luncheonette, speedily found a subway line that would take us home, and arrived at our respective abodes without any mishap. We had beheld and harkened to the voice of Tower, and we would now have to hand down to posterity what we had seen and heard. (Dig that wording, man!)

NOW BACK IN PRINT WITH NEW MATERIAL! ALTER EGO: THE COMIC BOOK ARTIST COLLECTION

(160-page Trade Paperback, now shipping) • $20 POSTPAID (Canada: $22, Elsewhere: $23 Surface, $27 Airmail)

TwoMorrows. Bringing New Life To Comics Fandom. 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

All characters TM

• Special color cover by JOE KUBERT! • A never-published interview with GIL KANE! • All-new rare and previously-unpublished art by JACK KIRBY, GIL KANE, JOE KUBERT, WALLY WOOD, FRANK ROBBINS, NEAL ADAMS, and others! • STEVE DITKO on the creation of SPIDER-MAN, and a rare DITKO INTERVIEW! • ROY THOMAS on the birth of THE INVADERS, and more!

& © DC Com ics.

See the material that heralded the return of Roy Thomas’ legendary fanzine of the 1960s! Reprints the ALTER EGO flip-sides from the out-of-print COMIC BOOK ARTIST #1-5, plus 30 NEW PAGES of features & art:

CBA Interview

Dynamite Dan Adkins On his years at Tower and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. contributions EDITOR'S NOTE: Don’t miss Dan’s interview in the upcoming book (co-edited by yours truly) THE WARREN COMPANION, due any minute now from TwoMorrows Publishing! In this massive 288page tome, you’ll find spectacular Adkins art on some unfinished Warren assignments, as well as a lot of talk regarding Wallace Wood by Dan, and another former Wood assistant, NICOLA CUTI. Be there, comics fans!

Inset right: Dapper Dan and his future vivacious bride Jeanette (Strouse) in a 1956 photo, courtesy of Dan Adkins.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson Daniel Adkins really went all out for CBA this issue and we extend our profound appreciation for his back cover illustration, Tower checklist consultation, and participation in yet another interview for our magazine (hot on the heels of his Alter Ego #8 cover and interview!). While we talked to the artist about his Marvel Comics tenure for our seventh issue, here we zero in on his experience working in Wally Wood’s studio during the 1960s, specifically his contributions on Tower’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. This conversation took place by telephone on January 11, 2001, and Dan copy edited the transcript. Comic Book Artist: Do you have any idea how Tower Comics came about? Dan Adkins: I don’t know exactly how Wally learned that they wanted to put out comics, but I assume he heard and took up a package to them. I don’t think he’d just approach them out of the blue. So, he must’ve heard they were looking to put out comics. CBA: Who was Samm Schwartz? Dan: He was a previous editor of Archie Comics, I believe, and he was the editor of the Tower Comics line. Samm was the guy I had to deal with. If Wally was busy, it was me that had to deal with Samm. “Well, Samm, I don’t know, Wally’s doing something. I think he’s taking a nap.” [laughter] Anyway, Samm called me up after the death of Menthor and gave me a dressing-down for killing him. I said, “Sam, you okayed the idea!” But he had a bunch of kids down there in the office that were after me, and he wanted to know what to tell them! “Tell them to get out of your office, Samm!” [laughter] CBA: They marched into his office? Dan: Yeah, they were gonna do something. They wanted to know who’s the guy responsible for killing Menthor! [laughs] CBA: Did you deal with the guys at the Tower offices? Dan: I was the freshman on the block, a kid working with Wally and the

guys in his studio, so I didn’t know any of the people at the editorial office. I never met Harry Shorten or Samm Schwartz in person. CBA: You just dealt with Samm over the phone? Dan: Yeah, I never met the guys at Tower. I was just Wally’s assistant, you know? I was never working for Tower. CBA: So you just worked for Woody? Dan: When I first got there, Wally was putting out the first issue, and the last story wasn’t done. It had been penciled, and Wally was redrawing it. I don’t know who that penciler was. CBA: Was it Larry Ivie? Dan: No. [laughs] It wasn’t Larry Ivie, but Larry was to blame for the mess at the beginning! We had to do the first four pages over. The last story, I never did find out who that penciler was, but it didn’t look like anything like Larry Ivie. It looked more like John Giunta, but I knew it wasn’t. Dick Ayers penciled “The Counterfeit Traitor.” It ends up looking like Wally Wood, but it was penciled by Dick Ayers. He didn’t want credit, because I guess he was still doing Sgt. Fury for Marvel. So we didn’t tell anybody Dick was working on the Tower stuff, and he wasn’t quite as bad as the guy who penciled that first Iron Maiden story. Anyway, I had to redraw it all over and did a little inking on it. The first story was messed up by Larry Ivie—the first four pages—the so-called “Introduction.” Larry had been down at the offices, and saw Samm, and Samm gave a call and told Wally about Larry. But Wally did not know Larry at this time, he never met him, so I don’t know how that fits in with the Creepy stuff, but I guess the Creepy stuff came later. Right? Creepy wasn’t along until about six months later, I guess. But I don’t think Larry Ivie and Wally Wood ever met, you know? I think all that stuff was done through Samm. Anyway, Larry was given the four-page script and the breakdowns by Wally for the first four pages. They were sent over to Samm, and Samm gave them to Larry. Larry gave the stuff back to Samm, but it came back to Samm penciled and inked! Well, the book was supposed to look like Wally Wood had drawn it, so we had to fix it up, you know? And we did it completely over. There was nothing left of the Larry Ivie in that story. CBA: I’ve seen Larry’s version which he sent to me. They were completely done, even lettered! Dan: He did the inking, but he wasn’t asked to do the inking! [laughs] He also did a cover of three of the characters running towards you, which we used later on. But there wasn’t anything new in that idea, because Mac Raboy and everybody had done covers of heroes running at you at that point. So, Larry took credit for that cover later on. On the layout he did of the first cover, he had a little banner across it that said “Crandall/Ivie/Wood.” We didn’t use the banner. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

CBA: Did Larry come into the studio later? Dan: No, he was never at the studio. He wrote scripts which were given to Samm. CBA: I read an essay by Ralph Reese, and he was describing a time when Wally Wood was inking “Captain America”—which I ascertain must’ve been when Woody was inking The Avengers—and Larry Ivie took it upon himself to ink Cap as the Golden Age Captain America, without the stripes down his back. [laughs] Apparently, Woody was not too happy about that. Dan: But that wasn’t done at Wally’s studio. He was never up there. There’s only one room in the studio, and I had a desk there. CBA: Samm Schwartz was point central for Tower as editor of the books? Dan: Well, he was like the manager of Wally! [laughter] Wally was basically the editor of the book. CBA: Artists came to the studio with their finished assignments? Dan: Well, no... they dropped the stuff off down at Samm’s all the time or mailed it to Wally. Nobody came up to the studio! [laughs] Nobody bothers Wally. Ditko dropped stuff off down there, and Samm called up and says, “This guy is terrible, Wally! He draws weird stuff!” CBA: [laughs] Good old Samm! Dan: Yeah! And Wally says, “This guy’s got a great following; he’s very popular!” CBA: Ditko was never better than at that time! [laughs] Dan: Yeah, that’s true. It was real good stuff. In fact, we inked a couple of Steve’s jobs just to please Sam. CBA: Oh, really? [laughs] That was a beautiful job! Dan: Hell, Ditko drew “The Death of Menthor”… he’s the one that killed Menthor! CBA: [laughs] It’s all Steve’s fault! Dan: Wally and I just wanted to ink it. Of course, we wrote the script, too. CBA: But Wally would do breakdowns for Steve at times? Dan: Wally would for almost everybody, because he did a lot of the storytelling, so he did all the breakdowns. He would draw the breakdowns on this 81/2" x 11" typewriter paper. For us in the studio, he’d do the breakdowns on big sheets. We had to job a few stories out sometimes. The one about China is inked by Chic Stone, one of the stories we never had a chance to ink, but it was originally penciled by me. It’s the only story in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents that I penciled and somebody else inked. Wally did all the breakdowns on all the other ones. I don’t think Wally liked my layouts very much, and that was the reason we kept putting that story aside! [laughs] We finally needed a story, so we sent it to Chic Stone to ink. CBA: As far as you recall, did Steve Ditko immediately come over to Tower after he quit Marvel? Dan: Well, the reason he worked for Tower is Wally Wood asked him to. Samm insisted on seeing his work, so he went down to see Samm. [laughs] Samm didn’t like the art! But he gave him work, anyway. It was real good work, too. CBA: Did Gil Kane visit much? Dan: When I was up there—I don’t know who visited when I wasn’t there, you know—but the only people who ever came was Al Williamson and Leo Dillon, the science-fiction illustrator. CBA: If Woody was editor of the books, when did he see the final work? Did Samm send the finished pages over to him for approval? Dan: No. We didn’t see the finished work when Ditko would hand in a job, for instance. We did most of the jobs because we inked them. We inked Crandall, Dick Ayers, even Orlando did a story we inked, and we inked our own stories... there wasn’t a hell of a lot that was not touched by us. CBA: Oh, I see, all the stories came through the studio anyway. Dan: You know, we depended on Gil Kane. He would sometimes drop off a story. [laughs] It was a five flight walk up to Wally’s! You could take an elevator up to Samm’s, you know? So, I don’t think those other guys wanted to walk up five flights. [laughter] We talked to Crandall by phone—he lived out in Kansas—and we’d get his stuff in the mail, so that came to us first. CBA: Sometimes Reed would pencil and ink? Dan: Oh, yeah. CBA: Do you know what happened to the original art after the job July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

was printed? Dan: Well, I don’t know what happened to the art, but I used to own some pages which I sold for peanuts—ten or fifteen bucks a page—but I don’t know where I got that stuff from. Anyway, I inked two Crandall stories that I can remember. The first one was where the story took place in the desert—Iraq or someplace—do you remember that? With dinosaurs in the front? The other was where they were under the Earth; where there were railroad cars. That’s the second one I inked. I remember being inhibited inking Crandall’s pencils. CBA: Those are your inks? Dan: Wood and me. Wood did the better stuff! [laughter] He did all the main figures. That doesn’t mean I didn’t do some of the muscles on them, like Dynamo, which I did. But I was mostly doing the guy’s hats! [laughter] Weed’s or something, or a train. CBA: Did you chat at any length with Reed? Dan: No, I didn’t. CBA: It was just pretty much it’s in the mail? Dan: Well, Wally had a whip, and if I talked long... crack! [laughs] Actually, I don’t even think we had music on in the studio, you know? CBA: Was he a taskmaster? Dan: Well, only by example. He constantly worked! That’s all he did was work. Geez, besides eating, that’s all he did.

Above: Splash page recreation (sans verbiage) by Dan Adkins of the Reed Crandall, Wally Wood and Adkins drawn story, “The Return of the Iron Maiden,” from T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #4. Commissioned by John Harrison and courtesy of Dan.

Inset right: Contributor J. David Spurlock suspects this sketch (enhanced by Photoshop wiz JDS) was by Wood assistant Tony Coleman, who, after only six months or so in Woody’s studio, returned to his native Britain where he resumed drawing the war comic book stories that set his reputation. Courtesy of JDS and Bill Pearson. Art ©2001 the Estate of Wally Wood.

Below: Dan Adkins’ proposed Adkin’s Outlet prozine led not only to the artist joining Wally Wood’s studio but also was transformed into the legendary witzend. This ad announcing the ’zine appeared in Jerry Bails and Bill Spicer’s 1965 booklet The Guidebook to Comics Fandom. Courtesy of Mike Friedrich. ©2001 Dan Adkins.

CBA: That was an extremely busy time for Woody, wasn’t it? You guys didn’t really get any break, did you? Dan: When I came in, he was just finishing up Daredevil at Marvel. CBA: Do you recall meeting Larry Ivie for the first time? Dan: I lived with the guy my first two weeks in New York. I was his roommate. That’s how I know he had nothing to do with Wally, because Wally kept saying, “Who the hell is this guy?” [laughter] At the time, Larry Ivie and Tim Battersby—who committed suicide at 19, I think— and Ralph Reese were all good friends. They were all lying their asses off in the fanzines about what they were doing on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents! And Wally was madder than hell! But he was trying to help Ralph, because Ralph had problems at the time—he was only 15—and Wally was an alcoholic (who was on the wagon at the time) and he was always trying to help Ralph, but Ralph would come over there, and he wouldn’t even know who in the hell Wally was some of the time! He kept calling him Larry! [laughter] Anyway, at a science-fiction convention, Larry Ivie showed this slide show, and he had my stuff and Virgil Finlay and a bunch of guys, he was showing our swipes, or sources. Like when Virgil Finlay would swipe from the Saturday Evening Post or something, he’d show that. He’s show me swiping Frazetta or someone. So, I wasn’t at the convention, but I heard this from Steve Stiles, so I went up to see Larry and talk it over, “What the hell are you doing, smearing my name?” [laughs] This wasn’t the first time, he was also writing letters to Celia Goldsmith, who was the editor at Amazing Stories, and she would show me the letters from Larry Ivie, where he would show my swipes and stuff to her. And then, he would show her how to draw! [laughs] He would point out, “This is comic book art, this is illustration, this is fine art,” he would do examples. She was saying, “You’ve got to straighten Larry Ivie out! I don’t need this!” [laughs] So, he was working for Galaxy at the time, doing a couple of illustrations for Galaxy, but I don’t think he ever worked for Amazing. Anyway, I went up to talk to Larry, because he was writing Celia letters, and he was running me down....

CBA: Bad-mouthing you? Dan: Yeah, at the conventions.... He put me in good company! He was showing Krenkel, [laughs] and everybody. I knew that Larry was always broke, so I stopped at the corner pharmacy to get sandwiches and sodas for both of us, and so I went up there, and I said, “Do you want this tuna fish and the soda?” He said, “I’ll take the soda, put the tuna fish in the refrigerator.” I went over to the refrigerator, opened it up, and it’s empty! Completely empty, except for one little upsidedown clay dinosaur, on a rack down there! It’s only as big as your hand. This is from one of the little movies he used to make, stopmotion movies. I just couldn’t argue with the guy, I couldn’t do it that day. [laughter] Other stories, like we’d have parties, and Larry would give parties, and all kinds of people would show up, and I don’t know if you know who Marvin Frenzel was, but Marvin was sitting over in the corner—this was during hippie time, in the ’60s—and Marvin was playing with cooked spaghetti with his feet! [laughs] He had a plate there, and he was playing with spaghetti with his feet! That’s the kind of people that showed up at Larry Ivie’s. CBA: People would just come and crash at Larry’s place a lot? Dan: Yeah, he lived in Manhattan. Bill Pearson was there at the time. Bill Pearson moved out of Larry’s and Bill and I lived together for maybe six months. CBA: Who is Bill Pearson? Dan: He put out witzend, and is head of the Wally Wood estate! He’s got all that Wood art out there and papers! He’s got all these sketches by Wally, Jesus, all these little doodles, thousands of them! Anyway, Bill is the guy I met when we were both teenagers, and we wrote letters to fanzines. We put out a fanzine together, Sata. He was also editor up at Charlton for a long time. Bill also wrote some of the first stories in Creepy and Eerie. As a matter of fact, Russ Jones wrote a story with him, and Joe Orlando illustrated it, and it was about voodoo or something. Read the byline there: “Russ Jones and Bill Pearson,” and what was Russ Jones’ contribution? “Hey, Bill! Do a story about the voodoo guy!” That was his contribution! [laughs] Bill also wrote some stories for T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. So did Larry Ivie and Len Brown. CBA: Do you remember Len Brown? Did he come around? Dan: I don’t think he ever came around. I met Len, but not there. I think I met him in Manhattan someplace. He worked for Topps, you know. I guess he still works for Topps! CBA: He just finally retired. Dan: [laughs] Oh, so that’s what happened! He was so young when I was up there, he was in his 20s. Anyway, it was just me, Ralph and Coleman up there for a year-and-a-half, and his wife, Tatjana. CBA: This was Tony Coleman? He was out of Canada? Dan: Yeah. He went back to Britain. I did such a good job on “The Battle of Britain” because of those little digests, British war magazines that Tony had. [laughs] I swiped just about everything in “Battle of Britain” except the first page, which Wally laid out. But in between, I used most of those British comics. CBA: Coleman was an artist over in England? COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

Dan: Yeah, he was a comic book artist of the type like Mike Esposito would be, you know? Not too flashy a style. But a good journeyman. He worked for Wally for under six months, just to get enough money to get back to England. He lost all his money in Canada or something, and Joe Orlando sent him up from DC to work for Wally, which means Orlando must’ve been editor down at DC during the Tower time. CBA: So Joe and Woody always maintained their friendship? Dan: Yeah, they were always great buddies. CBA: Did they go out and socialize together? Dan: Wally never went out. [laughter] Wally went out twice a week to see a psychiatrist. CBA: Did he order everything out? Dan: Yes, we did. We ordered a lot of stuff out. CBA: Did you have a hot plate? Did anyone ever cook? Dan: We had a kitchen right next to us, then down the hall was the bathroom, and then the swipe room, which was filled with about 22 cabinets. Wally had made his own swipe machine, it was a great, elaborate affair! [laughs] Like this great big house was coming down on us. Yeah, we turned a crank wheel, and a big wheel at the side there, and Wally made the lenses and everything himself. It was a great thing. I used to sleep in there, and I was afraid all the filing cabinets would fall on me or something. Then, I slept in the living room sometimes, on the couch in there. I was up there all the time! CBA: Did you see, there was supposedly a ritual that Woody would, one day a week, just do tear sheets, just go through magazines and just tear out pictures for reference? Do you remember that? Dan: No, I don’t think he did that. I think most of that happened beforehand. He might’ve had that ritual earlier on or something. But I was up there seven days a week! I lived there! [laughs] CBA: It was just an amazing amount of work you guys put out. Dan: We put out all the Tower stuff, three or four series for Topps, stuff for Harvey, the Total War and Fantastic Voyage stuff for Western.... We even did an eight-page monster story for Western. We did that Alka-Seltzer ad that appeared on TV. We did Argosy ads, we did those six record album covers. CBA: How long were you with Woody? Dan: 16 months. CBA: [laughs] Wow! Dan: Yeah! I know I did 60 different assignments. It was great fun, I had nothing but fun all the time. CBA: Did you do some writing? Dan: Yeah, I killed Menthor. CBA: [laughs] So that was your idea? Dan: Yeah, yeah. CBA: What was your thinking behind that? Dan: I guess it was because my parents and everybody treated me bad. [laughter] I used to have dreams of everybody coming to my funeral, and they were all weeping and sorry they treated me so bad. CBA: You’ll show them! [laughs] Dan: So, this came out in my “Death of Menthor” story. Instead of writing it Wally’s way, with a happy ending, I wanted to show the people that characters can die. [laughter] It just wrote itself. I sat down for two hours, and Wally gave me this plot about... they swiped his helmet, you know? So I started out with that, and ended up passing the pages along to Wally, and Wally’s saying, “I hope to hell you save this guy! It’s good!” [laughs] Then, the last two pages, I didn’t save him. So, Wally told me for two hours, “You’ve got to change this, we can’t kill off Menthor!” And I kept saying, “Ah, you never use him anyway! He’s a lousy super-hero!” [laughter] I convinced Wally, then Wally had to do the same act for Samm. But he was very popular after we killed him! For a couple of months, anyway. The story just happened, it just wrote itself. That’s the way I did my Doctor Strange stories, too. They might’ve been a little better when Denny O’Neil was writing, because he did have tight plots, but everybody else would just give me a loose plot and I was just winging it! I liked my own control—I didn’t like being bossed around. That’s why they stink, too. [laughter] Now, I realize in the old days, those things were going nowhere! You can tell they’re just sort of like The Wizard of Oz. CBA: I remember seeing it as a kid, and going, “Wow! You can’t July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

kill a super-hero!” That was cool and innovative! It was before Ferro Lad was killed in “Legion of Super-Heroes.” Dan: Wally wrote the last line, something about laying down your life for a friend or something. Ditko ended up penciling it, which pissed me off at the time, because I was going to do such a marvelous job! [laughs] I probably couldn’t have done any better than he did though. Ditko used my layouts that I drew, as I wrote the script. CBA: How much work were you doing on a typical T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents story? Dan: Well, when we started out, Wally had to fix up my work a lot. I can’t remember exactly what I did after that first Iron Maiden story… I think it was that one about robots coming up in Washington, D.C. with that big shot of the capitol on the splash page. He would lay it out, the breakdowns.... Well, you’ve seen the Wood Sketchbook? Well, those are the sketches. It was pretty good. There were no backgrounds hardly on most of the stuff, and there’s no faces much. It’s just basically figures, but there’s some little indication of faces there. But the figures were mostly there, all you had to do was tighten them up, they were most of the time on the money. He said if I could find a better figure, to swipe it. So sometimes I substituted Crandall or somebody for his stuff. Then, there were a lot of backgrounds to make up, because the backgrounds weren’t too complex. The cover roughs in there, he never did them that tight. Those

Above: A page from the Adkins tour de force, “The Maze” (Dynamo #4), entirely penciled by Dan and inked by Woody.

Below: A little-known aspect of Woody’s mid-’60s work is his two issues of Gold Key series Total War, which contains vigorous (if somewhat rushed) art from the Wood studio. By the third issue the book was renamed M.A.R.S. Patrol Total War (what’s up with all these ’60s acronyms?), with #3 containing the only Wood artwork. Here’s the splash page from #1. ©2001 Western Publishing.

are almost complete pencils that he has in the Sketchbook, of some of the covers. Some of those covers [laughs] where he went over a swipe by Ralph or something, you can see some of the awkwardness in the train or something. We had Ralph swipe a lot of the stuff. If we needed a train or something, Ralph would swipe some of that stuff. But mostly after Wally laid it out, I took it home, and I’d do the tight pencils, and back at his place, we’d do mostly the inking, finish it up there, so Wally could have the last... and usually it was deadline time anyway... so Wally could have the last word on the panel. We’d make corrections up there. But at home, I would tighten it up. I worked my ass off up at Wally’s, and drag it home, get a nap, and start working my ass off at home! [laughter] I never slept any at all, probably averaged four or five hours a night, you know? Only my day lasted about 35 hours [laughter] before I’d get to sleep! CBA: Did you guys do lettering, too? Dan: No, Ben Oda and his assistant, Billy Yoshida, would do most of our lettering. CBA: Would it be sent out, or would Ben come over? Dan: I think he would pick that up, I think they’d pick up four or five stories at a time. Billy was a very young guy, like 20. I don’t think he ever got credit. CBA: Did Wally do all the story logos? Dan: For the stories we did, he probably did. I don’t know if he inked them all, but he roughed them in there, just how he wanted. CBA: What did Coleman do? Dan: Coleman specifically inked Fantastic Voyage, the majority of the inking on that. I did no inking on Fantastic Voyage. I did almost all the pencil-

ing. [laughs] Conceptual, everything almost! He worked on either Dynamo #2 or T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #2. Wherever all those guys are on a beach and Dynamo was beating the hell out of about 20 or 30 guys in one panel. Tony was complaining about that. [laughter] He worked on a couple of the stories we did for Harvey... this was like the V-1 Rocket story which I penciled. CBA: Was this Warfront? Dan: Oh, that’s what the name of it was! [laughs] Yeah, that’s where they had “Dollar Bill Cash” and all those guys. I don’t have any copies of that, I haven’t seen them in years. Earthman and all that stuff. I haven’t seen those in years. CBA: Did you guys work on “Animan”? Dan: The one that was printed in witzend? No, I had nothing to do with that. I think I did a little inking on the splash, and that’s all I did... in front of those trees and stuff. That’s just because I happened to be there at the time. I don’t know if that’s because that came in so late, I’d already left, or was close to leaving Wally. Ralph was tracing off those little cavemen running over a log from Reed Crandall [laughs] when I’d seen them. CBA: What did Ralph do on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents? Dan: He didn’t do much art until after I left, but there’s one that Chic Stone penciled, and we added more penciling by Ralph. Chic penciled this one about a castle, and there’s one of those machines that throws a big rock that’s on the floor—catapult. Ralph did the catapult. CBA: There was a splash page in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #4, with billboards reading “A.G. Coleman Presents Daniel Adkins”? Dan: Yeah, that’s the Times Square thing. There’s also other artists mentioned throughout the whole damn book. The guys in Texas, the Texas Trio—Buddy Saunders... those guys are mentioned. That’s when I was starting to get Wally interested in putting out witzend, but under my control! [laughter] CBA: Did you add those names, or did Woody? Dan: No, I had it all in there. Tony on the splash... I think I put Tony Coleman as a “BNF”—Big Name Fan! [laughter] And Jerry Bails, Big Name Fan. There’s also “Tim” for Tim Battersby. That’s when Tim was on good terms with us! [laughs] CBA: Astor is just for the hotel? Dan: Yeah, the Astor Hotel is where they held the convention. CBA: You obviously did a lot of work on this story. I can see your dinosaur, this is really... Dan: Well, it’s Wally’s old round dinosaurs, I took a lot from his EC stories. I like his dinosaur better than today’s dinosaur, which has all the color. All these old, gray, round ones! The dinosaurs today are weird-looking! I like Wally’s dinosaurs. CBA: Did you know Manny Stallman? Dan: Yeah, he lived out in Queens and was absolutely nuts. CBA: The Raven stories were so cartoony. Dan: Yeah, Wally didn’t know what to think of that. [laughter] I told him I liked it! CBA: Who was John Giunta? Dan: He was an old-timer. He did the one story where Dynamo is running and dressed in uniform, as a soldier or something, with a tank. He did quite a few. He also did science-fiction illustrations for Galaxy. CBA: Did you know Gray Morrow? Dan: Yeah. He’s been over to my home, we were good friends. [laughs] I haven’t really seen him lately, but he still looks great to me, and he’s older than I am! [laughter] Yeah, he still looks sharp to me. Oh, yeah, we used to have a lot of fun together, because he liked to party. In fact, I think he still likes to party, he invited me for a drink! [laughs] He was here at a convention, too, but he only stayed about two hours and left, because he found the convention dull. I helped Wally on a lot of the science-fiction stories. As a matter of fact, Coleman inked a few of the science-fiction illustrations, too. But this was right during that period where I was working there, ’68 or something, and I worked for Galaxy during that same period, doing my own stuff. So, in one issue of Galaxy there’s a story illustrated by me, another illustrated by Wally I also did the penciling on, and then there’s a story by Ralph Reese... it was an all-Wally issue! [laughter] Of course, Wally did a cover, all himself and his wife, Tatjana. She helped some on the coloring. They wanted big changes COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

on the cover to make it cheaper and louder, and Wally was going to say no to the whole deal, and Tatjana just says, “Let’s let Danny fix it, and we’ll split the money.” So, I made it cheap and louder, and then they ended up giving the credit to Gray Morrow! [laughter] CBA: Was Roger Brand around the studio at the time? Dan: I did a story called “The Haunted Sky”— I’m not sure if that’s a Creepy or Eerie story—but it was in one of the books, and I penciled the splash, and I didn’t want to do the rest of the story, because I guess I had to do something for Marvel, so I gave it to Roger to finish. So, “The Haunted Sky,” which was printed in one of the books, is my splash, a story Archie wrote for me about planes, [laughs] that I begged him for, then I gave it back to him and screwed him, and Roger finished the story. So, how much Roger helped me, I don’t know. Roger did a few—oh, I know what he helped me on! He helped me on that anniversary issue, the 100th issue of Sub-Mariner versus the Hulk, Tales to Astonish, I guess. Roger helped me ink that, we inked nine pages in a week. CBA: Did you meet him at the studio? Dan: No, I don’t know how I met Roger. You’ve got to remember, it’s New York, where you go up to the offices of the publishers, you go to parties—Bill Pearson used to have an apartment that wasn’t too far from Wally Wood. You know, Wally was on 76th Street, off Grand Central Park, and Pearson was at 72nd Street, on over towards the river, and this was back when Steve Ditko used to actually get out and go to these things, and I actually talked to Steve Ditko, so I can assure you he’s a real person! [laughter] A very nice, quiet guy, usually wore a suit. Gray Morrow was over there, and you’d meet all kinds of people over at Bill’s place. I probably met Roger, because I also knew Michelle, his wife. So, I met her over there. I don’t know if I met Marvin Wolfman. Jeff Jones came into the city a month or two after I left Wally. He helped me on a couple of science-fiction illustrations. He also helped me on a Not Brand Echh! story by... geez, it was Magnus, Robot Fighter... [laughs] Don Heck! You know, Jeff Jones helped me ink some Don Heck. It’s all very strange, because you meet so many people. I used to be with the other crowd, like Ted White, Harlan Ellison, Lin Carter, Terry Carr—I still have photographs in my scrapbook of Terry Carr and his wife when they got married. Lin Carter was writing all that stuff, and he had an apartment with Oriental curtains, and chests... [laughter] I was down in the Village, that’s where Ted White was. CBA: Harlan was a character, right? Dan: Yeah, Harlan was a character. He was briefly in town here, spoke over here at Reading College. I went over and listened to him for two hours. God, I don’t know how these guys can project in their old age! [laughs] Harlan’s a couple of years older than me, and has had one heart operation, I think, and he can still get out there and talk without the microphone and project to 200-300 people or something. I got to talk to him for a while; he’s a nice guy. CBA: What do you imagine the thinking behind the Tower Comics were? Were they trying to grab some of the thunder from Marvel Comics? Was it a James Bond thing? Dan: Well, Wally had all these characters, almost since childhood, like Animan, and Andor, a sort of a villain that looks like a civilian. Ditko did a couple of stories with Andro. That was his Animan, as far as giving power. But he had stories he’d done of Animan when he was 13 years old. Those little sketches. Pearson has all these little sketches, he sent a bunch to Steranko just to look at for a while. According to Steranko, they were all done without any pencil lines, July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

Wally was just inking those as a kid! Just made ’em up! I don’t know about that. CBA: Did he create all the Tower characters? Dan: As far as I know. A lot of them were made up as we went along, a lot of villains. CBA: Did you develop any of the characters? Dan: No. I don’t think anybody ever asked me. I had to write a couple of stories and stuff, and I probably wouldn’t have been able to do it, except Wally asked me. My God, he was my hero at the time! CBA: Did you like the Tower comics? Dan: Oh, well, one reason I quit was I kept telling Wally I’d like to do bigger pictures. [laughs] Wally was always into this telling a story in this formulaic way, and I was more into the image kind of thing. I said, “Let me do some big splashes!” CBA: They had pretty small panels. Dan: In fact, there was one with a big rocket ship—I forget what the hell that was—and I wanted to do a full splash, and Wally sat down there as half a page, and he’s got four other panels on that page. That got in the way, when I started, Wally stopped doing the breakdowns, and like I said, I did four on my own. He told me I had to do them all together on my own. In fact, I probably got credit for those, too, all three that I got credit for were probably ones I did on my own. The other one was the one that Chic Stone inked. So, it’s just that I wanted to do it differently than Wally. That’s what happens after you get so tired of doing it one way, you like experimenting a little bit when you start out, whereas Wally had settled to what he wanted to do. CBA: Was the lack of credit bothersome to you at all? Dan: No, I don’t think so. I was a lot happier getting credit, though! I could’ve lasted another two years if it continued, probably. The main reason I left everything is because we were told by Samm that the books weren’t selling, or were having hard times with distribution, and Wally said I should find some extra freelance work. I didn’t want to do advertising! [laughs] I did a couple

Left inset: Okay, maybe keen readers have seen this illo repro’d in Dan Adkins CBA #7 interview, but this Adkins recreation of Dynamo #1’s “Menace from the Moon” splash (originally by Wood & Adkins) but please forgive us for believing it deserves a second look. Commissioned by John Harrison and courtesy of Dan Adkins.

Below: Many thanks to contributor Bill Schelly (CBA pal and Alter Ego associate editor) for going above and beyond the duty when after a last minute request by Ye Ed, he sent a copy of ’60s fanzine Gosh Wow! #2’s great Wally Wood cover. An contemporaneous ad for the ’zine also mentioned a Reed Crandall NoMan cover but we discovered instead a spectacular Vaughn Bodé piece. Anybody seen the “Invisible Agent” cover?

Above: The most refreshing aspect of Tower Comics’ T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents was the reverence given to the art above all, from the spectacular void-of-blurbs covers to the exquisitely rendered pinups. Here’s a magnificently rendered one-pager by Wood & Adkins from #3.

Inset right: A photo of Dan Adkins, albeit from his days as 1970s art director for Marvel Comics’ b-&-w magazine line. Courtesy of Dan. 38

of those advertising jobs—I forget what the hell they were—and one was for Argosy magazine. I ended up copying Mort Drucker! It was a “Subscribe to Argosy, we have the great detective stories” ad. I had to draw Perry Mason and a whole bunch of detectives... that wasn’t any fun at all. CBA: Was the money good? Dan: Yeah, I guess. I don’t remember the money on that, but I do remember the money on the record albums, and that was $60 a page for just doing the pencils. That’s good money even ten years ago, let alone 30! I had money back then. Although, when Wally left Mad, he was getting $200 a page, which was good money today, almost! CBA: Did Woody stick it out at Tower? Dan: Until they went under. They started reprinting stories and stuff. CBA: And that’s all they did; they just reprinted to the end, right? Dan: Well, they had new covers, I think. Then they actually reprinted a couple of covers and everything. I think it only went to about #20. CBA: Did you like Woody? Dan: I don’t know if I liked him or just admired him. After all, he was mean-spirited, you know, but he really liked comics. I mean, I love the man’s work—everybody likes his work—but I don’t know if I liked him... I don’t think he was a nice guy. I think he was a very

honest guy, but I don’t know how many people you’ve talked to about his later years, but I’m sure if he had a kid, he’d never think much of the kid. But I might be wrong, because he sort of took care of Ralph a little bit. CBA: Was it unpleasant to work for him? Dan: No, it wasn’t unpleasant to work for him, because 1) You knew the money was going to be there, and 2) You respected the man’s work—but there was something about him that made you nervous; you don’t cross this man, you know? CBA: You were afraid of him? Dan: Well, yeah. I guess it boils down to that, yeah. I was afraid to be myself. CBA: But he wasn’t prone to violence, was he? Dan: Prone to violence? Did you ever hear about his later years? [laughs] CBA: Well, yes. Dan: He tore up the whole studio, and then started shooting a shotgun into the walls! And then he took an axe to everything! [laughter] Geez! CBA: I mean, when you were there. Dan: He was bleeding, he’d cut himself with the axe when Pearson found him one time. He had this rage in him, this underlying rage, that I’ve seen a few times. [laughs] When Tony left, and he didn’t like Tony’s artwork, he’d tear the man apart verbally. So yeah, I feared the guy. But basically, he was never terribly happy. The only true light moments he had was when he would strum the guitar and play folk songs. I always felt sorry for him, or concerned. CBA: Do you think his being unhappy added to his creativity, or do you think there was any correlation? Dan: It would tire me out to be unhappy, because that’s what happens when I get unhappy. He was going to a psychiatrist. If he was on meds, I don’t know, but he could’ve been on medicine. I know it was expensive for him to go to a psychiatrist. I don’t know. I think the thing that made Wally draw good was the fact that he wanted to show people his talent. Usually his value of himself comes from his work... in other words, what he valued from himself, what he was most proud of, was his work. He had delusions of grandeur, to a certain extent. CBA: If this country was a little more hip to what was going on, he would’ve been a major name in American culture, I think. Dan: If it was like in Europe, you mean? CBA: Yeah, more attuned. There was something in the early ’60s, with his work with Mad, that was the face of humor in this country—Wally Wood’s drawings were America. Dan: He asked me if I thought they should have a Wally Wood parade in New York, and how many people knew who he was, and all that sort of thing. [laughter] One of the reasons you start out drawing is to get attention, the ego thing. That can’t sustain you or your ego. He never got the glory like McFarlane. I went to a convention in Philadelphia when those guys were at their peak, and they had that big convention, it must’ve been ’89, ’90, somewhere in there, and there was a line for signing autographs for McFarlane that was 1,000 people long! Get in that line, you’re going to wait about two hours! That never happened with Wally Wood.

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

DIGITAL

NS DRAW! (edited by MIKE MANLEY) is the professional EDITIO BLE A “HOW-TO” magazine on comics, cartooning, and IL AVA NLY animation. Each issue features in-depth INTERVIEWS FOR O 5 and DEMOS from top pros on all aspects of graphic $2.9 storytelling, as well as such DRAW! #4 skills as layout, penciling, inking, Interview with ERIK LARSEN, KEVIN lettering, coloring, Photoshop techNOWLAN on drawing and inking niques, plus web guides, tips, tricks, techniques, DAVE COOPER’s coloring techniques in Photoshop, BRET and a handy reference source—this BLEVINS tutorial on Figure magazine has it all! Composition, PAUL RIVOCHE on the Design Process, reviews of NOTE: Some issues contain nudity for comics drawing papers, and more! purposes of figure drawing. (88-page magazine) $5.95 INTENDED FOR MATURE READERS. (Digital Edition) $2.95

DRAW! #8

DRAW! #9

DRAW! #10

DRAW! #5

DRAW! #6

DRAW! #7

MIKE WIERINGO interview, BENDIS and OEMING on how they create “Powers”, BRET BLEVINS shows “How to draw great hands”, “The illusion of depth in design” by PAUL RIVOCHE, art books reviewed by TERRY BEATTY, plus reviews of the best art supplies, and more!

Interview & demo with BILL WRAY, STEPHEN DeSTEFANO interview, BRET BLEVINS shows “How to draw the human figure in light and shadow,” Photoshop tutorial by CELIA CALLE, inking tips by MIKE MANLEY, reviews of the best art supplies, links, and more!

Interview/demo by DAN BRERETON, ZACH TRENHOLM on caricaturing, “Drawing In Adobe Illustrator” demo by ALBERTO RUIZ, “The Power of Sketching” by BRET BLEVINS, “Designing with light and shadow” by PAUL RIVOCHE, reviews of art supplies, links, and more!

(88-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(96-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(96-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $2.95

DRAW! #11

DRAW! #12

DRAW! #13

Interview & demo by MATT HALEY, TOM BANCROFT & ROB CORLEY on character design, “Drawing In Adobe Illustrator” by ALBERTO RUIZ, “Draping The Human Figure” by BRET BLEVINS, a new COMICS SECTION, International Spotlight on JOSÉ LOUIS AGREDA, and more!

WRITE NOW #8 crossover! MIKE MANLEY & DANNY FINGEROTH create a comic from script to print, BANCROFT & CORLEY on bringing characters to life, Adobe Illustrator with ALBERTO RUIZ, Noel Sickles’ work examined, PvP’s SCOTT KURTZ, art supply reviews, and more!

RON GARNEY interview & demo, GRAHAM NOLAN on creating newspaper strips, TODD KLEIN and others discuss lettering, “Draping The Human Figure, Part Two” by BRET BLEVINS, ALBERTO RUIZ on Adobe Illustrator, interview with MARK McKENNA, links, and more!

STEVE RUDE on comics & drawing, ROQUE BALLESTEROS on Flash animation, JIM BORGMAN on his daily comic strip Zits, BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY on “Drawing On Life”, Adobe Illustrator tips with ALBERTO RUIZ, links, a color section and more! New RUDE cover!

KYLE BAKER on merging traditional and digital art, MIKE HAWTHORNE on his work, “Making Perspective Work For You” by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, Photoshop techniques with ALBERTO RUIZ, THE VENTURE BROTHERS, links, and more! New BAKER cover!

Demo of painting methods by ALEX HORLEY, interview and demo by COLLEEN COOVER, a look behindthe-scenes on Adult Swim’s MINORITEAM, regular features on drawing by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, links, color section and more!

(96-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(88-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $2.95

(104-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(112-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(96-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $2.95

(88-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

DRAW! #14

DRAW! #15

DRAW! #16

DRAW! #17

DRAW! #18

DRAW! #19

In-depth interviews and demos with DOUG MAHNKE, OVI NEDELCU (Pigtale, WB Animation), STEVE PURCELL (Sam and Max), MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP on “Using Black to Power up Your Pages”, product reviews, and more!

Covers major schools offering comic art as part of their curriculum, in an ultimate overview of collegiate-level comic art classes! Plus, a “how-to” demo/interview with BILL REINHOLD, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP series, and more!

In-depth interview with HOWARD CHAYKIN, behind the drawing board and animation desk with JAY STEPHENS, COMIC ART BOOTCAMP on HOW TO USE REFERENCE and WORKING FROM PHOTOS (by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY), and more!

Interview and tutorial with Scott Pilgrim’s BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY on how he creates the acclaimed series, learn how B.P.R.D.’s GUY DAVIS creates his series, more Comic Art Bootcamp: Learning from The Great Cartoonists by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, reviews, and more!

Interview & demo by R.M. GUERA, Cartoon Network’s JAMES TUCKER on the hit show “Batman: The Brave and the Bold,” plus product reviews by JAMAR NICHOLAS, and Comic Book Boot Camp’s “Anatomy: Part 2” by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY!

DOUG BRAITHWAITE demo and interview, DANNY FINGEROTH’s new feature on writer/artists with R. SIKORYAK, BOB McLEOD critiques a newcomer’s work, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies and tool tech, COMIC ART BOOTCAMP on penciling & more!

(84-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

DRAW! #20

DRAW! #21

DRAW! #22

WALTER SIMONSON interview and demo, Rough Stuff’s BOB McLEOD gives a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work, Write Now’s DANNY FINGEROTH spotlights writer/artist AL JAFFEE, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews the best art supplies and tool technology, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS offer “Comic Art Bootcamp” lessons, plus Web links, book reviews, and more!

Urban Barbarian DAN PANOSIAN talks shop about his gritty, designinspired work with editor MIKE MANLEY, DANNY FINGEROTH interviews “Billy Dogma” writer/artist DEAN HASPIEL, plus more of MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, product and art supply reviews by JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

Interview with inker SCOTT WILLIAMS from his days at Marvel and Image to his work with JIM LEE, FRANK MILLER interview, plus MILLER and KLAUS JANSON show their working processes. Also, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, art supply reviews by “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

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

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

CBA Interview

Len Brown, Dynamo! The Topps guy on his career and THUNDER experience EDITOR'S NOTE: CBA certainly hopes this interview isn’t the last word we get from Len Brown as we’d love to devote at least a flip-book section to the great comics-related art of Topps’ legendary trading cards (never mind their 1990s run of bona fide comics). If Jay Lynch is up for it, it’s a go, fair reader!

Below: Len Brown—the writer, not the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent—at age 18 (1958), just prior to his long tenure at Topps Chewing Gum, Inc. Courtesy of Len.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Sam Gafford Although you may recognize the name of Leonard Brown as the alter ego of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent Dynamo—you may not know there’s also a real human being with the same name, a guy who contributed to kid culture mightily from 1960 up to the ’90s. Only recently retiring from Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., where he spent over 30 years as a major creative force at the monolithic trading card company, Len worked on any number of series, from Mars Attacks to Wacky Packs to Garbage Pail Kids. Plus he had a brief and memorable career as a comic book writer. The following talk took place on April 23, 2001 via telephone and Len edited the final transcript. Comic Book Artist: Where are you from? Len Brown: I was born in Brooklyn, New York, back in 1941, but I’ve lived in New Jersey the bulk of my life. We moved down to the Austin, Texas, area about a year ago when I retired from Topps. So I’ve lived here for almost a year in a town called Dripping Springs. Great place to live! CBA: Why Texas? Len: I love the music. Over the last ten years, I’ve had a radio show in New Jersey playing traditional country music. I’ve also done a little radio down here and hope to do some more in my retirement years. CBA: Hank Williams, Sr.-type music? Len: Yeah, Bob Wills, Hank Williams, ’50s and ’60s kind of stuff. I don’t care for the current music but I love the old stuff. CBA: You grew up in New York City? Len: Yeah, in Brooklyn and I lived there for almost 30 years of my life. CBA: What kind of neighborhood was it? Len: Oh, it had a very nice kind of community feel. A small town kind of neighborhood. I grew up in an apartment building where you’d know everybody. You’d walk down the block and everyone would say hello. The block was almost like living in a small town even though it was in a big borough in a big city. CBA: Were you into comics at an early age? Len: Oh, boy, I loved comics from the earliest I can remember. I can clearly remember being six years old and discovering an issue of World’s Finest Comics that sold for 15¢ and being amazed at how thick it was, 98 pages for 15¢! I loved comics. Superman, Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman were my three favorites. CBA: Did you draw yourself? Len: I tried. Whenever I got white paper I would try and draw. I never had any talent but I can remember doing a Dick Tracy-kind of strip when I was a little boy and thinking it was terrific. CBA: What were your

aspirations as a kid? Len: I always thought I’d want to be a journalist more than a writer, you know? Working on newspapers. I grew up in a time when there were seven dailies in New York. Into my early teen years, there were three or four that I’d want to get every day but I couldn’t afford it. Each paper had their own collection of comics and I loved comic strips. I used to cut and collect them for years, you know? Li’l Abner, Prince Valiant Sundays and all that. CBA: That’s dedication! Len: Yeah, I loved it! I always thought it was a little weird because I didn’t know anyone else who did it. When classmates would come over I’d show them these stacks of strips and they weren’t really interested. I had Joe Palooka, Steve Canyon, all the big strips of the day and I always thought it was a strange hobby. Then I read this article on Ray Bradbury when I was in my teens and it turned out that Bradbury used to do that, too! Vindicated! [laughter] My family used to get one daily newspaper and I would really look forward to Saturday and Sunday. The New York Journal American used to have color comics on Saturday, 16 pages of tabloid comics. Then, on Sunday, they’d have the full-size big comics section. They ran almost every King Features strip and in those days there were some great ones: Buck Rogers (which wasn’t King Features), Lone Ranger, Popeye and they’d run them full-page on the tabloid which was wonderful. The New York Daily Mirror was another of my favorite papers. CBA: What kind of strips did they run? Len: Steve Canyon, Joe Palooka, Li’l Abner… When I was very young, they carried Superman on Sundays which I liked. And then in the early ’50s they had Tom Corbett for a couple of years. CBA: Did you ever dream of doing your own strip? Len: Oh, yeah. I think at some point I thought that writing a comic strip would be just fabulous. Actually tried it once with Al Williamson. This is jumping ahead now into the ’60s. At one point, Woody Gelman who worked at Topps was the Above inset: Detail of Len Brown—the inspiration and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent, co-financed a not the writer—as Dynamo strip by Al from the Wood/Adkins and me; pin-up in TA #3. Woody COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

paid Al to draw a couple of the sample Sunday pages which I wrote. We did a pretty ornate two-page strip which has appeared in print a number of times over the years called Robbie. It was a takeoff of Little Nemo but it was prime Al Williamson work. We shopped the samples around to the syndicates and a couple of them held them for a while and acted like they were considering it but who knows? Basically, the feedback was that they weren’t interested in a Sunday strip, they wanted a daily, which we didn’t want to do because we wanted big panels to show off Al’s artwork. CBA: Did you consider the grueling schedule involved with doing a syndicated strip? Len: No. I was blind to reality! First of all, the writer’s work is a lot easier than the artist’s on a daily basis. I could probably write a weeks worth in two-three hours and the artist would have to slave for the other six or seven days. This was before Al was doing his own syndicated strip [Secret Agent Corrigan]. CBA: Did you have favorite artists when you were growing up? Len: Oh, yeah. I guess it wasn’t until I was 12 years old that I realized specific artists worked on these comics. I was a huge EC fan once I discovered them, and the artists from EC were the greatest, in my mind. Wally Wood, Al Williamson, Reed Crandall, George Evans, Jack Davis—what a company! What can I say? CBA: You were the perfect age for that, right? You were ten when they first started coming out with the New Trend stuff? Len: Yeah. I don’t think I got into it right away. I remember discovering EC when I was in fourth grade so I guess that would be 1953, a couple of years later. A friend was telling me about the great science-fiction stories that were in these comic books and that was, of course, Weird Fantasy and Weird Science. So I latched onto those and then found out about the horror stuff and got those, too, and then Mad… oh, I thought Mad was the greatest! CBA: Did you get into the war material, too? Len: I wasn’t interested in the war stuff. I am now but I didn’t get into the Kurtzman books at the time, just his Mad and the EC horror and science-fiction. I wasn’t even picking up Crime SuspenStories or Shock at that time. It was just the three horror, two sci-fi, and the humor book and then Panic, of course. CBA: Because the artists were able to sign their work at EC, you were able to recognize their work? July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

Len: Yeah, exactly. Whereas of the DC books, which I did read… I read a lot of comic books, I even read Dell from time to time, and there were Quality and Fiction House comics that I loved. I was around for the tail end of Plastic Man. CBA: Was Jack Cole still doing it? Len: I don’t think so; not at that point. It seems like he got involved with Playboy and once he got involved with that he left the books. I just know that I loved the character of Plastic Man and the look of it. A strip I loved—I don’t know if you know it—was in a comic called Big Shot and there was a strip in there called “Sparky Watts.” I forget the name of the artist who did it which I’m really ashamed about because I really love his work. Years later, when I met Art Spiegelman, he mentioned that he was a big fan of “Sparky Watts” and I couldn’t believe that anyone else knew it. In fact, Art got the rights and reprinted one of the “Sparky Watts” stories in Raw because he thought so much of it. CBA: Did you become an official EC Fan-Addict? Len: You know, for some reason I never joined but, boy, my heart was with them. It seems weird when I consider how much stuff I sent away for when I was that age. I guess money was tight when I was growing up. CBA: So were you non-discriminating in your taste? Did you like funny animal stuff as well as super-hero and other genres? Len: Yeah, absolutely. I hate to say “non-discriminating” but I loved comics! I loved the books that would reprint newspaper strips like Tip-Top and Sparkle, you know? They would do four weeks of Tarzan Sundays and other strips… I just loved the medium. CBA: How do you recall the Wertham era as a kid? Did you feel inklings about what was happening? What did your family think of your interest in comics? Did they care? Len: They never really encouraged it. When I was about ten or eleven years old, they found out that I need-

Above: The only picture Len Brown could find of his mentor and father-figure Woody Gelman is from the Topps’ magazine oneshot Soupy Sales. From left to right: Young Len Brown, goofy Soupy Sales, and stoic Woody Gelman. Courtesy of Len. ©2001 Topps.

