Comic Book Artist #5 by TwoMorrows Publishing

WRIGHTSON KALUTA CARDY ADAMS O’NEIL GLANZMAN POST SKEATES ARAGONÉS

No.5

$5.95

Summer 1999

In The US

DC Comics: 1967-74

The Daring & The Different

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

EDITOR’S RANT: IN THE LIVING YEARS The urgency of Comic Book Artist’s mission and a plea for help................................................................2 CBA COMMUNIQUES Re: The Warren Report—Frazetta, Corben, Eisner, Wrightson, Ivie and more comment on CBA #5 ..........3 DORK ATTACK! Evan Dorkin on why most comics suck big time! ......................................................................................6 THE WORDS & PICTURES MUSEUM OF SEQUENTIAL ART Museum curator Fiona Russell explains that while W&P’s doors close, the virtual window opens............8 DATELINE: @!!?* Getting “In Like Fred” (Hembeck, that is) with the scoop on that ’70s classic, The Phantom Stranger ....9 THE MADAMES & THE GIRLS The story behind the DC Writers Purge of 1968 by Mike W. Barr ..........................................................10 THE LAST JOHN BROOME INTERVIEW Mike W. Barr talked to Silver Agers John & Peg Broome at last year’s San Diego ComiCon ..................16 IRWIN DONENFELD INTERVIEW: DONENFELD’S COMICS A conversation with the one-time DC editorial director on the company’s (go-go) checkered past ........21 SPOTLIGHT ON NICK CARDY: THE 1998 SAN DIEGO COMICON PANEL TRANSCRIPT With Nick Cardy, Mark Evanier, Colleen Doran, Marv Wolfman, & Sergio Aragonés ..............................24 ALEX TOTH: BEFORE I FORGET Toth on his feelings about Frank Robbins’ DC work, and ruminations on The Shadow and Batman ......30 GIL KANE INTERVIEW: MAN OF ACTION A chat with the artist about his great Captain Action and other late ’60s DC work ................................34 NEAL ADAMS INTERVIEW: “A QUIET PITCHED BATTLE FROM DAY ONE” Talking with the artist on his hell-raisin’ DC days....................................................................................36 SERGIO ARAGONÉS INTERVIEW: MAN BEHIND THE BAT (LASH) A conversation with the great cartoonist about his writing days at DC and Plop! ..................................40 HOWARD POST INTERVIEW: COUNTRY BOY FROM THE CITY A rare discussion with the artist/writer behind Anthro, and a whole lot more ........................................46

CBA #4 CORRECTIONS: Oy. The bigger CBA gets, the bigger whopping mistakes there be. The name is LEE MARRS!!! TwoRs, ya dumb editor!!! Sorry, Lee. Our profound apologies to David A. Roach and A.J. Greenwood for A) omitting D.A.R.’s “thank you” list for his exquisite article on the Spanish Artists, and B) for neglecting to mention the extraordinary efforts my pal A.J. went through to transcribe D.A.R.’s intsy-winsty handwriting. I’m sorry, Ajé! You did a great job. Dave’s kudos went to Mariel Miralles (at S.I.), Steve Holland, Barry Coker (at Barden), Louise Simonson, Ian Gibson, Herb Spiers, Steve McManus, Gil Page (at Fleetway) and Ron Tiner. Apologies to Jerry K. Boyd for neglecting to list him on the contributors page—Jer shared the Kurtzman Help! thumbnail and a Frazetta Vampirella line drawing. My regrets to Jim Warren and Flo Steinberg for the extremely dark printing of some of their photographs... it’s the thirsty paper stock. Visit CBA at our NEW Website at: www.twomorrows.com/comicbookartist/ 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 NEW PHONE NUMBERS! (401) 783-1669 • Fax (401) 783-1287