Below: Photo of happenin’ bubble gum card writer Leonard Brown in the 1970s. Courtesy of Len.

Above: One inspiration for Topps’ Civil War and Mars Attacks! card series was the 1938 Horrors of War trading card set which unflinchingly focused on Japanese, German, and Spanish atrocities of that dark decade. Here’s three courtesy of Len Brown. ©1938 Gum, Inc.

Below and background image: Perhaps the only big-budget Hollywood movie based upon a trading card series is Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! The fondly-recalled set was executed by such luminaries as Bob Powell, Norm Saunders, and—of course—Wallace Wood. Here’s a few cards courtesy of creator Len Brown. ©2001 Topps, Inc.

ed glasses. I’ve worn glasses since I was eleven years old and it was alternately blamed on television and comic books. So they always looked at it a little wantonly. Comics didn’t have a good reputation in the ’50s. Wertham was around saying comics caused juvenile delinquency and stuff like that. My mom was willing to let me get just so many and when the pile got to about 50 books they would suddenly just vanish! I would come home from school one day and the comics would be gone. “Well, yeah, I cleaned your room out. You know, you would let it pile up to the ceiling if I let you!” She was a nice mother but she was not very prone to let me collect too much. We lived in a small place. There were five of us living in a small apartment. Things were crowded. Then, at one point, she actually suggested… we had a basement where people stored their bicycles and stuff, it was a community basement in the apartment house and I actually had cartons of comics stored down there for a long time. CBA: Were you able to save them? Len: Yeah. Every once in a while I would take a carton of them upstairs and look through them. This was probably when I was about 14 or 15 years old. CBA: Do you still have them? Len: Nah, you know what happened? One day I went down there and the super had cleaned everything out. All the cartons were gone. All of them. I was heartbroken. Heartbroken. It was traumatic. I had to start collecting from scratch all over again. CBA: So did you ever stop being a comics fan? Len: I can’t remember a period where I ever stopped buying comics. I may have cooled off in my later teen years but I don’t think entirely. I can remember being there when Showcase started bringing back the super-heroes for DC. I remember buying the first Flash comic, Amazing Spider-Man #1, Fantastic Four #1. I remember being very interested in seeing the super-heroes coming back in a big way; once they came back, I got interested again. I think the period that was the least interesting for me was when EC stopped publishing. I think there were a couple of years when there wasn’t much for me to buy and then the super-heroes came back in what, 1957? A few years later? Then I started to follow that very closely. I was thrilled with the Justice League because I had been a great fan of the old All-Star Comics a decade earlier. CBA: Were you able to trade with other kids to get back issues? Len: In those days, I think kids read comics but not many collected them or else they had moms like mine. I don’t remember ever being able to trade with anyone at all. The best I had was a general store that sold old comics—it wasn’t a comic store; it was basically a hardware store a few blocks from my house—and whenever I would go there, I would find a small selection of old comics. The owner would buy a comic for a penny from kids and sell them for 3¢. One of the great moments was going there and finding about 20 ECs (after EC had gone out of the comics business) and I bought them all for 3¢ apiece! Boy, was I excited! I think I was able to keep those. [laughter] This was just about 1957 when my mom stopped indiscriminately throwing everything out… I was 16 then and she wouldn’t dare just throw my things out without checking with me.

CBA: Were you athletic? Len: I wasn’t really a natural athlete but I loved to play stickball, a real Brooklyn type of game, and softball with friends in the school yard, but I didn’t play other sports. CBA: Did you ever go to Ebbet’s Field? Len: Maybe once a season in the early ’50s. I definitely remember going there. I was a Dodger fan early in life. CBA: Did you ever go see the Yankees? Len: I became a Yankees fan after the Dodgers left, maybe a little before that. When I was a teenager, I would go take the subway up to the Bronx for the double-headers and sit in the bleachers. CBA: You saw Mickey Mantle play? Len: Many times. I saw Roger Maris. I remember 1961, which was a great year. Every morning I’d wake up and run to the paper, which was on the kitchen table every morning, and I couldn’t wait to see if Mantle or Maris had hit a home run the previous night. CBA: For me, it was the ’69 Miracle Mets. I lived in Westchester at that time. We moved out when I was eleven but New York is bred in me. What were your aspirations when you were a teenager? Len: I always thought maybe I’d take some journalism classes when I got to college. I was going to evening classes at Brooklyn College, but you know what happened? Very early on, I got in contact with Woody Gelman. Woody had joined the Topps Chewing Gum Company in the early to mid ’50s. In 1955, I met Woody when I was 14 years old and he became like a father to me because my father had died when I was five years old. So I grew up fatherless and Woody seemed like the most unbelievable guy in the world. I wrote Woody a letter because he was publishing a series of kids’ magazines. They were TV Guide-size, with fictional stories about Davey Crockett and Daniel Boone, and also a Hardy Boys-type series called The Power Boys. I wrote him a letter with some suggestions and a couple of days later he called me on the phone and invited me down to his office to discuss some of the books that they were considering. He was looking for feedback from kids. That one letter I wrote changed my life. Woody was also working for Topps at the time. Ultimately, the books weren’t making a lot of money and he closed down publishing after about a year, yearand-a-half. Woody would call me about ideas that they were considering at Topps for trading cards. I remember once calling them and telling them that the TV show The $64,000 Question was very hot and that Topps might want to issue a trading card set, but they didn’t. We always stayed in touch and when I turned 18, he offered me a part-time job at Topps. CBA: Did you collect trading cards? Len: I did. I loved Topps baseball cards tremendously. I was there from the beginning. I remember the ’51 card series which which looked like small playing cards. Then in ‘52 they went to a more traditional size (though still a little bigger than the ones today). I was collecting sports cards, Davy Crockett cards… CBA: Non-sports cards, too? Len: Yes. I loved the non-sports stuff. I remember Bowman, which was a competitor of Topps in the early ’50s (which Topps eventually bought), was putting out some non-sports cards that I loved, a series called Spacemen was a beautifully painted science-fiction series. CBA: Did anybody of note work on them? Len: You know, I don’t know the names of the artists. I know that they have their little cult following but it was nobody that folks like

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

us from the world of comics would know. They were beautiful little cards, though. I think they were the first science-fiction card series. CBA: Was it space opera-type stuff? Inspired by Captain Video, perhaps? Len: Yeah, it was more like Buck Rogers. I mean, the heroes wore Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon kind of outfits. They were really neat. CBA: What was the appeal? I think that nowadays, people can understand the appeal of sports cards but the non-sports cards… when you were a kid, what was the appeal of them? Len: Topps had a great idea back then which was to put a stick of gum in the packs. They were a penny a card with gum or you could get six cards and a stick of gum in a nickel pack. All their early items were sold that way up until about 1956. You had your choice of one card and gum for a penny or six cards and gum for a nickel. It was appealing to me, I guess: You got a piece of gum to chew and you start collecting. It’s that basic collecting instinct, you know? I think that was the appeal. I can remember collecting flags of the world, a very early Topps series, I think it was called Parade Flags of All Nations, in 1951 or maybe ’52, I was 11 years old. I had begun collecting that very early non-sports stuff. Then Topps issued a series on cars called Wheels, and stuff on planes called Jets which were black&-white photos of jets and I’d try to collect the entire series. I guess I was born with a collecting instinct. Today, I collect DVDs and CDs. [laughs] CBA: But you don’t go through them and say, “got it… got it… don’t got it… got it”! [laughs] Len: Right! And I don’t flip them! CBA: What’s interesting is that for a lot of people who fell in love with comics and subsequently became professionals in the field, there’s a life event that made them collectors. For me, it was in the Fall of 1969 when I had chicken pox and later spending a year in Europe, when I buried myself in comics; it was those periods of relative isolation that did it for me. Dick Giordano suffered scarlet fever as a child and went through a solitary recovery mired in comics. Do you think that by losing your father at such a young age perhaps got you into collecting? Len: Oh, you ought to hang out a shingle like a therapist! [laughs] I’ve often thought that. I’ve analyzed what made me a collector and I absolutely came to the same conclusion. As I’ve gone through life, I realize because there was a void in my life, no father figure basically, and I’d lost something dear to me and this was a way of keeping something and not ever losing it, by collecting. Absolutely. No doubt in my mind. CBA: Who was Woody Gelman? Len: For the bulk of his career he was the creative director of Topps. He came from the world of animation. Woody was a cartoonist and also wrote some great comic book stories of his own, but he got involved in animation and worked for Paramount Studios on the early Popeye and Superman cartoons. CBA: He worked with Max and Dave Fleischer and then with Paramount? Len: Exactly. Actually he left Paramount after he got involved with trying to unionize the animators and the studio got wind of it and fired whoever was involved. Paramount was down in Florida in those days so he had moved down there. When he came back to New York in ’44 or ’45 and opened a studio, doing art advertising. Did you ever heard of Popsicle Pete? CBA: No, I haven’t. Len: Popsicles used to feature a kind of Bazooka Joe character in their advertising—Popsicle Pete—and he was in a lot of their ads that were aimed at kids. I think Woody came up with the character. Then, later, he got involved with Bazooka Joe. Through his art service, Woody was approached by various corporations for advertising work. Topps ultimately came to him and the owner at that time was impressed with Woody and offered him a job. Woody closed down his art studio which he’d operated for seven or eight years. CBA: Did he specifically produce comic book advertising art? Len: He did a lot of different stuff. Those were just the two that I remember—Bazooka Joe and Popsicle Pete—because they were cartoon characters but the studio produced a lot of stuff, basic product artwork for advertisements. CBA: It wasn’t necessarily in competition with the main comic July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

book advertising agency, Johnstone & Cushing? Len: I don’t know who they are. CBA: J&C was a New York agency renowned for their quality comics material. Lou Fine, Neal Adams, Dik Browne, Irv Novick, Al Stenzel are some artists who worked there between the ’40s and the ’60s. They did all the comic strip work for Boy’s Life. Len: Yeah, I used to like that material in Boy’s Life. I subscribed because of the comic strip section they printed. In early years, I think they were actually on comic book paper, then they got away from that and used regular slick paper. I remember a strip, Pee Wee Harris, a Boy Scout strip, and a science-fiction strip called Space Conquerors which I always liked. Did Al Stenzel go on to do other comics? CBA: I’m not sure. He actually ran Johnstone & Cushing in the 1960s, I believe, as the production manager. Len: Oh! He was a good artist. CBA: Woody was from New York originally? Len: Yeah, Woody was born in Brooklyn. Originally he lived just a few miles from where I grew up as a boy. Woody was about 25 years older than I. I think he was born in 1916. Oh, he fed my collecting mania! Walking into his house was like walking into a museum. He collected pulps, had a complete run of Amazing Stories, all the great pulps—Argosy magazine, the humor magazines Judge and Life. CBA: He started collecting during the pulp era? Len: I would guess so. He was an avid collector and loved early newspaper strips. He had a complete run of the Sunday Little Nemo strips which were just wonderful. As early as 1947, he was the first private publisher to reprint strips in book form rather than comic book form. He put out a reprint of Little Nemo in Slumberland in black-&-white on his own. I think he printed a couple of thousand copies. It was 32 pages and it contained some of the great Nemo strips. Woody said that he lost money on it because back in those days no one cared about such things, and there was no real way to sell it. CBA: So with his first real foray into publishing Woody started at the top with Little Nemo! Len: Then he started Nostalgia Press in the ’60s, reprinting classic strips in hardcover books at the same time Ed April was reprinting Buck Rogers and other strips. It was the beginning of an era when strips were being reprinted in finer forms either in trade paperback or hardcover forms. Do you remember Nostalgia Press? CBA: Oh, yeah! My friend John Borkowski gave me some of Woody’s Flash Gordon collections and that great EC horror comics compilation. Woody also did Prince Valiant volumes, didn’t he? Len: Yeah, he did those. CBA: It’s au courant to be reprinting this stuff now but Woody was really ahead of everyone in the ’60s and early-’70s. Len: I think so. Again, I’ve got to give credit to this other fellow, Ed April, who was doing some but I think he dropped out a lot sooner than Woody did. CBA: Woody just did this publishing on the side? He had a full-time job while doing this? Len: He sure did!

Above: As well as being the originator of the original trading card series (with boss Woody Gelman), Len also wrote back-up stories for the Topps’ comics adaptation of Mars Attacks! Drew Friedman’s cover for #3. ©2001 Topps. Below: Len was initially inspired by Wally Wood’s superb Weird Science #16 cover from 1953. ©2001 William M. Gaines, Agent.

Above: New York kiddie TV show host phenom Soupy Sales became a national celebrity in mid-’60s America. Hoping to capitalize on the comedian’s success, Len suggested a Soupy Sales magazine one-shot which apparently didn’t fare too well outside the New York metropolitan area. Courtesy of Len Brown. ©2001 Topps, Inc. Below: As published in the book, Alter Ego: The CBA Collection, Len worked with Roy Thomas, art spiegelman, Wally Wood, and Gil Kane on the Topps mini-comics satirical series. Here’s three covers by Wood. ©2001 Topps, Inc.

CBA: Did you work with him on those collections? Len: I did. He gave me credit on them. Woody also began a magazine called Nostalgia which reprinted comic strips and featured articles about them. CBA: Was this published by Topps? Len: Oh, no. This was on his own. He had a lot of energy. He’d go home and work on it at night and on the weekends. CBA: Was he married? Len: Yep, he was and had two children. He had such an innate drive and a love for collecting old periodicals and nostalgia items. One of the earliest books he did was a Nostalgia Press picture history about Charlie Chaplin. He was a big Chaplin fan. CBA: Woody was into the movies, too? Len: Very much into silent film. He was a big Douglas Fairbanks fan and collected movie posters. The early Thief of Baghdad poster was in his living room, a great piece of art. He definitely made me feel “normal” about collecting. If you collect and don’t have any support, you can feel like the weird kid on the block. But because Woody was such a collector and successful in business and in life—being married and with kids—it almost justified the things I did. Like I said, Woody was a father to me, my mentor who brought me into Topps. Because of him I think I just ended up there the rest of my life even though he left Topps 15 years after I was hired. He was in his fifties and spent the rest of his retirement publishing. CBA: Did you love him? Len: Oh, yes, absolutely! He became the father I lost at the age of five! I always say to my wife that I regret she never had a chance to meet him. It’s the second marriage for us both, and when I met Abby, Woody had already passed away a couple of years before. He was just a wonderful guy. One of the most intelligent guys I’ve ever

met. A great thinker. CBA: Were you part of his family life, too? Len: Well, not as much. I met his son and daughter on many occasions. Woody verbalized that he was as close to me as he was to his own son. You know, we saw each other five days a week at Topps and when either one of us had personal problems that would crop up in our lives we would confide in each other. It was really more of a father/son than a boss/employee relationship. CBA: After you had first met him, was that in your mind that someday you’d work for him? Len: No, I didn’t at all, but about a year or two later—before I joined Topps—he gave me an assignment to write a Power Boys novel. I remember submitting a couple of chapters and then it looked like the business was going downhill so I never finished it. I guess at that point I started to think that it would be great to work with Woody. I was about 16 or so at the time and still in high school. It was after I got out of high school that he called and asked if I’d like to come in for 12 hours a week and sort of help as an assistant. Take care of mail that would come in and file some things. Then, little by little, I got involved in Topps projects and was working there five days a week in about a year. CBA: Do you recall your first salary? Len: It was about $70 a week. Back in 1959, that wasn’t too bad. Probably about 1961 or so, I was making $100 a week and I just thought I was doing great. CBA: When did you move out of home? Len: Ah, right about that time. I actually paid rent and bought a car. My first car was a brand new Ford convertible and that cost about $3,000 in 1960. CBA: Did you still live in Brooklyn? Len: I did. Topps was in Brooklyn, located in a factory district. The second floor was the main business office where we were and the fourth floor was where the manufacturing was done. Bubble gum was manufactured on the fourth floor. CBA: Was the printing done in-house? Len: No, Topps didn’t own printing presses in those days, though they did much later. The printing was done by a company in Maryland, I think Lord Baltimore? Then there was a company in Philadelphia that would print the sheets of trading cards. There were 264 cards printed on one sheet. CBA: How big was that? Len: Oh, I don’t know. You could do the math, I suppose, and figure it out but they were really large sheets. CBA: Did you ever travel down to Baltimore to do press proofs? Len: I never did, no. CBA: Did Woody do that? Len: No. Woody had a partner in his art business named Ben

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

Solomon who was also out of animation. They both left Paramount about the same time and came back to New York and started the art service, which was called Solomon & Gelman. In fact, they published the boys series books, called Triple Nickel books. They sold for 15¢. Solomon became the art director at Topps and Woody was the creative director. CBA: Was Woody a good artist? Len: A great cartoonist. He created the character Nutsy Squirrel for DC Comics. I don’t know if he had his own book or if he just appeared in Funny Stuff Comics. CBA: Did he ever talk about his DC experiences? Len: A little bit. This is a funny story: When I was about seven or eight years old, I remembered reading a Funny Stuff and a feature that I really liked called “The Dodo and the Frog.” In the strip, these two funny animals were having an argument about who could jump higher, who could run faster, and finally the Dodo (who was this little guy that the Frog was always outsmarting) says he knows a guy who could out-jump the Frog so they make this big bet and in the final page he drags out Superman! [laughs] This had to be the first time that a super-hero appeared in a funny animal strip but this was DC so they could do it. Ultimately, Superman beats the frog. So I remembered this story from a decade earlier, and I told Woody about it while visiting his home. Well, he started to laugh and pulled out the comic book from his basement and the rough black-&-white drawings… he used to do these pencils to show how he’d want it drawn and then script it afterwards. So he showed me both and he laughed because he had done it! I told him I’d always loved that story and the thought of Superman appearing in a funny animal strip was something I never forgot! CBA: Was Woody easy to work for? Len: Oh, yeah. Amazing. I don’t think I heard him raise his voice once or twice in all the years we worked together. He just didn’t seem to have a temper. He was a sweet guy, a really sweet guy. CBA: What was the organization like at Topps? Who started it? Len: There were four brothers who started it after WWI. They had owned a chain of gas stations and had actually done so well that Esso bought them out. Esso (later Exxon) saw them as something of a threat. The brothers now had all this money to go into another business, so they hired some market research people to find out what kind of business to start. The war was just getting over and the market research people predicted that there would be a baby boom and chewing gum would be a great thing to get into. Trading cards wasn’t the first thing Topps got into. It was chewing gum and then later it became bubble gum. The first gum that they put out was just called Topps and it was like Chicklets (which was very popular around that time). CBA: Was there any significance to the company name? Len: I don’t know. I guess they just thought it was a good name to call the company… “top of the line” type thing. Sort of had a double meaning. CBA: Do you have any idea when Bazooka Joe was developed? Len: There was a weirder Bazooka Joe character in the 1940s that looked more like an Archie character but the Bazooka Joe that we know with the eye patch, T-shirt and baseball cap came about in the early 1950s. That was something that Woody and Ben Solomon came up with. CBA: Do you know if Topps had any comic mascots before then? Len: Yes, they did, though not of their own creation. They bought the rights to a lot of Daily News Syndicate characters. Really minor characters that I don’t even remember. They ran them as comics before Bazooka Joe. I know in the ’50s they got the rights to Li’l Abner which they used on their packaging. CBA: Obviously Bazooka Joe’s name was derivative of the WWII weapon, right? Len: Right, and one of the four brothers was Joe Shorin who named his son Joe Jr., so I think that was where the name came from. CBA: So Topps got right down to the business of focusing on the baby boomer thing? Because they obviously clued into the nonsports cards when television was becoming big. Len: Right. CBA: You got into the company in 1960? July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

Len: I actually started in 1959. CBA: Do you recall the significant nonsports cards you worked on? Len: I remember the first day I came into work, another fellow in our department who was on an equal footing with Woody, was Stan Hart… CBA: Stan Hart, the humorist? Len: Yeah! He worked for Mad magazine for many, many years. CBA: Then he worked as a writer on the Carol Burnett Show. Len: Yes. Absolutely. We became very close. In those days, it was Stan, Woody and myself in the new products department. Woody had hired me but in many ways, Stan was my boss. I was 18 years old and I guess Stan was about ten years older than that. CBA: What was Stan like? Len: Stan could be tough but he was a very funny guy and very creative. I don’t remember exactly when but it was probably around 1965, when he left Topps and went to California. He was already working for Mad magazine by then… Somehow he did get involved with Carol Burnett and started writing for her and became head writer and eventually won an Emmy. He worked with Burnett for many years and he’s done many different things. He produced his own movie and wrote a play that Hal Prince produced on Broadway. It was called Some of My Best Friends. CBA: Did you maintain any contact with Stan once he went Hollywood? Len: Oh, yeah, we stayed in touch and I’d visit him occasionally. He never really went completely “Hollywood” and he continued to consult for Topps. He’d fly in periodically for a series of meetings. I think after the Carol Burnett gig ended (I don’t remember how long he worked for her), he moved back to the city and got involved with Topps again, though not on a daily basis. He’d come in a few days a week as a consultant and we’d still work together. Since I moved to Texas, we’ve spoken and, in fact, I have a note here to give him a call and see how he’s doing. He’s retired now and I think he’s close to 70. He’s got grandchildren. Stan was a very important aspect of my life, too, and very sup-

portive of me during my early days at Topps. CBA: We were discussing memorable non-sports trading cards you worked on? Len: Well, on that first day I came to work at Topps, Stan was there and Woody hadn’t arrived yet. So I introduced myself. He knew I was coming and had heard about me from Woody. Stan was writing the copy for the backs of a Fabian series (Fabian was a teen idol briefly in the late ’50s). Stan was looking for information and I was into rock ’n’ roll in those days and I remember answering some questions about Fabian. I guess that would be the first set I worked on. Another very early series was Jack Davis’ Funny Monsters; it was just a joy to work with Jack Davis. CBA: You worked on a Civil War set? Len: The Civil War set was a couple of years later. Let’s see, I started in ’59 so this would have

been about ’61, I guess. I was very involved in that. I wrote the backs of all those cards and, together with Stan and Woody, we would plan the scenes. We would actually describe very dramatic battle scenes. We wanted picture cards that looked like a pulp magazine cover. High drama! Woody, who was very instrumental in the look of the set, brought in some of the old gum cards that he had collected over the years and this would have been Horrors of War and some of the Gum, Inc. cards from the 1930s which used illustration and blood ’n’ guts and all the things that kids liked. CBA: [laughs] Kids still do! Len: A lot of gore, yeah. They were very much inspiration to the Civil War set. CBA: Were they explicit cards in the 1930s? Len: Oh, Horrors of War was a very explicit set that was published in the 1930s, depicting the Japanese-Chinese war of that decade… it showed incredible gore. It outdid Mars Attacks!, let me put it that way. One card depicted a scene of a bombed city, and there would just be severed hands holding the steering wheel of an automobile. Just the hands and nothing else left of it! That was one particular image which stuck in my mind. That was about as bad as it got. I remember that Woody told me that the Japanese embassy complained to the Roosevelt administration, just before they bombed Pearl Harbor. [laughs] They actually complained that this was an awful thing that this American company was doing, depicting the Japanese as these barbaric soldiers, that they were being shown as the bad guys in this war with the Chinese. Anyway, it was one of the most graphic sets and it’s highly collectible. If you look in any of the non-sports guides, a complete set is worth thousands of dollars. CBA: When did you first meet Wally Wood? Len: I was telling Woody Gelman about EC comics because he was aware of them but he wasn’t following comics in those days. I’m sure I brought some in and mentioned Wally and Al Williamson. I remember we tried to contact Al Williamson but he was living in South America at the time and we couldn’t reach him. We did locate Jack Davis and hired him to do a funny monster set. CBA: Did you introduce Woody to the work of the EC artists? Len: Oh, yes, very much. Because of my love for EC. Woody Gelman instantly saw that these guys were very talented as soon as I showed him these comics. We brought Wally in to do a parody of Ripley’s Believe It or Not which we called Crazy Cards, not a great name but they were a funny set. Wally would draw the front of the card in a typical Believe It or Not-type style. On back of the card was the punch line and a Mad-style cartoon. CBA: You remember Funny Valentines? Len: Jack Davis did that series before I came on board. Jack was no longer doing much for Mad but he was doing a lot of advertising work, movie poster work. As a matter of fact, he did a series of Valentines for Topps annually for about three or four years. It’d be like “You look like a million bucks” on the front of the card and it would look like this sweet Valentine and then on the back it would say, “All green and wrinkled,” [laughter] and it would show this ugly girl who was all green and wrinkled. It was very, very successful. CBA: The ’50s was this very conservative time with Eisenhower in office and all that and yet all these subversive elements were creeping to corrupt kids. Famous Monsters started about that time, EC Comics, and Topps were able to do this wonky, Kurtzman-esque type of humor that was downright radical at their core. Len: Well, Mad was really very big and very early on we realized that Mad had a really good formula and kids really related to it. It’s kind of funny that you brought up Stan Hart as a humorist because he had a really great sense of humor and he’d write all these funny card sets that we put out. He’d have me help out a little and write some but he was really prolific. If I came out with one or two a day I was feeling pretty satisfied but he could do 12 gags an hour. CBA: I’ve been contemplating those creative geniuses who came out of the New York area in the early part of the last century—Will Eisner, Woody Allen, Neil Simon, Mel Brooks, Sid Caesar, Jules Feiffer, Jack Kirby, and many others who all happen to be Jewish— and there was just so much creativity that came out during that period. Perhaps the greatest was Harvey Kurtzman who was able to really cue in on the essence of Jewish humor and he perhaps changed the American psyche with a “new” brand of humor. Was there COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

something in the water there? [laughter] Len: Well, you know, I agree with you. It was pretty amazing. Woody and I would actually talk about that and we’d say that a poor slob growing up in Dripping Springs, Texas, wouldn’t have a chance because he was away from the world of publishing and media. The fact that all these people were born in the center because there was L.A. and New York and, of course, Hefner in Chicago, you know? But most of these people in other parts of the country… I met a very talented fellow that never really made his mark in life and he had lived his whole life down south and even did a little work for Topps but he struggled all his life and did some work for DC. His name is Bhob Stewart. Even now we stay in touch to a certain extent but Bhob was always on the fringes but he had a basic talent. He could have written comics and stayed involved. But how do you break into comics when you live and you’re spending your life in Des Moines, Iowa or something? I know some people have the luck. They send in their stuff and someone responds to it and they get their break. But when you’re not able to get out there and go to the office, I just think that the proximity… I’m not taking anything away from the Neil Simons and Kurtzmans of the world but luckily they lived in the center where all of this was happening. I think that had a lot to do with it. CBA: Do you think also that it was the ethnic aspect? When you really get down to it, all of these creative geniuses coming out of the same area at the same time were all Jewish. Len: Yeah. CBA: Woody Gelman was Jewish, too? Len: Yeah. CBA: Stan Hart? Len: Yep. CBA: And you? Len: Yes. [laughter] CBA: What you’re talking about is really a minority in a city creating humor for a whole world. It’s fascinating. Len: It is. I guess it really does have something to say for our environment and upbringing. There’s a lot of humor in growing up, intentionally or unintentionally. My wife and I love to watch the old Woody Allen movies—the early ones—when he was doing the funny stuff! And he was talking about his family and his grandmother and when you’re watching this stuff it’s funny but it wasn’t when you had to live through it, but it’s hilarious years later. Sid Caesar was marvelous. I love his old stuff! And I love Mel Brooks. I love Jewish humor. CBA: So do I! Len: I guess you’re not Jewish? CBA: No, I’m as goy as they get, pure WASP. The history of comics is just permeated with this Jewish sensibility. Did you read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon? Len: I have the book on my shelf to read but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. CBA: I strongly recommend it. It’s really wonderful and, at the core of it, is the Jewish experience in America. I also think that like Jack Kirby and Harvey Kurtzman, it’s a part of what they are, being Jewish and what they created. They showed an enthusiasm for the super-hero that was rooted in the reality of the Depression that perhaps the fellows down in Dripping Springs couldn’t articulate as well. Len: Yeah, I guess. By the way, a cousin of mine by marriage— although divorce ended our relation—was Jerry Siegel from Cleveland. So look at Siegel & Shuster, too. I don’t know Bob Kane’s ethnic background. CBA: He was Jewish, too. Len: Was he really? CBA: Yeah. Is Brown your real last name? Len: It was our given name and the story I heard was that my grandfather had come through Ellis Island at about 1910 and it was this long sounding Russian name and I used to get kidded at Topps all the time about that and they would call me “Len Brezhnev.” [laughter] Anyway, my grandfather couldn’t spell the name out because spelling is different in Russian so they just wrote Brown and that became the family name. CBA: Did you ever find out what your real last name was? Len: No, never did. July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

CBA: So you obviously clued Woody Gelman into the EC comic stuff. Len: Yeah, I let him know what he was missing. He never loved the super-hero stuff. It was more the comic strips that he loved. He loved Foster, he had some Foster originals. He worshiped Winsor McCay. He just loved comic strips, I guess the stuff he grew up with in the 1920s. He had Sunday comic sections from the Herald Tribune, where I know Little Nemo appeared. He collected comic strip art, but never comic book art. CBA: With your generation’s sensitivity to comic books and Woody’s prior generation’s to comic strips, there was a real kind of synergy at Topps? Len: I think so. As for the EC guys, we also had George Woodbridge do something for us, Bill Elder came in and did an odd item for a little while and then Harvey Kurtzman was even hired as a consultant and brainstormed a few ideas. So I got to meet Harvey a few times. CBA: What years roughly? Len: Oh, about middle to late-’60s. I’d say ’65 or ’67, somewhere about there. CBA: Were you in heaven being able to pick up the phone and talk to these guys? Len: Oh, yeah, it was great. I idolized Wally Wood. Boy, I couldn’t wait on Sunday to go to work on Monday in the ’60s because it was just the Golden Age for me. Those first ten years we seemed to be putting out all the good stuff! Working on Mars Attacks! CBA: Did Woody Gelman attract other fans to him? Len: Once he started publishing the Nostalgia books, he would get other fans coming to him. But Topps was a very anonymous company back in those days. People didn’t know his name or my name or even the artists on some of the picture cards. In fact, there was a very long period of time where, if we got a call and someone had broken the code and found out that Len Brown was employed by Topps and Woody Gelman was the Head of New Product Development, and if that call got through and you were from the press, we could not speak to you. Topps had a public relations guy. We’d have to say, “I can’t answer your question but I can send you to someone who can,” and immediately transfer the call over to PR. CBA: Was that because of the highly competitive nature? Len: I don’t know. I really don’t know why they were like that. Guess it was a part of corporate life. CBA: I mean, what secrets could you give? Len: Exactly! We weren’t dealing with the atomic secrets at that point. CBA: I mean, Norman Saunders! What a secret! [laughs] Len: Well, they might have been a little paranoid because we didn’t want to lose talent to another company. Fleer was the big competitor

Above: Preliminary sketches by Wally Wood for the cover of Dynamo #1, courtesy of J. David Spurlock and Bill Pearson. Be sure to check out the pair’s invaluable addition to the study of Tower Comics, The Wally Wood Sketchbook, available from Vanguard Productions. Check out the ad on page 17 of this issue of CBA. Art ©2001 the Estate of Wallace Wood.

Above: Okay, so Len didn’t write this particular story but his name’s all over it! From Dynamo #3, art by Chic Stone. Below: Len named his super-hero counterpart’s love interest after his own real-life girl friend, who was unimpressed. From Len’s story in Dynamo #2.

back then. So there might have been a little of that. We were the creative department but not allowed to speak to the working press or people that wanted information. CBA: When you were young and just working at Topps was there a particular project that you really wanted to do? Len: I guess once we started to talk about Mars Attacks! That was the one. And there was some thought as to maybe we shouldn’t do

it but the president of the company was pretty supportive. We had a pretty good track record in our little department. I mean, not everything would come out and make a million bucks for us but top management respected Woody and Stan, and if they said they really wanted to do something, the president of the company would just tell them to go ahead and get it done. CBA: So Topps really had a hands-off style of management back then? Len: Oh, yeah, it was great in the early days! CBA: Was there a separation between your department and the sports department? Len: Not in the beginning. You know, it was funny. The philosophy of Topps was that in the baseball season you put out your baseball cards and in football season you put out the football cards. In between, you’d probably put out a non-sports series that wouldn’t interfere with the sports items. Then once football ended and before baseball started you could get another non-sports series out. So we looked to do two non-sports series every year in the early ’60s. CBA: What was your average run for a series? Len: Back then it was about 88 cards. 88 seemed to be the magic number. That was because of the sheet size. CBA: Would it take you about six months to produce them? Len: About that. CBA: Was there much overlap with projects? Len: No, we’d pretty much work on one project, get it out, and then start working on the next one. The Civil War set was timed for the centennial and it wasn’t even Woody or I who said that we should do a Civil War set. The president of the company suggested it for the anniversary and, at first, we all groaned, “Kids don’t care about the Civil War.” But Woody was really pretty creative and because of his love of Horrors of War, he brought in a few of those cards and we started thinking that maybe we could do the Civil War set that way. No one was really watching what we were doing. We had limbs being blown off, people dying in flames—“The Atrocities of the Civil War” was what we were really putting out—and it worked! It sold! Another thing that was very popular was the inserts that were put into the Civil War packs. There were the cards and the gum but also these reproductions of Confederate money on parchment paper. The kids loved that and it was a huge hit! A year later we were trying to think of another card series we could do and we were certain that it was the blood ’n’ guts in the Civil War set that kids were responding to. So Woody, being a big science-fiction fan— said let’s do something in that genre. Then we actually started talking about what kind of card set we should do. Invasion from outer space, War of the Worlds, was just such a natural. But we even thought about should we do an Invisible Man set which was sciencefiction or a Frankenstein-type thing or a series like The Incredible Shrinking Man. But after we made up our list it just seemed that an Martian invasion theme would really, really work. CBA: How much writing did you do on that series? Len: I wrote the backs of the cards. Woody and I pretty much planned out the whole thing. Stan was not a fan of science-fiction and horror the way Woody and I were, nor a big comic book fan. He recognized good art when he saw it, and liked the guys that we were bringing in, but it was essentially Woody and I who planned the whole Mars Attacks! set. We’d figure out what we wanted on each card. Woody would do a little thumbnail sketch then it would be sent to Bob Powell who was a pretty famous comic book artist back then, who had done lots of great stuff. Bob was excellent at taking these little thumbnails of “a boy and his dog are attacked by Martians,” and would then do two or three roughs from different angles. Showing the dog’s perspective, the Martian’s perspective and when he’d send them back after we okayed which version we liked, he’d do a very tight pencil twice up, card size twice up so it’d be about 5” x 7”. He’d give this very tight pencil back to us and we’d send it to the painter who would paint right on top of it. Unfortunately, the pencils no longer exist because the painter went right over the pencils. CBA: So Bob did everything from soup to nuts on the pencil images? Len: On the pencil images, yeah. We would supply the ideas and he actually laid down the pencil images and Norm Saunders did the COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

actual painting on about 80% of Mars Attacks! I think, in the end, we weren’t getting it done fast enough and we pulled in another couple of artists. CBA: Wasn’t Wally Wood involved in Mars Attacks!? Len: He was definitely involved in the beginning and he designed what the Martians would look like. He designed a lot of the ships, Martians, and hardware, but he didn’t do the day-to-day work on the series. CBA: Did you hang out with comic book artists to any degree? Len: Well, I was up to Wally’s apartment a number of times but that was when we started to work on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. I was still pretty young at that time so I was like a kid to these guys, although I did get to know Al Williamson pretty well when he returned from South America and was living in Pennsylvania. He invited me up to his house a number of times and that was always a treat. He‘s an incredible collector of everything from Big Little Books to artwork to movies and the work of great illustrators. It was like going to a museum and looking at all the stuff he had. So we were pretty friendly and we would talk. CBA: He’s still pretty much a kid anyway. Len: Yeah, he is. He’s a 70-year-old kid! He’s as enthused about stuff as ever. [laughter] He’s great. And then with Al, he got me into movie collecting because he used to collect 16MM movies and when I’d go up there he’d always show me some serial or some great old horror movie. I came to find out about this underground of film collectors and started collecting films. This was before the days of VCRs. CBA: Here we are, a good hour into our interview and now we need to start talking about the subject at hand. Len: Well, that was the most interesting stuff, but okay! [laughter] CBA: How did you get involved with Tower Comics? Len: Well, Wally would periodically come up to Topps with his material when he completed something and I always made it a point to talk to him. I always wanted to know if he wanted to do superheroes and he said that he had but that it seemed that he was always working for companies in those days that didn’t want to do super-heroes. Now, I would almost ask you, Jon, when Wally did Daredevil, because that was certainly super-heroes and that was a little ahead of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents? CBA: No, that was before T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Len: Yeah, that’s what I thought. So he had finally done a super-hero. I don’t know who contacted him about T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents but one day the phone rang at Topps and it was Wally on the phone and he was asking, “How would you like to write some comic books?” And, by God, that was probably only about second best to being asked, “How would you like to spend the night with Marilyn Monroe?” [laughter] What a thrill! Are you kidding? I was trying to keep my voice from trembling. I definitely agreed to try and write something. CBA: Was this your first attempt to write something for comic books? Len: Yeah, yeah, it was. CBA: So how old were you? That was 1964? Len: I don’t remember when the first issue came out… CBA: That was in ’65 so I’m just assuming that this would have been earlier. Len: Yeah, it must have been about that time. I had a story in Creepy #20 but I suspect that that came later. July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

CBA: Yeah, that was later. Len: So anyway, Wally said he wanted to do a Justice League group kind of thing so we batted around a few names. I remember that I came up with… it’s funny because there’s a saying we used at Topps and that’s “Success has a hundred fathers, but failure is an orphan.” Basically, Larry Ivie has disputed my recollection of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. In fact, Roy once sent me a copy of a letter that Larry had sent him where he discussed his recollection of his involvement with Wally and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents that disagreed with my recollection but honorable men can disagree honorably they say. He just remembers it slightly different even though they happened at the same time… I don’t quite understand it. But I recall coming up with the name of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents because, basically, I had always loved the old Phantom Empire serial with

Above: Outstanding Dynamo action page from the Dan Adkinspenciled, Wood-inked story, “The Maze,” in Dynamo #4. From the original art courtesy of James Van Hise.

Above: Dan Adkins based his back cover art on this story from T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #4. The story, partially set in New York City’s Times Square, abounds with in-jokes as hotel marquees and billboard signs features names of Wood studio assistants Adkins, Tim Battersby-Brent and Tony Coleman, as well as BNFs—Big Name Fans—Jerry Bails, Buddy Saunders and the Texas Trio.

Gene Autry in the ’30s. CBA: Oh, I loved that one! Len: I absolutely loved it, too. I remembered that the Thunder Riders were the agents of the evil queen in the serial. I always loved the name, the Thunder Riders, so I recommended Thunder Agents to Wally. CBA: So you came up with the acronym? Len: No, Wally came up with that part of it. CBA: And the original name of Dynamo was supposed to be Thunderbolt? Len: Yes, but Wally switched it. The villain was supposed to be named Dynamo that he was going to fight in the story but Wally swiped the name Dynamo and used it. I forget what the villain was ultimately called. CBA: Was that the Warlord? Len: Yeah, that’s what he was ultimately called. CBA: Do you know if the reason the name was changed from Thunderbolt was because Charlton was coming out with a character called Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt? Len: No, I don’t know. I don’t think so. CBA: I’m pretty sure that Tower Comics preceded the Charlton Action Hero line but I was just wondering if there was any connection. But Dynamo is a more—ahem—dynamic name, right?

Len: Yeah, I think so. I think it was a good decision ultimately. CBA: Whose idea was it to have this kind of spy motif? You know, there was SPECTRE in James Bond, 007. Len: Yeah, that wasn’t like me at all. Thunderbolt to me was from my love of Captain Marvel and I wanted to have a thunderbolt on his uniform like Captain Marvel. So Wally designed it the way he thought it should look. The thunderbelt was my concept but Wally added all of the spy stuff. It made sense, I guess, with all the James Bond and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. which was probably on the air at that point, and it probably made it more unique. CBA: Did you come up with any of the other characters? Len: No, I did not. My involvement with T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents was really very limited. I only ended up writing three stories. I think I wrote the lead story in the first two issues and then the dinosaur story, I think that was in the fourth issue. Wally had called me up and said he had always wanted to draw a story about a dinosaur in Times Square so I think that was a splash page in #4. Yeah, that was Wally. He threw in that idea because he’d always wanted to do it. CBA: It was pretty cool because there were lots of billboard jokes and in-jokes with Wally’s assistants name all over. There’s Tony Coleman, Dan Adkins, Tim Battersby all appeared on billboards or hotel marquees. Len: That would have been Wally’s doing. CBA: There was a pretty big in-joke that took place in the first issue. Do you remember it? Len: Oh, yeah, well [chuckles]… the most-asked question of my career! I always explain that this was Wally’s little joke on me but I was always a little embarrassed about it. CBA: What was it? Len: Well, the thing that people always ask me is how come Dynamo is named Len Brown. That wasn’t my idea. Because it always seemed like, “who is this egotistical guy who uses his name as a super-hero?” and it wasn’t anything I had anything to do with. God knows, I’d be the last guy to try and do something like that! So everybody then asks me what I had originally named Dynamo’s alter ego. When I recently moved, I actually found the script for the second issue (I could not find the script for the first issue) which would have had the name I wrote, which is the only place I could have found it. The only anecdote I can add about character names is that I was dating this girl that I was enamored with named Alice Sparrow, an odd name. I named Dynamo’s girl friend, Alice Robbins, after her. But I don’t know what Dynamo’s real name was supposed to be. I just tried to impress this girl. CBA: Did it? Len: I don’t think she really cared one way or another. CBA: Did you enjoy writing comics? Len: I liked the idea but it was really hard work. It didn’t come easy for me. Roy Thomas was living with me and he could just whip out stories so prolifically and he seemed to enjoy it in a way that I really envied. It was never that enjoyable for me. I loved the idea of getting the assignment and seeing the story in print. I guess the work was hard. I enjoyed it when the work came out but I never enjoyed doing it. It never flowed as easily as the writing of the back of the baseball cards which I did for many many years back in the ’60s. They’d have little biographies on the back and I could write 15 of them in a hour. You’d look at the record book and just knock them out. Comics would be a lot of work. I learned from what Woody Gelman had shown me about sketching out a comic page breakdown. I couldn’t draw very well but I’d rough sketch it in stick figures and then stick in the word balloons. When Wally and I were working, we’d do it the old fashioned way, the DC way. Marvel’s way was the opposite. The artist would get the penciled page and write the dialogue but we did it the old way which I guess was the DC way in that I’d write the script and then he’d draw it. Yes, I found it was tough work, though I did have a fondness for it. I wrote a few other comics for Topps, about five or six of the six-page Mars Attacks! stories… back-ups in the Mars Attacks! comics. Jim Salicrup [editor of the Topps Comics line] asked me to do it and I enjoyed that. I don’t want it to sound like I didn’t like doing it because I would also be enthused, but the actual sitting at the typewriter would always be tough. It didn’t flow as easily as I hoped or wanted it to. CBA: Were you incredibly busy at Topps anyway? COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

Len: Oh, yeah. That was part of the problem during the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents days. In fact, Wally called me and wanted me to do another story and I had to tell him that I just didn’t have the time because I did have a full time job working five days a week. So I would have to do the writing on the weekend and was involved with this girl I was telling you about. She encompassed all my thoughts. So I actually begged off further assignments from Wally. Again, I only wrote the three stories, but I do feel that I was a core, important part of the origin of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and Dynamo at the very beginning. CBA: Did you like the comics when you saw them? Len: Certainly. What’s not to like about Wally Wood’s art? I did. I always felt that it was too bad that they had to sell for a quarter. CBA: Oh, yeah? Len: Yeah, because it made it hard for them to compete with Marvel or DC with the price because Marvel was really kicking ass in those days. They were putting out all of these great books and I think they were about 12¢ in those days. So we were charging more than twice as much. But still, wouldn’t you rather buy two books than one? 25¢ books had to be pretty special in those days and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents lasted, what, about 20 issues? It was around for only a couple of years. CBA: Were you privy at all to the idea behind them about them being 25¢? Did you ever talk to Wally about that? Len: I thought that that was just what he was told. They wanted to put out a book at that price. Maybe they could see less of a print run at that price. Maybe there was a better profit at that level which I’m sure there was. I was always told back then—maybe that’s not true any longer—that the cover cost as much as the entire interior of the book. So, if that were true, at a quarter, they were able to buy that package at a pretty good price with all those pages and only one cover. That was maybe a third of the cost. I think they had business reasons in that they’d have to sell less copies to make a profit. The break-even was probably lower but a quarter was tough to get from a kid at the time. CBA: Did you deal with Samm Schwartz at all? Len: I only met Samm twice that I recall. The first time was when Wally brought me up to the Tower offices because Samm wanted to meet the writers, you know. I went up with Wally at that point and he just seemed like a business kind of guy, not that he had a great love of comics or anything. He sounded pretty much like a businessman. I don’t remember a long meeting with Samm. It couldn’t have been a long time, he just wanted to meet the people who were doing the work and I didn’t meet him again until several years later. Everything was done through Wally. Wally would receive the script and make whatever changes he felt they needed which was fine with me because Wally knew comics better than I did. Then I left after the first few issues. I kept on buying them, of course, and the other books in the line. CBA: Did you stay in contact with Wally? Len: Oh, yeah, we still spoke. And he was still interested in doing Topps work. He did a wonderful series of little booklets called Krazy July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

Little Comics, this great series parodying other comics. Roy Thomas wrote the scripts for them. Stupidman, Fatman, Fantastic Fear. Typical Mad-type stuff and Wally and Gil Kane would do the artwork. They looked great. They looked like something that was done for Mad and I know those came after the Tower work. We stayed in touch. He still had the studio and we did some stuff. CBA: Did you ever have a wish that Topps would get involved in comics? Len: Oh, absolutely. I tell you, back in the ’60s, Woody Gelman and I talked about this. The closest we ever got was that Topps talked to Archie Comics and they were interested in putting out a Bazooka Joe title. They thought it was an interesting character and that it might work. Woody went to his files and showed me a comp that he made up of Bazooka Joe as a comic. We had actually talked about Topps getting into publishing in the ’60s and they did. They published a couple of magazine one-shots. One on Soupy Sales which I co-edited and a one-shot on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and they sold reasonably well. And you know what happened? The president looked at what we had made on the magazines—about $20,000 profit—and decided they weren’t worth it. I think we broke even on the Soupy Sales book and the reason for that was that we had gotten the rights from Soupy directly. He was really hot at the time and someone else put out a Soupy Sales fan magazine without any rights which hit the newsstands the same week we did and the other thing that didn’t work was that Soupy was a New York City area phenomenon at the time and we were doing a national magazine hoping it would sell a lot of copies but it really only sold in New York. But The Man from U.N.C.L.E. magazine was published about a month or two later and that was a big hit. The bottom line was that we had

Above: Len Brown (right) presses the flesh at a mid-1990s comic convention with underground comix master Jay “Nard ’n’ Pat” Lynch, a longtime Topps contributor who worked on numerous Wacky Packages series. Courtesy of Len Brown.

Above: Len Brown also wrote a story or two for Warren’s black-&white horror magazines in the 1960s. Here’s a recent shot of Len hanging out with Warren’s former femme fatale. Courtesy of Len. Vampirella ©2001 Harris Pubs.

only made $20,000 and the president of the company looked at it and said, “You only made $20,000 on this, you would have done better to have concentrated on a new card series and we would have made a couple hundred thousand dollars.” So we got away from publishing at that time. About 1989, a new head of product development, Ira Friedman, came in and he was just great. He came from the world of publishing. Next to Woody, Ira’s been my best boss. We talk to each other all the time. We e-mail each other a couple of times a week. He came from the world of publishing and was always interested in getting Topps into publishing and indeed they did. They put out a Star Wars magazine for a good number of years and a sports magazine for a number of years and then ultimately we got into comics when the comic boom was going on. CBA: That’s one thing that Tower took advantage of in the 1960s in that they started publishing while the Batman craze was going on. Len: That’s right. Yeah, Batman helped make that happen. It was also because Marvel was doing so well… it was the beginning of the Golden Age of Marvel when their books started going big. CBA: Was there any comic-related material in the Soupy Sales book? Len: There was a little bit, but not too much. I always loved the fumetti [photo comics] look. So we actually did three or four pages of gags where six panels would be of Soupy and his puppets… CBA: White Fang! Len: They were photo comics. Then in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. which was like a picture fan magazine, there was a 10- or 12-page fiction feature illustrated with line art. CBA: Who drew it? Len: I looked at it recently and think it was drawn by Gray Morrow. CBA: Were you in on the photo shoot with Soupy? Len: Yep. It’s funny that you asked for a picture from that period and I was thinking if I could just find that magazine there was a great picture of Woody, Soupy and myself. CBA: What was Soupy like? Len: He was okay. He wasn’t terribly interested in the magazine. We went and interviewed him. We being my co-editor, Bob Shorin, and myself. Bob was a relative of

one the founders of the company, the Shorin family, and a very nice man. So we went up and interviewed Soupy and he was fine during the interview. Then, we got done with the interview and he was just ready for us to go. I guess I just wanted to hype the magazine because I was really excited about Topps getting into publishing and I remember saying that it was going to be a great magazine and that we hope he was looking forward to it and he just went on to something else with someone else like he didn’t even hear what we were saying. He had his own career and I guess he felt that the magazine was nice but that he really didn’t need it and he wasn’t particularly funny during the interview either. CBA: Soupy was a weird phenomenon. Like I said, I grew up in the New York area during that time so I remember all that stuff. White Fang and Snaggletooth. The show was great! I always suspected Soupy didn’t translate very well outside of New York. Len: We did Soupy Sales cards and I think they did pretty well but again, in the metropolitan area. CBA: And the craze just as quickly died. Suddenly he was gone right about the time of the Beatles. Did you do any Beatles cards? Len: Yep, I wrote the backs of those cards. CBA: Did you hang out with Larry Ivie, Bill Pearson or the fan circles that were around in the ’60s? Bhob Stewart? Len: Bhob Stewart, yes, because he worked at Topps, but not Larry Ivie. Well, I always felt he was a little reclusive. I was up to Larry’s house once, as far as I know, though he’s vanished off the face of the Earth. I’m sure there are people still in contact with him. I always liked him. He was working on a book on the history of comics years ago that Woody Gelman thought he was going to publish. It was voluminous. He had quite a bit done in the ’60s. Just one of those things that fell by the wayside. CBA: Yeah, did you go to First Fridays? It was a monthly gettogether type thing. It was held variously at the apartments of Roy Thomas, Jeff Jones, Archie Goodwin…. Len: No, I never did. I went to all the local conventions and I knew Phil Seuling… I had been over his place. I had my own circle of friends that I was closer to. I got married for the first time in 1968 and moved to Jersey about a year or so after that. I was always interested in what was going on in comics and read the Comic Buyer’s Guide and all that, whatever newslink kept me connected to what was happening. In fact, I still like to know what’s going on. I still go to comic stores once a month. You know what I buy? I buy the DC Archive reprints and things like that. I loved when DC did the Millennium reprints every week and it broke my heart when the year was over and there were no more of them coming out. CBA: The retro stuff seems to be the only growing part of the market. Len: Yeah, I spoke to Paul Levitz, DC’s publisher about a year ago, and he said that comics continue to be a tough business but the part that’s really growing is the reprints in book form… the backlist of books they keep putting out. I love when they announce a new Plastic Man or Captain Marvel book coming out. CBA: When do you recall meeting Art Spiegelman? Len: He was about 14 years old when I met him, so I guess that would be about 1963? CBA: Did he come into the office? Len: Yeah. Like myself, he just wrote Woody a letter and Woody responded and they corresponded for awhile. Art sent in some of the stuff he had done for his high school newspaper and a fanzine, and Woody was just amazed at what he was doing for his age. Artie is probably just the most brilliant guy I’ve ever met. You use the word genius rarely, but he has a genius about him. He’s creative, funny, could draw, could write, and he’s just an amazing guy. So he was just 14 but Woody could see the potential in him and gave him an assignment. Ever since that, there were times he worked on staff… I think, more often than not he worked freelance. We were very good buddies. We hung out continuously and after work we would go places and do things together. Then he relocated to the West Coast for many years and then he came back. I’ve known Artie for many, many years. Not as close these days and it’s not because we don’t like each other. He’s so involved with his area and things he’s doing. He worked at Topps for many years and was key to Wacky Packages, Garbage Pail Kids, and candy and gum products. We were close as COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

two guys could be as friends at one point. We have kind of drifted apart in a way. When Artie heard that I was leaving Topps, he called me up and recollected how close we had been over the years, like brothers almost. I remember the night his mom committed suicide. CBA: Yeah, he wrote about that in a comix story, “Prisoner on the Hell Planet.” Len: We had been together earlier that night and about ten o’clock, the phone rang at my house and it was one of his relatives trying desperately to reach Artie saying that there was an emergency at home and they thought he might have been with me. He had actually already left to go see a girlfriend. When I asked what the emergency was, they told me that his mother had committed suicide. I actually thought he was going to spend the night with this girl and would come into Topps the next morning and I would have to break this news to him and it was the most tormented night of my life. I didn’t sleep. But I didn’t have to break the news. It turned out that he had called home and got the message and found out. Again, we were like brothers at one point and we talked about it. But I haven’t seen Artie more than twice in the last two or three years. CBA: Did you have an inkling that he would achieve the level of success he has? Len: Absolutely. I used to tell him that and he would laugh at me. I would say, well, when he first started Maus, I would tell him that it was going to be a phenomenon, this is going to be a bestseller… he was doing it just to get that stuff out of his head, you know? Like therapy. He never, ever imagined the impact it would make. Woody Gelman always felt that Art was a genius and he was going to find a niche where he was going to become famous and make a fortune. I think Artie’s done all right for himself. CBA: Well, he’s always staying busy. He’s doing a Plastic Man book now with Chip Kidd. Len: Oh, great! Because I read the piece he did in the New Yorker a few years ago which was maybe a prelude to it. I know he’s working on another book like his recent Little Lit with Jay Lynch who I stay in touch with. CBA: Did you start dealing with Jay in the ’60s? Len: Oh, yeah, Artie brought him in. They were buddies. Jay and I are fairly close. We like each other a lot. We have a lot of respect for each other. In fact, I was talking with Jay just last week. He’s a terrific guy. That’s a guy who has an incredible genius very similar to Artie’s but he hasn’t been able to channel it commercially or financially. He deserves a lot more recognition than he gets among the masses. I think he’s well respected among his peers. He’s done some wonderful stuff and he’s a great cartoonist. Topps is always trying to give him work. I know he’s even done some freelance work with Topps through Ira Friedman’s office recently. CBA: Was he always Chicago based? Len: Well, he lived in Jersey as a teenager or as a young kid, but later he went to Chicago when he was old enough. He recently moved to Binghamton, New York. CBA: Did you know anything about Tower Publishing beforehand? What was Tower Books? Len: Well, I knew they had a paperback line. As a matter of fact, I wrote three paperbacks for them during the days of paperbacks, on pop music. One was a rock ’n’ roll quiz book, another was an encyclopedia on country music and one was an encyclopedia of rock ’n’ roll. I co-wrote them with Gary Friedrich. CBA: Are you kidding? I just did a long interview with him and he mentioned those same books! He’s a courier out in Missouri now and he seems to be happy although he’d like to do creative work on the side. Len: My hypothesis is that when you live in the city, it’s easier to get the work. I think there’s a lot more opportunity. When Gary was living in New York, of course he was friends with Roy Thomas and Roy opened a lot of doors for him at Marvel, but he was completely involved in comics and did a lot of comics. But once he moved back to Missouri, it’s like out of sight, out of mind. If you don’t live where it’s happening, it’s so much harder for you. He certainly worked on a whole lot of great books. CBA: Did you become friends with Roy Thomas? Len: Oh, yeah. Well, Roy was a roommate. I knew him as a comic fan from Alter-Ego and then when he came to New July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

York, I think I met him the first week he was here and working for Mort Weisinger at DC and ultimately we became roommates for about a year-and-a-half. He lived in Brooklyn with me and then he married Jeanie, his first wife, and got his own place but we stayed in touch. We fell out of touch for a number of years and then when Topps got into comics, he was the first guy I called. He wrote the Mike Mignola Dracula adaptation. On any of the books I edited, I tried to get him. Jim Salicrup was the full-time editor and whenever he gave me books to edit like the Cadillacs & Dinosaurs series, I’d want Roy to write them. He was my favorite writer to work with. CBA: Were you happy to see Topps finally get into comics in the ’90s? Len: Oh, yeah! You know, my first reaction was this isn’t Topps. Because I go back to the conversation I had with the Topps president after The Man from U.N.C.L.E. magazine when he said that we had only made $20,000 when we should have made hundreds of thousands. How many comics make $20,000 these days? But comics were booming and they hired a nice little staff. Charlie Novinsky’s a great guy who Jim Salicrup hired. But I feared comics weren’t really for Topps. I remember talking to people at Marvel over the years and a typical Marvel book maybe made a few thousand dollars and that was why they put out 40 books a month (back when they were doing 40 books a month). So that way they were making a hundred thousand a month. And then licensing became the big thing. Probably made more money for Marvel than comics. I just never felt that Topps would end up feeling it was worthwhile when all was said and done and yet in the beginning, I was dead wrong. The month we introduced the Kirby books [Jack Kirby’s Secret City, Satan’s Six, etc.], we sold a million dollars worth of books. Over a million dollars and non-returnable. So for a while it thrived. And even in the last year, it still made money. They never had a year where they lost money. I think in the last year they made something like $200,000 on comics and it was XFiles and Xena making the money. But it wasn’t enough for the activity. Having staff and people who had to follow what was going on in the business when there was still the other core business to

Above: As often Topps couldn’t secure actors’ permissions to use their photographs, the company often made do by superimposing pix of staffers to legitimize certain cards. Here’s Len playing Igor in a Universal Monsters card series from the early 1970s. Courtesy of Len. ©2001 Topps, Inc. Below: Len and Abby Brown enjoying a life of retirement in Dripping Springs, Texas. Courtesy of Len.

Above: Pure Wally Wood art from “Collision Course,” T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #15. From the original art courtesy of Kevin Stawieray.

PAGES 56-57: JERRY ORDWAY contributes this extraordinary T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents centerspread exclusively for this celebratory issue of Comic Book Artist! The Ordster is quickly becoming our absolutest, favoritist contemporary super-hero artist and we extend our sincere and appreciative thanks for this great piece! Art ©2001 Jerry Ordway.

worry about. For instance, Ira Friedman who was just a great asset in comics, was the publisher, but they really wanted to focus more on the cards and candy because the money there was far greater. Comics is a tough, tough business. I was stunned last month, some report came out, I think it was Diamond or IBC2, the Web site that gives comic breaking news. The story showed the best-selling comic didn’t break 100,000 in circulation and Dark Horse’s biggest selling comic for that month was 24,000! You don’t make money with figures like that. Topps didn’t break even when we sold that many. I think our break-even was around 31,000. So I don’t know how Dark Horse stays in business these days. And it was a Star Wars comic that was their biggest seller. CBA: Overall, how would you assess the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents stuff? Was it fun? Len: Oh, yeah. It was. I’m proud of it. I never thought it was up to the Marvel level, you know? Maybe because it didn’t have as many titles and it was so short-lived, but I was always amazed at the fans’ reaction to it. Even today, people still remember it and think fondly of it so it was very gratifying to have been involved. The Wally Wood aspect for me was the best part… getting to work with him. T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents is part of my legacy I guess, which is nice. I wish now that it had worked better and that I had been more involved and wrote more stuff.

CBA: Did you stay in contact with Wally Wood until the end? Len: Well, he left the area, didn’t he? Moved somewhere out in the West? He wasn’t doing stuff for Topps and he’d fallen on hard times and was having health problems. I know he had kidney problems and was on dialysis which I heard had prompted the suicide… I’d heard he didn’t want to deal with it. But I’d heard he was doing porn strips for Screw magazine at some point. He’d fallen on hard times. I guess we had fallen out of touch by that point. CBA: Do you recall where you were when you heard about Wally committing suicide? Len: No, but I was stunned. I think someone at work had called to tell me. It was a real shock. I was horrified. CBA: Were you surprised? Len: Yeah, I really was. There was a certain depressing aspect to his personality. I mean, when you spoke to him, he was very soft-spoken, and when you talked to him on the phone there were times when you couldn’t hear what he was saying. The act of suicide is so shocking. I guess I didn’t know what he was going through in the last couple of years and he just couldn’t deal with it anymore. So I was surprised. I was shocked and felt awful about it. What a great talent whose potential, as great as he was, I don’t think was ever realized. Do you know what he always felt badly about? Whenever he would show you artwork, he would show what he was working on, and then he would add this because he’d heard it so many times, “but it’s not like the old EC work, is it?” I think he peaked, in a way, with the old EC artwork and he knew that. That was the thing that everyone loved and now EC was gone and he was doing other things. I saw that Prince Valiant page he did, that one Sunday page before Hal Foster retired, as a test and it was gorgeous. I remember thinking that he should be the one to replace Hal Foster. But I don’t think that would have made him happy if he got it. CBA: When did Woody Gelman retire? Len: 1974 or ’75. We did things together after he retired, published a few books. When Presley died in ’77, we did a couple of Elvis photo books together. CBA: Were they successful? Len: No, I don’t think so. At that time, there were so many Elvis books. It just got buried. CBA: When did Woody pass away? Len: I believe in 1978. He was only 61 and I say “only” because I’m at 59, almost 60, and I still feel like a kid. In this day and age, 61 is still pretty darn young. CBA: Do you recall hearing about it? Len: Oh, yeah, I called his house and he had had a stroke, I found out about that and I was in touch with his son almost daily. Yeah, his son called me one day and told me. Once he had this really bad stroke, I don’t think they expected him to last much longer. He went into a coma and I think he lasted another couple of weeks and I kept hoping he would come out of it but he never did. He’d had a couple of minor strokes earlier with no damage, but there was the final one at 61 and that was devastating. It was like losing a father. And we had still been working on things until the very end. We did a postcard book on Close Encounters of the Third Kind and a Star Trek postcard book we packaged for Crown Books. CBA: He was always bubbling with ideas? Len: Always. I know the week before he died, he still had projects he was thinking of and wanted to do. He always had a list of projects he wanted to do and the list was always longer than he could get done because he wasn’t a full-fledged publishing house. He had a lot of books that he put out over the years and that made him very happy. He did a great book on EC horror comics, you know? Classic Horror Comics of the ’50s. CBA: What was your favorite experience with Woody? Len: Probably Mars Attacks! with all the hype. It was something that I loved and we just worked on it together for hours and hours. It was the best of all the work we did together, and appreciated more than anything else. CBA: Were you just like kids working together? Len: Absolutely. Hey, non-sports fans! We at CBA are contemplating a special issue devoted to the cool TOPPS TRADING CARDS, particularly the material produced by comic book folk. Are you up for it? Let us know! COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

CBA Interview

The Old World Heroes Peerless Bill Pearson on Wally Wood and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Conducted by Jon B. Cooke There’s a romantic element to aspects of comics fandom and the post-Wertham rebirth of comics, all linked to the glorious EC era of comics. Imagining the late-’50s/early-’60s get-togethers of “Big Name Fans” John Benson, Archie Goodwin, Larry Ivie, and our next interview subject just seem, well, cool. While today serving as executor of the Wally Wood estate, Bill has had a long history in comics, as Nicola Cuti’s successor as Editor George Wildman’s assistant in Charlton’s last years; working as an occasional writer (notably at Warren); letterer extraordinaire at Gladstone and DC; and most significantly as editor of the lauded prozine witzend since the late ’60s (about which we implore readers to check out Bill’s interview in the eighth issue of our sister magazine Alter Ego). Bill was interviewed via e-mail on April 24, 2001.

Comic Book Artist: When did you first start to appreciate Wally Wood’s art? Bill Pearson: Avon and EC comics. CBA: Were you a fan of the EC comics? If so, what influence were they on you? Bill: Major EC fan. I had been reading science-fiction for years, along with all kinds of comics, but when EC came along, they offered

well-illustrated, well-written science-fiction, and one particular artist that simply blew my young mind. CBA: The first instance I’ve found of your involvement in organized fandom was your publication of Sata. Were you involved in fanzines prior to that? Bill: There was nothing organized about science-fiction fandom. Individual young outsiders from all over the country were getting acquainted. Dan Adkins started Sata and I contributed to his ’zine first, I believe. CBA: Can you describe your first meeting with Dan Adkins and subsequent relationship? Bill: Dan was in the Air Force, stationed at a base not far outside Phoenix. He saw a letter of mine in a science-fiction magazine (Fantastic, I think) and wrote me, hoping I might know some girls. His interests paralleled mine, he had access to a ditto machine, and it was inevitable we’d meet and become buddies, I guess. I was just 17, still living with my parents, but I had a job as a mechanical draftsman, making pretty good wages, and I had a car. On his own, Dan met twin sisters, aged 15, who lived about halfway between the base and where I lived. So from age 17 until 19, he and I dated the twins, produced Sata, and contributed material to many other fanzines as well. CBA: How did your acquisition of Sata come about? Any anecdotes? Bill: Dan was rapidly becoming the most popular artist in sciencefiction fandom, and was trying to fulfill the many requests he got for artwork from dozens of fanzine editors. I was becoming more and more interested in publishing. Designing pages, doing logos, assembling and presenting material creatively. Our roles reversed, and it just evolved naturally. CBA: Did you meet your goals with Sata? How long did it last and what was Dan’s involvement throughout the history of the ’zine? Bill: First I bought my own ditto machine, and Dan and I got quite expert at preparing the plates (that’s not exactly the word, but as close as I can come right now) and acquired a reputation as having the best quality printing by that now antique process. Later I went offset, digest-size, because I very much admired a couple of fanzines produced in that very professional way, and could reproduce artwork photographically from the original art. I was proud to publish the first work of George Barr, for example, who had a beautiful stipple technique that was heavily influenced by the legendary Virgil Finlay. I published several issues in that format into the early ’60s, even when I was in the Army. Dan did less and less as time went by. He was busy with other interests. CBA: When did you meet Archie Goodwin? Larry Ivie? (Any anecdotes would be welcome) and any other significant personalities? Bill: The easiest way for me to remember is to go at it chronologically. The company I was working for in Phoenix lost a big government contract and I was laid off with dozens of other draftsmen just about the same time Dan was released from the Air Force. We went to New York together in 1958. A few months later, when she turned 18, Dan’s girl got on a bus to New York and they got married. I didn’t send for my girl. At 19, I was in no hurry to get married. It’s hard to believe they’ll be celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in just a few years. When we first got to New York, Dan and I shared a hotel room in a flophouse hotel on 45th street, one block from Broadway, one of the roughest areas in Manhattan. One night a guy was murdered on the steps of the building, which was in real distance just a few feet from where I was sleeping! We were young and COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

oblivious. Dan met Larry Ivie on the street somewhere. I guess he was carrying a portfolio and Larry asked him if he was an artist. That same day Larry took us down to his apartment on 23rd Street, the old Chelsea neighborhood with many tall-storied apartment buildings where immigrants had brought families for generations. We moved in with Larry for a few weeks until Dan and I got an apartment in the same building. Larry introduced me to a few of his friends who got together every Saturday at a private apartment in the Village and had life drawing sessions with nude models. That’s how I met Archie Goodwin, Al Williamson, Roy Krenkel and a few others. Larry had just graduated from the School of Visual Arts, which was on the other side of Manhattan, also on 23rd Street. I got a job right away as a technical illustrator for the McGraw Hill Publishing Company, which had a multi-floored building all its own right in the center of Manhattan, and signed up for evening courses at the School of Visual Arts. My anatomy teacher was Burne Hogarth. When I think about those days now, it all seems like a dream. CBA: Did you seek out any other former EC artists? Bill: Angelo Torres and Frazetta came to one of the life drawing sessions, as I recall, but just as an excuse so that afterwards we could all go up to Central Park and play baseball. Frazetta loved playing baseball. I got to know Frazetta pretty well in later years, but we didn’t remain close friends the way I did with Archie and Roy. CBA: When did you meet John Benson? Bill: Now how did you know I knew John Benson? John’s not a famous comic artist or writer, but he’s an important figure in comics history… but that’s for his interview. Here’s what I’ll tell you about John Benson. After I got out of the Army, about ’63, ’64, I was dating a crazy girl from South America who introduced me to her roommate, a crazy girl from Germany. So Friedel and I were on our first date, hanging around my apartment, when John Benson dropped by unexpectedly. The next day I heard from each of them how much they disliked each other. Next thing I know, they’re going steady. To make a long story short, John and his wife Friedel, a very talented painter, have been and will always be two of my closest friends. CBA: When did you first meet Wally Wood? What was he like? Bill: Have you got 20 pages? I’ll try to abbreviate here. I happened to be in Larry Ivie’s apartment one day when the phone rang. This is about seven years later, you understand, since I first met Larry. He wasn’t on long. When he got off, he said, “Wally Wood is creating a new line of super-heroes for a new company and he needs ideas for names, costumes and powers!” I’m sure Woody called several people that day. A day or two later, I went along with Larry to Wood’s place, which was a six floor walk-up apartment where he lived with his wife Tatjana. He hadn’t solicited any ideas from me, but I’d brought some along anyhow. CBA: Did you work in Woody’s studio? If so, what were your duties? Do you recall what projects you were working on? Bill: I was never a traditional assistant to Wood in those days. CBA: Do you recall others who worked in Woody’s studio? Ralph Reese? Tom Palmer? Larry Ivie? Tony Coleman? Roger Brand? Tim Battersby? Bill: Larry never worked in Woody’s studio either. Tim Battersby was an unhappy kid who spent a lot of time at Ivie’s place. He was a major art collector and had some talent, but he died before his 20th birthday from pneumonia. Larry and I went out to Brooklyn to help his parents sell his comic books. Before we got there, his sister threw out dozens of rare comic strip and comic book originals because “there wasn’t any color on them and she thought they were unfinished.” They had no interest in their son’s interests, and Larry and I could understand after that visit why Tim had been so unhappy. Roger Brand was an old friend of mine from my fanzine years. He showed up at my place one afternoon without advance notice from California. I asked him what his plans were. He said he was going to try to get any kind of job he could, and try to get started in the cartooning business. I picked up the phone, called Woody and told him about Roger. The next day after Roger arrived in town he was working as an assistant to Wally Wood. He stayed in Wood’s studio for at least a year, and then worked in Gil Kane’s studio as Gil’s assistant for another couple of years. July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

Ralph Reese was a teenager living on the streets; I think he’d escaped from a detention facility, when Wood took him in. He had the foulest mouth of any human being I’ve ever met. I used to go over there and walk in on a major shouting match between the two of them. They used to argue all the time. And viciously! But Woody put up with Ralph because he was producing, and getting better all the time. CBA: Did you contribute to Topps material? If so, can you specify your involvement? Relationships with Woody Gelman and Len Brown. Bill: Never had any involvement with Topps. Never met Gelman. Probably met Len Brown, but that’s about it. I think Bhob Stewart was on staff at Topps for quite awhile. Bhob was in the mix in those years. He was one of Woody’s unofficial assistants too, but is seldom mentioned. Bhob’s a real pal of mine, and one of the most intelligent men I know. If I need to know something but am too lazy to look it up in an encyclopedia or reference book, I call Bhob. Nine times out of ten, he’ll know the answer! CBA: Do you recall the genesis of the Tower Comics line?

Below: With the welcome help of Jeff Gelb and Bill Schelly, we searched high and low for a Reed Crandall NoMan illustration, reportedly drawn for fanzine Gosh Wow! #2, but apparently the as-advertised feature never appeared. All we have is this lowresolution image from the aforementioned advertisement—placed “for position only”—and we waited until the last possible moment to replace it with a crisper image, one alas that hasn’t been found by presstime.

Bill: Harry Shorten made his stake as the writer of the There Oughta Be A Law comic strip that had been very popular in the ’40s and ’50s. He had a very successful pocket book publishing business when the comics had a boom in the ’60s and he decided to take the plunge. I never talked to him but I saw him around the offices once in awhile. He looked like the very caricature of a publisher. Stocky body, bald head, and a fat cigar in his mouth at all times. CBA: Can you give us a description of the day-to-day goings on at Woody’s studio? Bill: When Tower got to rolling, Woody rented a room in a rundown hotel with an elevator. When the morning guys arrived (Adkins and Coleman, etc.), 59

Woody would already be at the board. They’d work until about five and go home, then, all evening, others would come and go. When the last one left, Woody would still be at his board. Everything was geared to getting those pages finished. By this time, I had a full-time job as the production manager of a Manhattan art studio involved in audiovisual presentations for major national companies. Frankly, I was making about as much money as Wood was, and working half the hours, even including my freelance work both for him and others. I think, by the way, this is one reason it was easier for the two of us to develop a friendship. He was friendly with his crew, but it’s like being the captain of a ship. You have to maintain a certain air of authority so they’ll do what you tell them to do and not respond “I’m not in the mood.” Woody knew I didn’t want his job, that it was my love of comics that brought me around, and we could go out for dinner or occasionally take in a movie or something, and it would just be a little socializing outside the studio. If two or more writers showed up at the same time, Woody would put down his brush, and we’d have an impromptu plotting session. He’d set up the premise of a story, or just a beginning situation, and invite ideas. “What happens next?” he’d say.

More often than not he’d say, “That stinks!” to whatever we threw in, so it was tense. But you’d be pleased when he said, “That’s good. We’ll use it. Then what happens?” Before I’d leave, he’d hand me a bunch of layout pages on typewriter paper, little layouts with enough art to recognize the characters, blank panels between the fights. I’d take them home, lay out the same pattern of panels on another set of typewriter paper, and write dialogue, including for the blank transition panels. He’d use some of it, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, but it gave him a first draft. As for the art, Woody would quickly find out what each guy was best at. Some would be good at the Art-O-Graph, penciling swipes of Raymond or Lou Fine, putting the figure in a Dynamo suit. Others were good at laying down Zip-A-Tone. Ralph Reese would be a good example. When Ralph started working for Wood, he’d never before thought himself an artist. He delivered artwork, sharpened pencils, swept the floor. Eventually Wood handed him a half-inked page with little Xs all over it, and told him to fill in black all the areas marked with an X. After Ralph developed enough control of his tools, Wood would give him a page and let him do some background inking, on lines that didn’t need any character, like buildings or furniture. Eventually Ralph had enough control that he could do some inking on lines that did need character, like clothes, or even figures. And if Ralph, or anybody else, went beyond their skill level, and the inking was bad, there was an electric ink eraser available, and Woody would erase the bad patch and redo it himself. A few, like Adkins, could both ink and draw. And Ralph, to his own surprise, discovered that he could draw. But everything was supervised and monitored by the boss. That’s why, when you talk about assistants, consider this: Is it important if Wood himself filled in every area of black or inked all those hundreds of lines that make up a building, with all the windows, etc.? The point is, there aren’t many real geniuses in this world, so when you know one personally, and can be a part of his process, it’s like being a part of something magical. CBA: Did you deal with any other Tower contributors? Samm Schwartz? Bill: Shorten was happy with T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and wanted to expand right away. Woody simply couldn’t handle any more than he already was. Samm Schwartz had been with Archie Comics for many years. He wanted every story to be exactly ten pages. I told Woody I wanted to write some scripts on my own. Schwartz really needed scripts. I tried to write as many NoMan stories as possible, but others liked writing for that character too, so I ended up writing a lot of Undersea Agent stories, and even a couple of Tippy Teens. They were all terrible, but I was learning how to write comics. I learned how to pad an eight-page idea into ten pages and condense a 12page idea into ten. Somehow I sold him a 14-page story, but it didn’t appear for a long time and I thought it never would, but it finally showed up in one of the last issues, illustrated by Ogden Whitney. CBA: Do you know who Ray Bailey was? Bill: Never met him. I always figured he was a Caniff assistant who went out on his own. CBA: What did you think of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents book and characters? From your perspective were they worthy books? Overall feelings about the run in retrospect? Bill: I’m prejudiced. I had quite a bit to do with developing the powers and personalities of the characters right from the beginning. Along with many others, of course. In general, measured against all that came before and since, I believe the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents were the last of the old-style “real world” super-heroes, without the fantastic, fantasy elements of the super-heroes that were developing at Marvel and DC in the ’60s, and the totally bizarre characters that have appeared since. Even Superman, in the Golden Age, could be whipped in a fight. I think Woody was basing the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents on those more innocent days, when super-heroes were not invincible and dealt with more human situations than the superheroes of the Silver Age and beyond who battle God-like Warlords on Other Worlds! Personally, I never was into super-heroes as a youngster, and never wrote any after the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. I was so deep into the NoMan character though, that I approached one of Tower’s pocketbook editors about writing a NoMan novel. He wasn’t interested. That’s my only regret. There was so much more I wanted to do with NoMan. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

CBA: Do you recall the impact of the death of Menthor? Bill: I think that was Dan Adkins’ idea. CBA: What specifically did you contribute to the Tower books? Bill: I’m not particularly proud of the stories I wrote “all on my own” for Tower. I was just a beginner at writing scripts, learning on the job. I’m much more proud of the fact that I was part of Woody’s “associate team,” as opposed to his first team—Adkins, Coleman, Reese—who were employees, about a dozen guys who came and went, contributing in various ways to the comics produced in the chaos of his studio. You ask what in particular I contributed. Here’s the scene: People are coming and going all the time. Everybody’s busy at one thing or another. The phone rings. A fight breaks out. Somebody arrives with pizza. Through it all, everybody is throwing out ideas! The artists have story ideas. The writers have ideas about page layouts. There was no secretary sitting there furiously writing in shorthand “Oh, there’s an idea from Bill.” “There’s an idea by Bob.” Somebody says “Let’s have Dynamo crash through a wall and find himself in a ladies restroom.” Chuckles all around. Somebody else says “Yeah, and the Iron Maiden is in there.” Everybody laughs. Somebody else says “Yeah, she’s naked, but she hides her face with her hands.” Even Woody laughs. Most ideas are half-baked. Several have to be put together and cooked until they’re hot and a complete pie of an idea. Then a piece of cheese is thrown on that pie. After it cools a bit, some of the crust is scraped off. By the time any idea gets used, it’s difficult to trace it’s origin. Which is a roundabout way of saying no, Jon, I can’t specify which ideas of mine registered with Woody and eventually ended up as part of a plot or a line of dialogue. I’d be surprised if others you ask can supply a list either. All I know for sure is, I contributed. I wrote the Vibraman story in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #3, “In the Caverns of Demo” in TA #5, “To Be or Not To Be” in TA #7, “Pyramid of the Warlords” in TA #8, “Starflight to the Assassin Planet” in TA #15, and that’s all I know for sure. I’m sure there were a few others including a Lightning story. Or maybe it was Menthor. As for Noman in particular, he probably had too many powers, but the fact about him which fascinated me was that he was an old man. In my view that would have affected every part of his life! Completely aside from his powers, the mind of an old man in a vigorous young body would be an unsettling dichotomy, a situation any man would find difficult to cope with psychologically. I probably wasn’t capable of writing a good novel at that time, but the elements of a compelling story were there. Going into those areas would have, at the time, been more appropriate as a Marvel series, with Stan Lee driving the narrative, pencils by Alex Toth (to capture every emotional extreme) and inks by Jesse Marsh (to soften all the edges and give it a smooth, gray moodiness). Forgive me, I can be silly, too. I wish I could be more specific about my contributions… I was just on the sidelines, really, playing with these guys after a hard day’s work. CBA: What happened with the Tower comics? Bill: I guess John Carbonaro still owns the characters. CBA: Did you work on the Wham-O Book of Big Comics? Bill: Woody recommended me as a writer. I wrote one of the stories… Captain Valoren, I think. A big Toad Man was the villain. I forget who illustrated it. I was pleased to do it. They paid twice as much as I was getting from other publishers. CBA: When did you leave Woody’s employ? Bill: I was never in Wood’s employ in any official way, but I would July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

do anything he asked me to do until the day he died. I did a lot of lettering for him, ghost writing, including on The Wizard King, coloring, production work from the early days on witzend through his later self-published books. He was generous without insulting me by offering cash. He gave me a lot of original art over the years because he knew I was a fan of not only his work but of all the great cartoonists. He used to kid me about being “a fan” whenever I wasn’t doing something like a “professional,” I guess. CBA: Do you recall the genesis of Adkins’ prozine Outlet, which eventually morphed into witzend? Bill: Dan didn’t tell me anything about it. Maybe he thought I’d try to take that away from him, too! CBA: Can you describe your involvement in witzend and how you ended up publishing it? Bill: I just did an interview in Alter Ego (#8) all about witzend, so it’s been covered. CBA: Do you miss Woody? What was his influence on your life? Bill: Yes, I miss him. He was the center of my universe for a long time.

Above: Okay, so this page didn’t appear during the character’s initial Tower Comics run, but this Dave Cockrum page—from Wally Wood’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1—is sure pretty! Courtesy of John Carbonaro.

Opposite page, top left: The NoMan dome. Detail from Reed Crandall’s great NoMan job in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1.

Opposite page, bottom left: Writer Bill Pearson added refreshing complexities to the NoMan character in the story “To Be or Not to Be,” in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #7. Art by John Giunta and Sal Trapani. 61

THE ORIGINAL GOES DIGITAL!

Go online for an ULTIMATE BUNDLE with all print issues HALF-PRICE!

The forerunner to COMIC BOOK CREATOR, CBA is the 2000-2004 Eisner Award winner for BEST COMICS-RELATED MAG! Edited by CBC’s JON B. COOKE, it features in-depth articles, interviews, and unseen art, celebrating the lives and careers of the great comics artists from the 1970s to today. ALL BACK ISSUES NOW AVAILABLE AS DIGITAL EDITIONS FOR $3.95 FROM www.twomorrows.com!

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 E-mail: store@twomorrowspubs.com

Order online at www.twomorrows.com COMIC BOOK ARTIST COLLECTION, VOLUME 3 Reprinting the Eisner Award-winning COMIC BOOK ARTIST #7-8 (spotlighting 1970s Marvel and 1980s indies), plus over 30 NEW PAGES of features and art! New PAUL GULACY portfolio, MR. MONSTER scrapbook, the story behind MARVEL VALUE STAMPS, and more! New MICHAEL T. GILBERT cover! (224-page trade paperback) $24.95 • ISBN: 9781893905429

#3: ADAMS AT MARVEL #4: WARREN PUBLISHING

#5: MORE DC 1967-74

#1: DC COMICS 1967-74

#2: MARVEL 1970-77

Era of “Artist as Editor” at National: New NEAL ADAMS cover, interviews, art, and articles with JOE KUBERT, JACK KIRBY, CARMINE INFANTINO, DICK GIORDANO, JOE ORLANDO, MIKE SEKOWSKY, ALEX TOTH, JULIE SCHWARTZ, and many more! Plus ADAMS thumbnails for a forgotten Batman story, unseen NICK CARDY pages from a controversial Teen Titans story, unpublished TOTH covers, and more!

STAN LEE AND ROY THOMAS discussion about Marvel in the 1970s, ROY THOMAS interview, BILL EVERETT’s daughter WENDY and MIKE FRIEDRICH on Everett, interviews with GIL KANE, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, JIM STARLIN, STEVE ENGLEHART, MIKE PLOOG, STERANKO’s Unknown Marvels, the real origin of the New X-Men, Everett tribute cover by GIL KANE, and more!

(80-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(76-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

#6: MORE MARVEL ’70s #7: ’70s MARVELMANIA

NEAL ADAMS interview about his work at Marvel Comics in the 1960s from AVENGERS to X-MEN, unpublished Adams covers, thumbnail layouts for classic stories, published pages BEFORE they were inked, and unused pages from his NEVER-COMPLETED X-MEN GRAPHIC NOVEL! Plus TOM PALMER on the art of inking Neal Adams, ADAMS’ MARVEL WORK CHECKLIST, & ADAMS wraparound cover!

Definitive JIM WARREN interview about publishing EERIE, CREEPY, VAMPIRELLA, and other fan favorites, in-depth interview with BERNIE WRIGHTSON with unpublished Warren art, plus unseen art, features and interviews with FRANK FRAZETTA, RICHARD CORBEN, AL WILLIAMSON, JACK DAVIS, ARCHIE GOODWIN, HARVEY KURTZMAN, ALEX NINO, and more! BERNIE WRIGHTSON cover!

More on DC COMICS 1967-74, with art by and interviews with NICK CARDY, JOE SIMON, NEAL ADAMS, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, MIKE KALUTA, SAM GLANZMAN, MARV WOLFMAN, IRWIN DONENFELD, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, GIL KANE, DENNY O’NEIL, HOWARD POST, ALEX TOTH on FRANK ROBBINS, DC Writer’s Purge of 1968 by MIKE BARR, JOHN BROOME’s final interview, and more! CARDY cover!

Unpublished and rarely-seen art by, features on, and interviews with 1970s Bullpenners PAUL GULACY, FRANK BRUNNER, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, MARIE and JOHN SEVERIN, JOHN ROMITA SR., DAVE COCKRUM, DON MCGREGOR, DOUG MOENCH, and others! Plus never-beforeseen pencil pages to an unpublished Master of Kung-Fu graphic novel by PAUL GULACY! Cover by FRANK BRUNNER!

Featuring ’70s Marvel greats PAUL GULACY, JOHN BYRNE, RICH BUCKLER, DOUG MOENCH, DAN ADKINS, JIM MOONEY, STEVE GERBER, FRANK SPRINGER, and DENIS KITCHEN! Plus: a rarely-seen Stan Lee P.R. chat promoting the ’60s Marvel cartoon shows, the real trials and tribulations of Comics Distribution, the true story behind the ’70s Kung Fu Craze, and a new cover by PAUL GULACY!

(60-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(116-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(100-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(96-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(128-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

#10: WALTER SIMONSON

#11: ALEX TOTH AND SHELLY MAYER

#8: ’80s INDEPENDENTS

#9: CHARLTON PART 1

#12: CHARLTON PART 2

Major independent creators and their fabulous books from the early days of the Direct Sales Market! Featured interviews include STEVE RUDE, HOWARD CHAYKIN, DAVE STEVENS, JAIME HERNANDEZ, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, DON SIMPSON, SCOTT McCLOUD, MIKE BARON, MIKE GRELL, and more! Plus plenty of rare and unpublished art, and a new STEVE RUDE cover!

Interviews with Charlton alumni JOE GILL, DICK GIORDANO, STEVE SKEATES, DENNIS O’NEIL, ROY THOMAS, PETE MORISI, JIM APARO, PAT BOYETTE, FRANK MCLAUGHLIN, SAM GLANZMAN, plus ALAN MOORE on the Charlton/ Watchmen Connection, DC’s planned ALLCHARLTON WEEKLY, and more! DICK GIORDANO cover!

Career-spanning SIMONSON INTERVIEW, covering his work from “Manhunter” to Thor to Orion, JOHN WORKMAN interview, TRINA ROBBINS interview, also Trina, MARIE SEVERIN and RAMONA FRADON talk shop about their days in the comics business, MARIE SEVERIN interview, plus other great women cartoonists. New SIMONSON cover!

Interviews with ALEX TOTH, Toth tributes by KUBERT, SIMONSON, JIM LEE, BOLLAND, GIBBONS and others, TOTH on continuity art, TOTH checklist, plus SHELDON MAYER SECTION with a look at SCRIBBLY, interviews with Mayer’s kids (real-life inspiration for SUGAR & SPIKE), and more! Covers by TOTH and MAYER!

CHARLTON COMICS: 1972-1983! Interviews with Charlton alumni GEORGE WILDMAN, NICOLA CUTI, JOE STATON, JOHN BYRNE, TOM SUTTON, MIKE ZECK, JACK KELLER, PETE MORISI, WARREN SATTLER, BOB LAYTON, ROGER STERN, and others, ALEX TOTH, a NEW E-MAN STRIP by CUTI AND STATON, and the art of DON NEWTON! STATON cover!

(108-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(108-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

#13: MARVEL HORROR

#14: TOWER COMICS & WALLY WOOD

#15: 1980s VANGUARD & DAVE STEVENS

#16: ATLAS/SEABOARD COMICS

#17: ARTHUR ADAMS

1970s Marvel Horror focus, from Son of Satan to Ghost Rider! Interviews with ROY THOMAS, MARV WOLFMAN, GENE COLAN, TOM PALMER, HERB TRIMPE, GARY FRIEDRICH, DON PERLIN, TONY ISABELLA, and PABLOS MARCOS, plus a Portfolio Section featuring RUSS HEATH, MIKE PLOOG, DON PERLIN, PABLO MARCOS, FRED HEMBECK’S DATELINE, and more! New GENE COLAN cover!