DENNIS O’NEIL INTERVIEW: SHADOWS OF REALITY The writer behind Green Lantern/Green Arrow and The Shadow on his early DC days ..........................54 SPECIAL SAM J. GLANZMAN TRIBUTE SECTION SAM GLANZMAN INTERVIEW: The Salty Dog on his great DC war book material ................................62 MY LIFE AS A CARTOONIST: Sam discusses his long career in comics, from Fly-Man to Jonah Hex ....64 IN ONLY FOUR PAGES…: Don Mangus & Andrew Steven look at the best U.S.S. Stevens tales ........66 STEVE SKEATES INTERVIEW: SKEATING ON THIN ICE Talkin’ at the Fishman himself, that Aquaman and Plop! scribe on his Charlton and DC days ................70 MARV WOLFMAN INTERVIEW: BREAKING INTO THE RANKS Busting a move into the Old Boy network at National Periodicals with the Wolfman himself ..............76 LEN WEIN INTERVIEW: AN ILLEGITIMATE SON OF SUPERMAN Swamp Thing co-creator and Phantom Stranger scribe on his early tenure at DC Comics ......................79 BERNIE WRIGHTSON INTERVIEW: LIKE A BAT OUT OF HELL Swamp Thing’s other co-creator discusses his artistry on Joe Orlando’s mystery books ..........................82 MICHAEL WILLIAM KALUTA INTERVIEW: THE MAN BEHIND THE SHADOW Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of old DC? We dunno, but Mike talks about his time there! ......86 INVASION FROM THE PHILIPPINES Chris Knowles gives us a brief survey of the influx of great Filipino artists at DC Comics ......................90

N EXT ISSU E—TH E MARVE L B U LLPE N: 1970-1977

COMIC BOOK ARTIST™ is published quarterly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 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: $5.95 ($7.00 Canada, $9.00 elsewhere). Yearly subscriptions: $20 US, $27 Canada, $37 elsewhere. VIews expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the opinions of TwoMorrows Publishing. All characters are © their respective companies. All material is © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © their respective authors. ©1999 TwoMorrows/Jon B. Cooke. First Printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

Editor JON B. COOKE

Editor’s Rant

Publisher TWOMORROWS JOHN & PAM MORROW Contributing Editors ROY THOMAS JOHN MORROW Proofreading RICHARD HOWELL Cover Painting NICK CARDY Design & Production JON B. COOKE/ GREAT SWAMP GRAPHICS Transcriber SAM GAFFORD Contributors John & Peg Broome • Julius Schwartz Irwin Donenfeld • Joe Simon Alex Toth • Howard Post Nick Cardy • Sergio Aragonés Joe Orlando • Murphy Anderson Dick Giordano • Neal Adams Sam Glanzman • Gil Kane Mark Evanier • Marv Wolfman Dennis O’Neil • Steve Skeates Len Wein • Sam Glanzman Bernie Wrightson • M.W. Kaluta John Costanza • Mark Hanerfeld Mike Friedrich • Paul Levitz Sal Amendola • John Morrow Roy Thomas • Fred Hembeck Evan Dorkin • Ed Noonchester Manual Auad • Don Mangus Andrew Steven • Ronn Sutton Conrad Eschenberg • David Hamilton Bob Beerbohm • Mike W. Barr J.D. King • Richard Howell Arnie Fenner • Mike Gartland Mike Thibodeaux • Arlen Schumer Chris Knowles • Jerry K. Boyd Fred Hembeck • Michael T. Gilbert Tod Adams • Marc Svensson DC Comics • Victor Lim Frank Miller • Jim Long • Ronn Sutton Paul Gulacy • Fiona Russell Charles Hatfield • Gary Groth Special Thanks Nick Cardy • John D. Coates Arlen Schumer & Sherri Wolfgang John & Pam Morrow • Beth Cooke Roy Thomas • Neal Adams Benjamin, Joshua & Daniel Cooke Ina Cooke & Nick Mook Andrew D. Cooke & Patty Willett Richard Cooke • Chris Cooke Susan Cooke-Anastasi • Becky Cooke The Boys at Graphic Innovations, Inc. Tim & The Guys at Concept Link Trina Robbins • Constance Mussells Providence Creative Group, Inc. Tim McEnerney • Steve Kortes Joe Kubert • John Costanza Cliff Galbraith & Tim Bird Don McGregor • Bill Schelly Mark Evanier • Tony Isabella Jim Warren • Sergio Aragonés Frank Brunner • Bill Black Bud Plant • Quebecor Printing Tom Ziuko • David A. Roach and all you WizardWorld Weirdos! 2