Interviews with Tower and THUNDER AGENTS alumni WALLACE WOOD, LOU MOUGIN, SAMM SCHWARTZ, DAN ADKINS, LEN BROWN, BILL PEARSON, LARRY IVIE, GEORGE TUSKA, STEVE SKEATES, and RUSS JONES, TOWER COMICS CHECKLIST, history of TIPPY TEEN, 1980s THUNDER AGENTS REVIVAL, and more! WOOD cover!

Interviews with ’80s independent creators DAVE STEVENS, JAIME, MARIO, AND GILBERT HERNANDEZ, MATT WAGNER, DEAN MOTTER, PAUL RIVOCHE, and SANDY PLUNKETT, plus lots of rare and unseen art from The Rocketeer, Love & Rockets, Mr. X, Grendel, other ’80s strips, and more! New cover by STEVENS and the HERNANDEZ BROS.!

’70s ATLAS COMICS HISTORY! Interviews with JEFF ROVIN, ROY THOMAS, ERNIE COLÓN, STEVE MITCHELL, LARRY HAMA, HOWARD CHAYKIN, SAL AMENDOLA, JIM CRAIG, RIC MEYERS, and ALAN KUPPERBERG, Atlas Checklist, HEATH, WRIGHTSON, SIMONSON, MILGROM, AUSTIN, WEISS, and STATON discuss their Atlas work, and more! COLÓN cover!

Discussion with ARTHUR ADAMS about his career (with an extensive CHECKLIST, and gobs of rare art), plus GRAY MORROW tributes from friends and acquaintances and a MORROW interview, Red Circle Comics Checklist, interviews with & remembrances of GEORGE ROUSSOS & GEORGE EVANS, Gallery of Morrow, Evans, and Roussos art, EVERETT RAYMOND KINSTLER interview, and more! New ARTHUR ADAMS cover!

(112-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(128-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

#18: 1970s MARVEL COSMIC COMICS

#19: HARVEY COMICS

#20: ROMITAs & KUBERTs #21: ADAM HUGHES, ALEX #22: GOLD KEY COMICS & examinations: RUSS MANNING ROSS, & JOHN BUSCEMA Interviews & Magnus Robot Fighter, WALLY WOOD &

Roundtable with JIM STARLIN, ALAN WEISS and AL MILGROM, interviews with STEVE ENGLEHART, STEVE LEIALOHA, and FRANK BRUNNER, art from the lost WARLOCK #16, plus a FLO STEINBERG CELEBRATION, with a Flo interview, tributes by HERB TRIMPE, LINDA FITE, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, and others! STARLIN/ MILGROM/WEISS cover!

History of Harvey Comics, from Hot Stuf’, Casper, and Richie Rich, to Joe Simon’s “Harvey Thriller” line! Interviews with, art by, and tributes to JACK KIRBY, STERANKO, WILL EISNER, AL WILLIAMSON, GIL KANE, WALLY WOOD, REED CRANDALL, JOE SIMON, WARREN KREMER, ERNIE COLÓN, SID JACOBSON, FRED RHOADES, and more! New wraparound MITCH O’CONNELL cover!

Joint interview between Marvel veteran and superb Spider-Man artist JOHN ROMITA, SR. and fan favorite Thor/Hulk renderer JOHN ROMITA, JR.! On the flipside, JOE, ADAM & ANDY KUBERT share their histories and influences in a special roundtable conversation! Plus unpublished and rarely seen artwork, and a visit by the ladies VIRGINIA and MURIEL! Flip-covers by the KUBERTs and the ROMITAs!

ADAM HUGHES ART ISSUE, with a comprehensive interview, unpublished art, & CHECKLIST! Also, a “Day in the Life” of ALEX ROSS (with plenty of Ross art)! Plus a tribute to the life and career of one of Marvel’s greatest artists, JOHN BUSCEMA, with testimonials from his friends and peers, art section, and biographical essay. HUGHES and TOM PALMER flip-covers!

Total War M.A.R.S. Patrol, Tarzan by JESSE MARSH, JESSE SANTOS and DON GLUT’S Dagar and Dr. Spektor, Turok, Son of Stone’s ALBERTO GIOLITTI and PAUL S. NEWMAN, plus Doctor Solar, Boris Karloff, The Twilight Zone, and more, including MARK EVANIER on cartoon comics, and a definitive company history! New BRUCE TIMM cover!

(104-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(104-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(122-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

#23: MIKE MIGNOLA

#24: NATIONAL LAMPOON COMICS

#25: ALAN MOORE AND KEVIN NOWLAN

COMIC BOOK ARTIST: SPECIAL EDITION #1

COMIC BOOK ARTIST: SPECIAL EDITION #2

Exhaustive MIGNOLA interview, huge art gallery (with never-seen art), and comprehensive checklist! On the flip-side, a careerspanning JILL THOMPSON interview, plus tons of art, and studies of Jill by ALEX ROSS, STEVE RUDE, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, and more! Also, interview with JOSÉ DELBO, and a talk with author HARLAN ELLISON on his various forays into comics! New MIGNOLA HELLBOY cover!

GAHAN WILSON and NatLamp art director MICHAEL GROSS speak, interviews with and art by NEAL ADAMS, FRANK SPRINGER, SEAN KELLY, SHARY FLENNEKIN, ED SUBITSKY, M.K. BROWN, B.K. TAYLOR, BOBBY LONDON, MICHEL CHOQUETTE, ALAN KUPPERBERG, and more! Features new covers by GAHAN WILSON and MARK BODÉ!

Focus on AMERICA’S BEST COMICS! ALAN MOORE interview on everything from SWAMP THING to WATCHMEN to ABC and beyond! Interviews with KEVIN O’NEILL, CHRIS SPROUSE, JIM BAIKIE, HILARY BARTA, SCOTT DUNBIER, TODD KLEIN, JOSE VILLARRUBIA, and more! Flip-side spotlight on the amazing KEVIN NOWLAN! Covers by J.H. WILLIAMS III & NOWLAN!

(106-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(122-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(122-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

Previously available only to CBA subscribers! Spotlights great DC Comics of the ’70s: Interviews with MARK EVANIER and STEVE SHERMAN on JACK KIRBY’s Fourth World, ALEX TOTH on his mystery work, NEAL ADAMS on Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, RUSS HEATH on Sgt. Rock, BRUCE JONES discussing BERNIE WRIGHTSON (plus a WRIGHTSON portfolio), and a BRUCE TIMM interview, art gallery, and cover!

Compiles the new “extras” from CBA COLLECTION VOL. 1-3: unpublished JACK KIRBY story, unpublished BERNIE WRIGHTSON art, unused JEFF JONES story, ALAN WEISS interview, examination of STEVE ENGLEHART and MARSHALL ROGERS’ 1970s Batman work, a look at DC’s rare Cancelled Comics Cavalcade, PAUL GULACY art gallery, Marvel Value Stamp history, Mr. Monster’s scrapbook, and more!

(76-page Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page Digital Edition) $3.95

CBA Essay

Ivie League Heroes Larry Ivie on his T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents contributions by Larry Ivie The following remembrance by Larry Ivie on his participation in the development of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents is abbreviated from its first appearance in Scary Monsters #23, 1997, where it served as a chapter in his essay series on the history of American monster magazines under the title “Larry Ivie’s Monsters and Heroes: The Prolog Tales.” Larry slightly edited the text for its appearance here and we thank the writer for permission to reprint this fascinating insight into the origins of the celebrated comics line. Article ©2001 Larry Ivie.

Above: Larry Ivie, who in the 1960s had an impact on the development of a number of projects, including The Justice League of America, Creepy and Eerie magazines, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, Castle of Frankenstein, and, of course his own Monsters & Heroes magazine. Photo courtesy of Larry Ivie. Opposite page, right: Larry’s cover design for his T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents proposal. Opposite page, bottom right: Larry Ivie memo sheet featuring a rough layout of the proposed T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents comic book. Courtesy & ©2001 Larry Ivie. Inset right: Larry’s fully-finished “First Encounter” splash page Courtesy & ©2001 Larry Ivie. Below: Scrap sheet featuring Ivie’s thoughts on the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. acronym. Courtesy & ©2001 Larry Ivie.

An over-worked Stan Lee was offering me a co-editor position at Marvel Comics, and Jim Warren, publisher of Famous Monsters, was making wild offers for me to produce a new title for him (as detailed in the curious story of Creepy #1 in the 1997 Scary Monsters Annual), but I didn’t want to present Monsters & Heroes (or some of the ideas with much greater financial potential) to anyone who hadn’t been tested first with other ideas, ones I felt I could leave behind, if not satisfied with the company, as would turn out to be the case with Warren. I had already given away so many ideas, with little or no income to me from most of them, one editor called me the “Johnny Appleseed” of the comic book field, and another, by coincidence, without knowing that, extravagantly told someone else I was the “Johnny Appleseed” of publishing in New York City! I thought he was going overboard until I realized there wasn’t a day without at least one story idea, title, or titles on the stands that had come from me, without pay to me… from 1960 until today! Making the feeling stranger was to see some of the weakest of those “throw-away” story ideas, after publication, being adapted to movies and TV… although none of the best ones ever have been! One of the calls I received, in 1965, was from the publisher of a new comic book company, still in search of a major title idea. It was another of those curious conversations typical of the larger companies: “Is this Larry Ivie?” “Yes, it is.” “I’m publishing children’s stories.” “Comic books?” “Yes. Have you had experience with humor?” “Some people have considered my writing humorous, I’m sure, but usually it hasn’t been intentional!” “I’d like to meet with you in my office tomorrow, okay?” “All right.” “Well, I’ll see you then.” “Wait! What’s the address?” (I wrote it down, along with the company name, Tower, which wasn’t familiar, and again, he seemed ready to hang up.) “Wait! What time? And what’s your name?” (The name, Harry Shorten, was familiar. I’d seen it daily, as a child, on a newspaper cartoon panel.) My anticipation, as I arrived at the Madison Avenue building, was that I would be giving them the name and address of the individual I would convince them would be best for producing a humor

title, Archie Goodwin. Shorten’s office, at the end of a short hallway, had the only furnishings—a desk, couch, table, and chairs. His editor, Samm Schwartz, sat on the couch, while I sat in a chair on the other side of the low table, and Shorten, a very pleasant personality, stood as he explained he would like me to create, write, and draw a new comic book horror title! (I know he said “humor” on the phone!) A full-color variation of the title I had created for Warren. I said I could, but would prefer a three-story format in which other artists would draw two of the three stories I would write each issue. They might be some of the ones who had been working on Creepy, since Warren’s pay rates were among the lowest. Although I was told to go ahead, I said I would bring in something to show them on Monday, to make certain they were satisfied with what I would do. They saw no problem, but I did. The horror comic book field had fallen a decade before, because of time-consuming problems with the Comics Code Authority (a censoring board created in an attempt to limit or end “harmful” comic books). It was the reason I had conceived Creepy as a black-&-white magazine not governed by the Code. Surprisingly, Shorten didn’t seem to know of the Code. Samm had heard of it, and said he would get in touch with them the next day. I suggested they might not be open on Saturday. “Monday then,” he said. After setting the time for my return, and getting Shorten’s office phone number, in case of problems, I left to begin thinking of ways to avoid problems. Even the mild titles of the day were delayed by the unpredictable Code board. At least one issue of The Incredible Hulk had been held up because he was shown taller than others in COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

scene panels, which they said could “frighten” young readers, even if he was friendly! One of Wood’s “Help” calls had been to do a Daredevil cover, while he would “hack” out the story. As it turned out, I had to do about a third of the story also, to get it in on time, as did another artist, Bob Powell. Before I inked the cover however, Wally added a woman being kidnapped, and the Code bounced the cover because scenes of kidnapping could only be shown inside. On the whole, however, super-hero titles— which were selling well at that time—were not as bothersome to the Code as “horror” comics had been: so, as I walked along the slush-covered sidewalk toward the subway entrance, my thoughts turned toward trying to talk them into a super-hero title instead. The major chance, I thought, would be if I had a solid idea to discuss by the time I reached my apartment, and phoned to ask them. By the time the train arrived, I had settled on the title T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, and had mentally written a twopage introduction that would link three characters, who would then go their own way for at least several issues. Two would have complete stories each issue; one would have a continuing story. As soon as I was seated on the train, on the way uptown, I pulled a notebook, with attached pen, from my coat pocket, and began a small cover sketch. I doodled three names for the middle character, but realized they had all been used before, so I crossed them out. I would think of the others later. As I neared my apartment, I saw the familiar figure approaching of a young artist named Tim, carrying his latest drawings to show me. First however, I made the call to Shorten, and found my planned presentation unnecessary. As soon as I asked if he might consider a super-hero title instead, he said, “Okay! Show me what you can on it Monday!” I then phoned Wally. For months, he had been saying he would someday like the challenge of finding interesting ways to show an invisible character, like The Shadow. I had been involved with The Shadow’s final days on radio, on post-network episodes heard only in the West, sponsored by a publication I later did art for—Astounding Science Fiction—and some of the old episodes were now being re-aired. I told Wally about the appointment on Monday. and suggested one of the new characters could have an invisibility cloak, but, he said, “What I’m really in the mood to do right now is a war title!” confirming my suspicions that Wally’s interests were primary on things he wasn’t doing at the moment (or, in this case, had a chance to do). I suggested he spend July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

the weekend developing whatever character he would most want to do, and join me on Monday. I would call him then to see if he was ready. I then turned my attention to Tim’s work, which was progressing impressively, but said I had to get to work immediately on the Tower project, to finish at least several sample pages of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. to show on Monday. “It might be interesting,” I said, “if I can make the letters in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. stand for something.” (I had written the story for the first issue of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. magazine.) I wrote the letters in a vertical line, and was able to write in something for the first five 65

Opposite page: Tower editor Samm Schwartz lamented the inclusion of dinosaurs in Ivie’s Sky Boy story, telling the writer-artist that kids didn’t care for prehistoric beasties (!). Here’s Larry’s unfinished final page. Courtesy & ©2001 Larry Ivie. Opposite page, bottom right: Larry’s notes on the acronym “S.I.L.V.E.R.” Courtesy & ©2001 Larry Ivie. 66

instantly, but then had to pause, and write in an awkward “and” before finishing. Tim was impressed at the speed, but I wasn’t satisfied. Since he seemed so enthused at being in on the beginning of a new comic book title. I suggested he meet me the next morning, for the short walk to Bill Pearson’s place so the three of us could discuss ideas. By then, I had the two introductory pages drawn and carefully hand-lettered, and it was at Bill’s that it was decided to drop the words “and Energy” in favor of “Enforcement.” But I wouldn’t stop to make changes until after the first samples were shown. I showed Bill a list of super-powers, and he suggested to go with the first three—super-strength, flight, and invisibility. In trying to think of names, I mentioned “Invisible Agent,” but it seemed familiar, and it was verified it had been a movie title, so I wrote down “Unseen Agent” instead. On Monday, Wally and I entered Tower carrying equally large cases, his black, mine brown. We were greeted by Samm, who led us to a room to the right, which had an improvised table made from a long piece of wood propped up at the ends with boxes. He sat in a chair behind it, next to the wall, and I sat in a chair facing him, while Wally sat in a chair to my right. Samm said he was anxious to see what I had. So I pulled out a full-size cover, the two preliminary pages: A sample of the flying-boy character I wanted to do, plus two typed scripts for that character (written in such a way they could eventually tie-in with the Altron-Boy saga, if Tower turned out to be the company I wanted to stick with). Harry Shorten entered the small room through the door to our rear to stand to Sam’s right, seeming favorably impressed. I introduced Wally, hoping they would be familiar with the past work of this artist the National Cartoonists Society had once voted comic book artist of the year. (“It would have been even better, though,” Wally had said, as we looked at the plaque on

his wall, “if they had given it to me for a year in which there had actually been comic book work by me!” I recalled that year, in which we both agreed the most impressive comic book work had been done by Alex Toth, while Wally had been working on other things!) Anxious to see what he had produced, I mentioned he had something to show, also, and Wally opened his case to reveal a single sheet of paper, with a drawing of an airplane. No title, no character designs, and nothing said as he simply put it on the make-shift table for them to see! Shorten, probably as puzzled as I was, said he would keep it in mind for a future title, and gave the okay to proceed with the super-hero work. As we left, I mentioned something to Wally…. The one item in my case I hadn’t shown was a duplicate of the cover, drawn lightly in pencil, for use by one of the other artists, to draw and ink his character, with a costume design of his choice, to later paste in place with the other two. I said I would like one to be by Reed Crandall, who had done some excellently-drawn superstrength heroes during the early ’40s. At the moment, he was living in Kansas, but could work through the mail. Wally finally began to show some interest, saying he had Reed’s phone number at his apartment, and suggesting we stop by the nearest art supply store, to stock up on paper, phone Reed from his apartment, and then sit down to discuss the invisible-guy character. By phone, I described, to Reed, the character I wanted to see him design and draw, saying it would probably be titled “The Thunderbolt,” with the other two characters being “The ThunderBird” and “The Thunder-Vision.” Reed liked it, but said he would prefer not to write his own script. So, I said one would be sent to him. Wally said there was a problem. A writer we knew, named Len Brown, had once suggested writing a character for Wally to draw, called Thunderbolt. “Perfect!” I said. “We’ll have Len write Reed’s COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

script.” Wally had me leave the two-page introduction, to explain the premise to Len, and then said he would have me write the ThunderVision script for him, using the idea I had once told him, in a dream adventure I had, about the ability to switch awareness from one body to another. “Also,” he said, “let’s make the guy an android—a robot… a set of them!” I didn’t particularly favor multi-gimmick characters, after Superman and Captain Marvel (a favorite of Wally’s), but I wanted him happy enough to finally stick with a character he felt was his. “And, oh yes,”he added. “Instead of ThunderVision, he’s got to be called NoMan (a name in the stories of Homer) because I’ve always wanted to do a character with that name. If it can’t be called that, I think I’d rather be doing something else instead. There’s another character I want to do—Dollar Bill Cash!” I agreed to write a script for him titled “NoMan,” and brought it to him later that day, so I could finally get back to my own character. A day or two later, however, he called to say I would have to write Reed’s script, too, since there was a problem with the one he received from Len. I went over to look at it, and saw what Wally had realized. The plot, by chance, was almost identical to that in the Shadow episode of the previous Sunday, which would remain in syndication forever. A script should be on the way to Reed fast, so I dashed back to my apartment, used as much from Len’s as I felt I could, but changed it greatly. In compensation to him, I also changed the name of the hero to Len Brown. I took it back to Wally, to see if he agreed with the revisions. He did, and said he would send it to Reed, since he had to take some other things to the post office that day. Then, a day or two later, Wally phoned to say that he realized he had been longing to do a scene with a super-hero crashing through a brick wall, and standing amid a pile of bricks! Did he want me to come over and write a scene like that into the NoMan script? “No,” he said, “I’ve already drawn it, for the first page of the Thunderbolt story. I sent the NoMan script to Reed, instead! But, even though I’ve inked in the title, I think I’ll change it to something else, because DC had a Johnny Thunder character!” (Ironically, without letting me know, he selected the name “Dynamo” from my original sketch—a name used three times before!) At this point, with the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. theme falling apart, I decided it would be best to set it aside completely, as a follow-up title, if sales of the first warranted one. In the first, I would use “Sky-Boy” for my character’s title, and the title T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents could be changed to… I went over to Wally’s again to discuss possibilities. He hadn’t yet picked the new name for his character, and I used a piece of paper there, again placing letters in a vertical line to see if the formula would work again with the word SILVER—Silver Agents. Again, the first five letters came instantly, but not the next. After a long pause, trying to think of an “R” word, I was suddenly writing over a dozen of them, but we began laughing so hard at some, I decided to leave that choice to Wally, who agreed to replace the word T.H.U.N.D.E.R. throughout to S.I.L.V.E.R.… or something! It was obvious, whether he realized it consciously, or not, that the more in the title he could feel was his, the happier he would be… which was okay with me, as long as I could get enough time to not have to rush the rest of my pages. Then Tower said that instead of putting out 32-page issues for 12¢, it was going to be 64 pages for 25¢. They would need twice as many pages… in the same time! Before even finishing the first, I began work on the second Sky-Boy episode, soon realizing the quality I wanted couldn’t be maintained with 20 instead of 10 pages an issue. Wally suggested bringing in other artists with additional characters. Envisioning a cover with so many characters none of them would seem important, I suggested adding a feature called “The SILVER Squad,” with a blandly-dressed unit containing so many members none of them would compete with the three major heroes. Wally’s eyes lit up. “A military unit!” he exclaimed with interest and I think he suggested a plot idea, but eventually the task of writing fell to me, along with the issue’s two-page text story, and I don’t think he got beyond a few sketches before turning the art, also, over to someone else. Eventually, even much of the work seeming to be by Wally was by others who could imitate his style as well as I could, with most of it being produced in his studio by under-paid students—using a projector to trace figures from past stories. His wife did lettering, and what resulted was often good, but not the format I July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

had envisioned, with three dedicated creators each conceiving, writing, and drawing 10 pages an issue of a character that would be theirs alone. An additional big drain on time came with a request from Samm to see the first chapter nearing completion in pencil, before it was inked, to see how it was coming. The only one that far ahead was mine, so I took time out to take the first 10 pages (the last page not fully drawn) to the Tower office. Samm now had a small room on the left-hand side of the hall. His first reaction to the pages was dismay that the title panel took up over half the page and that there was no dialogue balloon in it. “Title panels should just use the top third. And you’ve got dinosaurs in the story. Kids don’t like dinosaurs!“ (My friends and I had always reached for issues with dinosaurs first!) I wondered what he would think of the next two title pages he would see. Wally’s first episode, and my second one, both began with full-page scenes! Then he pointed out something I hadn’t thought of—that the ceiling lamps in the second panel would be out of perspective if attached to the slanting ceiling. For the first time in my experience in comics, I was receiving editorial comment that was right! Then, he brought out a page of art, for my comment, on another title they were working on. “Archie!” I 67

said, not needing to make it a question. Tower was going to be the new publisher of Archie Andrews? He seemed disappointed. “It looks a little too much like Archie? I guess we’ll have to change the face a little!” It wasn’t just the face, the entire style was Archie, and suddenly, I began to understand! All of his views, of how a comic book should be, were based on Archie! (As I later learned Shorten had been the first editor of Archie, and Samm had probably spent most of his career at that company!) We were never going to be in tune on the production of adventure stories! Shorten, however, seemed to like what he saw, and wanted Wally and me to see him again, Wally Wood used himself as for an interesting offer…. The offer from Tower, at model for his character Dollar a time there was a move to give comic book writBill Cash in Harvey’s Warfront. ers and artists a slight degree of creative rights, was an extra $10 a page for art or a percentage of the title’s profits. Wally jumped at the increase for art, already planning his assembly-line of cheap help. “What publisher,” he asked cynically, as we discussed the choices at his studio, “has ever been honest? $10 in the hand is better than the few cents an issue the account books will probably end up showing. The ones we would be shown!” The decision, however, would not be of benefit to me, as I was soon asking Shorten if I could buy back the Sky-Boy work I had been paid for if I could provide a suitable replacement material in time for the first issue. Although page count is the primary factor to most comic book publishers, Shorten took some time to make a decision with Samm—and Wally after they contacted him—trying to change my mind. I assured Samm I would continue to do writing if needed, and Wally, when they finally agreed, said he would get the replacement pages. He also expanded the introduction to four pages. In its original 32-page format, and with compatible editorial outlook, I would have found T.H.U.N.D.E.R. a satisfying source of income. With the changes and editorial delays, came the realization Tower wasn’t going to be the place for Monsters & Heroes, which I wanted to get back to, with both total control and the copyright. Sky Boy was too similar to Altron-Boy! When S.I.L.V.E.R. Agents #1 appeared on the stands in early fall of 1965, it bore the title T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, with a cover scene favoring Wally’s character and only his signature on it.

Get the Best of the Rest of the Original ALTER EGO!

THE BEST OF ALTER EGO, VOLUME 2 is the new sequel to ALTER EGO: THE BEST OF THE LEGENDARY COMICS FANZINE, which presents more fantastic features from the fabled mag begun in 1961 by JERRY BAILS & ROY THOMAS—covering undiscovered gems from all 11 original issues published between 1961 and 1978! Editors ROY THOMAS and BILL SCHELLY uncover never-revealed secrets about the first super-hero fanzine ever published, with vintage articles about TOR, HAWKMAN, THE SPECTRE, BLACKHAWK, THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, THE ALL WINNERS SQUAD, ROBOTMAN, WONDER WOMAN, THE HEAP, THE LENSMEN/GREEN LANTERN CONNECTION, and so much more! Plus rarely-seen comics stories by JOE KUBERT (a gorgeous, unsold “Tor” newspaper strip), RONN FOSS (“The Eclipse”), and ROY THOMAS and SAM GRAINGER (adapting Gardner Fox’s novel “Warrior of Llarn”), as well as Roy’s entire “Bestest League of America” parody, collected for the first time ever! There’s even a never-before-reprinted 1977 interview with JEAN GIRAUD (“Moebius”), plus special sections on Bails’ adzine THE COMICOLLECTOR and on “the A/E #10 that almost was”! It’s all behind a classic cover of GARDNER FOX and his greatest creations by then-future Marvel artist SAM GRAINGER! (160-page trade paperback) $19.95 • (Digital Edition) $6.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-048-9 • Ships May 2013 STILL AVAILABLE: ALTER EGO: THE BEST OF THE LEGENDARY COMICS FANZINE • (192-page trade paperback) $21.95 • ISBN: 978-1-893905-88-7

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

A COMICS HISTORY GAME-CHANGER!

AMERICAN COMIC BOOK CHRONICLES THE

1960-64 Volume NOW SHIPPING! 1980s Volume ships in MARCH!

This ambitious new series of FULLCOLOR HARDCOVERS documents every decade of comic books from the 1940s to today! Each colossal volume presents a year-by-year account of the comic book industry’s most significant publications, most notable creators, and most impactful trends.

This ongoing project enlists TwoMorrows’ top authors, as they provide exhaustively researched details on all the major events along the comics history timeline! Editor KEITH DALLAS (The Flash Companion) spearheads the series and writes his own volume on the 1980s. Also in the works are two volumes on the 1940s by ROY THOMAS, the 1950s by BILL SCHELLY, two volumes on the 1960s by JOHN WELLS, a 1970s volume by JIM BEARD, and more volumes documenting the 1990s and 2000s. Taken together, the series forms the first cohesive, linear overview of the entire landscape of comics history, sure to be an invaluable resource for ANY comic book enthusiast! JOHN WELLS leads off with the first of two volumes on the 1960s, covering all the pivotal moments and behind-the-scenes details of comics in the JFK and Beatles era! You’ll get a year-by-year account of the most significant publications, notable creators, and impactful trends, including: DC Comics’ rebirth of GREEN LANTERN, HAWKMAN, and others, and the launch of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and multiple earths! STAN LEE and JACK KIRBY’s transformation of superhero comics with the debut of FANTASTIC FOUR, SPIDER-MAN, HULK, X-MEN, AVENGERS, and other iconic characters! Plus BATMAN gets a “new look”, the BLUE BEETLE is revamped at Charlton Comics, and CREEPY #1 brings horror back to comics, just as Harvey’s “kid” comics are booming!

NOW SHIPPING! The Best of FROM THE TOMB Compiles the finest features from the preeminent magazine on horror comics history, along with never-seen material! (192-page trade paperback with COLOR) $27.95 • (Digital Edition) $8.95 ISBN: 9781605490434 • Diamond Order Code: AUG121322

The co-founder of Filmation Studios tells all about leading the last American animation company through thirty years of innovation and fun! (288-page trade paperback with COLOR) $29.95 • (Digital Edition) $9.95 ISBN: 9781605490441 • Diamond Order Code: JUL121245

MATT BAKER: The Art of Glamour The fabled master of glamour art finally gets his due! (192-page HARDCOVER with 96 COLOR pages) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $11.95 ISBN: 9781605490328 • Diamond Order Code: JUN121310

PRINTED IN CANADA

LOU SCHEIMER: Creating the Filmation Generation

1960-64 VOLUME: (224-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $11.95 • ISBN: 9781605490458 • Diamond Order Code: JUL121245

CBA Interview

That Terrific Tuska Touch George Tuska on his wonderful Tower Comics work Conducted by Mike Gartland While the great George Tuska may not remember all that much of his Tower material (as revealed below), we’d be loathe to exclude the artist from this retrospective as he contributed a number of fine T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents stories, among them the humorous “Weed” tales. Look for a comprehensive, career-spanning interview with the artist in an upcoming “Marvel Heavy-Hitters” issue. Mike Gartland visited George in May, 2001.

Below: Arriving just in time to accompany this interview, contributor Jerry “The K.” Boyd sent us this lovely Tuska commission drawing of Len Brown and the Invisible Agent! Thanks, JKB!

Comic Book Artist: How did you get the Tower gig? George Tuska: I was freelancing work at that time while working on the syndicated Buck Rogers strip, I really don’t remember who told me about it. CBA: Did you deal with editor Samm Schwartz at all? George: His name rings a bell, but I don’t believe I ever met him. CBA: Do you know anything about the Tower Publishing background and why it decided to get into comics? Do you remember the types of paperbacks the company produced? Did you know of Harry Shorten? Any anecdotes?

George: I guess Tower was just jumping on the super-hero bandwagon, along with the other publishing houses that devoted some of their space to superheroes at that same time. Harry Shorten I don’t know of, sorry. CBA: Did you visit Wally Wood’s studio with any frequency? George: Believe it or not, I never knew Wally Wood nor visited him. I knew Bob Wood when I worked at Lev Gleason, but I don’t think they were related. CBA: Who wrote the stories you drew? Did you write any stories? Were the scripts Marvel-style or fully written? George: I don’t recall who wrote the stories, I may have contributed some 70

stuff, but without having the books to refer to, I couldn’t tell you. I think the stories were full scripts; I only remember working Marvelmethod at Marvel. I liked Marvel method because it allowed you more of a free reign to move the plot your own way. I’m really sorry, but without the books I couldn’t recall any anecdotes of interest; at the time it was just fill-in work, you understand. CBA: Favorite characters? You drew a few “T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad” stories, did you enjoy the strip? Was Weed based on Woody? George: Didn’t really have a favorite character, they did remind me of the X-Men though. If Weed was based on Wally Wood, you’d have to ask the writer, as I really don’t know. CBA: Do you recall what your page rate was? How did it compare to Marvel and DC at the time? George: I think it was something like $20 a page, Marvel was less; I didn’t work for DC at that time so I don’t know what their rate was; probably higher. CBA: What did you think of the Tower material? George: Same as the Marvel stuff, super-hero stuff, you know. The Tower stuff had a James Bond kind of touch to it, though. CBA: Do you think the Tower comics were developed to capitalize on Marvel’s success? As far as you recall, was the Batman craze in full-swing when the books were coming out? George: At that time I really wasn’t fully into Marvel; that didn’t happen until the Buck Rogers strip was over. I remember when Batman was very popular, but I was just freelancing, doing pick-up work for places like Marvel and Tower at that time. It didn’t occur to me that the TV show had any effect on all of comics. Some said it was bad for comics. CBA: What do you think of super-heroes? You’re renowned especially for your ’40s crime stories for Crime Does Not Pay. Did you wish genres other than super-heroes were popular during the ’60s and ’70s? George: I liked the action in super-hero books, but preferred doing the Crime Does Not Pay material. The stories were more thrilling to me because they seemed more based on real life. I would’ve like to have seen the Crime stories make it to the ’60s and ’70s, but those Kefauver hearings put an end to them in the ’50s, shame really. CBA: Did you consider Wally Wood a tragic figure? George: Tragic figure? I think that he felt he had to take his own life was a tragedy, he was a very talented man. CBA: Did you socialize with other comic book artists in the 1960s? Where did you live in the ’60s and what was your family situation? George: Since I was freelancing, I didn’t really see many artists; sometimes I’d run into someone at the office if I was bringing in or taking out work. I lived on Long Island (in Hicksville) at the time with my wife, two daughters and son. I liked to golf and still do as often as I can. I did golf with Stan Lee on several occasions. CBA: What was the story behind your brief Marvel foray—drawing “Captain America,” for one—in the mid-’60s? Why didn’t you stay longer? George: The Buck Rogers strip was very time-consuming, and you always had to be on top of it; it’s like that with many syndicated strips. You also had to get and pay for the letterer and inker. Also, Marvel’s rates for a penciled and inked page didn’t give you enough incentive to stay, although I did prefer doing comic book stories to the syndicated stuff. CBA: When and why did you return to Marvel? COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

Mini-Interview

Tres Chic Chic Stone on Tower Conducted by Mike Gartland Though we certainly lament the passing of Chic Stone in 2000, we were fortunate to have CBA friend Mike Gartland visit the artist two weeks before his death, when Chic was kind enough to answer a few questions about his work for Tower Comics. The artist is perhaps best recalled for his work on the “Lightning” stories in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Comic Book Artist: Chic, do you recall why you left Marvel? Chic Stone: Yes, because of Jim Shooter. CBA: No, I meant Marvel in the ’60s; you went to Tower Comics. Were you looking for penciling rather than inking assignments? Chic: Oh, I’m not sure, but I think [Tower editor] Samm Schwartz promised me the moon or something like that; but anyway that didn’t work out because I knew I wasn’t doing good work then. CBA: Harry Shorten was the publisher. Did you meet him then? Chic: Yes. Shorten was trying to glean talent from the other companies and he hired me by mistake. [laughs] CBA: How do you mean? Chic: He wanted somebody else and I happened to walk in the office, but it never panned out because I just didn’t like the set-up. I was hacking out work at the time and don’t particularly like my work in those books. I know good work and I know hacking when I see it, and I was one of the world’s great hackers. [laughs]

Above: George Tuska’s work was especially lush at Tower because he was allowed to pencil and ink his own work. The artist’s semi-humorous work on the solo T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad member, Weed, stories are very fondly recalled. Here’s George’s splash page in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #15.

George: The Buck Rogers strip finally was ended and Stan was always asking me to come back, so around 1967 I started doing some inking, then some fill-in stories, then Iron Man. CBA: When did you start working again for DC Comics? Did you primarily work for Murray Boltinoff? George: I got into DC trough Carmine Infantino; one day Sol Brodsky told me that they didn’t have any work for me; so I took some of my Marvel samples to Carmine and he said “This is what we’re looking for.” So what happens? He puts me on romance stories! Ugh! [laughs] Later on I ran into Stan who asked why wasn’t I working for him anymore? So I go up to his office and explain that I was told I wasn’t needed around here; and John Verpoorten, who was sitting next to me in Stan’s office said “He’s right, Stan.” [laughs] So I was back at Marvel again. I worked with Carmine and Joe Orlando at DC, although I did know Boltinoff, also. He lived a short distance from me in Long Island and sometimes I would bring my work to his house rather than go into the city. CBA: Any memories of other Tower contributors? George: I remember Sekowsky from the Eisner-Iger days, but didn’t see him anymore after that. Reed Crandall was there, too, and I used to watch him draw along with Lou Fine; they were very good. Others like Esposito, Stone and Adkins I know from their inking stories I drew. the others I know only from conventions, while some I’ve never met. TUSKA FANS! If you’re interested in new artwork by George, inquire about commissions directly to the artist! Take it from Ye Ed: Tuska’s art is better than ever! Write him at: George Tuska, 899A Stratford Court, Manchester NJ 08759. Tell ‘im CBA sent ya! July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

Above: Chic Stone’s fine splash page to his “Lightning” story in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #13. 71

Lightning Round

Up in the Tower The T.H.U.N.D.E.R.ous real-life adventure of Steve Skeates! by Steve Skeates While my esteemed associate editor Chris Irving did conduct an interview with the writer, Steve Skeates felt that perhaps an essay would best express his fond memories of working on various strips for Tower’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents books. The following was written exclusively for this issue of CBA and our thanks to the award-winning writer for this delightful flashback to his days of T.H.U.N.D.E.R.!

Above: Dramatic rendition of Lightning by Mike Sekowsky & Frank Giacoia. From T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #4, the speedster’s first appearance. 72

So, who was that resourceful madman, the one who (for a while at least) took NoMan out of the game simply by placing this monumentally powerful android, this socalled “invincible” agent, in captivity, tying him down within a locked room, a veritable vault? I suppose a number of you are already well aware that this seemingly impossible happenstance transpired within a taut and tightly-knit tale aptly entitled “The Trap!” A mere ten pages in length, this minor epic wormed its way into the consciousness of its fairly limited audience via the eleventh issue of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents comic book, way back in March of 1967—a tale which still stands as my own personal favorite among all the various yarns I had a hand in spinning for the Tower publishing group. But, to return to my original inquiry here, the one concerning the identity of this particular

entry upon NoMan’s long list of maniacal adversaries—the truth of the matter is, in my youthful enthusiasm, eager to get this story written and sold, to see it drawn, to have it published, I never even gave the dude a name. Still, said crazy person did possess the relatively disconcerting habit of referring to himself as “The King of the World!” At least that’s something. Furthermore, artist John Giunta was gracious enough to provide this unnamed character with a very distinctive visual personality! Dressed regally but with an insane overblown edge to his outfit, a surplus of pretentiousness, as though we were being confronted by a doorman with definite delusions of grandeur at some posh uptown apartment complex rather than by an actual king. Tall and lanky and with a pencil-thin mustache—those aspects making him look rather like a Snidely Whiplash that we were all taking a tad too seriously. Actually, though, this apparently silly appearance was more than minorly befitting, especially considering the stilted melodramatic dialogue I had a tendency to employ back in those crazy days. Just listen to him: “You see, NoMan! You can’t transfer your mind! The mento-barrier disc prevents that! And those solid steel bonds make it impossible for you to get free! You’ll never escape… nor will anyone be able to save you… for, once I close this door, this cell will be automatically sealed for all time! Even I will be unable to re-enter!” The villain departs, loudly slamming the door behind him, and NoMan, obviously caught up in the moment, his dialogue strangely mirroring the pomposity of his captor, says to himself: “I must not give up hope! But I’m afraid that… this is the end! And worst of all, since I’m the ‘immortal agent,’ I won’t be stuck here for simply a normal lifetime, but for a lifetime of lifetimes! I’ll be doomed to spend the rest of eternity, trapped! If only I hadn’t been so foolish as to walk right into this….” Ah, an “if only…”! Obviously, then, this opening scene is but a framing device, and we (as I now adroitly become one with those readers way-back-when) are about to enter a flashback, about to see how NoMan got himself into this predicament, about to view this awesome adventure through the eyes, the mind’s eye, the very memory, of this hero himself. No wonder I have such affection for this particular tale! I’ve always loved framing devices, became enamored of them via reading those great old Spirit stories written and drawn by that master of the comic book form, Will Eisner. Highly polished, gem-like, totally self-contained six- and seven-pagers. No huge and ungainly story arcs belaboring the inner-workings, every minor psychological glitch, to be found within one highly neurotic super-hero or another (or, more accurately, someone who calls himself a hero, yet more often than not acts more like a villain himself)—seemingly endless, nit-picking, basically unstructured pseudo-stories that somehow became quite fashionable in the eighties and the nineties and beyond, bloated repetitious overly-violent nonentities that only someone every bit as neurotic as the “heroes” of these sick constructs could possibly get into, could possibly enjoy. Nope, none of that! But large ideas, huge concepts, handled economically. And, that’s what I was striving for here as well—an actual story with an actual beginning, middle, and end, with even the villain of the piece accidentally perishing once his nefarious scheme had been foiled. Eisner, though, wasn’t the only hero of mine whom I attempted to emulate. There are (that is to say) certain flowing passages within certain Tower tales of mine in which I sought to display a sort of pacing similar to that which the great Jack Kirby would employ within his wondrous Fantastic Four output. Also, the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent I COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

most often wrote for, scripting all but two of his Tower adventures—Lightning by name—I consciously, purposely attempted to base this sober, stern, superserious super-hero not upon the Flash (even though, as this character’s creator, the one and only Wally Wood, had originally set things up, Lightning—outside of the life-shortening aspect of his powers and the fact that he wore goggles—essentially was The Flash), but upon Simon & Kirby’s Fighting American. To flash back a bit my own self— when I first read those beautifully entertaining adventures of what I quickly learned was not your regular ordinary red-white&-blue overly patriotic hero, I saw that obviously Fighting American and his requisite juvenile sidekick were just about the only sane inhabitants of a topsyturvy comedic world in which puns abounded and villains were total crackpots, yet FA and his under-age cohort never even cracked a smile (let alone fell down and rolled around laughing, as I figure any of us under similar situations would surely have proceeded to do); instead, they took every bit of this world’s intrinsic wackiness perfectly seriously. Thus, always having perceived humor to be rather my long suit—and especially considering that Guy Gilbert had been around for three issues, functioning as the strict and seemingly humorless leader of that Challengers of the Unknown rip-off known as the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad, prior to becoming Lightning—I viewed Fighting American’s surroundings as the downright perfect reality—or should I say “surreality”?—to use as the model for the world in which I would ensconce the so-called Swift Agent! Oh sure, being a green kid comic book-writing-wise, I wasn’t quite up to the task I had set up for myself, my Lightning adventures never being quite as whacky as I wanted them to be. Furthermore, I was the only one who worked for Tower who felt that Lightning should be handled in this fashion, and that too led to a number of problems. For example, the very first villain that the swift agent faced, that Prussian desert pilot who had created that evil substance known as The Deadly Dust, originally sported what I felt was quite the appropriate monicker—Baron Waste! Imagine my chagrin, then, when, upon reading the published version of my very first “Lightning” scripting effort, I discovered that without my knowledge the evil Baron had suffered a name change, that he was now known as Baron July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

Von Kampf. Surely not a bad handle at all for such a kill-crazed dude, yet definitely devoid of the alternate-reality silliness I was aiming for. All in all, though, my working relationship with Tower was a good one. In fact, as quite the novice, one whose reach far too often exceeded his grasp, I was probably entrusted with far more responsibility than I should have been. One need only look closely at my aforementioned very first “Lightning” scripting effort to see what I

Above: Back in the early ’80s, Steve produced this three-page strip (continued on our next page) back when rumors persisted that the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents were in the public domain. Courtesy & ©2001 Steve Skeates. 73

Above: Final two pages of Skeates’ autobio strip on his affection for Lightning, one of his first writing assignments. Steve told Ye Ed, “I did up the enclosed three-pager (which, incidentally, has never been published anywhere) when the rumor that the Tower characters had been proclaimed public domain was circulating—in other words, I (in fact, I’m embarrassed to say) had bought aboard that particular silly rumor!” Courtesy & ©2001 Steve Skeates.

Right inset: Courtesy of artist Steve Mitchell, here’s the two Steves—Skeates (at left) and Mitchell—clowning around for an early 1970s picture. 74

mean—the verbosity, those huge balloons leaving so little room for any artwork! And then there’s the fact that Guy Gilbert gets shot at point-blank range, yet survives without even a wound, while (rather unbelievably) I never even bothered to explain how he pulled that one off! I’m surprised those in power (Harry Shorten, Samm Schwartz, and Wally Wood) after that one ever let me write another Lightning, NoMan, Undersea Agent, or Raven story, but I’m damn glad they did! The chance to work with the likes of Woody, Mike Sekowsky, Steve Ditko, Ogden Whitney, Chic Stone, and Gil Kane— for the fresh-faced, admittedly rather fannish kid I was back then, how could such as that help but be one of the biggest thrills of my life? My use in the paragraph above of the term “worked with” may be a touch misleading, however—seeing as I had so amazingly little contact with the above-named artists. I never even talked to Ogden

Whitney, although I did pass him in the hall once. It would be later, while I was working for Charlton, that I would come face-to-face with Steve Ditko, and later still (while I was working for DC) that I would first meet Sekowsky and Kane! Y’see, being a freelancer, I did all my writing work at home, pounding away on a portable manual typewriter, getting my fingers so grubby thanks to the fact that no one used Xerox machines back in those days—all the writers I knew employed (as I did) carbon paper to make their file copies—and visiting the office merely once every two weeks (voucher time!) in order to turn in whatever scripts I had concocted during those previous fourteen days. It was a rather solitary existence—just me and my typewriter, home alone, trying to extricate Lightning or NoMan or the Raven from whatever dire situation I had wrapped whichever hero within—and yet, I must admit, somehow I was having the time of my life! COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

DIGITAL

DRAW! #8

DRAW! #9

DRAW! #10

DRAW! #5

DRAW! #6

DRAW! #7

(88-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(96-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(96-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $2.95

DRAW! #11

DRAW! #12

DRAW! #13

(96-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(88-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $2.95

(104-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(112-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(96-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $2.95

(88-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

DRAW! #14

DRAW! #15

DRAW! #16

DRAW! #17

DRAW! #18

DRAW! #19

(84-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

DRAW! #20

DRAW! #21

DRAW! #22

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

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

CBA Interview

A Man Called Jones Talking with Tower scribe & monster maniac, Russ Jones Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Brian K. Morris The following interview with writer/artist/editor Russ Jones was originally intended to appear in the currently-available book by Ye Ed and David A. Roach, The Warren Companion, but due to certain complications, it appears here. Russ wrote for Tower Comics during its brief life and we feature a career-spanning look at this multi-talented man. Though T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, et al. are only briefly discussed here, Russ was associated with Tower art director Wally Wood for a number of years. This interview was conducted via phone on January 17, 2001 and was approved by Russ.

Above: Russ Jones at Chiller Con this past April. Check out Russ’s Website at www.horrorbiz.com where you’ll find Jones merchandise for sale. Courtesy of Russ and Dave of Horrorbiz.

Comic Book Artist: Russ, where are you from? Russ Jones: Ontario, Canada. CBA: What year were you born? Russ: 1942. CBA: When did you start developing an interest in art? Russ: As a kid. Back in those days, it was the wonderful Sunday comics and we had all the great stuff like the Alex Raymond strips and Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant. My favorite was Dick Tracy by Chester Gould. CBA: Did you read comic books as a kid? Russ: Yeah, I was very interested in them. CBA: You were just in time for the ECs, right? Russ: Oh, yeah. I bought those on a regular basis, as soon as they came out. CBA: What particularly attracted you to EC Comics? Russ: They were different. They felt different, had a very different look and, of course, the work inside was unparalleled, as far as I was concerned. It was just knockout stuff. I had no idea, of course, what Craft Tint or Zip-A-Tone was or anything like that at the time but I would look at this and, with a kid’s wonderment, say, “Wow.” It felt like special effects make-up or something. It was unlike anything I’d really ever seen. CBA: Were there any particular artists that you really liked back

then? Was it Wally Wood? Russ: Well, yeah. Woody would be right up there pretty much on the top of the list, I’d say. Of course, all of them were very good. I liked George Evans and Reed Crandall and, of course, Al Williamson and Frank Frazetta. CBA: So you were more attracted to art than the stories? Russ: Oh, no. You see, the story and art amalgamated so well. It was the perfect combination. CBA: Did you collect them all? Russ: No, I didn’t. I was never really a collector. CBA: Did you pursue an art education? Russ: No, my education was in the United States Marine Corps. CBA: When did you join the Marines? Russ: I started out in Second Recon and went to Korea for 18 months and came back to the States in Quantico where I was with Criminal Investigations and went through most of the FBI academy. From there I went to Marine Corps headquarters. CBA: What years were you in Korea? Russ: I was there in 1959. I did some work for the Marine Corps magazine, Leatherneck, out of Penderson Hall in Arlington. CBA: Did you have a vocation in print production? Russ: Yeah. As a matter of fact, that’s what my MOS turned out to be. It was a 1461 MOS but, of course, your primary in the Marine Corps is a grunt. CBA: Did you encounter any action at all? Russ: Yeah, but I had to take an oath on that. The outfit that I was with was running what they would call today Black Ops. But we referred to it just as Search-&-Destroy or whatever. CBA: This was during your time overseas? Russ: Yeah. CBA: What did you do for Leatherneck? Russ: Illustrations. CBA: Did you want to pursue a career in comic books or comic strips? Russ: Yeah, that had always been my goal but I didn’t know, exactly, how to get there, and I met this wonderful old timer that no one on Earth had ever heard of. His name was Wood Cowan and Wood had taken over the Our Boarding House strip from Gene Ahern. Wood was doing editorial cartoons out of Connecticut, I met him and he invited me out to his place. He was quite a character. He must have, like, been close to 80 at the time, wore one of the worst rugs I’ve ever seen. [chuckles] He was very funny and in his studio, he had this wonderful portrait that James Montgomery Flagg had done of him. So I said, “Gee, this Wood Cowan guy must have had some real history.” He taught me some tricks and introduced me to the people at McNaught in New York. That’s really how the whole thing got started. CBA: What did you do at McNaught? Russ: I did some work for some of the different artists. Oh gosh, I worked with Mark Bailey. Through Mark, he was doing stuff for Lank Leonard. They had another strip called Dixie Dugan… just some odd stuff here and there. CBA: Doing assists, backgrounds, and the like? Russ: Yeah, and learning. I was going to start my own historical strip, and I knew Jack Davis. I wanted that EC look. Jack was very busy. This was back in about 1962 or ’63, I guess. Jack was keen on working on it but at that time he was actually making the big bucks. He just started getting into the movie ads and the TV Guide stuff and he pointed me in the direction of Wally Wood and that’s how Woody COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

and I got together. CBA: Where was Woody at the time? Russ: He was at 74th Street in Manhattan. CBA: Did he have assistants working for him at the time? Russ: No, he did not. CBA: Were you his first assistant? Russ: You know, I really don’t know. I think prior to me, I think it was probably Joe Orlando. CBA: Joe goes back, obviously, to the late ’40s. Russ: Yeah, and Woody, of course, had worked with Harry Harrison. CBA: You must have met a lot of people through Woody, right? Russ: Quite a few, yes, indeed. CBA: Who’d come by that you recall? Russ: Well, there was a guy by the name of Leo Dillon who was an illustrator who worked for Galaxy magazine. Quite remarkable guy. Leo and his wife, Diane, would come visit with Wally and often I would be, sort of, the odd man out, partially in the conversation because we had so much work piled up. [chuckles] I mean, it was this incredible factory going on, most of it through Vinnie Colletta. CBA: Oh, yeah? Did Vinnie have his own thing in town? Russ: Yes, Vinnie had a studio in the West 40s which was quite a place. You’d walk in and there would be Vinnie, no shoes on, sitting July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

at the board; his little protege, Laida Edmond Jr., frumping around the place merrily. Joe Orlando was working there a lot and Maurice Whitman was there, a fellow by the name of Bob Simon, and there were just people just trundling in and out all the time. Vinnie had an incredible factory. CBA: Was most of the work for Charlton? Russ: There was a lot from Charlton, a lot from Dell, a lot from Marvel. CBA: There’s a legend about Vinnie that he would get his work done very early and then would scoot out in the middle of the day to do glamour photography. Do you know if that was true? Russ: He did a lot of photography, yes he did. Vinnie was very underrated. If you’d ever seen any of his earlier work, he almost could rival Stan Drake, and that’s no joke. I knew Stan very well and I saw some of Vinnie’s early stuff. Vinnie was really remarkably good but he got on this treadmill. I remember we were working on, I think, Lawrence of Arabia for Dell—the movie tie-in book—and I did a lot of penciling and had this incredible scene with all these camels and I think it was at Prince Feisal’s camp, or something, with these Bedouin tents. Vinnie decided that was a little bit too much to ink so he put a huge rock in the foreground. [laughs] And so 90% of the panel was a rock. CBA: [laughs] That sounds like Vinnie.

Above: What the heck does this Dan Adkins rendition of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent Dynamo have to do with Russ Jones? Not a goldarned thing, but it sure is a nice piece by the Dapper One! This originally appeared on the cover of the fanzine The Comic Artist #3, Winter 1970. Courtesy of John R. Borkowski.

Russ: Yeah, that was Vinnie. CBA: Looking at Xeroxes of Jack Kirby’s original pencils, you could see Vinnie’s touch, before and after. An awful lot of Jack’s pencils were erased at times, in the rush to finish the job apparently. Russ: Oh, yeah. He almost had to because, like I said, he said he was undertaking an incredible amount of work. CBA: What assignments were you working on? Were you working on Galaxy illustrations? Russ: Oh, it’s funny you’d mention that. Later on, down the road, I did some but, oddly enough, since they were done in Craft Tint, Gray Morrow got credited with them. CBA: So Gray would come around? Russ: Well, no, that was an accident, I think, on the part of Fred Pohl because they comped me on the magazine. I knew Bob Glenn at Galaxy who was the publisher at that time, and Fred was the editor. I remember an illustration I did had something to do with a dirigible, or something like that, with a dragon. I think it was one of those jobs that had three or four illustrations and I opted to do it on Craft Tint, which I didn’t work with very frequently. But I did that one on Craft Tint and when the magazine came out, I got my two copies (or whatever they sent), opened one up and it was credited, “Illustrations by Gray Morrow.” That was all right. I mean, I don’t think Gray would be embarrassed and I wasn’t because I got paid, right? CBA: When you were with Woody, was he working on Topps material at the time? Russ: Woody’s Topps stuff came later. During my tenure with him, I first did romance books, war comics, got a myriad of other things besides the comic strip that we were working on (which I was supposed to supply McNaught with six Sunday pages within a certain period of time). Woody was going through a difficult period then, having very severe headaches, and he had a hard time really getting started or even getting jobs finished, and he wanted out of Mad magazine very badly. CBA: Do you recall why? Russ: I really don’t know. Woody was reticent about talking on that. I think, though, it would be fair to say that he felt a little bit hurt that the movie lampoons were going to Mort Drucker at that particular time and he felt like he was getting…. CBA: Shortchanged? Russ: Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. I think he was hurt by that and he did do a job of comic strips because he kept getting those. And somebody up at Mad sent him a rejection slip because what he was doing was using a lot of Snow-pake and someone up there thought it would be a joke, I guess, to send him a rejection slip on the job, but that really hurt. CBA: Woody took it seriously? Russ: Oh yeah, and it was shortly thereafter that he called Bill Gaines and he quit Mad. CBA: Did Woody maintain any contact with Harvey Kurtzman at the time? Russ: To my knowledge, there was no communication at all between Harvey and Woody at that time. CBA: The historical strip that you just mentioned; that was your pitch, your idea? Russ: Oh, yeah. As a matter of fact, I had it running in several papers as a much smaller version. Charlie McAdam at McNaught gave me the green light on it and we worked the thing up and Woody was so late that McNaught said, “Sorry, Russ, we’ve gotta

pass on this because we’ve got so much trouble with Dan Flagg, we can’t handle two of these.” CBA: [chuckles] Well, there’s another name. Was Woody drinking a lot when you were working with him? Russ: He was dry. Yeah, he was on the wagon. CBA: But obviously suffering bouts of depression? Russ: I would say yes, absolutely. CBA: But still there was an enormous amount of work there so you were busy all the time? Russ: Oh, yes. And not only that, we had a lot of fun. There was the wonderful days and there was the not-so-good days but it was like everything else, you muddle through. CBA: Were there good times with Woody? Russ: Oh, yeah. It would be when we decided to take a break. Woody would pick up his guitar, I’d pick up mine and we’d record on an old Revere recorder. He’d sing old folk songs by The Easy Riders, Hank Snow, or any of the other stuff he liked. It was really very enjoyable, very kick-back and just really nice. And Tatjana made these incredibly great Canadian bacon sandwiches. [laughter] Lots of coffee and Canadian bacon sandwiches. CBA: Would you guys pull all-nighters? Russ: Most of the time, yeah. CBA: How much sleep would you be able to get? Russ: Oh, maybe three or four hours at a time. One or the other would stagger up, get started and sooner or later another guy would show up, mutter a few words, and there was always coffee on. So we just kept going. CBA: Specifically, what did you do with Woody? Breakdowns? Russ: A lot of breakdowns, backgrounds, outlining. Wally insisted on inking the heads, hands, and things like that. But the rest of the inking, for the most part, I would do and got to the point where even Vinnie couldn’t tell the difference, because on one job—I think it was a war book for Charlton, a submarine story—I ended up doing pretty much the whole thing because Wally just couldn’t handle doing it at that point. He needed to take a little break. CBA: Was he able to get one? Russ: Oh, yeah, yeah. That’s one of the reasons why it worked out so beneficially for both of us during that period. CBA: Would you characterize yourself, at the time, as being very ambitious? Did you have things you wanted to do, wanted to accomplish? Russ: Yeah, I would say that. I had the fire. CBA: Was your dream, when you first came to New York, to get a syndicated strip? Russ: Yeah, actually I wanted to start there. And that was quite a disappointment when Charlie McAdam had to pass on it. I went shopping everyplace else and there were some interested parties and, God, everybody loved them. I’d even gone to the trouble of having them colored and a couple were photoengraved in New Haven, Connecticut (where most of the comic strips and a lot of comic book work was engraved). I had these incredibly beautiful color proofs and anybody that looked at them was knocked on their butts because Wally’s work on those was absolutely amazing. CBA: What happened, you couldn’t get a buyer or was it a bad time in the industry? Russ: Well, if you recollect during that period, it was probably one of the most… well, how can I phrase this politely? It was not exactly the good old days and there were so many restrictions on everything, everybody was so paranoid. I mean, I knew John Prentice very well and, I mean, the restrictions that King Features had on people were just unbelievable. CBA: Oh, really? What kind of restrictions? Russ: No navels in bathing suit shots. Anatomy always had to be underplayed. I mean, some of it was really absurd. CBA: So what next with Woody? How long did you stay with Woody as his assistant? Russ: That wasn’t exactly the relationship. It was like we were doing the strip together, then all of a sudden, we were doing all this other stuff. [chuckles] CBA: [laughs] You were shanghaied? Russ: Well, I wouldn’t call it that. I was educated, let’s put it that way, and by a master, at that. I mean, if you’re going to learn, why COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

not learn from the best? CBA: What did you learn? Russ: Well, I learned how to ink. I was fairly adequate at illustration in the early days but inking, as you know, has got a whole different feel to it in a totally different way. And Woody, with a good old Windsor-Newton Series Seven #3, showed me the way. CBA: That was kind of a down period for comics, following the Kefauver and Wertham situation of the ’50s and there wasn’t a great deal of work in comic books. George Evans told me it was a sad day when Frank Frazetta called up in the early ’60s and just asked him, “You got any work?” It was apparently a very tough time for Frank. Russ: Oh, it was indeed, sure it was. I remember those days. CBA: Did you compare the life of a syndicated cartoonist and a comic book artist, and did you make any judgements between the two? Russ: You’d only have to go to one meeting of the National Cartoonists Society and you’d see it. There was definitely a caste system. I mean, the comic book guys would be with the comic book guys and the syndicated guys would be with the syndicated guys. CBA: I would assume the syndicated guys were of a higher caste? Russ: Yeah. CBA: So did you look at that and say, “I don’t know if comics are for me”? Russ: No, I didn’t. That wasn’t the reason I wanted to do it. CBA: There wasn’t really any difference as long as you had a career? Russ: Yeah, I think the whole thing was that somehow, that fire had to be placated and somehow or other, it was just something I had to do. CBA: Was it fame-and-fortune or some other accomplishment? Russ: No, actually, that wasn’t even it at all. That’s probably where I made my biggest mistake. It had nothing to do with money. Money wasn’t even an issue. I thought that would be a byproduct if something were to catch, of course, that might come with it. But that wasn’t the reason. CBA: What was the reason? Russ: The reason was I felt like something had to be done and nobody was doing it. [chuckles] And I wondered why aren’t they doing it? CBA: You mean like all these great artists were idle and there wasn’t great product that was coming out at the time? Russ: Absolutely. I was doing a lot of work for Gold Key for editor Bill Harris: Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery, The Twilight Zone. CBA: In the early ’60s, there was almost a small EC revival that took place at Gold Key. In Twilight Zone and Boris Karloff, you had Angelo Torres, George Evans, Frank Frazetta, and Al Williamson doing some work. Did you feel that way at all? Did you see that good work for a period of time was coming out of Gold Key? Russ: Yes, because I think I’m the person who put Bill Harris on to those people. I think that’s what he saw. [chuckles] CBA: Do you remember the meeting with Bill? Did he say that he was looking for other people? Russ: Well, no. He was always looking for people who were good and he knew that the books lacked, shall we say, panache. Bill was a very agreeable fellow. He was one of the nicest editors that I ever worked with, always looking for people and I was always willing to pass on names. “So-and-so is looking for work,” or “So-and-so is looking for work.” Like Alden McWilliams was somebody I always admired greatly, and Al and I did a ton of stuff together. Anyway, Bill was always agreeable and would see peoJuly 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

ple and give them work. CBA: So you got the word around? Who did you suggest Gold Key was the place you could sell work? Russ: You know, that’s going back such a way, it could have been any number of people. But we’re going back well over 30 years now and I’ve got a pretty good memory but those incidental little conversations with Bill Harris, I really wouldn’t want to speculate. CBA: For instance, Alden McWillams and Angelo Torres worked for Bill? Russ: Yes, and I was instrumental in getting Al Williamson the Flash Gordon comic later on down the road, because there was only one guy who could really do it justice. CBA: So did you socially start hanging around these guys? Al Williamson knows everybody, for instance. He certainly has a sociable nature. Did you start getting to know the community of these former EC guys?

Above and left inset: Russ Jones told Ye Ed in an e-mail, “Wood's love for [science-fiction novelist] A.E. Van Vogt gave birth to NoMan; [Vogt’s novel] The World of Null-A. Woody loved 'ol A.E., [and] the Null-A books were his very favorites. The hero switched bodies; the origin of NoMan.” Above is Woody’s one-pager depicting the hero switching bodies at will while retaining his consciousness, a feat also accomplished by Gosseyn in Vogt’s Null-A series. At left is the cover of Berkley’s 1970 edition of The World of Null-A, courtesy of my mom, proprietor of South Kingstown, Rhode Island’s lovely establishment, Mom & Pop’s Book Shop! ©1970 Berkley Medallion.

Russ: Well, I’ll tell you pretty much how that whole thing worked out: When I was with Woody, I had some conversations with Lee Ergang of Philadelphia. (I thought that Warren’s offices were actually in Philly and I wasn’t aware of the fact that he was in New York.) I had some illustrations that I had done and thought, “Well, gosh, maybe I could sell these as covers to Warren.” So I finally arranged, through Lee, to have a meeting and had one with Jim, and it was quite a good meeting. What resulted of that was The Horror of Party Beach. CBA: Was that your idea to do the adaptation as a fumetti? Russ: Oh, no. That was Jim’s. Jim already had that lined up and Woody and I took it on and wished to hell that we hadn’t. CBA: [laughs] That was quite a production job, huh? Russ: Oh, we did all of it. CBA: Was Bill Pearson involved in that? Russ: Not to my recollection. If he was, I didn’t see him. [laughs] CBA: Maurice Whitman, was he involved in that? Russ: No, he wasn’t. CBA: And Woody even appears in photographs in that magazine, right? Russ: Yes. CBA: Did you do the photography? Russ: Yes. [laughs] By Polaroid. CBA: [laughs] That must have been one bitch to put together, huh? Russ: It really and truly was because we met with Del Tenney, who was the director of the movie and a producer who owned a string of drive-in theaters. We looked at this picture and said, “Why in God’s name was Fox distributing this abomination?” [laughs] We hated it and Woody said, “My gosh, it looks like cigars coming out of the mouths of these things!” [laughs] So we had to draw teeth in

them. Then Woody went out, rented an airbrush, and the damn thing wouldn’t work right. [laughs] It was a nightmare. CBA: I guess you don’t look at that magazine too fondly? Russ: Well, I kinda do because it was so wretchedly awful. CBA: [laughs] It has a charm of its own? Russ: Yes, kind of, and the movie was wretchedly awful and more ironically, years later in England, I was very busy over there and Alex Soma, who had worked for Harry Chester for all those many years, had just gotten out of the Army, and he was visiting for several months after his discharge. So we’re watching TV one day and, son of a gun, on a BBC teleplay, a kid is reading The Horror of Party Beach. [laughs] We looked at each other and said, “What in hell? Where did they get that?” CBA: [laughs] It’s cursing you, huh? After Horror of Party Beach, what else did you do? Russ: Well, when I was pitching the idea to Jim to revive EC, “The Mummy” comic book job had been in the works for many months. CBA: What was the idea behind that? Russ: That was my way of showing Warren that comics would work. CBA: So you wanted to sneak them in, to have them featured in Famous Monsters of Filmland? Russ: It was a testing ground. CBA: And the first one was “The Mummy”? Russ: “The Mummy,” uh-hmm. CBA: You did the breakdowns on that? Russ: I did the pencils and did some of the inking. I’ve got a copy of it around here someplace. Woody did, I think, a pretty crisp job on it. We didn’t have VCRs back then, of course, and I had to run out and get the silent version of the Castle film. I would stop it at the appropriate place and freeze-frame it, then do the breakdowns and the pencils. CBA: That story had very nice likenesses of Edward Van Sloan that Woody did. Those are charming adaptations. Did you feel like you were limited by the amount allotted. I mean, geez, what were they? Six pages to adapt a 90-minute movie? Russ: They were, in fact, and that was a point of contention with me and Jim. He was paying $30 a page for everything, but I felt that those films deserved, well, a lot more. Particularly “The Mummy,” “The Mummy’s Hand,” and of course, there were only four of them altogether. Anyway, it was the beginning, the genesis of the [unintelligible], call it what you will. But it really kicked the whole thing off. CBA: Did you have to seek a Universal license for that, or did you guys just go ahead and do it? Russ: You know, the irony about that is that getting a license from Universal back in those days was reasonably simple. There was this wonderful woman in New York who headed up their legal department and worked very closely with publicity and her name was Ruth Pologi. Ruth was very co-operative. Whether Jim cleared that or not, I do not know. CBA: After “The Mummy,” you did “The Mummy’s Hand” with Joe Orlando. Were those stories originally intended for Famous Monsters? Russ: They were intended for Monster World. CBA: They were going to kick off the new title? Russ: Yeah, that was Jim’s idea. Where they eventually ended up never mattered to me. FM would have been fine but he figured with Monster World, he’d launch the monster comics there. I did the Wolfman cover for the first issue. CBA: That was yours. Russ: Yeah. CBA: Where did you learn painting? Russ: That was just something that I got into as a kid, growing up around all those N.C. Wyeth illustrations and things like that. I got interested and kept doing it. CBA: Are you attracted to horror as a genre? Russ: Oh yes, very much. I used to go to the cinema with my mother as a child. That’s where I first saw the Val Lewton films and that’s what really got me going was The Leopard Man and a lot of the others. CBA: Do you recall meeting Archie Goodwin? Russ: Oh, gosh, yes. One of the nicest guys in the world. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

CBA: Where was that? Russ: I met him, I think, for the very first time at Larry Ivie’s place in Manhattan. CBA: Did Larry have a crash pad in the city? Was it a place where a lot of people came by? Russ: You know, I don’t know because all the time that I was in New York, I don’t think that I might have been there six times, maybe at most. CBA: So did you have much interaction with Larry? Russ: No, very little. CBA: I sent you some quotes by Larry about the genesis of Creepy. Is there anything that you recognize as being your experience? Russ: No, if any of that happened, it happened in an alternate universe. CBA: So you contend that it was your idea to bring the EC artists together, kind of do a relaunch of EC, so to speak, through Warren? Russ: Well, let me put it this way: If I hadn’t been there, it wouldn’t have happened. And it almost didn’t happen. CBA: Frank Frazetta said you had an ability to get things done. Was your ability to bring people together and you had a lot of contacts? Russ: Well, I wanted it to work. I’m one of those kind of people— and it’s probably one of those Marine Corps things, call it what you will—that if you’re going to do it, you do it right. Get the best people to do the best work. I still believe in that. It’s just something that’s in me.That was a very kind thing of Frank to say. Still in touch with the old boy. CBA: You met with Jim, proved that you can do effective short stories within Monster World. What was the next step? Russ: The next step, you talking about with Creepy? We’re not going to talk about Mole People or any of that other stuff? I mean, do you want to get into Mole People or any of those other projects? CBA: Oh, sure. Russ: Yeah, because Creepy was not an easy sell. Jim resisted and that I think it was because he really didn’t have any experience at all in comics. He knew Bill Harris because Jim had licensed The Flintstones characters from Gold Key who had done the printing for The Flintstones at the New York World’s Fair [Warren’s first bona fide comic book]. It was a project that he had in the works about the same time that Creepy was being planned. CBA: As you remember, The Flintstones was entirely produced by Western? Russ: Right, it was. CBA: Jim got the contract for the 1964-65 World’s Fair, for the authorized comic book? Russ: Yes, absolutely. Anyway, Mole People was another one that I said I wish to hell I’d never gotten involved in. [laughs] That one I did with Maurice Whitman. Woody would have absolutely no part of it. [laughs] CBA: [laughs] What was [Maurice “Reese” Whitman] like? Russ: Reese was a wonderful guy. I understand he’s no longer with us. I really liked him. He was a very humorous, very animated guy, a big fellow and he could draw. I mean, Reese could sit down and draw anything. He’d been an editor at Charlton. He had a lot of experience and was just one of those guys that was, I guess you’d call him a very skilled journeyman. He had a great personality, and was great fun to work with. But I think he was basically unhappy, but we did have a hell of a lot of fun. We even had fun doing The Mole People. CBA: Was he unhappy not being a greater success than he was? Russ: I think that I don’t know anything about that, really, except that I know he was terribly flattered, I remember, when people would bring up the work he did for Fiction House. CBA: I’ve read very little about him in the historical record but from talking to you, George Evans and others who knew him, he sounds like a magical guy. Russ: Yeah, he was. I was very fond of him. Reese was the kind of a guy that would drop by the studio, and if you were in the middle of a job, and everybody was hacking and slashing (as Tex Blaisdell would say), Reese would just pull up a drawing board and say, “Throw me a page,” and he’d sit down and break the script down. CBA: [chuckles] Did you know Tex [Blaisdell] at the time? July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

Russ: Oh, sure. CBA: What was he doing? Russ: He was working for Leonard Starr. Carl Anderson had recently left Leonard and Tex was working for Stan Drake, for Leonard, among others. CBA: Did you help out with the Westport boys at all? Russ: Well, they weren’t Westport boys then, except for Stan and, of course, Mort Walker, Dik Browne, and a few of the others, but they rarely came into New York. The studio set-up that we had at the time, and there were several different arrangements but one of them was myself, Joe Orlando and whomever else came in. I mean, Angelo worked out of there, Gray worked out of there, Al Kilgore worked out of there. CBA: Joe was working primarily on Mad magazine material at the time? Russ: Yes, and he was doing some toy stuff too, for an outfit called Honey Toys, mostly advertising work or designing box covers. CBA: Do you recall how much time you had to do to get Mole People done? Was it a killer deadline? Russ: Well, yes it was and not only that, but there’s a bit of humor in all of this as well. Jim said to me, “Russ, I want you to go to Pathé Labs,” which, of course, was way uptown in Harlem, “and they’ve got a fine grain negative print of the film there. I want you to pick it up.” So I said, “Okay.” I walk into Pathé Labs and it’s a gigantic warehouse. They have more security there than at Fort

Above: Sweet Russ Jones/Wally Wood art job on their adaptation of the Universal monster flick, The Mummy. This strip ushered in the Warren age of horror comics, being the first b-&-w monster tale published by the company. From Monster World #1, Nov. 1964. Characters ©2001 Universal Pictures; strip ©2001 Warren Publishing.

Above: Buffalo Nickel Comics is selling a set of beautiful Wally Wood prints (check out their ad in this issue), including this Joan of Arc piece. Bill Pearson, in the flyer that accompanies the set, believes Russ Jones had something to do with this series, done as samples for a proposed biographical Sunday newspaper strip. “In Woody’s files, after his death, I found a couple of inked sketches, in a parody of Wood’s style, signed by Russ Jones. They would have been done sometime in 1963, which is when these four pages were created. Jones, the first editor of Creepy, had diverse talents, but was primarily a promoter. He was an idea man, and the idea to create a Sunday comic feature with his writing and Wood’s art would have been a natural. But it’s only my guess.” ©2001 the Estate of Wallace Wood.

Knox. I had to get all of these passes and waivers and vouchers and—rrrrrahhhh!—everything! It was worse than going to the Pentagon. Finally, someone brings down a 35MM can of film and you know how many reels are in that. They said, “Okay, here’s your fine grain print.” So I grab a cab, make it back to the Clifton, get to the studio, open the can and in there is the fine grain camera negative. [laughs] So I said, “Oh, no!” CBA: [laughs] Somebody will be looking for this! Russ: I immediately get on the phone and Jim said, “Get that damn thing back over to Pathé and they’ll have the print for you.” I said, “Look, it’s 98 degrees outside, the humidity is unbearable. If they want it, they can come pick it up.” And they did. They were very good about it and brought the fine grain which we sent to Vita Prints. The reason I went over that, frame by frame, putting string through sprocket holes, and then sending it over to Sol Jaffee at Vita Print and they did the enlargements from the fine grain. CBA: Were you privy at all to how well these adaptations sold? Russ: You know, I really don’t know. We only did three and, of course, the one that could have been the hallmark was the one we had no budget at all. So my guess would be they probably didn’t fare all that well. CBA: What would have been the hallmark? Russ: The comics adaptations of The Horror of Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein. CBA: Do you recall the production on those? Russ: Yeah, Joe and I did that. Gosh, we just had to work from stills and Alex Soma’s 16MM prints that he made from blow-ups. CBA: Did you get the license agreement from Hammer to do that or was that all taken care of at the office? Russ: No, that was done through Seven Arts. That’s when Seven Arts was putting the money into it. They actually did the release of those films. CBA: You worked for Jim for a period of time. How was he to you? Russ: Jim is a paradox. He’s a very talented man in his own department, a very enthusiastic guy. He’s capable of incredible

benevolence, and then, by the same token, he can turn around and be very vindictive. But I must say that I always had a great deal of admiration for him, actually. CBA: What did you admire? Russ: He was a hell of a businessman. He could go out, and I was with him on more than one occasion when he was pitching product and said it better than anybody I’ve ever known. CBA: Do you see he had the ability to get talented people together, that he had an eye for talent? Russ: I’m not sure he truly recognized talent, per se. He had to be always reassured that work he was looking at was good. In other words, if somebody said it was good, it was good for Jim. Gosh, he is a paradox. CBA: Jim’s first real foray into publishing was four issues of After Hours—a Playboy imitation—and he ran into trouble down in Philadelphia with people trying to censor him and trying to shut it down. Russ: Yeah, I remember seeing copies of it. CBA: And he came to some success with Famous Monsters. And, with comics, he saw what happened to EC—obviously, the whole industry came down against Bill Gaines; almost everything within the Comics Code is anti-EC, not being able to use the word “Terror” in a title or using vampires, for instance—did you feel that Jim may have been wary of the industry at the time? Russ: Pensive, he was pensive, absolutely. CBA: Did you reassure him at any time that you could do it outside the Code? Russ: Yes, and the point being that they weren’t going to be racked with the comics. The price wasn’t going to be 10¢ or 12¢, and they weren’t in color. So, therefore, they wouldn’t qualify, per se, as a comic book. It was a comic magazine being racked in a totally different place. That was my number one pitch to him. CBA: What were your ideal demographics for a proposed black-&white horror magazine? Did you see it as being 13- to 15-year-olds, kids who grew out of Famous Monsters, for instance, or the same kids who would pick up Mad magazine? I mean, did you think COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

about that? Were you doing a more adult, mature magazine? Russ: I was attempting to. In fact, Roy Krenkel and I had had many conversations about that in the early days. And Roy, of course, was a great advocate of H.P. Lovecraft and John Collier, among others. It was Carl Jacobi and all these wonderful stories. Of course, I wanted to be able to secure the rights to a lot of them and we were limited by budget. CBA: All that Weird Tales stuff, was it owned by the Scott Meredith literary agency at the time? Russ: You’re right, absolutely. A lot of it was, the Lovecraft stuff was. I later used some material in the anthology comics. CBA: Was it your thought to remake EC, in a sense, and include a war book? Russ: That was precisely the idea. As a matter of fact, Bill Gaines was kind of my—well, not only Bill but Al Feldstein, Nick Meglin, Jerry DeFuccio, and all the guys up there were very supportive. As a matter of fact, I talked to Bill originally about doing it and, of course, he didn’t want any part of it at all except he would say, “Russ, if you need any help, I’m always here for you.” And Feldstein and Jerry and Nick were always supportive, of course. CBA: Did Jerry and Nick participate in your planning of Creepy? Russ: Not that I recollect. They were instrumental, of course, for bringing Angelo Torres into the picture. It was through Nick, I believe, that Ange showed up and it was through Angelo that Gray Morrow showed up. He’d just recently come back from California. CBA: How did Al Williamson come on board? Russ: I met Al and he was not only enthusiastic, he got behind the thing and was one of the driving forces behind it, to pull everybody together. It was through Al that I met the fellows that I didn’t know. I believe I met Frank Frazetta through Al and probably George Evans and definitely Reed Crandall. CBA: Was Reed in the New York area at the time or out in Kansas? Russ: No, Reed was in New York. He’d been in New York for quite a long period of time. He was staying with Al and Arlene, Al’s late wife, in Fosterdale. CBA: Was Frank in Pennsylvania? Was he in the New York area too? Russ: Oh, he was in Merrick, on the island. CBA: Did you have a summit, of sorts? Russ: Yes, and eventually what happened is that Jim gave the project the green light. At that particular point, I don’t know exactly, except for Woody who didn’t want anything to do with the horror books at all. He didn’t like doing them for EC and he told me that he wasn’t the least bit interested in getting back into that. But the rest of the fellows, I don’t think, quite frankly, that Jim met all of them. I know that he’d met Al Williamson. Al might have been the only one at that particular point until that first Cattlemen restaurant outing. CBA: Did you have a meeting before that with the guys? Russ: Oh, kind of one-on-one. Roy and Frank would come into town and they’d always stop by the studio and we would talk. It just slowly but surely started to take shape. CBA: George Evans said he recalled you working at Marvel in the ’60s. Now, I know that you did some material for Marvel in the early-’70s, right? Russ: Yes, it was 1974, after I’d come back from England. Yeah, George and I would always hook up at Marvel or at Martin Goodman’s company later at Atlas/Seaboard. George and I would then go out and usually hoist a few. CBA: But not in the early-’60s. Did you spend any time over at Marvel? Russ: Oh yeah, I did, as a matter of fact. CBA: Were they going full-blast with Fantastic Four and SpiderMan? Russ: No. As a matter of fact, it was very quiet. I think Flo was there and Roy Thomas was working in the reception area writing Rawhide Kid copy. [chuckles] Sol Brodsky was there and Jack Kirby was there frequently, and, of course, Stan and Martin. They had small offices on Madison Avenue, if I recollect. CBA: Were you working there? Russ: I did some stuff for them and it was usually fill-in. If something fell through the cracks, Sol would give me a call, I’d come in July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

and ink a page of the Fantastic Four or something. Actually, what’s referred to as the Silver Age hadn’t taken place not quite yet. CBA: Did you go over to National Periodicals at all? Russ: Yes, I did and I did some stuff for Jack Schiff, some Mystery In Space stuff and a couple of jobs for Murray Boltinoff. Later on, I did a ton of stuff for Jack Miller’s romance books. CBA: You were penciling? Russ: Yeah, and everything. I did most of the inks on Jay Scott Pike’s stuff. CBA: Did you like his work? Russ: Yes, very much. CBA: He was a fine artist. Did you just go around to the various houses, picking up whatever freelance you could? Russ: Yeah, because even during the Creepy days there wasn’t enough money in it to sustain one’s self. CBA: Okay, you got the green light from Jim and talked to the EC guys one-on-one. Did you earmark Archie and Larry as the writers? Russ: Yeah, I had met Larry when I was working with Woody. Woody called him in to do layouts on some Colletta stuff. And so Larry had come over and I think he had worked there for a few hours, then went back to his place and popped by three or four days later. When Creepy was at its very beginning, Al Williamson recommended that I use Larry, and Al was always looking out for Ivie. They had some kind of a mutual appreciation for each other. Larry was one of Al’s biggest advocates and Al was always looking out for Larry’s interests. So he convinced me that Larry Ivie should be brought in. It was through Larry that I met Archie. CBA: How did you know Archie was a good writer? Russ: All he had to do was bring in that first script and he had a feel for it. He was just a natural. I mean, there was something about

Archie. I guess it was that Midwestern honesty or something. He was just a very exceptional human being. CBA: He’s probably the most revered editor in the history of comics. Russ: Boy, that’s really something. Nobody would deserve it more. CBA: Archie characterized you as somebody who could get people together and get them motivated to get this Creepy magazine done. Were you involved in all aspects of the production of the books? Russ: Yes. On Creepy and Eerie, yeah. They were all done out of Clifton, out of the studio. The jobs were delivered there, the scripts were assigned there, and then the guys would either bring them in or they would be sent Special Delivery in those days. I mean Crandall

Above: Russ Jones was editor and packager of perhaps the best single comic book published in the 1960s, Creepy #1, which featured Frank Frazetta’s last comic book story, the unforgettable “Success Story” (parodying the reality of ghost writers and artists in syndicated strips), and the Williamson/ Krenkel/Goodwin tour de force, “H20 World.” ©2001 Warren Publishing.

had gone back, of course, to Wichita but the rest of the fellows would generally bring the work in. CBA: How did you get Frank Frazetta to do a comic book story? Russ: With a lot of convincing. [laughs] I mean, he resisted me. “Frank, Frank. I’ll give you cover assignments.” I think that’s what finally did it: the promise of covers, because then he was just eking things out with Canaveral Press and the odd cover, and I got him together with Irwin Stein at Lancer. And the rest, we all know what happened after that. CBA: Did you consider Frank to do the cover for the first issue? Russ: No, as a matter of fact. Jack Davis came to mind because the first cover had to introduce the character and I thought Jack would be the right guy to do that. CBA: Was that completely your thinking to have a rather inoffensive—obviously it had humorous overtones, using Jack Davis for the

cover. Was that part of the thinking of not coming out with necessarily graphic horror material but giving it a tone of fun? Russ: Yeah. I wanted the cover to be kind of light, but the subject matter, well, I think it worked. I think that, actually, the first issue did quite well. CBA: Creepy #1 was an extraordinary magazine out of the gate. What a lineup of artists and stories. Russ: I was very happy with that. Of course, there were some bumps in the carpet. One of them was that it was originally going to be a 64-page magazine. CBA: It came out as a 48-page? Russ: Right. And what had happened is I was supposed to be getting $500 an issue as the editor. And Jim was stuck on paying $30 a page and I said, “Jim, for God’s sake, you’re not going to be able to get these guys to do work if you’re not paying the rates that Dell and Gold Key are paying, at least.” What I did was say, “Okay, fine. Just take whatever it is out of my $500 to make up the difference so they’ll get $35.” So I ended up making $325 an issue. Nobody knew that at the time. It’s just something that I kept to myself because I wanted to see this work, the project being the important thing. CBA: And did you see this as the beginning of a family of magazines? Russ: Yes, uh-huh. CBA: And what were your other ideas? Russ: Well, of course, the next one was Blazing Combat. CBA: What was your thinking behind that title? You were in the Marine Corps yourself and it was the beginning of a volatile time in this country. Vietnam was coming into play and Civil Rights. Did you see Blazing Combat as an anti-war book? Russ: Oh, absolutely. CBA: Did you have any profound feelings about that? Russ: Well, anybody that’s ever been standing in a place where a 16MM mortar goes off has profound feelings about it. [laughs] CBA: Were there other genres that you would have ideally liked to have gotten involved in? Russ: Down the line, I could see some nice science-fiction titles coming along. But, of course, that just wasn’t to be. CBA: So what happened? You were producing the magazine for a period of time. I think you’re credited as editor with possibly three or four issues of Creepy. Russ: Yeah, I was credited for three, though it was actually like four or five. CBA: Even as far as Creepy #8, there was “Death Plane” by George Evans and it’s dated 1964, written by Larry Ivie. Russ: Yes, it was supposed to be in #1. CBA: Right, that and another story — Russ: The Maurice Whitman job called “The Invitation.” CBA: Right, they were pulled out. Did you know Manny Stallman? Russ: Yes. CBA: What was he like? Russ: He was really a very nice guy. I met him through Jim. He’d come to Jim with some job that he had done and Jim said, “Well, Russ, see what you can do for this guy,” and gave him a shot. But I just couldn’t make it work because his stuff was just wretched, I thought. [laughs] CBA: Stallman definitely had an interesting, idiosyncratic style. Russ: Yes, well, he decided to break all the rules, was doing a job, and I had to pull him off it because he was doing it same-size. And I said, “Manny, you can’t do that. We’re sending these things off to the printer. Everyone has to work at the same size.” There’s one thing that I wanted to do. The magazine had to have a look, a consistency throughout. And all of a sudden, it started to get away from me and I said, “No, call it back. That was it,” and I stopped him before he could get past page one. CBA: Because it was just a jarringly cartoony style? Russ: Yes, and it was for Blazing Combat #2, I think, and it just didn’t cut it. CBA: Were there other EC artists that you did not get that you wish you had? Did you try, for instance, to get Graham Ingels? Russ: Oh, heavens, yes. Bill wouldn’t give me Graham’s address. I pleaded, went down on hand and knee and he would just look at COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

me, give me that Bill Gaines stare [laughs] and just say, “I don’t know where he is.” CBA: [laughs] Joe Orlando, was he involved in the developmental stages of Creepy and Eerie? He got some credit as story editor for a period of time? Russ: Yeah, well, for the first issue and the way that worked was Joe and I were working out of the same studio at the Clifton. Joe was very, very good at coming up with story ideas, 90% of which were never really done. But we would sit there and go into fits of laughter. Joe had a laugh which was so infectious he could have everybody on the floor, and particularly if Al Kilgore was present. Those guys could break anybody up. We had just so much fun with that stuff, but that was actually done as Joe being part of it, right then and there. And, also, I recognized the incredible ability he had to come up with plot twists and stuff like that. CBA: Did you wish you could have had more participation of him with the magazines? Or was it a short-lived thing or during your tenure, did you consult Joe? Russ: Oh, yeah. Well, Joe was there right along. Sure, the Adam Link stuff was done around there and as a matter of fact, Kilgore lettered the first Adam Link job because Ben Oda couldn’t. CBA: I guess Adam Link was the only continuing character within the line, right? Russ: Yeah, that was paying a little homage, shall we say, to EC and letting Otto rework the job that he had done nine or ten years before. CBA: Did you deal with Otto Binder on that? Russ: Oh, yeah. CBA: Through the telephone or did you meet him? Russ: Well, I knew Otto very well. I knew his wife and his late daughter, Mary. Adorable. CBA: His daughter’s death really broke his heart, didn’t it? Russ: Oh, God. That was terrible. CBA: What was he like? Russ: He was very quiet. He was having medical difficulties at that particular time and was having a hard time getting it all together, but Otto was a pro. I was very fond of him. CBA: Did you know Jerry Siegel? Russ: I met him. I really didn’t know him. CBA: Were there other writers who contributed? Of course, Archie did just an enormous amount of stories. Russ: Yes, because at $5 a page, what can he get? [laughs] And that’s what it was. That’s why I was so frustrated because I would go to Jim and would say, “Jim, I want to get these Lovecraft things and we can contact Arkham House.” August Derleth was still with us and there was Scott Meredith, but Jim resisted. CBA: Besides the fact that it was cut down to a 48-page book, was Creepy #1 all you wanted it to be? Russ: I was very pleased with that first issue and with all of them that I was involved in. I would have, personally, gone a little bit more over the top. I would have taken a few more risks. CBA: What, with content? Russ: Yeah. CBA: So, been more horrific, you mean? Russ: Well, not so much that, but more Val Lewton. It was satisfying but I don’t think that the stories ran long enough. On reflection, I think they could have gone eight pages each. But I think on looking back at it and having a copy of it not too far from where I sit, I can say yeah, I’m not ashamed of that. I’d show it to anybody. CBA: Did Creepy #1 have an impact? Russ: It certainly did. CBA: How do you recall? Russ: Well, at the time, I didn’t. There wasn’t; and in fact, I wasn’t even aware that there was any interest in this stuff until just about three or four years ago. CBA: The Warren books are enormously influential on entire generations of cartoonists. Russ: Yeah. And not only that, Rick Baker, among others, who have come to me and said, “My gosh, thanks.” And Ed French (who is another make-up guy) and lots of other people that I’ve met who were really into it that are very big into the film business were great Creepy and Eerie followers. July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

CBA: So you had your own office at Warren Publishing? Russ: No. No, I did nothing out of there. CBA: You did everything out of Clifton? Were you involved, at all, in the production of Famous Monsters? Russ: No. CBA: Where was that done? Russ: Harry Chester’s. CBA: So FM was entirely produced over there and so Warren was pretty much Captain Company at the Warren Offices at the time? Russ: No, Captain Company was run out of Philly by Lee Ergin. Jim had started it and Lee refined it, fine-tuned it and it was actually Lee that got the Aurora Plastics deal put together. CBA: Were you involved at all with Help! magazine? Russ: No, I wasn’t, except I knew Harvey, of course. CBA: And was that run out of the Warren offices? Russ: No. He had them over the Chock Full O’ Nuts building (a location which we used to get a big laugh out of). [laughs] And that’s where Harvey was working out of but then Warren, I guess it was for financial reasons or whatever, moved everything to his penthouse apartment at the Embassy House. CBA: And he lived upstairs and the production was downstairs? Russ: There was no production downstairs. He had a desk, a couch, and a stack of magazines on the floor.

Above: A page from a Russ Jones & Alden McWilliams collaboration in Fight the Enemy #2, “The Silent Service.” Russ remembers, “I worked with Al McWilliams on a number of jobs, but recognized only the 'Silent Service' one, since Mac and I went into laughing fits over that absurd story… I recall doing a couple of bad Undersea Agent art jobs that looked like they'd been done underwater!”

Above: Post-Warren, Russ Jones edited, packaged, and did some art and scripting on Christopher Lee’s Treasury of Terror, at comic story paperback anthology which featured short stories (adapted from classic tales by H.P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, Robert Bloch, and Rudyard Kipling) drawn by Johnny Craig, Alden McWilliams and Frank Bolle, and written by Craig Tennis and E. Nelson Bridwell. Curiously, all of the stories were reprinted in less than a year in Warren’s b-&-w horror mags, Creepy and Eerie. ©1966 Renaissance Productions.

CBA: [laughs] Did you meet Gloria Steinem? Russ: Yes, uh-huh. CBA: Did you like Help! magazine? Russ: Parts of it I did, yeah. I always admired Harvey. Harvey was an exceptional guy. CBA: Did you see that you were carrying on Harvey’s legacy with Blazing Combat? Was that in your mind? Russ: Yes, and in fact, I wanted to bring Harvey in and I had many discussions with him about that but Help! had him occupied and of course, there was Little Annie Fanny for Playboy. So he was kind of tied down. We did have many discussions about it, yeah. CBA: John Cochran, who was an editor around 1970, recalls that at the time they had all the art files in the back where the original art was and he went through them to sort out. He uncovered some breakdowns that Harvey Kurtzman had done for a potential Blazing Combat story. Do you recall that at all? Russ: No, I do not. That was probably after I left. CBA: So the issues of Blazing Combat that you were involved in were the first and the second? Russ: Yes, #1, #2, and there might have been a couple of scripts that had gone out on #3, I really don’t recollect. CBA: So you were able to get Woody involved there, at least. Russ: Yes, uh-huh. CBA: Did you work on Woody’s stories there? Or was that Dan Adkins? Russ: That’s when Dan was there. Yeah, I was really busy at that particular point. CBA: Before, you did nothing with Woody necessarily after you started working, packaging for Warren? Russ: Right. CBA: What happened at Warren? You were gone pretty quickly, within six months, eight months? Russ: Yeah. I believe the way the whole thing came down is we had those soirees at the Cattlemen and there was the proverbial carrot being dangled for the rate to go up to a $100 a page. I remember the last outing that Jim threw there in one of the banquet rooms. This was the P. T. Barnum side of Jim. He’d had a bunch of brand new dollar bills that had all been bound and he stood at the head of the table and said, “I know what you guys are interested in, dah dah dah dah dah, and it’s this.” And he went from place setting to place setting. He would tear one of these off and throw it down next to the artist and say, “This is what it’s all about, guys, and this is what you’re gonna get.” And shortly thereafter, everything started to fall apart. CBA: A single dollar bill had been placed before the guests? Russ: Yes. Done with great style, I might add. CBA: Was it a joke? Russ: No, it was dead serious. I mean, Frank looked like someone had eaten his lunch. [laughs] I mean, the expressions—I thought Gray Morrow was going to get up and leave. Evans, old George, he looked completely bewildered. I’m sure if you were to ask him about this, he wouldn’t have forgotten that. George is a wonderful man. CBA: Now, obviously, like you’ve just said, Warren is given to theatrics at times. But was this a joke? I mean, he’s putting down a single dollar, right? And the issue was $100 a page?