In The Living Years The Urgency of Comic Book Artist ’s Mission I’m not much for schmaltzy pop songs but I am cursed (or, if you prefer, blessed) with a sentimental streak a mile wide. Mike & the Mechanics’ song, “The Living Years,” pushes my emotional buttons expertly, probably because of the distant relationship I had with my (now-deceased) father and now, as editor of a magazine mostly devoted to examining artists of previous generations, the song has endured meaning for me. In the short three or so months since I last composed my “Editorial Rant,” I learned of the passing of Tex Blaisdell, Milton Snappin, John Prentice, John Broome, and Jack Schiff. Each time I receive an electronic press release from DC, I cringe in anticipation of receiving news of another death. (I learned of Joe Orlando’s demise through a DC missive last Christmas Day as I was surrounded with three ecstatic sons, hooting over their new gifts—I had mixed emotions that holiday, I can tell you.) So I recently heard the song again and it prompted me to think long and hard about death and celebration, two realities that permeate this magazine. And it helped me to come to a decision. If the gods smile upon us, Comic Book Artist will commence bimonthly publication at the end of 1999. I have resigned my position as creative director in a small Providence, RI advertising agency—a job I held for four years or so—and I’ll devote most of my energy to this magazine and to a new freelance career in book design and production (preferably on tomes pertaining to comics). I’ll be designing and doing layout on our new sister magazine, Roy Thomas’ Alter Ego, as a regular gig, and I’ll most certainly be schmoozing as many of you as possible to root out freelance work. But I’m making this move less to initiate a new career as to come to grips with the “living years.” As I said, I’ve got three boys—Ben (10), Josh (6), and Danny (4)—and, rather than spending 40+ hours a week working 40 miles from home and innumerable hours trekking back up there on weekends to compose CBA (never mind the weekday nights I work at home ’til 3 A.M.), I’d frankly rather spend their offschool hours simply hanging with my sons and hopefully getting to know them better. And I’d like to know a lot of people better—a lot of comic book people. I feel this compulsion to interview as many creators and participants as time will allow. Whenever I seem to turn around another wonderful artist, writer, or editor has passed from this earthly plane, too many times leaving without us properly getting their story down on paper. It just has to be done because there is so much we’ve just got to know and just so little time.

You may notice that much of this issue includes interviews I conducted over a year ago. I had intended to include them (back when I was young and naive, with eyes far too big) in our debut number but alas, my plans were far too optimistic and we had to limit #1 to include only the artist-editors of DC in the late ’60s and early ’70s. But even with this issue—which includes talk with many of the most prominent writers and artists of that era—a fullyrounded picture of DC Comics between 1967-74 is far from complete. (And here’s another round of apologies to those I’ve already interviewed who’ve been passed over again—I swear they will see the light of day!) There are still so many to talk to and perhaps in a few years we will get to a goodly number, but how many lives may pass on before their stories are told? So I’m now a zealot when it comes to getting interviews. And I hope I can pass my fervor onto likeminded budding interviewers who share a passion for this art form. If you have any interest in helping to preserve the words of past comic book artists, writers, and editors— heck, anybody who has had some impact on the industry—please consider dropping me a line about any interviews you might have on tape or thoughts on potential candidates. Let’s get their thoughts and memories down in these, their living years. Whaddaya think of our bouncing new baby icon at left, huh? We call him “Woody” (after you-knowwho) and he’ll be representing CBA in the mountain of merchandising heading towards your local Wal-Mart! (Jes’ kiddin’, but I would like a nice T-shirt.) My old pal, J.D. King (lately of Amsterdam), a longtime cartoonist, perhaps best known for his Weirdo material, whipped ole Woody up in no-seconds flat! I love ya, J.D.! (Mr. King is perhaps the single hold-over contributor from my wee amateur fanzine of the ’70s, Omegazine (or OCMR—The Omega Comics Magazine Review. Back then, we had a circulation of 20 or so…). We only hooked up again (after 25 years!) when my gnawing curiosity got the best of me when I kept wondering if this alternative scribbler could be one and the same. ’S’nice to have continuity…. So. CBA is gonna go bi-monthly so I’m really gonna need readers’ help with art and interview contributions. Look elsewhere this ish for my full-page plea advertisement and I hope you’ll dig out that old convention sketchbook, or brush the dust off your ancient fanzine collection. This stuff has to live again! See you in the funnybooks…! —Jon B. Cooke