Russ: Yes, and this was a promise of things to come and with brand new bills that were bound, and I’d never seen that before. CBA: [laughs] Like from a Hollywood movie? Russ: Yeah, right. [laughs] A Sam Katzman production. [laughs] Everyone was pretty stunned, quite frankly, because they wanted to hear, “Well, okay. X-amount of issues have come out. We’ve gotten some x-amount of days off sales figures and from the distributor, let’s really get down and dirty and serious.” But it just never really happened. CBA: Was your impression that he was trying to not string them along but to continue that the promises are coming; someday they will get the money, someday they will get the page rates that they deserved? Russ: Yes, I don’t remember specifically when it was supposed to be, but I think it was supposed to be after either Creepy #3 or 4 if the magazine had taken off, which it had by that time. But I think that some of the other titles were in trouble and that’s why Screen Thrills bit the dust and things were in a state of change. I guess the bottom line is—and I heard this from Harry Chester years later—that Jim was so far behind in keeping up with his payments with Harry and with the printers that he had to keep publishing. And finally, Harry just couldn’t carry him any more and went off someplace else for the production. CBA: Jim just had to keep the cashflow going so he had to continue publishing? Russ: Right. CBA: Were you guys with Kable Distribution at the time? Russ: Yes. As a matter of fact, I went with Jim to Kable when he brought the color proof of Jack’s cover to show to Art Injer and George Davis at Kable, to pitch them Creepy. CBA: Were they the right distribution company to be with? Russ: I think they did a fine job. CBA: Did you look at Independent News, for instance? Did you wish that you got better distribution or were you satisfied with what you got? Russ: Actually, the galleys that Kable had worked out, they had a very good distribution pattern and worked very hard with Jim and really got the magazines out there. As far as Independent goes, Jim wanted out of his Kable contract. He did want to go to Independent and we did work on a presentation that he did pitch to Jack Liebowitz and Irwin Donenfeld, which turned out to be more of an embarrassment than anything else because they had the real sales figures. So that kind of blew up in his face. CBA: They had insider knowledge of what was going on throughout the entire industry, being at the top and having access to the figures. What was I thinking of next? Russ: PDC? CBA: Right. Was that where you went to? Russ: No, that was later. It was about, probably, six months later and I think he then went over to PDC. CBA: Eerie #1. Was that during your time? Russ: Yes, uh-huh. CBA: Eerie #1 was an ashcan? Russ: It sure was. [laughs] CBA: Featuring, actually, stories that had been pulled from Creepy #1, right? Russ: The castoffs, stuff that hadn’t been used. CBA: Do you recall the story behind that? It is legend that over a weekend, Jim, Archie and Gaspar Saladino got together to produce this ashcan to, I guess, intimidate the guys who were going to do their own Eerie magazine. Was it Stanley Publications? Russ: I thought that it was Myron Fass. Actually, the ashcan edition was thrown together at Harry Chester’s. It was done in threeand-a-half nanoseconds. [laughs] And then Jim handed me a whole bunch of them, like a whole box, and said, “Get these out on all the newsstands that you possibly can and take pictures because we’ve got to protect the title.” And that was that. CBA: You were getting a real insider experience of publishing. Was this where you wanted to be? Would you have, ideally, liked to have been a publisher? Russ: That actually hadn’t occurred to me at the time. Jim kept accusing me of it. He said, “You have aspirations of becoming a pubCOMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

lisher.” CBA: Like that’s a bad thing? Russ: Yeah. [laughs] And I said, “No. No. I’m very happy just doing what I’m doing.” He’s like, “You have aspirations of being a publisher and nice guys come in last.” You know, the usual rhetoric. CBA: [laughs] Was Castle of Frankenstein out at the time? Russ: Oh, sure. CBA: Warren was legendary on dissing his competitors. Did you witness that? Russ: Not in so many words. I think a lot of it was just bluster. CBA: There was obviously not much competition because you guys really created the black-&-white horror comic field? Russ: Yes, I would say so, if you want to rule out EC’s PictoFiction. But, of course that was about eight years prior and that did not work. CBA: And so after the Cattlemen Restaurant debacle, what happened next between you and Jim? Was that the end of it right there? Russ: No, it wasn’t. What happened is we were trundling along and I started getting phone calls. People weren’t getting paid and they couldn’t reach Jim. And, of course, I never had the prerogative nor the autonomy to write checks on Warren Publishing Company and I was in the middle of a very dodgy situation. And so Gray would call, for instance, and say that he’d had it and this was pretty universal. I don’t think George did anything like that or Reed, but there were several that were quite vocal about it. And nobody could reach Jim. I would say, “Well, try Jim.” “We can’t reach Jim. We tried.” Well, I’d been trying him all along too. We both had the same answering service and it was one of the gals there that said, “Well, he is making telephone calls. That means that he is there.” But I hadn’t been able to reach him in about two weeks. So finally, I went over to the apartment and tracked him down and we had it out, and that was that. CBA: So you just quit at that point? Russ: Yeah. He said some comments about “Well, you just can’t take the heat.” I figured I was getting $325 an issue, and it just wasn’t worth it. CBA: Did you consider your options when you quit? Russ: Well, it was a little bit more to it than that, and I guess to gloss over that wouldn’t put things in proper perspective. It was during the period that the magazine was being done that I got married. And there was a definite conflict between Jim and my wife. They did not get on, to put it mildly. I was no longer available at three o’clock in the morning to come over on some absurd mission which had, at one time, one year before, would have been fun. But then it wasn’t, you see? And the crowning thing, I think, with Jim that probably hurt him was that we had a party just prior to about the time that we got engaged, I think. We had a party and Frank and Ellie Frazetta, Al and Arlene Williamson, John and Cathy Prentice were there (because John had been the best man when we got married), and Leonard and Betty Starr, and Irwin Hasen and Stan Drake attended. I mean, as Alex Soma and Samm Sherman said, if a bomb had gone off that night, most of the talent in the comic book industry and in the strip business would have been dead. [laughs] It would have been over. And Jim was not invited. D.G. refused to have that man present. He was very upset by that and took things like that very personally. CBA: That was the end of it? Russ: Pretty much, yeah. CBA: There was a Stalinesque washing-out of Russ Jones in the Warren reprints after that. Russ: You noticed. [laughs] CBA: Reprints of the Mummy stories you did for Monster World were suddenly fully credited to Joe Orlando, and suddenly Russ Jones didn’t exist any more. Russ: I felt like Imhotep. [laughs] You know, the sacred words were scraped off the sarcophagus. CBA: There was a vindictiveness there? Russ: Yeah. Bill Harris told me that he’d been offered money not to give me work. CBA: Did that affect you emotionally and with your career? Russ: Not really because in a sense, I had accomplished what I wanted to do. July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

CBA: What was that? Russ: I got it started. It was out there, it was real. From there came The Illustrated Dracula through Ballantine. When Jim went to PDC, that caused Kable News Company to call me and Lee Ergun and actually of my aspirations to become a publisher, I became one. In some kind of inverted way which I’ve never quite understood, it all kind of worked out. CBA: And how long did you work at publishing? Russ: Oh, Monster Mania. That went for a whole three issues. CBA: And what was your experience with that? Was it a good one? Russ: I think that it was. And it still gets pretty good hits and pretty good scores on eBay. A lot of people still talk about it. Ridley Scott liked it. He had me sign his copy. [chuckles] CBA: Christopher Lee’s Treasury of Terror, what was that? Russ: A party whose reticence I will respect made it known that Jim was back into doing reprints again, so this clandestine meeting between Jim and myself took place where I said to him that, yes indeed, he could use that material [which had just previously appeared in paperback book form]. CBA: Did you guys break bread together or was it just a simple business arrangement? Russ: He was rather cold. CBA: Do you like Jim? Russ: Yes, very much. CBA: Do you miss him? Russ: In what respect? As a friend or as a colleague? CBA: As a person, I guess. Russ: I was very fond of him. Like I said, he’s the kind of a guy like, for instance, when my mother came into New York on a visit, she got very ill, and Jim had her put up at the Embassy House, got her a physician, the whole thing. He didn’t have to do that. So he was capable of incredible generosity and at the same time, he could be the flip side of that. You just never knew where he was coming from. But did I like him? Yes. Still do. CBA: For instance, Louise Jones, an editor in the late ’70s, said— and he agreed to this characterization—that Jim pushed people’s buttons, that he tried to find sensitive spots within people to see what their reaction was, to see what kind of people that they were. Russ: Yeah, but I knew that game and I know how to play that. He couldn’t do that with me. I think that one of the other problems was that I was supposed to have a percentage of the mag. I think that came into it. I mean, we had this agreement that I would have X-amount of percentage of the profits, whatever that meant. And, of course, I never saw them. But I think with Jim, there was always this feeling that as long as the creator of the thing—the guy who was maybe the driving force of the thing—was around, then he couldn’t take the bows for it. I’m not necessarily saying that this is the case but there’s every probability. I mean, we had a lot of psychology

Above: One of Russ Jones’s first Warren assignments in 1964 was the production of the Famous Films series which featured fumetti-style adaptations of contemporary horror films. Notably Wally Wood, Maurice Whitman, and Bill Pearson were among those to lend a hand with the work. Woody even models as a television announcer in The Horror of Party Beach edition! ©2001 Warren Publications.

classes at the Academy and I used to watch the way he would operate. He was good at it. He was very good. CBA: Yeah, he really studied human nature. Russ: I would push his buttons. CBA: Yeah? Russ: Well, he had an M-1 rifle in the corner of his apartment. CBA: Yeah, he always kept it there. Russ: Right. So one time, I just decided, well, Jim is always talking about all of this experience he had in the military. I’ll field-strip it when he’s not looking, and I did. And at oh-dark-thirty in the morning, he calls me and he’s furious. “Get over here and put this goddamn thing back together again,” because he couldn’t. [laughs] CBA: That’s pushing buttons. Russ: Now that was a big one. [laughs] CBA: What brought you to England? Russ: Oh, I was under contract at that time to Tony Keyes at Hammer. CBA: And this was a direct result of you being in the horror field? Russ: Yeah, and plus all the work we were doing on behalf of Hammer with the monster mag. CBA: What was your job over at Hammer? Russ: I was doing rewrites on scripts and storyboards and mostly working with Terrence Fisher. CBA: What motion pictures did you work on? Russ: Oh, my gosh. [laughs] Lots of them. I mean, with Don Sharp on Rasputin. The Summer of ’65 was one of the busiest summers of my entire life. That’s another one of the reasons that the magazine actually had to go. CBA: So you started in film as far back as then. Russ: Yeah, I was a Frequent Flyer and it took a long time back then. CBA: [laughs] And you stayed in England until 1974. When you came back and you gave comics another try? Russ: Yeah, I was at Marvel. The first thing Sol did was hand me their monster magazine, Monster Madness, and say, “It needed help, bring it back to life.” We did that special Horror of Dracula issue. CBA: George Evans said that you had a special phrase for Marvel, that it was the—was it Yiddish? Russ: [laughs] No, was it my own word, for “the Marfels”? CBA: Yeah, that’s it. Russ: You know, because I called the kids “farfels” and if they worked at Marvel, they were “Marfels.” And that cracked George up. [laughs] CBA: What’s a “farfel”? Russ: “Farfel” was just a young person, a young “farfel,” and the female of the species was a “farfelina.” CBA: [laughs] Your Marvel experience was pretty short-lived. Was it just not the place to be? Russ: No, actually, it went on for a good, long time. CBA: Oh, did it? I’m sorry. I was referring to an index that’s obvi-

ously incomplete that had Vampire Tales #4, What If? #5; I think it was writing credit for some of that. Was that true? Russ: Yeah, was that under the “Jack Younger” name or under mine? CBA: Oh, there’s a “Jack Younger” name? Russ: Yeah, because I did twenty-eight paperback novels under that name. CBA: What genre? Russ: Oh, usually under the occult or private eye stories. And they were all done in that same time frame. CBA: You were one busy guy, huh? Russ: Yeah. And it’s amazing. If you go to bookfinder.com on the net and just put in “Jack Younger,” at least usually ten titles will pop up. CBA: Any other pseudonyms that you had? Russ: Um, no. Not that I can recollect. CBA: I just had a listing for two things here for “Jack Younger.” It was Arrgh! #1 and 4, some humor books. Russ: We did “The Night Gawker.” CBA: Are you proud of your work that you did at Warren? Russ: I’d say so, yes. CBA: And what was the highlight? Russ: I think that the highlight was that it actually came off. I mean, that it endured through all those years. CBA: Did you continue to look at the books? Russ: Actually, no. No, I’ve kind of closed the iron door and went on because I wanted to see if comics would work in paperbacks, that was the next step. CBA: And how successful was that? Russ: Oh, Dracula did extremely well. As a matter of fact, it shocked Ian Ballantine and then, of course, Manor did the reprint in 1975. And it did very, very well there, too. CBA: Al McWilliams drew that? Russ: Yes. CBA: Obviously, you were dealing with Ian and Betty Ballantine? Russ: Oh, yes. They were just wonderful. They used to come up to the apartment regularly and we’d screen movies up there. Bob Blanchard, their art director, lived right down at the 79th Street boat basin on his boat and everybody would kind of come up to my place and we’d look at movies. CBA: Did you maintain contact with all the acquaintances you made at Warren? Archie, for instance? Russ: Archie and I played softball together on the Marvel team back in the ’70s, after I got back. CBA: And what was your first sale? Were you on staff at Marvel? Russ: I was sort of on-call for Sol. Every time he had a problem, or something, he would—I was supposed to end up packaging the monster book but that disintegrated, I think, after a couple of issues. And I was so busy, at that point, with paperbacks that were, quite frankly, paying substantially more; I was doing some articles for

Find out the latest news on your favorite heroes at (where else?):

WWW.THUNDERAGENTS.COM The Official Website of John Carbonaro’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents!

Nostalgia Illustrated and writing for Carl Savarkis for the men’s sweat magazines upstairs at Magazine Management. I thought, “Well, why bother with the funny books?” And Martin started Atlas/Seaboard, of course, so I was over there helping Larry. CBA: Did you maintain contact with Woody? Russ: On and off, sporadically. Of course, I was many miles away but whenever we got together, we always had a good time. The last time I saw him was at a convention, God, I don’t even remember when. I just remember that Jim Steranko was there, Krenkel was there. My gosh, I think Mike Ploog might have been there. There was a myriad of the guys. We all sat at one table and Kurtzman came in and, as always with Harvey, when Warren was in the vicinity, he would come out and he would give me that little smile and said, “How’s your buddy?” [laughs] And every time I saw Harvey, the first words were, “How’s your buddy Warren?” [laughs] I thought he was doing a scene, and he had that Kurtzman twinkle in the eye, you know. CBA: “How’s your buddy?” Russ: Yeah. “How’s your buddy?” It was always very softly, you know, with that little turned-up smile. And, of course, Jim came in and ignored everybody. [laughs] CBA: Have any other anecdotes you’d like to share? Russ: Oh my gosh, I don’t know. There’s so many things that I thought of that I can’t remember right now [laughs] and with us going all over the map, I’ve probably forgotten 90% of it. CBA: What did you think of Gray Morrow’s work? Russ: He was ready for mission number one right out of the gate. Gray had this ability to do faces and expressions and characters that were just phenomenal, I thought. And Krenkel did some really nice stuff with Williamson, and it’s odd because the “Success Story” job that I believe was in Creepy #1, that was actually supposed to be in the second issue. That was another one of those things that just happened. My original idea on that—since it was a lampoon, of course, on Don Sherwood—was the fact that Al was supposed to do the pencils and McWilliams was going to do the inks as they were doing on Dan Flagg, so it had exactly the same look. And sometimes Al would take it upon himself to do what he wanted to do. I mean, he was so good, I’d let him do it. [laughs] It’s just too bad that he and I had kind of a falling out and that was over a job that he had me get from Vinnie to give to Larry Ivie, who once again emerges into the picture, which was a romance job. Larry was late with it and when he brought it over, the thing was just diabolical and I brought it down to Vinnie and he looked at me and said, “What’s this?” and threw it back. Al and I worked all night to redo it and Al went limping back to Fosterdale and I went to get a cup of coffee at the Museum Restaurant, right by the Museum of Natural History. And who should walk in but Ivie who says, “Well, what happened to the job?” I said, “It bounced and we had to stay up forever to get it put right.” He laughed, which was the wrong thing to do. So I had a few words with him and, of course, the instant that Al got home, he called him, and then Al called and flew off at me, and I don’t think we’ve spoken since. I always have felt bad about that. CBA: Were you cognizant about Tower Comics? Russ: Oh, yeah. I did some stuff for them, I think. Harry Shorten’s company? I did some Undersea Agent, right? Yeah, I did some stuff for them. Samm Schwartz was the editor. I really don’t know how to explain it. He was a minor-league paperback publisher, Tower Books. Then he decided to get into the comics because the comics were hot and I remember that it was just was not a friendly place. It wasn’t conducive to… well, it wasn’t conducive to anything really startling, I don’t think. It was just kind of there. Nobody seemed to be interested in what they were doing. CBA: Do you know what the thinking behind it was? Were they envious of Marvel’s gains in comic books? Russ: That’s probably the motivating factor. It usually is. CBA: And how did Woody become involved? Russ: I really don’t know. I really don’t. CBA: Creepy was a really fine magazine when it came out and it was a true Golden Age that you helped initiate. Russ: It was everybody. It was an amalgam of everybody involved. CBA: But you guys—Jim, you, Al, Joe, everybody—initiated it. July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

Russ: Yeah, it really was because as Irving Thalberg says, if you have to give yourself credit, then it’s not worth taking, and I really believe in that. As far as being proud of, yes, I could say that those issues and Blazing Combat and all of it, I’d show that to anybody. CBA: Did you design Uncle Creepy? Russ: The fact is that the model for Uncle Creepy was Alastair Sim from the British film classic, A Christmas Carol. From there, I worked this thing up adding a little Basil Rathbone and a little this and a little that and sent Jack Davis the stills along with that sketch of Sim and that’s how Uncle Creepy came to be. CBA: Who is Julius, the other host character who only appeared on Frazetta’s story in Creepy #1? Russ: You know, that was an idea I had at the eleventh hour that, I think, another host in there and I was just thinking of that earlier, on the Frazetta job. And so when I was talking to Frank on the phone, I said, “Gosh, Frank, instead of just putting another Creepy, let’s break it up and put another one in.” And that was one and no mas. [laughs] No more Julius. CBA: [laughs] Alright, Roberto Duran. Why the name “Julius”? Russ: I don’t have the foggiest recollection. [laughs] CBA: You know, it’s not necessarily a horrific name or anything, you know. [laughs] “Uncle Creepy,” yeah. “Cousin Eerie,” sure, but “Julius”? [laughs] Russ: No, and I don’t even know. I didn’t even write the text. No, I really don’t. [laughter] CBA: What are you doing these days? Russ: Oh, gosh. Movie stuff and a little sidebar, we’re getting back into publishing again, something not unlike Creepy. CBA: Will it be comics? Russ: You’ll be the second to know, how’s that?

Hero Index

Tower Comics Checklist The complete index to Wood & Co.’s adventure comics line

The Tower Comics line was published by Harry Shorten and edited by Wally Wood and Samm Schwartz. Writers for specific stories are not generally known (though we’ve credited those identified by the writers), but contributing scripters include Wally Wood, Dan Adkins, Len Brown, Steve Skeates, Larry lvie, Bill Pearson, Russ Jones, Roger Brand, and Tim Battersby-Brent. The following index was adopted freely from one originally compiled for APA-1 by Gene Reed and The Comics Reader #197 by Mike Tiefenbacher. Corrections noted in TCR #198 and 199’s letter columns—from Mark Evanier and Steve Skeates, respectively—were also added. Thanks to Mark, Steve, Larry Ivie, Bill Pearson, and Len Brown for giving the list one final going-over. The art credits were verified and corrected by Dan Adkins. Special thanks to Jeff Clem and Al Gordon. We haven’t included reference to Tower’s teenage titles, Tippy Teen, etc., of which much was drawn by editor Schwartz. If you have any corrections, please send ’em in!—Ye Ed. T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS 1 November 1965 Cover: Wally Wood THUNDER Agents: “First Encounter” 4 Art: Wally Wood Story: Larry Ivie Dynamo: “Menace of the Iron Fog” 12 Art: Wally Wood Story: Len Brown/Larry Ivie NoMan: “THUNDER Agent NoMan” 10 Art: Reed Crandall (w/Wood) Story: Larry Ivie Menthor: “The Enemy Within” 12 Art: Gil Kane & George Tuska/Mike Esposito

(pages 2-7 penciled by George Tuska) THUNDER Squad: “THUNDER Squad” 10 Art: M. Sekowsky/F. Giacoia Story: Larry Ivie Dynamo: “At The Mercy of the Iron Maiden” 10 Art: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins/Wood & Adkins Text: Larry Ivie 2 2 January 1966 Cover: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins Dynamo: “Dynamo Battles Dynavac” 13 Art: Wally Wood & Richard Bassford/Wally Wood Story: Len Brown NoMan: “In The Warlord’s Power” 10 Art: Dick Ayers/Wally Wood & Joe Orlando Menthor: “Menthor” 10 Art: Mike Sekowsky/Frank Giacoia Dynamo: “D-Day For Dynamo” 13 Art: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins/Wood & Coleman THUNDER Squad: “On The Double” 10 Art: Mike Sekowsky/Frank Giacoia Text: “Junior THUNDER Agents” 2 Illustration by Mike Sekowsky 3 March 1966 Cover: Wally Wood Dynamo: “Dynamo Battles the Subterraneans” 10 Art: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins/Wood & Coleman NoMan: “NoMan Faces the Threat of the Amazing Vibraman”10 Art: John Giunta/Wally Wood & Tony Coleman Story: Bill Pearson

Dynamo: “The Red Dragon” 10 Art: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins/Wood & Coleman THUNDER Squad: “Invaders From the Deep” 10 Art: Mike Sekowsky/Frank Giacoia Dynamo & Menthor: “Dynamo vs. Menthor” 10 Art: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins/Wood & Coleman Pin-up: Dynamo 1 Art: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins/Wally Wood Pin-up: NoMan 1 Art: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins/Wally Wood Pin-up: The Thunderbelt 1 Art: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins/Wally Wood Pin-up: Menthor 1 Art: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins/Wally Wood Pin-up: THUNDER Squad 1 Art: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins/Wally Wood Letters 2 4 April 1966 Cover: Reed Crandall/Wally Wood Dynamo: ”Master of Evolution” 12 Art: Wood & Adkins/Wood, Adkins & Coleman Story: Len Brown NoMan: ”The Synthetic Stand-ins” 10 Art: Sekowsky/Giacoia Story: Steve Skeates THUNDER Agents: “The Deadly Dust” (Lightning debut) 10 Art: Sekowsky/Giacoia Story: Steve Skeates Dynamo: “The Return of the Iron Maiden” 10 Art: Reed Crandall/Wally Wood & Dan Adkins

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

Menthor: “The Great Hypno” 11 Art: John Giunta/Wally Wood & Tony Coleman Pin-up: NoMan in Action 1 Art: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins/Wood & Coleman Pin-up: The Origin of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. 1 Art: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins/Wood & Coleman Letters 2 5

June 1966 Cover: Wally Wood/Wood & Adkins Dynamo: “Dynamo and the Golem” 10 Art: Reed Crandall/Wally Wood & Dan Adkins NoMan: “In the Caverns of Demo” 10 Art: Gil Kane/Wally Wood & Tony Coleman Story: Bill Pearson Lightning: “Return of Baron Van Kampf” 10 Art: Sekowsky/Giacoia Story: Steve Skeates Menthor: “Menthor vs. The Entrancer” 10 Art: John Giunta THUNDER Agents: “ Double For Dynamo” 14 Art: Wood & Adkins/Wood & Coleman Story: Skeates Pin-up: Lightning 1 Art: Dan Adkins Letters 2

6 July 1966 Cover: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins/Wood Dynamo: “Dynamo & the Sinister Agents of the Red Star” 14 Art: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins/Wood & Adkins Lightning: “The Origin of the Warp Wizard” 11 Art: Sekowsky/Giacoia Story: Steve Skeates THUNDER Agents: ”THUNDER vs. Demo” 10 Art: Giunta/Wood & Adkins Menthor: “The Carnival of Death” 10 Art: John Giunta/Carl Hubbell NoMan: “To Fight Alone” 10 Art: Steve Ditko Story: Steve Skeates 7 August 1966 Cover: Wood & Adkins/Wood & Adkins Dynamo: “Wanted: Leonard Brown, Code Name ‘Dynamo’, Suspicion of Treason” 10 Art: Wood, Adkins & Ralph Reese/Wood & Adkins

July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

Lightning: “The Warp Wizard’s Revenge” 10 Art: Sekowsky/Giacoia Story: Steve Skeates THUNDER Agents: “Subterranean Showdown” 10 Art: George Tuska NoMan: “To Be Or Not to Be” 10 Art: John Giunta/Sal Trapani Story: Bill Pearson Menthor: “A Matter of Life and Death” 10 Layouts: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins Story: Wood & Adkins Tight pencils: Steve Ditko Inks: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins Pin-up: The Iron Maiden 1 Art: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins/Wally Wood Letters 2 8 September 1966 Cover: Wally Wood Dynamo: “Thunder In the Dark” 10 Art: Wood, Adkins & Reese/Wood & Adkins NoMan: “The Pyramid of the Warlords” 10 Art: John Giunta/Joe Giella Story: Bill Pearson Lightning: “The Blue Alien” 10 Art: Sekowsky/Giacoia Story: Steve Skeates Raven: “Enter… The Raven” 10 Art: George Tuska Story: Steve Skeates THUNDER Agents: “Final Encounter” 11 Art: Dan Adkins/Wally Wood & Dan Adkins Pin-up: The Overlord 1 Art: Wally Wood & Ralph Reese/Wally Wood Letters 2 9 October 1966 Cover: John Giunta/Wally Wood Dynamo: “Corporal Dynamo, U.S.A.” 10 Art: John Giunta/Wally Wood Lightning: “Andor” 10 Art: Mike Sekowsky/Frank Giacoia (odd pages) Joe Giella (even pages) NoMan: “The Secret of Scorpion Island” 10 Art: John Giunta THUNDER Agents: “The Black Box of Doom” 10 Art: Dan Adkins/Chic Stone Raven: “Raven Battles Mayven The Poet” 11

Art: Manny Stallman Letters

Story: Manny Stallman 2

10 November 1966 Cover: Al Williamson & Wally Wood/Wood Dynamo: “Operation Armageddon” 10 Art: Wally Wood Lightning: “The Air Laser” 10 Art: Mike Sekowsky/Joe Giella (odd pages) Frank Giacoia (even pages) NoMan/Andor: “Three Deeds of Evil” 10 Art: Ogden Whitney THUNDER Agents: “Kitten or Killer?” 10 Art: George Tuska Raven: “The Return of Mayven” 10 Art: Manny Stallman Story: Manny Stallman Letters 2 11 March 1967 Cover: Wally Wood Dynamo: “The Death of Dynamo” 10 Art: Dan Adkins/Wally Wood & Dan Adkins Lightning: “Lightning vs. The Vortex” 10 Art: Sekowsky/Giacoia Story: Steve Skeates NoMan: “The Trap” 10 Art: John Giunta Story: Steve Skeates THUNDER Agents: “Understudy For Dynamo” 10 Art: Chic Stone Raven: “The Case of Jacob Einhorn” 10 Art: Manny Stallman Story: Manny Stallman Letters 2 12 April 1967 Cover: Wally Wood Dynamo: “Strength is Not Enough” 10 Art: Steve Ditko/Wally Wood & Dan Adkins Lightning: “Speed Demon” 10 Art: Sekowsky/Giacoia Story: Steve Skeates NoMan: “The Rock” 10 Art: John Giunta/John Giunta & Frank Giacoia THUNDER Agents: “The Road to Spider HQ” 10 Art: Sekowsky/Giacoia & Giella Story: Skeates Raven: “The Raven Battles the Storm Troopers of Xochimilco”10

Art: Manny Stallman Letters

Story: Manny Stallman 2

13 June 1967 Cover: Wally Wood Dynamo: “A Bullet for Dynamo” 10 Art: Dan Adkins/Wally Wood & Dan Adkins NoMan: “Escape from Destiny” 10 Art: Ogden Whitney Lightning: “The Quick and the Changing” 10 Art: Chic Stone Story: Steve Skeates THUNDER Agents: “The Black Helmet” 10 Art: George Tuska Undersea Agent: “The Second Atlantis” 10 Art: Paul Reinman Story: Steve Skeates Letters 2 14 July 1967 Cover: Gil Kane Dynamo/Andor: “Return Engagement” 10 Layouts: Wally Wood Tight Pencils: Steve Ditko Inks: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins Lightning: “To Fight is to Die” 10 Art: Chic Stone Story: Steve Skeates NoMan: “On the Other Side” 10 Art: John Giunta Story: Steve Skeates Raven: “Darkly Sees the Prophet” 10 Art: Gil Kane Story: GiI Kane THUNDER Agents: “The Fist of Zeus” 10 Art: George Tuska Letters 2 15 September 1967 Cover: Gil Kane Dynamo/Andor: “Collision Course” 10 Art: Wally Wood Lightning: “While Our Hero Sleeps…” 10 Art: Chic Stone Story: Steve Skeates NoMan :“Starflight to the Assassin Planet” 12 Art: Ogden Whitney Story: Bill Pearson Dynamo: “Hail to the Chief” 10 Art: John Giunta/Wally Wood & Dan Adkins Weed: “Dig We Must” 10 Art: George Tuska

Pin-up: NoMan in Action (r: TA #4) Pin-up: NoMan (r: TA #3)

1 1

16 October 1967 Cover: Wally Wood Dynamo/Andor: “Dream of Doom” 10 Art: Steve Ditko NoMan: “One of Our Androids is Missing” 10 Art: Gil Kane/Gil Kane & Jack Abel (Abel pgs. 1-5) Lightning: “The Whirliwig” 10 Art: Chic Stone Story: Steve Skeates THUNDER Agents: “The End of the THUNDER Agents?” Art: George Tuska 17 December 1967 Cover: Ralph Reese?/Wally Wood THUNDER Agents: “First Encounter” (r: TA #1) 4 Dynamo: “Return of the Hyena” 10 Art: Wally Wood & Ralph Reese/Wally Wood NoMan: “The Locusts are Coming” 10 Art: Ogden Whitney Weed: “Weed Out West” 10 Art: George Tuska Dynamo: “Put Them All Together They Spell S.P.I.D.E.R.” 10 Art: Chic Stone 18 September 1968 Cover: Reed Crandall Dynamo: “Dynamo Meets the Amazing Mr. Mek” 10 Art: Steve Ditko NoMan: “The Sinister Schemes of Professor Reverse” 10 Art: Ogden Whitney Dynamo: “The Arena” 10 Art: Reed Crandall Dynamo: “The Secret of the Abominable Snowmen” 10 Art: Chic Stone Menthor: “A Matter of Life and Death” (r: TA #7) 10 Pin-up: NoMan in Action (r: TA #4) 1 19 November 1968 Cover: vignettes from TA #7, 8, 14 & 16 Dynamo: “Half an Hour of Power” 10 Art: Wally Wood & Ralph Reese/Wally Wood Dynamo: “Dynamo vs. The Ghost” 10 Art: Paul Reinman

Dynamo: “All-Girl Gang” Art: George Tuska NoMan: “A Matter of Transmitters” Art: Paul Reinman Lightning: “Speed Demon” (r: TA #12) Pin-up: Dynamo (r: TA #3)

10 10 10 1

20 November 1969 Cover: Chic Stone Dynamo: “The Origin of THUNDER Agent Dynamo” 4 Art: Chic Stone Dynamo: “The Return of the Iron Maiden” (r: TA #4) 10 NoMan: “Threat of the Amazing Vibraman” (r: TA #3) 10 THUNDER Agents: “The Deadly Dust” (r: TA #4) 10 Dynamo: “The Red Dragon” (r: TA #3) 10 UNDERSEA AGENT 1 January 1966 “Sink the Carrier Gettysburg” Art: Ray Bailey “Undersea Agent Meets Dr. Fang” Art: Ray Bailey “The Adventures of Skooby Doolittle” Art: Ray Bailey “Food, the Cycle of the Sea” Art: Ray Bailey “Underwater Exploration” Art: John Giunta Text

Cover: Ray Bailey 14 14 9 2 2 2

2 April 1966 Cover: Mike Sekowsky/Frank Giacoia “Return of Dr. Fang” 10 Art: Ray Bailey/Sheldon Moldoff “The Secret of the Flying Saucers” 11 Art: Ray Bailey/Sheldon Moldoff “Double Jeopardy” 11 Art: Ray Bailey/Sheldon Moldoff (Moldoff splash) “The Richest Man in the World” 11 Art: Ray Bailey/Sheldon Moldoff “Buried Beneath the Sea” 10 Art: Mike Sekowsky/Frank Giacoia (even pages) Joe Giella (odd pages)

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

“Mysteries of the Deep” Art: ? “Ocean Oddities” Art: ?

1 1

3 June 1966 Cover: Mike Sekowsky/Frank Giacoia “To Save a King” 14 Art: Ray Bailey Story: Steve Skeates “At the Mercy of Dr. Mayhem” 16 Art: Ray Bailey Story: Steve Skeates “The Panther Whales” 10 Art: Mike Sekowsky/Frank Giacoia “The Will Warp” 10 Art: Gil Kane Story: Steve Skeates “True or False” 7 Art: John Giunta Story: Steve Skeates “Submarines” 2 Art: John Giunta 4 August 1966 Cover: Gil Kane “Introducing Dolph” 14 Art: Ray Bailey “To Save a Monster” 13 Art: Gil Kane Story: Steve Skeates “The Haunted Shipwreck” 14 Art: Ray Bailey “Bait-Can Caper” 10 Art: Frank Bolle Story: Steve Skeates Letters 1 5 October 1966 “Born is a Warrior” Art: Gil Kane Story: Gil Kane “Death Darts from the Ocean Floor” Art: Ray Bailey “Merman” (part one) Art: Manny Stallman “The Showdown on Venue” (part two) Art: Manny Stallman Letters

July 2001

DYNAMO 1 August 1966 Cover: Wally Wood “Menace from the Moon” 14 Art: Dan Adkins/Wally Wood & Dan Adkins “A Day in the Life of Dynamo” 10 Art: Mike Sekowsky/Frank Giacoia “Back to the Stone Age” 10 Art: Reed Crandall/Wally Wood & Dan Adkins “Dynamo Meets the Amazing Andor” 10 Art: Steve Ditko/Wally Wood & Dan Adkins Weed: “Wonder Weed, Super-Hero” 10 Art: John Giunta

2 October 1966 Cover: Wally Wood “The Web of S.P.I.D.E.R.” 10 Art: Chic Stone/Wally Wood & Dan Adkins “S.P.I.D.E.R. Strikes at Sea” 10 Art: Dan Adkins/Wally Wood & Dan Adkins “The Priceless Counterfeit” 10 Art: Dick Ayers/Wally Wood & Dan Adkins “Between Two Enemies” 10 Art: Mike Sekowsky/Chic Stone Weed: “The Hyena” 10 Art: George Tuska Pin-up: Red Star 1 Art: Mike Sekowsky/Frank McLaughlin(?) Pin-up: Andor the Humanoid 1 Art: Dan Adkins

3 March 1967

Cover: Gil Kane 20

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

6 March 1967 Cover: Wally Wood “Doomsday in the Depths” 20 Art: Gil Kane Story: Gil Kane “The Sea Stalag” 10 Art: Ray Bailey Merman: “Lobster Island” 10 Art: Ray Bailey Letters 2

14 10

Cover: Wally Wood

“The Unseen Enemy” 10 Art: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins/Wood & Adkins “Bad Day for Leonard Brown” 10 Art: Chic Stone Story: Ralph Reese “The Feats of Samson” 10 Art: Chic Stone “Honeymoon or High Noon?” 10 Art: Paul Reinman Weed: “Weed vs. THUNDER” 10 Art: George Tuska Letters 2 4 June 1967 “The Maze” Art: Dan Adkins/Wally Wood “The Secret Word is…” Art: Dan Adkins/Wally Wood “Dynamo’s Day Off” Art: Chic Stone “The Weakest Man in the World” Art: Chic Stone Weed: “Once Upon a Time” Art: Steve Ditko/Wally Wood Letters

Cover: Wally Wood 10 10 10 10 10 Story: Wally Wood 2

FIGHT THE ENEMY 1 August 1966 Cover: Mike Sekowsky/Frank Giacoia Saga of the Lucky 7: “The Mission” 11 Art: Mike Sekowsky/Frank Giacoia “The Well in the Desert” 6 Art: Jerry Grandenetti “When It’s Time to Die” 10 Art: Jerry Grandenetti Secret Agent Mike Manly: “Message of Doom” 10 Art: Dick Giordano “Chain of Command” 7 Art: José Delbo “Iwo Jima” 6 Art: José Delbo Gallant Warriors: “Major Charles Loring, Jr., USAF” 2 Art: Mike Sekowsky/Frank Giacoia

2 October 1966 Cover: José Delbo Saga of the Lucky 7: “Michel’s Revenge” 12 Art: Mike Sekowsky/Frank Giacoia & Joe Giella “The Ace” 5 Art: Frank Bolle “The Silent Service” 8 Art: Russ Jones/Al McWilliams Story: Russ Jones “Dead Wrong” 9 Art: Ray Bailey Mike Manly Secret Agent: “The XX119” Secret Agent Mike Manly: “Assignment in Paris” Art: José Delbo “Green Berets” Art: Boris Vallejo K.P. McGoof Art: Samm Schwartz

5 10 12 1

3 March 1967 Cover: Mike Sekowsky/Frank Giacoia Zack Fight of the Green Berets: “The Draftee” 10 Art: Mike Sekowsky/Frank Giacoia “Pearl Harbor… Old Subs Never Die…” 10 Art: Mike Sekowsky/Frank Giacoia “The Young Ones” 8 Art: Al McWilliams Secret Agent Mike Manly: “Assignment in Paris” 10 Art: José Delbo Lucky-7 “A Date with Alice” 10 Art: Chic Stone K.P. McGoof 2 Art: Samm Schwartz 1/2 “Robert Scott, American Ace” Art: Wally Wood NoMAN 1 November 1966

Cover: Wally Wood

“Fingers of Fate” Art: Gil Kane/Paul Reinman “Secret in the Sky” Art: John Giunta Lightning: “The Warp Wizard’s Master Plan” Art: Chic Stone Story: Steve Skeates “Trapped in the Past” Art: Ogden Whitney Story: Steve Skeates “The Good Subterranean” Art: Ogden Whitney

10 10 10 10 10

2 March 1967 Cover: Wally Wood “Dynamo vs. NoMan” 10 Art: Ogden Whitney “The Weird Case of the Kiss of Death” 10 Art: Ogden Whitney Lightning: “The Web Tightens” 10 Art: Chic Stone Story: Steve Skeates “Target NoMan” 10 Art: Ogden Whitney “A Quick Change of Mind” 10 Art: Ogden Whitney Story: Steve Skeates PAPERBACK COLLECTIONS

“NoMan Faces the Threat of the Amazing Vibraman” (r: TA #2) 29 “The Synthetic Stand-Ins” (r: TA #4) 29 “NoMan in Action” (r: TA #3) 3 “In the Caverns of Demo” (r: TA #5) 30 Back cover: NoMan pin-up (r: TA #3) 1 MENTHOR (Tower Book 42-674) 1966 Cover: Steve Ditko & Wally Wood (r) “Menthor” (r: TA #2) 30 “Dynamo vs. Menthor” (r: TA #3) 29 “The Great Hypno” (r: TA #4) 33 “Menthor vs. the Entrancer” (r: TA #4) 30 Back cover: “The Great Hypno” splash (r: TA #4) 1 THE TERRIFIC TRIO (Tower Book 42-687) 1966 Cover: Dan Adkins (r) Dynamo: “Dynamo Battles the Subterraneans” (r: TA #3) 28 Dynamo: “Dynamo Battles Dynavac” (r: TA #2) 39 Menthor: “The Carnival of Death” (r: TA #6) 31 NoMan: “To Fight Alone” (r: TA #6) 28

FINAL EDITOR’S NOTE

Please don’t consider this list to be the last word on a thorough indexing of the Tower Comics material. Roger Hill and J. David Spurlock intend to publish a definitive T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents checklist as a Vanguard Productions book, based on pain-staking research by none other than Dan Adkins, that examines individual art contributions panel-by-panel! No date on this book as of yet but Comic Book NoMAN (Tower Book 42-672) 1966 Cover: Chic Stone & Wally Wood (r) Artist will be sure to inform interested readers “In the Warlord’s Power” (r: TA #2) 31 of its impending arrival.

DYNAMO (Tower Book 42-660) 1966 Cover: Wally Wood (r) Frontis “Menace of the Iron Fog” (splash only, r: TA #1) 1 THUNDER Agents: “First Encounter” (r: TA #1) 12 Dynamo: “Menace of the Iron Fog” (r: TA #1) 34 NoMan: “NoMan Battles the Spawns of the Devil” (r: TA #1) 27 Menthor: “The Enemy Within” (r: TA #1) 35 Dynamo: “At the Mercy of the Iron Maiden” (r: TA #1) 29

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

C o l l e c t o r

The JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR magazine (edited by JOHN MORROW) celebrates the life and career of the “King” of comics through INTERNS VIEWS WITH KIRBY and EDITIO BLE A IL his contemporaries, AVA NLY FEATURE ARTICLES, FOR O $3.95 RARE AND UNSEEN $1.95— KIRBY ART, plus regular columns by MARK EVANIER and others, and presentation of KIRBY’S UNINKED PENCILS from the 1960s-80s (from photocopies preserved in the KIRBY ARCHIVES).

DIGITAL

Go online for #1-30 as Digital Editions, and an ULTIMATE BUNDLE with all the issues at HALF-PRICE!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #34

KIRBY COLLECTOR #35

KIRBY COLLECTOR #31

KIRBY COLLECTOR #32

KIRBY COLLECTOR #33

FIRST TABLOID-SIZE ISSUE! MARK EVANIER’s new column, interviews with KURT BUSIEK and JOSÉ LADRONN, NEAL ADAMS on Kirby, Giant-Man overview, Kirby’s best 2-page spreads, 2000 Kirby Tribute Panel (MARK EVANIER, GENE COLAN, MARIE SEVERIN, ROY THOMAS, and TRACY & JEREMY KIRBY), huge Kirby pencils! Wraparound KIRBY/ADAMS cover!

KIRBY’S LEAST-KNOWN WORK! MARK EVANIER on the Fourth World, unfinished THE HORDE novel, long-lost KIRBY INTERVIEW from France, update to the KIRBY CHECKLIST, pencil gallery of Kirby’s leastknown work (including THE PRISONER, BLACK HOLE, IN THE DAYS OF THE MOB, TRUE DIVORCE CASES), westerns, and more! KIRBY/LADRONN cover!

FANTASTIC FOUR ISSUE! Gallery of FF pencils at tabloid size, MARK EVANIER on the FF Cartoon series, interviews with STAN LEE and ERIK LARSEN, JOE SINNOTT salute, the HUMAN TORCH in STRANGE TALES, origins of Kirby Krackle, interviews with nearly EVERY WRITER AND ARTIST who worked on the FF after Kirby, & more! KIRBY/LARSEN and KIRBY/TIMM covers!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #36

KIRBY COLLECTOR #37

KIRBY COLLECTOR #38

FIGHTING AMERICANS! MARK EVANIER on 1960s Marvel inkers, SHIELD, Losers, and Green Arrow overviews, INFANTINO interview on Simon & Kirby, KIRBY interview, Captain America PENCIL ART GALLERY, PHILIPPE DRUILLET interview, JOE SIMON and ALEX TOTH speak, unseen BIG GAME HUNTER and YOUNG ABE LINCOLN Kirby concepts! KIRBY and KIRBY/TOTH covers!

GREAT ESCAPES! MISTER MIRACLE pencil art gallery, MARK EVANIER, MARSHALL ROGERS & MICHAEL CHABON interviews, comparing Kirby and Houdini’s backgrounds, analysis of “Himon,” 2001 Kirby Tribute Panel (WILL EISNER, JOHN BUSCEMA, JOHN ROMITA, MIKE ROYER, & JOHNNY CARSON) & more! KIRBY/MARSHALL ROGERS and KIRBY/STEVE RUDE covers!

THOR ISSUE! Never-seen KIRBY interview, JOE SINNOTT and JOHN ROMITA JR. on their Thor work, MARK EVANIER, extensive THOR and TALES OF ASGARD coverage, a look at the “real” Norse gods, 40 pages of KIRBY THOR PENCILS, including a Kirby Art Gallery at TABLOID SIZE, with pin-ups, covers, and more! KIRBY covers inked by MIKE ROYER and TREVOR VON EEDEN!

“HOW TO DRAW COMICS THE KIRBY WAY!” MIKE ROYER interview on how he inks Jack’s work, HUGE GALLERY tracing the evolution of Jack’s style, new column on OBSCURE KIRBY WORK, MARK EVANIER, special sections on Jack’s TECHNIQUE AND INFLUENCES, comparing STAN LEE’s writing to JACK’s, and more! Two COLOR UNPUBLISHED KIRBY COVERS!

“HOW TO DRAW COMICS THE KIRBY WAY!” PART 2: JOE SINNOTT on how he inks Jack’s work, HUGE PENCIL GALLERY, list of the art in the KIRBY ARCHIVES, MARK EVANIER, special sections on Jack’s technique and influences, SPEND A DAY WITH KIRBY (with JACK DAVIS, GULACY, HERNANDEZ BROS., and RUDE) and more! Two UNPUBLISHED KIRBY COVERS!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #39

KIRBY COLLECTOR #40

KIRBY COLLECTOR #41

KIRBY COLLECTOR #42

KIRBY COLLECTOR #43

FAN FAVORITES! Covering Kirby’s work on HULK, INHUMANS, and SILVER SURFER, TOP PROS pick favorite Kirby covers, Kirby ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT interview, MARK EVANIER, 2002 Kirby Tribute Panel (DICK AYERS, TODD McFARLANE, PAUL LEVITZ, HERB TRIMPE), pencil art gallery, and more! Kirby covers inked by MIKE ALLRED and P. CRAIG RUSSELL!

WORLD THAT’S COMING! KAMANDI and OMAC spotlight, 2003 Kirby Tribute Panel (WENDY PINI, MICHAEL CHABON, STAN GOLDBERG, SAL BUSCEMA, LARRY LIEBER, and STAN LEE), P. CRAIG RUSSELL interview, MARK EVANIER, NEW COLUMN analyzing Jack’s visual shorthand, pencil art gallery, and more! Kirby covers inked by ERIK LARSEN and REEDMAN!

1970s MARVEL WORK! Coverage of ’70s work from Captain America to Eternals to Machine Man, DICK GIORDANO & MARK SHULTZ interviews, MARK EVANIER, 2004 Kirby Tribute Panel (STEVE RUDE, DAVE GIBBONS, WALTER SIMONSON, and PAUL RYAN), pencil art gallery, unused 1962 HULK #6 KIRBY PENCILS, and more! Kirby covers inked by GIORDANO and SCHULTZ!

1970s DC WORK! Coverage of Jimmy Olsen, FF movie set visit, overview of all Newsboy Legion stories, KEVIN NOWLAN and MURPHY ANDERSON on inking Jack, never-seen interview with Kirby, MARK EVANIER on Kirby’s covers, Bongo Comics’ Kirby ties, complete ’40s gangster story, pencil art gallery, and more! Kirby covers inked by NOWLAN and ANDERSON!

KIRBY AWARD WINNERS! STEVE SHERMAN and others sharing memories and neverseen art from JACK & ROZ, a never-published 1966 interview with KIRBY, MARK EVANIER on VINCE COLLETTA, pencils-toSinnott inks comparison of TALES OF SUSPENSE #93, and more! Covers by KIRBY (Jack’s original ’70s SILVER STAR CONCEPT ART) and KIRBY/SINNOTT!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #44

KIRBY COLLECTOR #45

KIRBY COLLECTOR #46

KIRBY COLLECTOR #47

KIRBY COLLECTOR #48

KIRBY’S MYTHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS! Coverage of DEMON, THOR, & GALACTUS, interview with KIRBY, MARK EVANIER, pencil art galleries of the Demon and other mythological characters, two never-reprinted BLACK MAGIC stories, interview with Kirby Award winner DAVID SCHWARTZ and F4 screenwriter MIKE FRANCE, and more! Kirby cover inked by MATT WAGNER!

Jack’s vision of PAST AND FUTURE, with a never-seen KIRBY interview, a new interview with son NEAL KIRBY, MARK EVANIER’S column, two pencil galleries, two complete ’50s stories, Jack’s first script, Kirby Tribute Panel (with EVANIER, KATZ, SHAW!, and SHERMAN), plus an unpublished CAPTAIN 3-D cover, inked by BILL BLACK and converted into 3-D by RAY ZONE!

Focus on NEW GODS, FOREVER PEOPLE, and DARKSEID! Includes a rare interview with KIRBY, MARK EVANIER’s column, FOURTH WORLD pencil art galleries (including Kirby’s redesigns for SUPER POWERS), two 1950s stories, a new Kirby Darkseid front cover inked by MIKE ROYER, a Kirby Forever People back cover inked by JOHN BYRNE, and more!

KIRBY’S SUPER TEAMS, from kid gangs and the Challengers, to Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Super Powers, with unseen 1960s Marvel art, a rare KIRBY interview, MARK EVANIER’s column, two pencil art galleries, complete 1950s story, author JONATHAN LETHEM on his Kirby influence, interview with JOHN ROMITA, JR. on his Eternals work, and more!

KIRBYTECH ISSUE, spotlighting Jack’s hightech concepts, from Iron Man’s armor and Machine Man, to the Negative Zone and beyond! Includes a rare KIRBY interview, MARK EVANIER’s column, two pencil art galleries, complete 1950s story, TOM SCIOLI interview, Kirby Tribute Panel (with ADAMS, PÉREZ, and ROMITA), and covers inked by TERRY AUSTIN and TOM SCIOLI!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page tabloid magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #49

KIRBY COLLECTOR #51

KIRBY COLLECTOR #52

WARRIORS, spotlighting Thor (with a look at hidden messages in BILL EVERETT’s Thor inks), Sgt. Fury, Challengers of the Unknown, Losers, and others! Includes a rare KIRBY interview, interviews with JERRY ORDWAY and GRANT MORRISON, MARK EVANIER’s column, pencil art gallery, a complete 1950s story, wraparound Thor cover inked by JERRY ORDWAY, and more!

Bombastic EVERYTHING GOES issue, with a wealth of great submissions that couldn’t be pigeonholed into a “theme” issue! Includes a rare KIRBY interview, new interviews with JIM LEE and ADAM HUGHES, MARK EVANIER’s column, huge pencil art galleries, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, two COLOR UNPUBLISHED KIRBY COVERS, and more!

Spotlights Kirby’s most obscure work: an UNUSED THOR STORY, BRUCE LEE comic, animation work, stage play, unaltered pages from KAMANDI, DEMON, DESTROYER DUCK, and more, including a feature examining the last page of his final issue of various series BEFORE EDITORIAL TAMPERING (with lots of surprises)! Color Kirby cover inked by DON HECK!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #55

KIRBY COLLECTOR #56

KIRBY COLLECTOR #57

KIRBY COLLECTOR #53

KIRBY COLLECTOR #54

THE MAGIC OF STAN & JACK! New interview with STAN LEE, walking tour of New York where Lee & Kirby lived and worked, re-evaluation of the “Lost” FF #108 story (including a new page that just surfaced), “What If Jack Hadn’t Left Marvel In 1970?,” plus MARK EVANIER’s regular column, a Kirby pencil art gallery, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, and more, behind a color Kirby cover inked by GEORGE PÉREZ!

STAN & JACK PART TWO! More on the co-creators of the Marvel Universe, final interview (and cover inks) by GEORGE TUSKA, differences between KIRBY and DITKO’S approaches, WILL MURRAY on the origin of the FF, the mystery of Marvel cover dates, MARK EVANIER’s regular column, a Kirby pencil art gallery, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, and more, plus Kirby back cover inked by JOE SINNOTT!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #59

KIRBY COLLECTOR #60

“Kirby Goes To Hollywood!” SERGIO ARAGONÉS and MELL LAZARUS recall Kirby’s BOB NEWHART TV show cameo, comparing the recent STAR WARS films to New Gods, RUBY & SPEARS interviewed, Jack’s encounters with FRANK ZAPPA, PAUL McCARTNEY, and JOHN LENNON, MARK EVANIER’s regular column, a Kirby pencil art gallery, a Golden Age Kirby story, and more! Kirby cover inked by PAUL SMITH!

“Unfinished Sagas”—series, stories, and arcs Kirby never finished. TRUE DIVORCE CASES, RAAM THE MAN MOUNTAIN, KOBRA, DINGBATS, a complete story from SOUL LOVE, complete Boy Explorers story, two Kirby Tribute Panels, MARK EVANIER and other regular columnists, pencil art galleries, and more, with Kirby’s “Galaxy Green” cover inked by ROYER, and the unseen cover for SOUL LOVE #1!

“Legendary Kirby”—how Jack put his spin on classic folklore! TONY ISABELLA on SATAN’S SIX (with Kirby’s unseen layouts), Biblical inspirations of DEVIL DINOSAUR, THOR through the eyes of mythologist JOSEPH CAMPBELL, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, rare Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, pencil art from ETERNALS, DEMON, NEW GODS, THOR, and Jack’s ATLAS cover!

“Kirby Vault!” Rarities from the “King” of comics: Personal correspondence, private photos, collages, rare Marvelmania art, bootleg album covers, sketches, transcript of a 1969 VISIT TO THE KIRBY HOME (where Jack answers the questions YOU’D ask in ‘69), MARK EVANIER, pencil art from the FOURTH WORLD, CAPTAIN AMERICA, MACHINE MAN, SILVER SURFER GRAPHIC NOVEL, and more!

FANTASTIC FOUR FOLLOW-UP to #58’s THE WONDER YEARS! Never-seen FF wraparound cover, interview between FF inkers JOE SINNOTT and DICK AYERS, rare LEE & KIRBY interview, comparison of a Jack and Stan FF story conference to Stan’s final script and Jack’s penciled pages, MARK EVANIER and other columnists, gallery of KIRBY FF ART, pencils from BLACK PANTHER, SILVER SURFER, & more!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(104-page magazine with COLOR) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR VOLUMES, edited by John Morrow Each book contains over 30 PIECES OF KIRBY ART NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED!

VOLUME 2

VOLUME 3

VOLUME 5

VOLUME 6

VOLUME 7

KIRBY CHECKLIST

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #10-12, and a tour of Jack’s home!

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #13-15, plus new art!

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #20-22, plus new art!

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #23-26, plus new art!

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #27-30, plus new art!

Lists EVERY KIRBY COMIC, BOOK, UNPUBLISHED WORK and more!

(160-page trade paperback) $17.95 ISBN: 9781893905016 Diamond Order Code: MAR042974

(176-page trade paperback) $19.95 ISBN: 9781893905023 Diamond Order Code: APR043058

(224-page trade paperback) $24.95 ISBN: 9781893905573 Diamond Order Code: FEB063353

(288-page trade paperback) $29.95 ISBN: 9781605490038 Diamond Order Code: JUN084280

(288-page trade paperback) $29.95 ISBN: 9781605490120 Diamond Order Code: DEC084286

(128-page trade paperback) $14.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 ISBN: 9781605490052 Diamond Order Code: MAR084008

NEW!

Lee & Kirby: THE WONDER YEARS

Celebrate the 50th ANNIVERSARY OF FANTASTIC FOUR #1 with this special squarebound edition (#58) of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, about two pop-culture visionaries who created the Fantastic Four, and a decade in comics that was more tumultuous and awe-inspiring than any before or since. Calling on his years of research, plus new interviews conducted just for this book (with STAN LEE, FLO STEINBERG, MARK EVANIER, JOE SINNOTT, and others), regular Jack Kirby Collector contributor MARK ALEXANDER traces both Lee and Kirby’s history at Marvel Comics, and the remarkable series of events and career choices that led them to converge in 1961 to conceive the Fantastic Four. It also documents the evolution of the FF throughout the 1960s, with previously unknown details about Lee and Kirby’s working relationship, and their eventual parting of ways in 1970. With a wealth of historical information and amazing Kirby artwork, STAN LEE & JACK KIRBY: THE WONDER YEARS beautifully examines the first decade of the FF, and the events that put into motion the 1960s era that came to be known as the Marvel Age of Comics! (128-page tabloid-size trade paperback) $19.95 • (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781605490380 • Diamond Order Code: SEP111248

NEW!

SILVER STAR: GRAPHITE EDITION

First conceptualized in the 1970s as a movie screenplay, SILVER STAR was too far ahead of its time for Hollywood, so artist JACK KIRBY adapted it as a six-issue mini-series for Pacific Comics in the 1980s, making it his final, great comics series. Now the entire six-issue run is collected here, reproduced from his powerful, uninked PENCIL ART, showing Kirby’s work in its undiluted, raw form! Also included is Kirby’s ILLUSTRATED SILVER STAR MOVIE SCREENPLAY, never-seen SKETCHES, PIN-UPS, and an historical overview to put it all in perspective!

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR SPECIAL EDITION

(160-page trade paperback) $19.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781893905559 Diamond Order Code: JAN063367

CAPTAIN VICTORY: GRAPHITE EDITION

Compiles the “extra” new material from COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR VOLUMES 1-7, in one huge Digital Edition! Includes a fan’s private tour of the Kirbys’ remarkable home, profusely illustrated with photos, and more than 200 pieces of Kirby art not published outside of those volumes. If you already own the individual issues and skipped the collections, or missed them in print form, now you can get caught up!

For the first time, JACK KIRBY’s original CAPTAIN VICTORY GRAPHIC NOVEL is presented as it was created in 1975 (before being broken up and modified for the 1980s Pacific Comics series), reproduced from copies of Kirby’s uninked pencil art! This first “new” Kirby comic in years features page after page of prime pencils, and includes Jack’s unused CAPTAIN VICTORY SCREENPLAY, unseen art, an historical overview to put it in perspective, and more! (52-page comic book) $5.95 • (Digital Edition) $2.95

(120-page Digital Edition) $4.95

NOTE: THIS IS ISSUE #58 OF THE KIRBY COLLECTOR!

KIRBY FIVE-OH! CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF THE “KING” OF COMICS

For its 50th issue, the publication that started TwoMorrows presents KIRBY FIVE-OH!, a BOOK covering the best of everything from Kirby’s 50-year career in comics! The regular KIRBY COLLECTOR columnists have formed a distinguished panel of experts to choose and examine: The BEST KIRBY STORY published each year from 1938-1987! The BEST COVERS from each decade! Jack’s 50 BEST UNUSED PIECES OF ART! His 50 BEST CHARACTER DESIGNS! And profiles of, and commentary by, the 50 PEOPLE MOST INFLUENCED BY KIRBY’S WORK! Plus there’s a 50-PAGE GALLERY of Kirby’s powerful RAW PENCIL ART, and a DELUXE COLOR SECTION of photos and finished art from throughout his entire half-century oeuvre. This TABLOID-SIZED TRADE PAPERBACK features a previously unseen Kirby Superman cover inked by “DC: The New Frontier” artist DARWYN COOKE, and an introduction by MARK EVANIER, helping make this the ultimate retrospective on the career of the “King” of comics! Takes the place of JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #50. (168-page tabloid-size trade paperback) $19.95 • (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781893905894 Diamond Order Code: FEB084186

NOTE: THIS IS ISSUE #50 OF THE KIRBY COLLECTOR!

KIRBY UNLEASHED (REMASTERED)

Reprinting the fabled 1971 KIRBY UNLEASHED PORTFOLIO, completely remastered! Spotlights some of KIRBY’s finest art from all eras of his career, including 1930s pencil work, unused strips, illustrated World War II letters, 1950s pages, unpublished 1960s Marvel pencil pages and sketches, and Fourth World pencil art (done expressly for this portfolio in 1970)! We’ve gone back to the original art to ensure the best reproduction possible, and MARK EVANIER and STEVE SHERMAN have updated the Kirby biography from the original printing, and added a new Foreword explaining how this portfolio came to be! PLUS: We’ve recolored the original color plates, and added EIGHT NEW BLACK-&-WHITE PAGES, plus EIGHT NEW COLOR PAGES, including Jack’s four GODS posters (released separately in 1972), and four extra Kirby color pieces, all at tabloid size! (60-page tabloid with COLOR) SOLD OUT • (Digital Edition) $5.95

TwoMorrows—A New Day For Comics Fandom! TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: store@twomorrowspubs.com • www.twomorrows.com

Teenage Tower

Tippy Teen & Tower, Too! Terry Austin on Tower’s most popular comic book character Inset right: One of Tippy’s spin-offs was the comic/prose magazine Teen-In. Courtesy of Steve Cohen. ©2001 the respective copyright holder.

SPECIAL THANKS: To CBA pal ROCCO NIGRO for sending us a nice unused Tippy’s Friend Go Go Special cover which we just couldn’t fit in this issue… we’ll try and use it in the letter col next time. 98

by Terry Austin Ah, the ’60s… if you’re like me, thoughts of those far-flung days bring back memories of mini-skirts and go-go boots, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Batman on TV, sweating out the lottery when your draft number was picked, sweaty Richard Nixon, stunning Barbara Feldon and Diana Rigg, that pair of bright blue corduroy bellbottoms you bought but only had the courage to wear a time or two, and of course, “America’s Swingingest Teener,” Tippy Teen! Wait a second!! Who!? Nope, doesn’t ring a bell with me either. I was too enthralled by the action-packed exploits of Woody’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. crew to acknowledge the very existence of Tower Comics’ most popular character, the aforementioned Miss Teen. That’s right, Tippy and her pals racked up at least 35 issues at Tower; the boys and girls of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. managed only 26. Tippy had a fan club with a membership card and a keen button, and even had a groovy coloring book; et tu, NoMan? Still, you argue, the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents would be revived a time or two at various companies years later; five years after Tower folded, Tippy would sashay from Madison Avenue over to Fifth, change her name to Vicki and enjoy life with her chums at Atlas/Seaboard comics for four more issues. News to you? Me too, until a couple of years ago… One night at dinner with the world’s champeen cartoonist, Dan DeCarlo (Betty & Veronica, Millie the Model, Josie, Big Boy, Sabrina to name but a few), he mentioned having designed the characters for a book published by Tower Comics called Tippy Teen. As a Big Time Fan of Dan’s work, this threw me for a loss. Pinhead Perkins I’ve heard of—who the devil was Tippy Teen? I soon found out. Tippy Teen ran for 25 issues (Overstreet says 27 but I haven’t run across anyone who has #26 or 27), cover dated Nov. 1965 to Oct. 1969, followed by a no-number reprint one-shot dated Nov. 1969. A spin-off, Tippy’s Friends Go Go and Animal ran for 15 issues from Aug. 1966 to Oct. 1969 (although Animal is dropped from the book’s title for #12-15). A second spin-off titled Teen-In (subtitled “A Tippy Teen Swingin’ ’Zine”) lasted four issues in 1968-69. In addition, a Tippy Teen coloring book was published by Saalfield in 1967. Finally, Atlas Comics’ Vicki appeared for four issues from Feb. through Aug. 1975. These are Tippy reprints where her friends retain their original names but sideburns have been added to all the men’s

hairstyles, which, of course, makes all the old stories fresh and new again (snort!). The Tower issues are giant 25¢ books, mixing comic book stories, pin-ups, photos of rock stars, advice columns, actor profiles, fashions designed by fans (such as the party dress contributed by little Craig Russell in Tippy #5), pen pal pages, and Tippy Teen P.A.L. (Phi Alpha Lambda(?)) Club pages (where Linda Medley won a $3 second prize for her poem in Tippy #12). Tippy Teen (yes, that’s her last name, not a description) is a shapely but slightly ditzy high schooler with long blonde hair. She is prone to chase the latest fad or fashion and generally perplex her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Teen (told you so) and the adult world around her. Her steady boyfriend is Tommy Trippit, a rather bland young man whose major accomplishment is to get a new haircut in Tippy #5, that he’d keep for the rest of the run, inspired by actor David McCrakum of The Man from A.U.N.T.I.E. TV show. Tippy’s best friend is a cute, short-haired brunette named Go Go West who sometimes uses her guitar to compose songs that comment on the plot of the story. Go Go’s boyfriend, Animal Barnes, is large, hungry, dumb, and inadvertently mysterious, since due to his sheep dog haircut, no one has ever seen his eyes (which is the plot of the lead story in Go Go #4) . Their friend Egghead Eggers is slight of build, bespeckled and requires no further explanation. Ditto Tiny, once you’ve said she’s corpulent, female and man crazy. As for the grain of sand in the eyeball department, those roles are mostly filled by Peggy Fleagle and Ashley Hartburn. Peggy (whose hair changes color a lot) wants Tommy, hates Tippy and has no discernable redeeming qualities. Ashley, on the other hand, wants Tippy, hates Tommy and is rich and evil. Finally, there’s perpetually put-upon Principal Phineas Phogg who, for some reason, becomes angry when the kids continually wreck the school. If I understand correctly, Tippy’s four-color birth was presided over by Samm Schwartz, an artist who had bounced around Archie comics in the 1950s until coming to rest on Jughead late in the decade. Over the next several years we would hone his remarkable sense of design, balancing an exquisite ink line with juicy, flat slabs of black, often disposing of panel borders to open up space within the page. He also had an extraordinary grasp of body language. Simply put, his characters were some of the finest pantomime actors in comics history. Additionally, as a writer, Samm introduced subtle shadings of character to Archie’s hamburger craving pal. Under his tutelage, Jughead became a multi-faceted character, a sly trickster even to his COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

friends, making him the perfect foil for the more ham-fisted plotter, Reggie Mantle. Samm also introduced such reoccurring innovations to the strip as Judy, the slovenly boy-hater who was the perfect girl for the woman-hating Jones boy until she accidentally fell in love with him, and the U.G.A.J. (the United Girls Against Jughead) who, fearing Juggie’s philosophies may spread to the other males of Riverdale, plot against him at night in dark basements across the town. Reportedly tiring of ill-treatment at the hands of Archie Comics higher-ups, Schwartz would jump ship in 1965 to edit for Tower, as well as write and draw many of Tippy and friends’ best stories, pin-ups, covers and feature pages. According to Dan DeCarlo, Sam tried to raid the Archie Comics talent pool using Tower Comics’ better page rates as a lure. He says this caused Archie’s management to reluctantly raise their rates while promising to terminate anyone caught working for the competition. Despite this edict, Archie’s other top two artists have jobs printed in the early Tower Books. Dan has a story in Tippy #1 (which is reprinted in #10) and Harry Lucey appears in #1, 2 and others, even drawing the cover to Go Go #4. Later in the run, many jobs are drawn by Dan’s less-talented assistant Doug Crane, who boldly signs his work on the splash panels, apparently not holding out any hope of being asked to relocate to Riverdale anytime soon. The only other artist I can identify is Chic Stone, who essays a straight romance story (sans Tippy and her pals) in each issue of Teen-In. Issue #1 is particularly noteworthy for Chic’s masterful use of Craftint paper to produce grey tones; the job is printed in flawless black-&-white. Additionally, the four Atlas/Seaboard issues of Vicki have new covers by the wonderful Stan Goldberg. Sadly, after Tower folded, Samm Schwartz was forced to return to his old bosses at Archie to ask for work. According to Dan, Samm was now branded a traitor and at the mercy of his former tormentors, who wasted no time making his life even more miserable than before. He returned to Jughead but with few flashes of the brilliance he had so effortlessly sustained years before. When he died, no one from Archie Comics management bothered to come to his funeral. But what of Tippy and her friends? Miss Teen, who never married, enjoyed a brief taste of fame once more as part of a touring company of Cats in the early 1980s. Today, tipping the scale at just over 300 pounds, she is hostess at a small restaurant in the Midwest and lives quietly in a trailer with her two cats, Ringo and Cher. Thomas Trippit works as an auto mechanic at a Texaco station in Florence, Nevada, where he resides with his common-law wife Peggy Fleagle and their 19-year-old son Barney. Information on his current hairstyle is unavailable. Upon graduation, Rachel “Go Go” West married her high school sweetheart and achieved some limited success as a folk singer. With the advent of disco music, they separated amid accusations of infidelity, then divorced. Now married to a long-haul trucker named Rudy, their nine children keep her too busy to consider a comeback, she says in a voice roughened by too many years of smoking unfiltered Camels. A shiftless drifter following the breakup of his marriage, Animal Barnes perished in 1984 after stepping off a curb directly in the path of oncoming traffic. “I never saw them coming,” he is reported to have gasped to the ambulance attendant. Ashley Hartburn took over the reins of his father’s canoe factory and turned it into a successful multinational computer software conglomerate. He is currently dating actress Cameron Diaz. Principal Phogg retired in 1979 and died shortly thereafter. His toupee was Martinized and resides in a dusty corner of the school’s trophy case. The whereabouts of Craig Russell are unknown at this time. [TERRY AUSTIN, inker of things penciled, dedicates this article in memory of his beloved cat, Tippy (2000-2001).]

This page: Nifty Schwartz fashion pin-up, covers to Tippy’s Friends Go Go and Animal #4, the Tippy Teen coloring book, and Tippy’s Atlas/Seaboard reincarnation as Vicki as seen on this Stan Goldberg drawn cover repro from #1. All courtesy of Terry Austin and ©2001 the respective copyright holder. July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

Endgame

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Strikes Twice! The revivals—and troubles—of Wally Wood’s super-hero line Below: Though the inked version appeared as a background image in OMNI Comix #3, I wonder if anybody has seen these great pencils by Dave Gibbons drawn for the Penthouse comics title? Thanks, Dave. Art ©2001 Dave Gibbons.

100

by Chris Irving Even though the original T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents title was cancelled in 1969, the characters have come back on numerous occasions, each one generating varying levels of interest. Despite their status in comics history as relatively minor characters, the 1980s brought about not only their first major revival, but also a major deal of controversy surrounding ownership of the trademark.

The Players JOHN CARBONARO got his start in comics when, in the 1970s, he co-published the prozine Phase with friend Sal Quartuccio, an alternative magazine featuring such contributors as Neal Adams, Rich Buckler, and Frank Brunner. After taking a ten-year leave from comics to pursue an accounting degree, Carbonaro decided to first pursue obtaining a licensing agreement for T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents on a lark. “I was an accountant at an advertising firm,” Carbonaro recalled recently. “A young lady, Vicki Blum, dropped in to visit an artist on staff, and I discovered she had worked at Tower Paperbacks in the past. She made the introductions for me.” Meeting with Tower president Jeffrey Proctor in late 1980, Carbonaro obtained an oral agreement to license T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents by June 1981. Taking advantage of the rapidly growing direct sales market, Carbonaro gathered together former Warren editor Chris Adames (serving as scripter and consulting editor), writer Richard Lynn, artists Lou Manna and Mark Texeira, and Archie Comics editor Pat Gabriele (as editor and artist) to produce the first appearance of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents in nearly a dozen years, publishing the b-&-w magazine JCP Features #1, the only appearance of the title (which oddly had a cover date of February 1982, but dated December 1981 inside). The one-shot featured crude but enthusiastic T-Agent stories, drawn in a Jack Kirby-style. According to Carbonaro, Tower received a $1000 check on April 28, 1981 for licensing the characters. Soon after, Carbonaro found both a home for T.H.U.N.D.E.R. and an editorial job at Archie Comics, helping to reintroduce the Red Circle line of super-hero comics (reviving characters from the Golden Age and the shortlived Mighty/Radio Comics run of the 1960s). Carbonaro said his plan at Archie was to merge the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents with the Red Circle characters in a shared universe, a notion that fell apart for a variety of reasons. “I was working with [artist] Mark Texeira, and [Archie editor] Pat Gabriele,” Carbonaro explained, “[but] unfortunately some money was diverted, and I was upset about that, since it was payment money for the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents books we put out, the black-&-white comic that Pat Gabriele had edited [JCP Features #1]. I disassociated myself from Gabriele and, unfortunately, about 20 pages of Mark Texeira artwork,” of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents meeting The Mighty Crusaders remain unpublished. Carbonaro’s position with Archie apparently changed when he brought artist Rich Buckler in to draw the T.H.U.N.D.E.R./Mighty Crusaders story. Archie soon decided to only focus on the Mighty Crusaders portion for a regular-length comic book, and to replace Carbonaro with the artist as editor of the title. “They wanted to be fair to me and said, ‘Why don’t we do a joint venture with you and the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, and we’ll work on that?’” Carbonaro recalled. “I went right over to the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and did a few reprints, and started up a TA comic book with new stories. They were shipped and billed over the Archie administration.” The new color T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents books featured a “JC Comics” imprint. Two issues (with stories continuing from the b-&-w magazine) were published, featuring art by Mark Texeira, as well as three issues of Hall of Fame featuring the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. All were printed between 1983 and 1984. The only Red Circle appearance of the Agents was in 1984’s Blue Ribbon Comics #12, which concluded the JC Comics’ series, which Carbonaro attributes to Archie’s needing the story for what Carbonaro refers to as a “blown deadline.” COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

DAVID SINGER was a fan-writer for such comic fan magazines as Amazing Heroes and his own short-lived Comic Times, and was hired by Archie as a Red Circle editor in the early 1980s. He and Carbonaro had met sometime in ’81 through Red Circle editor Pat Gabriele. Having obtained a law degree (though reportedly not yet passing a bar exam), Singer was qualified and hired to serve as legal consultant to Carbonaro. Singer received a check for $450 on May 6, 1982, for drafting written licensing agreements with Tower and Archie, as well as other companies that were approached by Carbonaro. “In early 1981, Carbonaro told me he needed a contract to be negotiated with Tower and asked if I could handle it for him,” Singer wrote in The Comics Journal #101 (August 1985). “He and I were already friends at that time… I agreed to represent him (not as an attorney, but as his appointed representative) and agreed to take only $450 for my expenses as well as my time.” Singer had denied acting as Carbonaro’s lawyer, claiming it was an informal relationship, for which he did not receive financial compensation for acting as a legal representative, as he “was not an attorney.” Meanwhile, Tower Books was undergoing a bankruptcy assets sale and, on August 18, 1982, Offset Paperback Manufacturer’s, Inc. gained rights to T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, which were in turn sold to Dorchester Publishing Company a week later. Dorchester orally agreed in December 1982 to sell the characters to Carbonaro, allegedly for $2000. Carbonaro feels that the turning point in his relationship with Singer was the result of a business proposition the latter was interested in. “David wanted to get involved in a deal with some buddy in San Antonio [who] convinced him that they would be able to sell comic books to the Armed Forces [through PXs] on a non-returnable basis,” Carbonaro said. “That would give them a fortune. Singer wanted to get into that [deal], and they told him that if he had something viable, like the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, he could get into this company. Wanting to make a fortune, David contacted me, and I refused. I thought it was a scam, and one of those too-good-to-betrue things. David said that he was going to go to Tower, based on information I gave him, and purchase the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, rather than licensing them from me.” Singer, after failing at his attempt to purchase the Agents from Carbonaro, apparently threatened to purchase T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents from Dorchester while Carbonaro was still in a transitional period before his purchase. “Even though [Singer] had worked as my legal rep and knew the confidential information that I gave him as a legal rep, he said, ‘You gave me information as a friend over a hamburger and a Coke. I did that contract for you years ago, so I shouldn’t be held to a fiduciary trust,’” Carbonaro recalled. “He also gave another reason later on, that he told people: He believed he was underpaid as a legal rep, although he was paid what he asked for. So being underpaid, he should not be held to the fiduciary trust, even though he was fully paid and paid what he had requested.” Carbonaro offered Singer a chance to license the Agents for $65,000, an offer Singer brought down to $50,000 and 3% cover price royalties, according to a Comics Journal article. Carbonaro agreed to a letter of intent, which stated his willingness to license the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents to Singer, so that Singer could use the letter to help secure investors. Carbonaro, however, claims to have not received an advance deposit on the licensing fee, causing him to send Singer a letter breaking off the letter of intent. Singer claimed, in a reply, that he was about to receive a loan to pay the initial payment to Carbonaro but, after the dissolution of the letter of intent, cancelled his loan. “[Singer needed to pay] timely payments for the rights, and he blew that,” Carbonaro recalled. “[N]ow that I owned the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and [had] given him the chance to make the payments—and his not making it—I felt in a business fashion, of disengaging from David. It had gone too far; he had threatened me and, in my mind, [that] violated a business trust as well as a friendship (a fiduciary trust); he was trying to force me into something I didn’t want to do. He could have satisfied the conditions if he made the payments. He had excuses for that; he could have borrowed the money, if only he’d asked somebody, but he didn’t do it, so I July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

told him I’d take it to Marvel instead.” Upon his arrival at Marvel Comics on June 19, 1984, Carbonaro learned that Archie Goodwin of Marvel Comics was interested in licensing T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents for the Epic Comics line, which Goodwin edited. Goodwin had been contacted by Singer, who claimed sole ownership of the property. Carbonaro said, “[Marvel] told me David Singer had been there a few days ago, and [they] showed me a copy of what he showed them, half of a letter of intent, not earmarking the payment he would have to make,” Carbonaro claimed. “He told them that this letter of intent was a contract (which by law it’s not, it was just intent to contract). It was also to help David get investors’ money to form a company.” “Marvel, being cautious, said to clear up the legal differences between David and I, and then come back,” Carbonaro continued. “They wanted to license the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, and incorporate them into Marvel’s world.”

Public Domain The relationship between the two men had, needless to say, completely dissolved. Matters were further complicated when, in November of 1984, Singer’s Deluxe Comics began publication of Wally Wood’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, featuring work by the likes of Steve Englehart, George Pérez, and Keith Giffen. At that time, Singer claimed that T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents had been in the public domain since Tower hadn’t correctly copyrighted the series in its original incarnation. In order for material to be properly copyrighted, the publisher must include, somewhere in the publication: the © symbol, the word “copyright,” year of publication, and copyright holder. While

Above: Mark Texeira’s painting graces the cover to the first T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents revival, JCP Features #1, Dec. 1981, a b-&-w magazine.

Below: Keith Giffen art for a Deluxe Comics house ad, showing the unaltered George Pérez cover for Wally Wood’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #3. Note that in the final version, Menthor was replaced by another character. Courtesy of Brian C. Boerner, the art director for the Deluxe Comics run.

101

Above: Covers to the various T-Agents revivals of the 1980s. Courtesy of John Morrow. Below: Stan Drake drew his first super-female ever with this Iron Maiden pin-up from 1983. Courtesy of John Carbonaro.

the first issue of Tower’s original 1965 T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents book did include these elements on the cover, subsequent issues did not. If not properly copyrighted, material becomes public domain, and is not owned by anyone. The paperback reprints of different T.H.U.N.D.E.R. stories in 1966 did contain the proper elements. However, once something reverts to the public domain, it cannot be renewed for copyright. “I think [Singer] believed he was right,” the late legal expert and comic book historian Rich Morrissey said. “I think he had a good claim to them, with the idea that they’d fallen into the public domain. Some works, even involving copyrighted and trademarked characters whose owners have let them go, have fallen into the public domain—the most notorious example being the Fleisher Superman cartoons, because Paramount and its successor never bothered to renew the copyright. Even though DC still owns the trademark to Superman, the cartoons themselves are in the public domain. At that time no one, including BelmontTower, was particularly interested in keeping the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents copyright or trademark. The trademark was completely lost, because a trademark expires once it’s not used.” While Carbonaro, who was then working as a sales clerk at a Texas comics shop, filed a copyright for the Agents on September 13, 1984, it most likely would not have affected the public domain status of the characters; once something falls in the public domain, it cannot be copyrighted. “John and I both knew that the characters were in the public domain because Tower neglected to put copyright, trademark or registration notices on their comics,” Singer said in Comics Interview #20 (February 1985). In a press release preceding his T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents book, Singer claimed that “All God’s Chillun’ got the rights to publish them!!!” The press release prompted Carbonaro to contact then Comics Buyer’s Guide editor, the late Don Thompson, claiming CBG was a party to a libel suit for printing the release. However, Singer himself had earlier written an article promoting the JC Productions 102

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents in Amazing Heroes #8 (February 1982), where he claimed “John [Carbonaro] obtained the rights to all of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. characters,” though Singer later claimed, in TCJ #101, that he “fibbed. I knew John didn’t have the rights—the article was just publicity and hype.” Singer soon attempted to option T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents for film. According to Carbonaro, it was Singer’s attempt to break into Hollywood. While Singer could not have necessarily owned the sole exclusive copyright on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, he could lay claim to any storylines or characters created by Deluxe Comics, and have solely optioned those. For example (given that T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents were public domain), Singer could not license the Wally Wood-produced version of the characters, but could license the versions and storylines produced under his Deluxe Comics banner. “I think it’s remarkable that a man who claims they were public domain claims he has a right to option them himself,” Carbonaro said. “What he did during the lawsuit was ask me to join him at a meeting with Michael Uslan and Ben Melniker of Batfilm productions, [who] later on… did the Batman movie. Singer wanted them to go ahead with the [T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents] movie, and there were two things about that: He wanted a winner-take-all situation, so that if his lawyers were better than my lawyers, he would have a major motion picture. Also, I noticed that in the contract he had with them, he would get some type of producer credit, so that he could get entry into Hollywood. Here’s a guy taking what I believe to be my property morally and legally—I bought it—and shamefully using it, even though he said it was public domain, and getting entry into Hollywood while taking less money that would have gone to the investors.” Meanwhile, the Deluxe Comics’ Wally Wood’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents comic book attracted established writers and artists through the higher-than-average page rates, rates that Carbonaro speculates were around $400-$500, capital apparently found from Singer’s investors. “Basically, David just called,” artist George Pérez remembered. “I had done a cover or something for [Singer’s Comic Times]… I obviously was a favorite [artist] of his, and when he was putting together the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, he called me and offered a surprisingly hefty amount to work on it.” “I know that [Singer] was putting together his version of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents,” writer Steve Englehart said. “I thought they were the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents at the time, and I didn’t know there were competing claims over it. He wanted me to write the main strip. I was glad to do it, because I had bought the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents stuff back in its original incarnation, and I had known Wally Wood.” (Englehart would depart Deluxe after working on two stories, citing “creative differences” with Singer.) “I had just set up a studio with Pat Broderick and Mike Machlan,” artist Jerry Ordway recalled. “We started getting bombarded with requests from David Singer, who’d wanted me to do T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. I’d heard he was paying double rates, and COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

really insane money. It wasn’t the right time, and I didn’t feel right about it. I guess I’d also heard that there was some dispute over the rights. I did [a] pin-up and thought about it. He kept asking me, and I finally agreed about two years later to do a T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. At that point, I think I’d read something to indicate that they may have been in public domain. It’s still kind of foggy for me. It was definitely a weird situation. It may have been one of the last issues of the book.” Carbonaro’s response to Singer’s version came in the form of threats of legal action to Singer and a variety of parties, through his legal firm of Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander and Ferdon. Upon publication of the initial press release, Carbonaro apparently threatened the aforementioned Comics Buyer’s Guide, writer David Campiti for an unpublished Singer interview from 1984 (for remarks made by Singer against Carbonaro), and even Futurians artist Dave Cockrum (in regards to Cockrum’s publishing through Deluxe). CBG and Cockrum were not mentioned in the eventual suit. Singer was being sued for over $450,000 in damages in the lawsuit. According to Singer, he had offered to settle with Carbonaro five times, all of which were rejected. Carbonaro’s most effective legal action came when he included comics distributors Glenwood, Capital City, and Comics Unlimited in his lawsuit, causing all three (with Glenwood and Capital City then the two largest) to drop Wally Wood’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, eliminating effective distribution for the book. Both Glenwood and Capital filed suits against Singer for misrepresentation, which only added to the $450,000 Carbonaro was suing for in his lawsuit. Reportedly, serving the initial legal documents to Singer on December 7, 1984 proved somewhat difficult. According to a Comics Journal article, Wellington Reed delivered the papers to the residence Singer shared with his mother, Ellen, who refused to take the papers. Upon a second try, Reed waited for Ellen Singer to answer the door, and then dropped the papers in the apartment and left. Reed said, in a written affidavit, that he stopped around the corner of the hallway and heard Singer’s mother, who had picked the papers up, say “‘Damn! What the hell has David gotten himself into now?’” David Singer responded to the TCJ report in a letter published in TCJ #101, where he claimed that he not only didn’t reside with his parents, but also that his mother didn’t utter the attributed quote. Interestingly enough, while Singer claimed to live apart from his parents, TCJ news editor Tom Heintjes replied, “I have called a phone number you gave me as your home phone, and I spoke to your mother, leaving a message… afterward, you called me.” Further complicating matters was the location of Deluxe’s office, which Singer would not divulge, claiming to be “afraid that John Carbonaro might break in and trash the artwork with a fire axe.” With a mailing address of Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, the phone number contained a 718 area code, which indicated Brooklyn, Queens or Staten Island. Meanwhile, Deluxe Comics’ Wally Wood’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents continued publication, spawning one issue of a spin-off, titled July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

Tales of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. in 1985. Deluxe’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. was to only last five issues (ending with an October 1986 cover date). The imprint would cease publication of the title due to the legal action coupled with distributors’ refusal to carry the title, which may explain the two-year period over which the few issues of the book came out. “I thought it was a nice book, and a nice package,” Englehart said. “I thought with Keith Giffen and Steve Ditko and George Pérez, he put together a nice group of people. He clearly went to press before he had all his legal ducks in a row, but I don’t think he had all his financial ducks in a row either, so that he ran short on money and had to divert it into [the lawsuit], but I think the package that he put together was pretty nice. “The biggest problem with it (and I can’t say the people who worked on it didn’t love the characters) was that, based on what Singer was offering as far as incentives,

Below: The characters also guest-starred in Justice Machine Annual #1, 1983. Cover art by Mike Golden and Mike Gustovitch. Courtesy of John Carbonaro.

103

he was somebody who apparently had the cash in hand and was willing to go out and get the best guys,” Ordway surmised. “I don’t know if that translated into the comics. It seemed like you’re paying $5,000,000 to each player on a baseball team but still can’t win a pennant. You’ve got the great talent, but it somehow doesn’t quite gel. With the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, you’ve got to have that love of the characters. With the other stuff going on, I think it was kind of missing. “I make my living at this, so I certainly understand not wanting to work for free. I think part of the problem was Above: One of the odder incarnations of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. that getting the Agents was this 1987 one-shot, simply titled superstar line-up T.H.U.N.D.E.R., by Michael Sawyer and James E. Lyle. wasn’t necessarily Courtesy of John Morrow. Art ©2001 Works Associates. the best thing. Even if he’d had a steady team of people, he’d have a chance to develop something on that book. I know Pérez and Giffen worked on it… but there was no identity to it. The original line had Wally Wood as a unifying force, but this one didn’t have that one strong anchor.” George Pérez, who left partway through the run, admitted, “Even though David Singer was paying me more money than either Marvel or DC were per page, there was still a commitment that I had to characters I was more in tune with. I think it was one of the first times I realized that I made the mistake I continue doing: of picking up projects more for money than actual desire. Even though I was interested in the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, from looking at back issues, I didn’t have the same love for the characters by growing up with them that I had for the characters I was more interested in doing. It didn’t work out for a myriad of reasons: I really can’t do a book for the cash, I’ve got to have a real interest in it, or my work suffers. I think my work suffered because The Raven character, of all the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents I could’ve done, didn’t do it for me.” Singer’s solution to distributors’ not carrying Deluxe titles was to couple Deluxe into both Singer Publishing and Lodestone Publishing. Lodestone was created for Singer to publish the non-T.H.U.N.D.E.R. titles, such as Codename: Danger and Dave Cockrum’s The Futurians without the restrictions legally hoisted upon the Deluxe Comics banner. In a letter to TCJ, Singer denied any such connection: “Lodestone Publishing, Inc., is a New York State corporation with no legal, financial, or political connections to Singer Publishing Co., Inc..” In that same TCJ, Bob Sodaro, a friend of Singer’s, published an inter-office memo between David Singer, President of Deluxe Comics, to David Singer, President of Lodestone Publishing, Inc., leasing office space for $1000 to Lodestone, commencing April 1, 1985. An interesting footnote came in the form of a letter from Brian Boerner in the September 1986 issue of TCJ. In it, he claimed that Singer had 1570 East 14th Street, Apartment 6-K listed as his residence, the same address as the Lodestone Publishing offices on the reprinted memo. Lodestone’s offices would have been right across the street from Singer’s parents’ residence, where he claimed he did not live anymore. Above that, Lodestone was charging the investors $1000 for office space; deducting what Boerner claims was under $500 rent for the apartment would leave an unaccounted-for $500. Shortly after the establishment of Lodestone, things continued to take an even more bizarre turn for the case, not so much in the courtroom, but in the pages of trade and fan magazines, The Comics Journal in particular. The announcement of Deluxe Comics’ placing of Wally Wood’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. 104

Agents on hiatus in 1985 coincided with two press releases, which promised a series of false upcoming projects by Deluxe. The first press release, photocopied on a Deluxe Comics letterhead, promised a flurry of “creator-owned” properties by popular names in comics. The list in the press release promised new books by Dave and Paty Cockrum, George Peréz, Steve Ditko, Keith Giffen, Jerry Ordway, Bill Sienkiewicz, Walt Simonson, Brian Bolland, and others, such as Howard Chaykin and Gil Kane. The releases, sent out to such magazines as Amazing Heroes and Comics Buyer’s Guide, went unprinted, as editors doubted their validity. The artists listed denied ever having any intention of working for Deluxe. Singer and his editor Ed Laufer told The Comics Journal that they suspected Bob Sodaro, who was also a friend of Carbonaro’s and lived in New York, to be responsible for the false releases. “The guy who did that has initials of B.S.,” Laufer was quoted as saying. “I’ll fix his wagon.” The second press release, received exactly a week later, offered more specifics for the fictitious projects, linking the artists and writers with titles to their books. Singer responded to TCJ, denied ever suspecting Sodaro of the press releases, and claimed that Laufer made his comments while not with Deluxe. The writer of the news piece, Tom Heintjes, quoted from his notes that Singer had said, “Our prime suspect is Bob Sodaro,” and also stated that Laufer was interviewed while working for Deluxe, thereby making him an official representative of the company. Laufer later issued an apology to Sodaro. Sodaro responded through TCJ in a letter and stated that around January of 1985, Carbonaro had received a letter stating that Carbonaro’s lawyers were not dealing in good faith. The letter had Laufer’s name typed at the bottom, and was signed “Ed.” Also, Barry Werbin, Carbonaro’s attorney, was apparently called by someone who identified himself as Laufer, and claimed that Sodaro had been harassing he and Singer. According to Sodaro, “Singer later admitted (in front of witnesses) to both transgressions.” More false Lodestone projects were announced in Comics Buyer’s Guide, this time in the form of an advertisement that promised The Next Man, a book by writer Roger McKenzie (without artist Vince Argondezzi), as well as The Mime, a book by McKenzie and artist Paul Smith. Singer uncharacteristically didn’t comment, but the creators mentioned all expressed distaste at the advertisement. “Dave and I never discussed it, and I can guarantee that I won’t be working on it,” artist Paul Smith said at the time. Smith had drawn one issue of Lodestone’s Codename: Danger. Another artist who had a bad experience relating to Danger was Ordway. “I did an issue of Codename: Danger, and was left holding the bag,” Ordway said. “I never got paid for it, and I did 22 pages. I got some of the pages back because Al Gordon was inking it and had possession of the pages. [Singer] just disappeared. I had a lot of animosity. It’s water under the bridge right now, but I think he may have been someone who had more enthusiasm than business sense. He seemed to have had some source of financing, whether he was from a wealthy family or just had people with money to spend. It was sad in a way, because he certainly paid out for a couple of years. The guys at the end are the ones who always get left stiffed for the payment. Again, I have conflicted feelings, but I think he tried something, and his problem was that he was too enthusiastic and didn’t have a game plan.” Ordway, in trying to receive payment for the pages he’d drawn, tried to contact Singer the best way he knew how: Through the parents Singer had earlier denied living with and whose phone number he gave out for business. “Like me, a lot of people worked through FedEx,” Ordway said. “I remember calling this guy for my money. I used the number I had for a couple of years, and I would get his mom. I’d never get a call back. At one point, I wrote a tirade and sent it to the address, and I’m sure he got that. It was one of those deals where ‘I’m sure if I ever see you in person, I will rip your head off.’ If that ever occurred that would be a good thing for my character! It’s water under the bridge and, at the time, it was a big deal because it was money out of my pocket. Now it’s just a bad memory.” Pérez, who left before the lawsuit really affected Deluxe Comics, recalls problems with the return of his artwork: “The only thing I think was problematic for a few artists was the return of the artwork; with everything else going down, getting the artwork back was a challenge. I’m thankful to Keith Giffen, who had gone into the offices at one point, saw my artwork there and realized ‘That’s George Pérez’s property,’ and took it himself, daring anyone to stop him.” With his 1987 victory over Singer and Deluxe, Carbonaro was awarded the copyright on all Deluxe Comics T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents material, plus backstock. Singer has not been seen or heard from in the comic book industry since. According to “The Resplendent Sound of T.H.U.N.D.E.R.!,” an article written by Bob Sodaro and printed in Comics Value Annual 1999, and posted on Carbonaro’s Website, Carbonaro’s lawsuit against Singer (“who imagined himself a junior-grade Stan Lee,” according to the article) asserted that Tower’s original copyright was “valid and legally binding,” that Carbonaro is now the “legitimate and legal holder of those rights,” and that “Deluxe was in violation of Federal Copyright & Trademark laws.” “I would need to read the decision,” Morrissey said when asked about the verdict. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

Above: The most recent appearance of our heroes was in OMNI Comix #3, the Penthouse comix magazine. The ish featured a story by George Caragonne, Paul Gulacy and Terry Austin. ©1995 Penthouse International, Ltd.