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

Summer 1999

CBA Communiques

Re: The Warren Report Larry Ivie California Because Creepy #1 still holds the curious publishing record, unfortunately, of most editorial blunders in a single issue, I was hoping its publisher would take advantage of his chance in CBA #4 to respond to my questions on them in the 1997 Scary Yearbook (Monster Memories #5), which he says he read, and absolve himself of blame by simply saying other distractions kept him from personal involvement during the period everything went wrong. I was pleased to see a more favorable image of him emerge in his interview than in other articles I’ve seen—as in the issue’s side anecdote by Michael Gilbert, reinforcing the traditional legend. (The “Larry” he mentioned wasn’t me!) And it’s interesting the appearance of Castle of Frankenstein had been annoying, since it existed only because I had been told, when first trying, he had no interest in looking at the work of outside artists and writers! But again, as with my earlier inquiries of him years before, he avoided the questions, and his summary of Creepy’s origin bypassed everything of foundation importance. Most curious, he implies (actually hard to believe) he was in control during the time of the blunders—lost scripts, lost art, lost direction sheets, stories going to the wrong artists (Wally Wood bypassed completely), poor layout and format decisions, poor lettering, art deadlines far too short, many of the credits wrong... His thoughts in the interview bear no similarity to those in conversations we had leading to what I prepared for him, or the viewpoints from those phoning to ask me why so much was going wrong. I couldn’t tell them because, by October 2, 1963, there seemed to be nothing left undone to go wrong. It was during the needless (unless financial) delay in sending the artists the seven scripts ready at that time, and then their art for lettering and to the printers, that so much of what had been in place somehow came undone. Instead of finally explaining how and why, he simply states he has no interest in my opinion that the version that appeared on the stands fell short of what I prepared for him. But in this case, the concept of “opinion” is not an abstract one. Those curious about the differences in our visions for Creepy #1 can find the first one fully detailed in the Scary article, for direct comparison with the one that actually appeared. Richard Corben Kansas City, Missouri I received the copies of Comic Book Artist, the Warren spe-

cial. Very complete and enlightening. You carried it out to a greater depth than I expected. It was very nostalgic reliving all those old episodes, plus information unknown to me about the earlier events. In fact much of this stuff is disillusioning. There was an impression to me and the public in general that Warren Publishing was a large important comic publisher, much larger than it actually was. Now it seems apparent that Warren started his empire and kept it going through promotion and hype. The cover from the sketch you asked about illustrated a scene from a Doug Moench story, "Change Into Something More Comfortable." I think. The subject is the Wolfman fighting Dracula and a bunch of other monsters. Used in Eerie #86. Thanks for the copies and the opportunity to be part of your edition. Arnie Fenner Overland Park, Kansas Tim Underwood [publisher of Underwood Books] warned me not to sit down with the latest issue of Comic Book Artist else it would distract me from finishing work on Legend, our follow-up to Icon. I should’ve listened to him. [Arnie is co-author—with Carol Fenner—of the Frank Frazetta art books.] As a kid not active in any fanboy circles, Warren’s magazines introduced me to some of the greats of comic art—many of whom I’m still very fond of. So I found your Warren-themed issue especially entertaining. Just a couple of points/observations: Warren’s comment and your descriptive text above the postage stamps implies that they were inspired (or taken directly from) Basil Gogos’ Famous Monsters covers: absolutely not true. They were painted by Thomas Blackshear II, currently one of this country’s most respected artists and the painter of the previous commemorative stamps of Hollywood stars and important figures in AfricanAmerican history. The similarity undoubtedly stems from a use of the same source material (stills that were provided to Thomas by Universal) that Gogos used. Secondly, it would have been interesting to have probed a little

This issue dedicated to

Constance Mussells Kaely Loree Larkin and the memories of John Broome Jack Schiff Tex Blaisdell John Prentice Milton Snappin Shel Silverstein Saul Steinberg

Above: Frank Frazetta’s cover painting to Creepy #15. In his letter, Arnie Fenner recounts his discussion with Frank and Ellie Frazetta on the history of “Neanderthal,” recollections at odds with Jim Warren’s version in CBA #4. ©1999 Frank Frazetta.

CLARIFICATION On pgs.14-15 of the Jim Warren interview in CBA #4, Jim took issue with one of my previously-submitted questions when I first spoke to him on Oct. 17, 1998. Jim said, “I see on this list of questions you ask if I was born ‘Hymie Taubman from South Philadelphia.’ Do you remember where you got that reference?” I explained that it was found in a footnote reference in David J. Skal’s book, The Monster Show, which cited sometime Warren scripter Bill Warren’s book, Keep Watching the Skies! Vol. 2 (1958-62), published by McFarland Press in 1986. The original footnote (found on pg. 321) referred to “Famous Monsters publisher James Warren” and it said, “No, repeat, no relation to me. His real name is Hymie Taubman.” Referring to Bill Warren, Jim said in his interview, “[Bill’s] been bad-mouthing me for decades, so I’m not surprised by his anti-Semitic reference. What he wrote was a made-up, deliberate lie. The name on my birth certificate is James Warren Taubman.” On February 15, 1999, I contacted Bill Warren via the internet and asked him the origin of his “Hymie Taubman” reference. Bill replied, “Frankly, I do not recall where I first heard this story.… All I remember is that the source—not Forry Ackerman—was someone I assumed was in a position to know. Although I despise James Warren, I had no intention of directing any anti-Semitic remarks his way, and profoundly regret if that’s how my comment was taken; my reasons for intensely disliking him are far more personal and individual.” Bill added in a subsequent e-mail that day, “I thought more about this. ‘Chaim’ is Hebrew for ‘James.’ ‘Chaime’ (pronounced, and often written, ‘Hymie’) is Hebrew for ‘Jimmy.’ Chaim is Yiddish for James, as Guillermo is Italian for William. It’s also common for Jewish families to give newborns both an ‘American’ (i.e. English) name and a ‘Jewish’ (i.e. Hebrew) name. You might ask J. Warren if any of his relatives did call him ‘Chaime/Hymie’ when he was young…” [When asked, Jim said “No.”] Fairness may have been better served if I had included Bill’s comments as a footnote to the Warren interview in CBA #5. I hope this clarification will go to remedy any ill feelings because of the omission. Noted science-fiction author and critic Harlan Ellison requested the following be added as a postscript: “Bill Warren has never, to the best of my knowledge, demonstrated even the vaguest scintilla of anti-Semitism. Bill knows very well that I am Jewish and we have been friends for years. He has always been a man of ethics.”

Summer 1999

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

bit into the plagiarism lawsuit that Harlan Ellison filed against Warren for DuBay’s alleged “adaptation” of “A Boy and His Dog” (art by Alex Niño). Though Harlan dropped the suit when Warren entered bankruptcy, it would have been interesting to get Jim’s take on the situation. I know there was some history between Ellison and Warren (I think Harlan has written that Jim introduced him to his second wife) and ultimately bad blood, and I was just curious how their relationship evolved into one of animosity. Finally, regarding the anecdote about the creation of the painting “Neanderthal”: I spent three days with Frank and Ellie Frazetta late last month pulling all the stuff together for Legend. Tim had already related to me the anecdote from a conversation with you about Warren and the splinters so I asked Frank about it:

Above: We attempted to locate Neal Adams’ thumbnails for an unrealized Vampirella story (for last issue) but have been so far unsuccessful. Any leads, beloved reader? Here’s a more recent Adams take on the sultry damsel. Vampirella ©1999 Warren Publications

OUR COVER:

Nick Cardy’s wonderful cover painting, originally intended for the neverpublished DC Comics collection The Greatest Silver Age Stories Ever Told. Our enormous gratitude to Nick for his kind permission to reproduce the work as the cover to this, the sequel to our first issue “A True Golden Age: DC Comics 1967-74,” celebrating an era when Nick’s work never shined so bright. Thanks also to John D. Coates for his help. Look for the book The Art of Nick Cardy by John in the very near future featuring more unpublished art by the Master! All characters ™ & ®1999 DC Comics.