“I’ve talked to other fans and legal experts, most notably Bob Ingersoll, and he wasn’t sure. Carbonaro had been going around saying, ‘This proves that I own the rights,’ but I’m not absolutely convinced that they did not go into public domain. The rule is usually that once something goes into public domain, it stays there; you can’t re-copyright it. If something was copyrighted now, the current laws are more willing to ignore relative trivialities, as far as copyrights are concerned. It doesn’t even require that you necessarily send copies to the registrar of copyrights. A single issue could suffice as sufficient for copyright. The [law] that existed before 1978, which is the one that applied to the original Tower comics was a lot stricter: it required that the copyright notice appear on every issue, and it didn’t.”

Hotel in Times Square, New York. He was too inexperienced to do the job and to deal with the day-to-day dealings of a corporate giant. Many took advantage of that inexperience. George's full story will come to light one day, when you least expect it.” Since Caragonne had licensed the rights from Carbonaro and, in turn, to Penthouse, the rights would stand to revert to Carbonaro. Penthouse, having paid what Gulacy has referred to as an “exorbitant” page rate, was hesitant to lose the job. “[Penthouse/Omni] contacted me and said ‘Either sign this contract, or we will deface the artwork to look like different characters and publish it anyhow,’” Carbonaro said. “We signed a contract where they were to do five issues and a trade paperback. They did one issue, Omni Comix #3.” The rights have once again reverted back to Carbonaro, who claims he is “still seeking payment for the minimum amount promised” from Penthouse. After Penthouse Comics folded, Carbonaro got hold of the artwork. Paul Gulacy claims that, after repeatedly trying to contact Carbonaro in regards to getting the artwork, he had a lawyer e-mail Carbonaro. The artwork was returned to Gulacy around March to April of 2001, after Carbonaro had apparently made scans of the artwork for when he may sell the rights to T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents once more. Currently, Carbonaro is still trying to find a home for T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. “It’s not that I need an artist to work on it, as much as I need to look for a home,” Carbonaro said. “Let somebody else handle the administration, and I’ll consult with them and help put it together. I’d rather it find a home like Marvel or somebody big like that, or even AmeriComics, if they were interested.”

With the lawsuit settled, Carbonaro shopped The Below: So many contemporary artists sent us in samples of unpublished T-Agents work, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents around to difwe’re ashamed to be only able to fit this unpublished Paul Gulacy/Terry Austin page. Our apologies and thanks to all who sent stuff in. Art ©2001 Paul Gulacy & Terry Austin. ferent companies, ultimately ending up with Constant Developments, Inc., run by George Caragonne, who, upon purchasing the rights to the Agents, shopped it around in turn, trying to find a publisher. Len Brown, co-creator of Dynamo, was ironically working for Topps Comics at the time Caragonne approached them. “We felt they wanted more money than we thought they should get,” Brown recalled of meeting with Caragonne. “I’m not saying we were right and they were wrong. In those days there were a lot of comics being made into movies. It broke down about what would happen if there were to be a movie, and what Topps’ share would be in it. If we were going to be publishing the books, we felt we should have a share in it. One of the philosophies about Topps going into the comics business, was that we felt we could develop properties that would then go to Hollywood, and toys would come out, all the good stuff that was then happening with the DC line.” Eventually, Caragonne found a home with the Penthouse magazine line of adult comix, a line he helped to launch. “He negotiated with Harvey and it didn’t work out, and then he negotiated with Penthouse,” Carbonaro retraced Caragonne’s steps. “[They] wanted to use the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents marketing plan for Penthouse Comics, to which he said ‘Sure,’ and they paid him a fair amount of profits.” Caragonne, who artist Paul Gulacy described as an “energetic big guy, who loved attention” and was “jovial,” worked with other writers on the Gulacy and Terry Austin drawn T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents stories. Penciler Paris Cullins came in to cover for Gulacy for one issue. Dave Elliott, Penthouse Comix editor, explained who George Caragonne was and his eventual fate: “George Caragonne was a comic writer who after years of frustration working on toy tie-ins and Nintendo-licensed work for Marvel and Valiant pitched the idea of a sex comic to Penthouse. Bob Guccione loved the idea and liked George so much he gave him carté blanche to do what he wanted (his downfall). “One of George's dreams was to do a T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents comic. It was never intended to appear in Penthouse Comix and its one appearance, after George's death, appeared in Omni Comix #3 (its last issue). Only the first issue of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents was used. Three others were finished and a fourth was penciled as well as an issue #0. Paul Gulacy did most of the pencils, with inks by Terry Austin. George wrote them all. “The story as to why George killed himself is long and complicated. As f*cked up as he was when he died, he started out a nice and decent guy. He was always a kid at heart. His mistakes were always the result of his naivete. I don't think there's a short, one sentence reason for him killing himself. I like to think of it this way: The world was killing George so he decided to get off. “The facts: He committed suicide on July 20, 1995. Two days after being fired from his job at Penthouse, he threw himself off the 42nd Floor of the Marriott Marquee

July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

105

Drawing Inspiration

Thunderstruck! A portfolio of cartoonist tributes to the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents hens Jay Step

John Backderf James Kochalka As with our 1960s Charlton Comics retrospective (#9), CBA correspondent CHRISTOPHER IRVING was all over this issue! (In fact, Ye Ed is so impressed with the writer’s enthusiasm and determination, we’ve asked Chris to officially join ranks as our newest bona fide Associate Editor!) Not only did he chronicle the birth, rise, fall, and afterlife of Tower Comics and the beloved T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, but somehow he got this crazy idea to ask a bunch of contemporary cartoonists—all known for their decidedly non-super-hero work—if they’d like to render their own versions of Woody & Company’s great characters. And, even wonkier, most of ’em accepted! Kewl idea, Irving! Have yourself a cookie! For those hopelessly mired in the ’60s, here’s a quick bio section on our esteemed contributors: JAY STEPHENS, crackerjack cartoonist of Sin, Land of Nod, and Atomic City Tales also has a career in animation, creating the Jetcat shorts for Nickelodeon’s excellent Kablam! TV show. JAMES KOCHALKA is perhaps best known for his series of Magic Boy stories, the mini-comic James Kochalka Superstar, and the recent lauded Top Shelf book, Monkey vs. Robot. JOHN BACKDERF’s widely-read comic panel “The City” appears weekly in 60 publication across the land, including the Village Voice. (Contact John at www.derfcity.com). BILL WRAY is a cartoonist/animator regarded for his Big Blown Baby, Hellboy Junior, the strip “Monroe” in Mad magazine, and director of numerous Ren & Stimpy episodes. DEAN HASPIEL rocks the house with his wild Billy Dogma stories and look for his auto-bio-stories in The Opposable Thumb due in July, and please call him Dino. Thanks to Chris and all these participants! 106

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

Dean Haspiel

Bill Wray

July 2001

Jay Stephens

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

107

Closing Scenario

Don’t Look Back in Anger A fictional surmise of an imagined 1969 Ditko-Wood meeting Below: Totally out of the blue, cat yronwode, renowned “Fit To Print” columnist, Eclipse co-publisher, and Eisner expert, sent CBA a pile o’ rare material from her vaults. You go, cat! Amongst the goodies was this stat of Steve Ditko’s pencils for the cover of John Carbonaro’s Hall of Fame #2.

108

by Blake Bell “Calm down, Woody… stop bouncing… off the walls,” begs the broken breaths of the wheezing man. In the doorway he teeters, propped up only by the studio’s door handle. Wally slams shut a drawer to his filing cabinet before noting his visitor’s presence. “Jeez, I’m in better shape than you, Steve. I’ll be wearing an oxygen mask in a minute, if you’re gonna suck the air out of the room like that.”

Steve glances back down the five flights of stairs leading up from the entrance facing out onto West 76th Street. Wiping his brow, he withholds his comments concerning the perilously narrow stairs, so as not to agitate his friend any further. Any movement by Steve towards the middle of the room brings down mounds of dust upon his shirt. The model airplanes hanging from the ceiling are caked in a coating that suggests abandonment. “Where are all the grunts?” comments Steve. “They haven’t been here for days,” says Wally, shaking his hand vigorously in the direction of the window facing across the street to Central Park. With his back still facing him, Steve notes in Woody’s response a hint of seething desperation unheard to his ears since ’65. “There’s enough paper on the floor for a Yankees’ ticker-tape parade, Woody,” says Steve pointing verbally at the overflowing trashcan beside Wally’s drawing table. “What demands such perfection from you this time, my friend?” The comment finally stops Wally’s pacing, as Steve knew it would. Wally makes the slow walk to his chair, slumping into same, a sigh of air releasing from the foundation. Supporting himself with the legs of his desk, Wally speaks without glancing up, moving a piece of paper from the corner of his drafting table to the center. “It’s my obit, Steve.” Steve never knows exactly the depth of seriousness in moments like these with Wally. He waits to be handed this now foreboding document, but Wally just keeps rubbing his temples. “I don’t understand this,” said Steve, holding a page of text in his hand in Wally’s lettering. Wally’s tired eyes look up at Steve. Hesitating for a moment, he speaks in a weary drawl. “This is the splash page to T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #20, cover-dated November 1969—you know, like a year to the day after #19—and it says if the readers buy enough of #20, there’ll be a #21.” Steve drops the paper on the desk. Although it falls like a feather, its landing resonates like a bomb. “It’s happening, isn’t it? This is the end.” Wally pushes himself away from the table with such force his chair, and himself, fling five feet backwards against the studio wall. “It’s a damned disgrace is what it is,” finally looking up at his companion. “How the hell am I going to convince anyone to buy more when this issue is virtually a reprint book? Look at it! 48 pages and four reprint stories!” Steve stands, morose, at the edge of the table. “Well, we saw this coming for a year-and-a-half, Wally. January 1968 for #17, September for #18? A whole year between #19 and #20… ” Steve’s voice trails into the distance, the stillness only giving way by Wally suddenly leaping out of his chair. Wally paces quickly up and down the room, firing off sentences like bullets from the gun in the holster at his left side. “I begged Shorten to shore up his crappy distribution! And 25¢? 64 pages? 10 issues a year? Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” His hands moving much faster now, the words speed up. “I didn’t want to resort to the kiddie crap our ‘former employer’ was schlocking out. I mean, I killed two of the original heroes in the first seven issues! That’s reality. And when I killed villains, they stayed dead! There was real tension in that writing, no glib, web-slinging B.S.” The moment ends and Wally’s fingers are back at his temples. “I mean, it was what we always wanted, Steve. I go for a more mature audience, I have the Code’s heads spinning, killing guys left and right, and still this is how it ends.” COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

“Maybe it was the eyes I gave NoMan in #5,” says Steve, a smile erupting across his face. Wally looks up at him, bursting with laughter. “Maybe it was that dumb-ass Captain Marvel/’Excelsior’ spoof in Dynamo #2, with that SPIDER agent playing back Dynamo’s taped voice to turn off his belt!” But the joy dissipates quickly. Wally’s face immediately hardens. His movements become more disjointed, and he moves randomly across the room again. “Geez, when Shorten said he wanted me as art director, I knew he was just trying to cash in on that ‘Caped Crap-Nadre’ craze. I knew there was a newsstand glut at the time, and I knew it was low rent to him, but damn it, I had other ideas. I was going to show up our favorite phony, and we did it, Steve. We scared the crap out of them with quality, not quantity.” Wally rushes over to his set of filing cabinets. “Look at this.” Steve joins him, peering over his shoulder as he leafs through perfectly arranged files of reference and swiping material accumulated over the past 20 years. Wally pulls two comics, from the file marked Brand Echh, and shoves them at Steve’s chest. “See? You know we scared them, otherwise you wouldn’t see the ‘Hurricane Agents.’” Paging through Wally’s tattered copy of The Inferior Five #1, Steve remembers its first appearance on the stands over two years ago, and how Wally had jumped for joy when he saw it. That was only matched by the hyena-like grin of bitterness exuding from Wally’s face a few months later in the summer of 1967. The two of them had come across a copy of Not Brand Echh #2, starring the “Blunder Agents.” Steve remembered noting then Wally had reached the pinnacle of what he considered success. Wally leaves Steve holding the two books and slowly retreats back to his chair, his elbows on his drafting table, his eyes staring down at the empty surface. “There’s no hope, Steve. They told me yesterday that we’ve lost $100,000 on Tower Comics. I sold off witzend for one buck to Pearson the other day. Your “Avenging World” stories will have to pass by him.” Steve knew Tower had been crawling towards extinction. The witzend subscription money up to #8 had been spent, and #4 had just been published. Glancing over at his friend, Steve cannot shake the sensation that a step forward would always seem to involve two steps back. “Maybe I should have laid off your pencils, Steve. I mean, you were the friggin’ star attraction, just off Spider-Man. You do that great story by yourself in #6, and then every other job, I take your pencils and make them look like mine. I remember saying to one of the grunts they were my books and I could make them look anyway I wanted, but I look back and I know my inks smothered your pencils, Steve. I bitched about Not Brand Echh’s house style, and look what I did to you.” Steve, still sifting through the filing cabinets, is lost in another world he had unearthed. Staring back at him is a beaten copy of one of the first science-fiction stories Wally had drawn for EC in the early ’50s. Steve remembers picking up that issue in a dime store on 37th Street, and how it virtually changed his life. Coming back to the present, Steve turns his face to his fellow artist and observes with a frown the exasperation in Wally’s features. Steve is frozen in this moment remembering how many times he drew outer space stories at Charlton and secretly, almost subconsciously, dedicated them to whom he considered the master of the genre. Steve pulls up a chair to sit across from Wally. “You remain my favorite inker, Wally. I love the polish you give my pencils. I try and achieve the same working with Jack.” Steve leans into his weary friend. “Goodman had the distribution and especially the brand name, Wally. The brand name was made on the backs of you, me, Jack, Dick, Don—the whole lot of us—and we sanctioned it. All the inks, all the eyes on NoMan, still may have not made a single difference.” Steve pulls back and tried to hide a grin. “Plus, we all know it was you making Menthor, Raven and Weed into heroes that killed the book.” “Oh brother,” gasps a rejuvenated Wally, rolling his eyes. “If I have to hear that line again about how a villain can never turn himself around, that he has broken something that cannot be fixed, I’ll send you back to the moustache man in a box!” Another long pause leaves Wally thinking he is whispering to July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

himself. “Damn him. Why bring in an artist, slap his name on the cover of two of your books, then don’t give him the slightest bit of control or credit for his work? And don’t give me that last panel from Mysterious Suspense crap. I want that credit. It’s mine, and I earned it!” Wally stops himself, looking around the room as if he is alone. Out of the drawer to his right comes a glass, then the bottle. How unfamiliar this feeling of pity and repulsion, thinks Steve, reaching back into his memory for last time he had witnessed this. “I thought you had brought me here to talk about Tower, but it’s really over between you and Tatjana, I take it.” Wally closes the drawer, picks up a pen and starts writing again. “Oddly enough, Tower started four years ago, and that was the last time I stared into a glass. Now it’s ended, so has my marriage, and here I am again, back at the beginning, waiting for the next ending.” Moving behind his companion, Steve rests his hand on Wally’s shoulder. “My old friend, whether it’s witzend or what you’ve done at Tower, 25 years from now, some bunch of artist brats will tell Marvel to go to hell and they’ll start up their own company. I wish that was enough for you.” Steve sees Woody’s reflection in the bottle on the drawing table, warped and mangled by the glass and liquid floating inside. Woody would not turn back, but in a sobering whisper, Steve could hear him say, “Old habits die hard.”

Above: The team of Wood & Ditko certainly clicked as evidenced by this page from Dynamo #4’s Weed story, “Once Upon A Time.” Ditko’s work in the Tower titles are undiscovered gems and Ye Ed agrees with CBA pal AL GORDON’s assessment that some of the stuff is among the best work Steve ever did. Thanks to MIKE W. BARR for the above contribution.

EDITOR’S NOTE We hope you’ll forgive this indulgence of using fiction to present a possible scenario involving the demise of the Tower Comics line but we could think of no more appropriate send-off for this celebratory retrospective. Our thanks to Ditko fanatic BLAKE BELL for this experimental piece.

109

Above: And the winnah is… well, winners are, that is… SETH FRISBIE-FULTON and MAXUMI HIRTZEL, the Philadelphia, PA couple who named every character in RUSS MAHERA’s Atlas Monster Guessing Game last ish (as well as being the only readers to give it a try!). Seth tells me they had to delve into the ’70s monster reprint books to identify Klagg and the elusive Martian spy! Seth and Maxumi: Check out the TwoMorrows’ house ad elsewhere in this ish and tell us what you’d like as a grand prize! (And, confidentially, Seth: A girlfriend who digs Kirby & Ayers’ monster stories is a keeper, dude!) Congrats! Above is Russ’s character key for his quiz. ©2001 Russ Maheras. 110

continued from pg. 7 issue. I have a near complete run of Skywald magazines (not the comics), missing only Crime Machine #2, and would be glad to put together a checklist for you, complete with artist/writer credits and story titles, if it would help make this issue happen. Question for you: I subscribed a while back in answer to your call for subscribers to keep CBA going. No, I don’t mind that you’re selling the Special separately! Good for you, everyone should have a chance to read it. My problem is this: I’m thinking I’m not going to renew my subscription (though I’ll still buy every issue), for two reasons. One, they invariably arrive damaged (not your fault—it’s the L.A. postal service). But more significantly, the comic shops get copies as much as a month before I do. Sometimes (like today) I break down and buy the issue in the store when I really can’t wait to read it. I’m happy to support you guys, but… I’m getting married, so money is tight... what I’m asking is, how are you guys doing? Do you still need every subscriber to stay afloat, or are things copacetic now? If you’re still in dire straits I’ll re-subscribe, but if not, I won’t, though I’ll still be there with you every issue. [Hope you got the TCJ Hewetson article Xerox, Chris. We’re doing okay and thanks for asking. I very much appreciate your—and every reader’s— support whether you’re ordering directly from us or through the comic shops. Orders are steady, which is particularly gratifying considering the eclectic themes we’ve been featuring, so the magazine is healthy. I still need to take on outside projects (albeit through TwoMorrows—thanks, John!—such as recently designing Michael T. Gilbert’s newest Mr. Monster tome, plus I’ll be laying-out the upcoming Miracleman trade paperback Kimota! for pal George Khoury) to help make ends meet, but how can I complain? I’m privileged to work in a field I love—the study of comics—and still be able to put bread on the table. How cool is that? —Ye Ed.] Marv Wolfman Tarzana, California CBA #12 was another great issue. Charlton was, for a brief time, a truly paradoxical company, publishing a few really excellent books and many almost unreadable titles. We should be thankful that, despite rates that were several cellars below the cellar, they still managed to do some wonderful material. It’s a tribute to their editorial staff that they were able to motivate people who could have gotten far better paying jobs elsewhere. But, as with any issue filled with interviews, some mistakes have a way of crawling through. My friend, Nick Cuti, misspoke or misremembered my infamous Stephen King story when he said I had rejected King’s stories. When I was publishing my horror fanzine, Stories of Suspense, back in the mid ’60s I received a story written by Stephen King which

had been forwarded to me by Jeff Gelb who is still very active in comics history as well as an editor of several fiction anthologies. I published the story and, frankly, forgot about it. Years passed and, well, let Mr. King explain it—from his July 22, 1980 letter to me: “…it may amuse you to know that in 1972, just after I finished the first draft of Carrie, I saw that you were working for Warren (it must have been you; how many Marv Wolfmans can there be around?!): I was so desperate (some personal stuff is in this section, then) that I would have happily peddled plot ideas to Nightstand Readers or Beeline Books. And as it so happened, I respected the Warren magazines a great deal. Anyway, I wrote you a letter—which traded shamelessly on the fact that we had done a story together in our Flaming Youth—but never heard back yay or nay. Probably sent the stuff to the wrong address or something. But of the three ideas, two went along to become published stories of my own, so all was not wasted.” Of course, by the time the premises were sent to me I had left Warren and had gone over to Marvel, never having seen his story submissions. If I had I have to assume I might have bought them which would have started Mr. King on a comic book career instead of whatever it is he’s doing these days—I hear he eventually did become a writer. Anyway, as Mr. King said, I never rejected the stories. I just never saw them. Just setting the facts straight. Mike W. Barr Via the Internet Absent in CBA #12’s voluminous discussion of who bought what copyrights from Charlton is any mention of the fact that Charlton may not have actually had the right to sell those copyrights in the first place. As many readers of CBA will know, an artist (by which term is meant a creative individual—writer, penciler, inker, etc.) owns the publishing rights to anything he creates unless and until he specifically signs it away. This may be done by one all-inclusive contract for a number of jobs, or by a separate contract for each job—or both. For many years, DC and Marvel placed a contract on the back of their checks which the freelance artist had to sign to endorse the check, until it was ruled that such a release was illegal. It was then that DC, at least, instituted a system where separate contracts were required for each job. I never worked for Charlton, but I’d be willing to bet that the sole copyright language the majority of freelancers dealt with, if any, was pre-printed on the back of the checks that the freelancers were paid with. That means that, legally, those freelancers still own the work they did, and Charlton had no right to assign their own copyright to it. Charlton therefore had no right to sell those copyrights, since they didn’t own them. I know of no instance where any freelancer for Charlton ever tried to take his rights back, but it could be done, though there’s no telling what such an attempt would cause to crawl out of the legal woodwork. Therefore, the debate between John Lustig and Roger Broughton over who owns the publishing rights to First Kiss may be an answer neither of them counted on: neither of them. And while we’re discussing freelancers’ rights, since John Lustig flogs First Kiss every chance he gets, let me give him an opportunity to talk about it some more: Hey, John, what percentage of your profits from your reuse of the First Kiss material as Last Kiss goes to the artists whose work you’re reprinting? And heck, what about the original writer? Without his scripts, there would be no artwork for you to reletter. What a business. Paul Kupperberg Stamford, Connecticut A nice bit of serendipity, my reading CBA #12, “Charlton Comics of the 1970s” on today (April 3) of all days. Today’s the anniversary of my first professional sale to—who else?—the “Charlton Comics of the 1970s.” 1975, to be exact. While I was and remain a huge fan of the 1960s Dick Giordano Charlton era, I naturally have a fondness for the ‘70s stuff, and not just because they were suckers enough to buy my work. As CBA #12 showed, there was a tremendous creativity working in Derby at that time and a lot of very talented folks—”oldtimers” and newcomers alike—turning out some very cool material. And, of course, several of the people interviewed in this issue and I crossed paths, either at Charlton or later on in my career. George COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

Wildman was editor in chief at the time of my first sale, although it was the ever-charming Nick Cuti with whom I was in direct contact at the time of the sale (I still have the invoice for that first story, as well as the letter from Nick accepting the script and okaying some other plots I had sent in). And it was Mike Zeck who drew that first story of mine (a 5-pager titled “Distress,” which appeared in Scary Tales #3, Dec. 1975). Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with—either as writer or editor—a lot of the other issue’s interviewees, including the lovely and talented Joe Staton, the talented and lovely John Byrne, the gracious and talented Pete Morisi, and the just plain lovely Bob Layton. And, of course, the much missed and awesomely talented Don Newton, who drew more of my stories than I could ever have hoped for—or deserved—in Green Lantern Corps and Time Warp stories and issues of DC Comics Presents. Don was one of those rare artists who could make a script look way better than it actually was; you were too busy admiring his art to see how shabby the story may have been. A question that popped up in a couple of the interviews was: Who was Duffy Vohland? Duffy (born Everett Eugene, a constant source of embarrassment to him; his Dad nicknamed him Duffy, after the radio program “Duffy’s Tavern”) was a dear, dear friend of mine for many years. He was—as Bob Layton told you—part of the Indiana comics “mafia,” and we first “met” when he started writing for the fanzines Paul Levitz and I did in the early 1970s (The Comic Reader and Etcetera). As Bob said, Duffy was a big, lovable screw-up. Not an evil bone in his body, but a definite love for the wicked. He was a big guy with a huge reddish-blond beard—had kind of a demented Santa Claus-look thing going for him—who enjoyed a certain level of flamboyance, wearing loud shirts, bright red sweater vests, a deer-stalker cap and a huge gold-and-silver embroidered blue velvet shoulder bag. He moved to New York from Indiana in the early-’70s and settled in Brooklyn, not far from where Paul Levitz and I lived (separately, of course, but in the same neighborhood) and where TCR and Etcetera were published. Duffy worked at Marvel, starting, if memory serves me, editing FOOM. Of course, trying to put out any publication on “Duffy Time” was a hazardous undertaking and I remember many a day in the mid-’70s spent at Duffy’s apartment, ghosting articles that ran

July 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

under his byline or helping him slog through the physical production of the magazine. (As I recall, we also used to get together to write the letter column for some early Crazy magazine specials, making up bizarre letters and damn near wetting ourselves with laughter… nobody else might have thought the stuff was funny, but we were definitely amused.) Later on, he edited Marvel’s line of British weekly black & white reprint magazines, and, after that, the details become fuzzy. He wanted nothing more than to be IN COMICS, as a writer or a penciler or an inker or editor or production artist or… whatever! He was happy just being on the fringe. I think his greatest chance of success lay in inking, but he never focused long enough or hard enough on it to become good enough to ever break though. Duffy was a sweet guy who either had a great big smile on his face and a devilish twinkle in his eye… or suffered in a dark room with terrible migraine headaches. He was also diabetic, which he could have controlled through diet and by following doctor’s instructions, but my friend Duffy was a slave to his appetites and wasn’t about to give up pizza or milk shakes just because he was suffering from a potentially deadly disease. By the mid-’80s, Duffy’s health had started to fail and he was eventually hospitalized for renal failure. He’d lost a lot of weight, his kidneys had shut down… but even then, Duffy refused to follow orders and let himself get better. For all his outward jocularity, infectious chuckle and booming laughter (when Duffy laughed, the room shook and tears ran down his face), he had a dark and decidedly self-destructive side. The last time I saw him was when I visited him at St. Vincent’s hospital in New York City and wound up yelling at him because he had friends smuggling pizza and junk food in for him. A few days later—it must have been 1983 or ’84, I’m not really sure—I got the phone call. His body had just shut down and he died. Duffy was, to say the least, a character. I could go on and on with stories about him, but suffice it to say, he was a dear, sweet friend who I miss to this day. As Bob Layton said, he had an uncanny ability to piss off his friends… and an equally uncanny way of laughing his way back into your life. Since the question came up, I just thought readers of CBA should know a little more about this wacky, gentle giant of a fan. [Thanks, Paul. Stories like this make this job a pleasure.—Y.E.]

LOVE AND ROCKETEERS! Next issue is devoted to DAVE STEVENS, LOS BROS. HERNANDEZ—Jaime, Gilbert and Mario—SANDY PLUNKETT, MATT WAGNER, and DEAN MOTTER. Kind readers: Anybody got rarelyseen or previously unpublished work by these guys? Please send us photocopies and, if we use ’em, we’ll send you a free issue!—Ye Ed.

Below: As mentioned by French correspondent JEAN-DANIEL BREQUE in our letter col, GIL KANE’s strip “Jason Drum” did indeed see print in the Belgian comic magazine Tintin in the August 24, 1979 issue (#30 Belgium, #202 French). JOE STATON mentioned in CBA #12 that he did the layouts on the 15 pages which Gil tightened-up and inked. The strip was concluded in five pages by European artist Franz. Now, Joe didn’t know if the story had been printed but Ye Ed. did, having received a letter from DANIEL TESMOINGT of Belgium last August, but I forgot to share the info. Thanks to Daniel for the two beautiful pages repro’d below. Gawd, I miss Gil. ©2001 the respective copyright holder.

111

Final Assessment

My Guilty Pleasure John Hitchcock examines a friendship with Manny Stallman by John Hitchcock

Above: Manny Stallman page from The Raven in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #10. Manny told a Pasadena newspaper that “The Raven was the first comic book that fought anti-semitism hard, and that was unusual for that particular era, but I’d gotten out of World War II and gotten through this Nazi thing and all the business with the Jews that were in concentration camps. I mean, that really repelled me. And this was an opportunity to say something about that to people of an era that didn’t live through it.” JOHN HITCHCOCK is proprietor of Parts Unknown, the Greensboro, North Carolina store. 112

1985. “Hello, ahhh… could I speak to Manny Stallman, please?” “Speaking.” “Ahhh… Mr. Stallman: I got your number from Julie Schwartz and I wanted to tell you that I loved your artwork on The Raven.” “What? I’m sorry, but you are the first fan to ever call me.” That’s how my friendship with Manny Stallman started. Come to think of it, a lot of my funnybook friendships started that awkward way, but few were so rewarding. I have been a comic book fan for over 35 years and have been fortunate to meet many of my idols. “Idols” is a difficult word to use, but I always had a drive to meet and personally thank the artists that amaze, entertain and inspire me. Every comics fan from the ’60s and ’70s know of the names Eisner, Kurtzman, Williamson, Toth and Wood. All brilliant, all unique, and all the greats have one thing in common: Comic book storytelling. But when you are really into comic books, there are those guilty pleasures; the “clanky artists,” I call them. Not as slick as say Gil Kane, but still just as original and maybe as important. No artist draws or thinks alike; many border on genius, others are journeymen who work to put food on the table. My guilty pleasures are guys like Don Heck, Sam Glanzman, Pat Boyette, and Manny Stallman. Artists who got the work done. Maybe not as naturally gifted as Joe Kubert, but guys who worked very hard to get good, get published, and who showed the effort and sweat. But understand: Their efforts are rarely applauded, but they help make the business of comic books wonderfully original. That is why I love comics so. The first Manny Stallman artwork I ever saw was his stories for Warren. I could stare at the splash page for “The Invitation” for hours. Those stories were so different, so labored, and odd that many readers hated them. When I first met Archie Goodwin in 1983, I asked him about the Stallman stories, and Archie said he really respected Manny’s originality, but Stallman’s work was criticized or just ignored by fans. Soon thereafter, I made the connection with Manny’s Tower material, realizing that he wrote and drew the Raven. Most collected the Tower books for the Wally Wood and Steve Ditko artwork. Stone, Tuska, Sekowsky all were just fillers at best. But when I hit those Raven stories by Manny Stallman, I stopped dead as if I got hit in the

face with a cactus. The atmosphere of these stories was very rough and brittle, and the Raven, sporting those strange, round, heavy ball wings, was just startling. There was nothing like this in all comic book history, period! (How much noise did those wings make anyway?) Stallman created an amazing world of strange and toothy villains, line symphony women, and sound effects that just seem to stalk up on one another. Nothing like it. I do not know all about Manny’s career. I know he worked for Julie at DC drawing for Big Town and Gang Busters in the late ’40s and early ’50s, and I know he was very respected for his contributions to Will Eisner’s The Spirit. After that first phone call, we kept in touch. We called each other often and, since I was his “first fan,” he kept up with me. Manny would always call two or three times a year, just to ask questions about what was selling in my comic book store. In 1992, I got a call and he asked me why I sounded so low. I told him that one of my favorite idols just passed away—Bernie Krigstein. “Bernie died? Oh, my God! I’ve got to call his family! Oh, Lord! Sorry, I have to get off the phone!” Click. Man, how would I know Manny had been friends with Krigstein? Later that year, I was at the San Diego convention and went to a panel on Bernie Krigstein. On display was the original art for the EC stories “Catacombs” and “Master Race.” Whew! After suffering brain damage from looking at those works of genius, I sat down as the panel began, joining a couple at a table. One of them was a round, bald Jewish guy who I immediately knew to be Manny Stallman. I couldn’t believe it! I asked a question about Krigstein and Manny began to cry. I did, too. Later, Gil Kane, Julie, Will Eisner and Jack Kirby all stopped by to visit with—that’s right!—Manny Stallman! All these giants knew him well, and handshakes, hugs, and cheery talk livened up the hall. It was wonderful to see Manny receive so much affection from his peers. Manny and I then walked to the dealers rooms where I purchased a few T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents for Manny to autograph. I also recall Manny being fascinated by the Gerber Photo Journals. Pointing at the Big Town covers, Manny exclaimed, “Look, John! I did that cover, and that, and that one!” The “clanky” guys obviously do more work than fanboys ever realize. A lot more. A little later, we went to eat dinner—Italian—and talked the night away. We didn’t just discuss comics; all Manny wanted to ask about was me—my job, education, family, health… I was totally amazed that he was so interested, so curious and caring. I asked him about The Raven and Manny explained that it was his way of fighting anti-semitism and prejudice. Appealing to the young, The Raven could clearly show right and wrong. Being of the Jewish faith, Manny lost a lot of family and friends in the Holocaust, and he wanted to illustrate a caring, loving society. That is also what he was doing with the giveaway comics he wrote and drew, The Adventures of Big Boy and Baskie & Robin. He was a small voice but I’m sure many children heard. Manny was a short, bald, beer-keg of a man with a soft, highpitched voice, very kind and childlike. I was very lucky to have known him. In his last years, Manny was having a lot of health problems, but he talked constantly about finding a new way for comic books to help children learn to read. I wish I could’ve seen what he was working on. During the last phone call from Manny, he asked me for my store’s new mailing address, so I rattled it off. But the artist stopped me and said, “Sorry, John, but I’ve had a stroke and I can’t write that fast. So, slow down.” And he laughed. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

July 2001

SAVE

WHE % OR N YOU SUMMER 2013 ONLDER INE! THE BEST IN COMICS ® & LEGO PUBLICATIONS!

ORDER ONLINE AT: www.twomorrows.com

KIRBY COLLECTOR #61

ALTER EGO #118

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #1 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #2

BRICKJOURNAL #24

Former COMIC BOOK ARTIST editor JON B. COOKE returns to TwoMorrows with his new magazine! #1 features: An investigation of the treatment JACK KIRBY endured throughout his career, ALEX ROSS and KURT BUSIEK interviews, FRANK ROBBINS spotlight, remembering LES DANIELS, WILL EISNER’s Valentines to his beloved, a talk between NEAL ADAMS and DENNIS O’NEIL, new ALEX ROSS cover, and more!

JOE KUBERT double-size Summer Special tribute issue! Comprehensive examinations of each facet of Joe’s career, from Golden Age artist and 3-D comics pioneer, to top Tarzan artist, editor, and founder of the Kubert School. Kubert interviews, rare art and artifacts, testimonials, remembrances, portraits, anecdotes, pin-ups and miniinterviews by faculty, students, fans, friends and family! Edited by JON B. COOKE.

LEGO TRAINS! Builder CALE LEIPHART shows how to get started building trains and train layouts, with instructions on building microscale trains by editor JOE MENO, building layouts with the members of the Pennsylvania LEGO Users Group (PennLUG), fan-built LEGO monorails minifigure customization by JARED BURKS, microscale building by CHRISTOPHER DECK, “You Can Build It”, and more!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Now shipping!

(164-page FULL-COLOR mag) $17.95 (Digital Edition) $6.95 • Ships July 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships May 2013

ALTER EGO #119

ALTER EGO #120

ALTER EGO #121

JACK KIRBY: WRITER! Examines quirks of Kirby’s wordsmithing, from the FOURTH WORLD to ROMANCE and beyond! Lengthy Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER and other columnists, LARRY LIEBER’s scripting for Jack at 1960s Marvel Comics, RAY ZONE on 3-D work with Kirby, comparing STEVE GERBER’s Destroyer Duck scripts to Jack’s pencils, Kirby’s best promo blurbs, Kirby pencil art gallery, & more!

AVENGERS 50th ANNIVERSARY! WILL MURRAY on the group’s behind-thescenes origin, a look at its first decade with ROY THOMAS, STAN LEE, JACK KIRBY, THE BROTHERS BUSCEMA, TUSKA, ADAMS, COLAN, BUCKLER, ENGLEHART, MERRY MARVEL MARCHING SOCIETY, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, FCA, Golden Age Blue Beetle artist E.C. STONER, unused Avengers cover by DON HECK!

MARC SWAYZE TRIBUTE ISSUE, spotlighting FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America)! Salutes from Fawcett alumnus C.C. BECK and OTTO BINDER, interview with wife JUNE SWAYZE, a full Phantom Eagle story from Wow Comics, plus interview with 1950s Dell/Western artist MEL KEEFER, MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and a SWAYZE Marvel Family cover art from the 1940s!

X-MEN SALUTE! 1963-69 secrets, rare ‘60s BRAZILIAN X-MEN stories, lost ‘60s XMen “character sheet” by STAN LEE, ROY THOMAS on the 1970s revival, art and artifacts by KIRBY, ROTH, ADAMS, HECK, FRIEDRICH, and BUSCEMA—plus the MARVELMANIA fan club story, interview with Golden Age writer ED SILVERMAN, FCA, Mr. Monster, BILL SCHELLY, and JACK KIRBY’s unused X-Men #10 cover!

GOLDEN AGE JUSTICE SOCIETY ISSUE! Features on JOHN B. WENTWORTH (Johnny Thunder), LEN SANSONE (The Atom), and BERNARD SACHS (All-Star Comics inker), art by CARMINE INFANTINO, PAUL REINMAN, MART NODELL, STAN ASCHMEIER, BEN FLINTON, and H.G. PETER, plus FCA, Mr. Monster, and more! Cover homage by SHANE FOLEY to a vintage All-Star image by IRWIN HASEN!

(104-page magazine with COLOR) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships June 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships June 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships July 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships August 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Oct. 2013

DRAW! #25

BACK ISSUE #65

BACK ISSUE #66

BACK ISSUE #67

BACK ISSUE #68

LEE WEEKS (Daredevil, Incredible Hulk) gives insight into the artform, YILDIRAY ÇINAR (Noble Causes, Fury of the Firestorms) interview and demo, inker JOE RUBINSTEIN shows how he works, “Comic Art Bootcamp” with MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, “Rough Critique” of a newcomer by BOB McLEOD, and “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies and software! Mature readers only.

“Bronze Age B-Teams”! Defenders issue-byissue overview, Champions, Guardians of the Galaxy, Inhumans, PETER DAVID’s X-Factor, Teen Titans West, Legion of Substitute Heroes, an all-star chatfest of Doom Patrol interviews, plus art and commentary by ROSS ANDRU, SAL BUSCEMA, KEITH GIFFEN, TONY ISABELLA, PAUL KUPPERBERG, ERIK LARSEN, GEORGE PÉREZ, BOB ROZAKIS, cover by KEVIN NOWLAN.

“Bronze Age Team-Ups”! Marvel Team-Up and Two-in-One, Super-Villain Team-Up, CLAREMONT and SIMONSON’s X-Men/New Teen Titans, DC Comics Presents, SuperTeam Family, HANEY and APARO’s Batman of Earth-B(&B), Superman/Captain Marvel smackdowns, plus art and commentary by BUCKLER, ENGLEHART, GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, GIFFEN, LEVITZ, WEIN, and a classic GIL KANE cover inked anew by TERRY AUSTIN.

“Heroes Out of Time!” Batman: Gotham by Gaslight with MIGNOLA, WAID, and AUGUSTYN, Booster Gold with JURGENS, X-Men: Days of Future Past with CHRIS CLAREMONT, Bill & Ted with EVAN DORKIN, interview with P. CRAIG RUSSELL, “Pro2Pro” with Time Masters’ BOB WAYNE and LEWIS SHINER, Karate Kid, New Mutants: Asgardian Wars, and Kang. Mignola cover.

“1970s and ‘80s Legion of Super-Heroes!” LEVITZ interview, the Legion’s Honored Dead, the Cosmic Boy miniseries, a Time Trapper history, the New Adventures of Superboy, Legion fantasy cover gallery by JOHN WATSON, plus BATES, COCKRUM, CONWAY, COLON, GIFFEN, GRELL, JANES, KUPPERBERG, LaROCQUE, LIGHTLE, SCHAFFENBERGER, SHERMAN, STATON, SWAN, WAID, & more! COCKRUM cover!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships July 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships June 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships July 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships August 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Sept. 2013

Ambitious new series documenting each decade of comic book history!

AMERICAN COMIC BOOK CHRONICLES: 1960-64 & The 1980s

JOHN WELLS covers comics in the 1960-64 JFK and Beatles era: DC’s new GREEN LANTERN, JUSTICE LEAGUE and multiple earths! LEE and KIRBY at Marvel on FF, SPIDER-MAN, HULK, and X-MEN! BATMAN’s “new look”, Charlton’s BLUE BEETLE, CREEPY #1 & more!

MODERN MASTERS: CLIFF CHIANG

Spotlights the career of CLIFF CHIANG (artist of DC’s New 52 breakout hit WONDER WOMAN series) through a career-spanning interview, and loads of both iconic and rarely seen artwork from Cliff’s personal files. There’s also an in-depth look into the artist’s work process, and an extensive gallery of commissioned pieces, many in full-color. By CHRIS ARRANT and ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON.

1960-64: (224-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 (Digital Edition) $11.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-045-8 • Out now! 1980s: (288-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $41.95 (Digital Edition) $12.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-046-5 • Out now!

(192-page trade paperback with COLOR) $27.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-051-9 • (Digital Edition) $8.95 • Ships July 2013

(120-page trade paperback with COLOR) $15.95 (Digital Editions) $4.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-050-2 Ships May 2013

THE STAR*REACH COMPANION

Complete history of the influential 1970s independent comic, featuring work by and interviews with DAVE STEVENS, FRANK BRUNNER, HOWARD CHAYKIN, STEVE LEIALOHA, WALTER SIMONSON, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, KEN STEACY, JOHN WORKMAN, MIKE VOSBURG, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, DAVE SIM, MICHAEL GILBERT, and many others, plus full stories from STAR*REACH and its sister magazine IMAGINE. Cover by CHAYKIN! MATURE READERS ONLY.

KEITH DALLAS documents comics’ 1980s Reagan years: Rise and fall of JIM SHOOTER, FRANK MILLER as comic book superstar, DC’s CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, MOORE and GAIMAN’s British invasion, ECLIPSE, PACIFIC, FIRST, COMICO, DARK HORSE and more!

DAN SPIEGLE: A LIFE IN COMIC ART

PLUGGED IN!

COMICS PROS IN THE VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY

Documents his 60-year career on DELL and GOLD KEY’S licensed TV and Movie adaptions (LOST IN SPACE, KORAK, MAGNUS ROBOT FIGHTER, MIGHTY SAMPSON), at DC COMICS (BATMAN, UNKNOWN SOLDIER, TOMAHAWK, JONAH HEX, TEEN TITANS, BLACKHAWK), his CROSSFIRE series for ECLIPSE, DARK HORSE’S INDIANA JONES series and more, with rare artwork, personal photos, and private commission drawings. Written by JOHN COATES.

Offers invaluable tips for anyone entering the Video Game field, or with a fascination for both comics and gaming. KEITH VERONESE interviews artists and writers who work in video games full-time: JIMMY PALMIOTTI, CHRIS BACHALO, MIKE DEODATO, RICK REMENDER, TRENT KANIUGA, and others. Whether you’re a noob or experienced gamer or comics fan, be sure to get PLUGGED IN!

(160-page trade paperback) $19.95 • (Digital Edition) $6.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-048-9 • Ships May 2013

(104-page trade paperback) $14.95 • (Digital Edition) $4.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-049-6 • Ships May 2013

(128-page trade paperback with COLOR) $16.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-047-2 • (Digital Edition) $5.95 • Now shipping!

SUBSCRIBE! • Digital Editions: 3.95 each, or save with a digital subscription (digital editions are included FREE with a print subscription)! • Back Issue, Draw, Alter Ego & Comic Book Collector are now all full-color! • Lower international shipping rates! $

2013 SUBSCRIPTION RATES: (with FREE Digital Editions)

Media Mail

1st Class Canada 1st Class Priority US Intl. Intl.

Digital Only

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR (4 issues)

$50

$68

$65

$72

$150

$15.80

BACK ISSUE! (8 issues)

$60

$80

$85

$107

$155

$23.60

DRAW! (4 issues)

$30

$40

$43

$54

$78

$11.80

ALTER EGO (8 issues)

$60

$80

$85

$107

$155

$23.60

COMIC BOOK CREATOR (4 issues w/Special)

$36

$45

$50

$65

$95

$15.80

BRICKJOURNAL (6 issues)

$57

$72

$75

$86

$128

$23.70

For the latest news from TwoMorrows Publishing, log on to www.twomorrows.com/tnt To get e-mail updates of what’s new from TwoMorrows, sign up for our mailing list! http://groups.yahoo.com/ group/twomorrows

PRINTED IN CHINA

THE BEST OF ALTER EGO, VOL. 2

This sequel to ALTER EGO: THE BEST OF THE LEGENDARY COMICS FANZINE presents more vintage features from the first super-hero fanzine, begun by JERRY BAILS & ROY THOMAS. Editors ROY THOMAS and BILL SCHELLY reveal undiscovered gems from all 11 original issues published from 1961-78, including features on Hawkman, the Spectre, Blackhawk, the JLA, All Winners Squad, the Heap, an unsold “Tor” newspaper strip by JOE KUBERT, and more!