Frank Frazetta: I’d put everything off to the last minute and there was this one time I had a cover due to Warren on a Monday morning, and by late Sunday night—say about 10:00 or so—I was about ready to start. I didn’t have a damn piece of art board to spare anywhere in the house! I went ape! Nothing’s open, Ellie goes to bed crying, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I had given my word! All of a sudden, I’m looking down at the floor that we were having repaired. Bingo! I pried up a piece of plywood and painted “Neanderthal.” I was so excited I dragged Ellie out of bed to see! Ellie Frazetta: He really did. When I went to bed Frank was yelling and throwing stuff around—I was all upset. And then he wakes me up around 3:00 and shows me this wonderful painting! It was like Christmas morning! Frank: Painting on plywood gave me the idea to start working on masonite. I liked the sturdiness, the heft of it. Arnie Fenner: I think Warren has said in an upcoming interview that he was desperate for that cover and that he sat on you to get it done. Frank: What do you mean? Is he saying he was at my house? Arnie: I believe that’s what I was told—I’d have to have the quote in front of me to say for sure. Frank: That’s bullsh*t if he says he was in my studio waiting for me. He wasn’t anywhere near my house. I worked at night, I was a real night owl. Warren wasn’t anywhere close when I was painting. Arnie: I think he also said that the painting was done in less than an hour…! Frank: Jesus Christ! You’ve gotta be kidding! I was fast, but Jesus Christ, I wasn’t superhuman! I think “Neanderthal” took me four or five hours, start to finish—and that’s really fast. But under an hour, jeez, that’s a load of crap! Whose memory is more accurate? Got me, but the contrasts are interesting. Great job on CBA—I’ll look forward to future issues! Barry Windsor-Smith New York We received copies of the latest CBA. Thank you. Moreover, thank you so very much for your thoughtful and personal editorial about Adastra In Africa. I am flattered that an intelligent and insightful gentleman such as yourself appreciates my work and has taken the time, and space in your excellent magazine, to express your support of Storyteller, even in the face of a disdaining comics public. I am eternally grateful. Michael T. Gilbert Salem, Oregon Just got back Saturday from a trip to Holland and Denmark (haunting all the comic shops, of course!) and arrived to find CBA #4 waiting for me. In a word: WOW! What an issue! I had high expectations for this—and the final product actually surpassed my hopes. Time and again you asked the questions I'd hoped you

would, to Warren and the other interview subjects. It was very interesting to see Warren actually admit that he sometimes treated his employees shabbily, and that he now realizes he was wrong to do so. You'd think Archie Goodwin alone would have demonstrated that you can treat people well and still get the best work out of them. No wonder they sometimes called Warren "Mr. Monster!" I can see why you had to add 50 extra pages—and it was worth it (you and John deserve a big thanks for adding it, and not charging more. I didn't even mind the lighter paper—the information's more important). In any case, I don't know what you could have cut out. It's a shame you couldn't have gotten in touch with John Cochran and Tom Sutton and Russ Jones (wherever he is), but maybe you can do a short addendum at some future date. Corben would have been a natural too! Oh well, you can't have everything, right? The Wrightson cover looked good, though I wasn't crazy about the color. A dark red sky, with a light green complexion for Uncle Creepy and a light green Artist on the logo would have provided more atmosphere and contrast. Tom did a nice job interpreting my Alter Ego cover, though. The only other complaint I have (a minor one to be sure) is 1994 magazine. I personally consider it one of the most vile, misogynist comics I've ever read (and I even include the worst of Crumb's work in that competition!). Crumb at least was genuinely sincere with his rantings—1994 seemed to go out of their way to appeal to the very worst instincts in their teenage readership solely for the money. In the process they ruined some beautiful art by Niño and others with the repulsive stories. I would've loved to see you call Warren and Dubay on it, and find out why they published such a genuinely hateful magazine. Maybe if you do a “Science-Fiction in Comics” issue you can return to that question. Otherwise, a wonderful issue, possibly the best one yet (or do I say that every issue? If so, I mean it!) You put in a lot of hard work, Jon—and you asked good questions. Congratulations! The A/E section was a treat, also. My "Gardner Fox Letters" article looked good (I even chuckled a few times—and I wrote the darn thing!), and Roy's pieces were interesting too (if a bit too long, for my taste). Writing about yourself in a mag (or a section of a mag) you edit can be a tricky thing! If it had appeared in the Marvel issue as Roy had wished, I think it would have been fine. Here, it sticks out a bit. I still think A/E should mainly stick to comics of the 1940s-1960s, and leave the 70's and on to CBA. Even so, I enjoyed the entire issue (that brief Ditko interview was a wonderful treat!). Are you still planning a T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents issue? If so, when? That should be another one I'm looking forward to. Well, enough of my blathering. Keep up the great work, Jon. But first, take a nap, and treat yourself to a nice hot-fudge sundae. You deserve it! Will Eisner Florida Thanks for the copies of Comic Book Artist. It is a splendid issue and the interviews with Jim Warren and the others were a delight to read. I know Jim will enjoy them especially. Thanks also for your careful handling of my interview and the generous space given to our book advertisement. I expect to be in San Diego. I hope CBA will be a winner. Good luck. [Thank you, Will! Here’s as good a place as any to mention that Comic Book Artist has been nominated for an Eisner Award in the “Best Comics-Related Periodical” category. In a bizarre twist o’ fate, both CBA and our sister publication, The Jack Kirby Collector, are competing for that award so to say our feelings are mixed is an understatement... (whaddaya say to an arm wrestling match, eh, Morrow? Whoa! I meant John, not Pam!). Our gracious thanks to ye nominating folk! And let’s have at it in San Diego, TCJ, CBM, and Wizard!] Bernie Wrightson Los Angeles, California Rereading my interview for CBA #4 reminded me of another encounter I had with Jim Warren. About 1973 or ’74, I was having some financial problems (like that doesn’t happen anymore! The more things change, huh?). Anyway, my phone bills backed up to the point that they shut the phone off and I needed something like two, three hundred bucks to have it turned on again. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

Summer 1999

So I saw Jim in his office and asked if I could have an advance on my current job for Creepy (I think it was “Cool Air”). Jim said, “Come on in and have a seat.” Suddenly very serious and all business. I sat down and he said, “I never give my artists advances, and here’s why.” And for the next 40 minutes or so he explained it to me. He said he’s a businessman and he has to take a hard line about these things. He can’t pay his employees until the work is finished and delivered. An artist enters into a business relationship with a publisher and an unspoken contract is immediately forged; the artist is given the assignment and completes the work on time and to the publisher’s satisfaction, and then and only then, the artist is paid for his time, talent, and effort. It’s a mutual show of good faith, payment in full for services rendered, payment to be made only upon satisfactory completion of the work, on and on, straight from the text book of J. Paul Getty. Then he went on to say that some artists (“not necessarily you”) are unreliable or flaky, heads always in the clouds, virtual drawing machines but with no business sense at all. They forget or they think it’s not that important and they take their advance money and for one reason or another never deliver the work. “And think about this:” he said. “Suppose I give you your advance and you walk out of here, cross the street and you get hit by a truck. You’ve got your money and I have nothing. That’s why I never give artists an advance.” I was about to thank him for his time and leave when he said, “I can’t give you an advance, but I will give you a personal loan.” With that, he took out his checkbook, and wrote me a check, which I later repaid him from the job he wouldn’t advance me on. Flash forward six months or so. I’d broken up with my girlfriend and was moving from upstate to Queens. Broke again and I needed two or three hundred bucks (same sh*t, different day) for the deposit on my new apartment. So I went into Jim’s office to ask for another personal loan. “Come on in and have a seat. I never give my artists personal loans, and here’s why.” Businessman. Hard line. Unspoken contract. “And think about this: Suppose I give you a personal loan and you walk out of here and get hit by a truck.” Deja Vu all over again. “That’s why I never give artists personal loans, but I will give you an advance on your next job.” So feeling like I’d been slapped up both sides of my head with a sock full of mashed potatoes, I took my advance, thanked Jim and left. Mort Todd New York, New York Congratulations on another fantastic issue of CBA. The Jim Warren interview was very educational after all the rumors that have been swirling for years. Warren’s magazines were a great inspiration for me as a youth growing up in Maine. My name first appeared in print in an article in Famous Monsters that came out while I attended an FM convention on my birthday! Warren’s reference to the late Cattleman restaurant was also nostalgic as it was the site of the Cracked 30th anniversary party I held with such attendees as John Severin and Don Martin. As Editor-in-Chief of Cracked, I put out a lot of monster humor Summer 1999

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reprints and started a title called Cracked Monster Party (a play on Kurtzman’s Rankin-Bass film Mad Monster Party). Some of the material in it was culled from For Monsters Only, Cracked’s Famous Monsters knock-off. (By then original publisher Robert Sproul had sold Cracked to my publishers so I didn’t have access to Web of Horror material). Due to Cracked Monster Party’s success, I was able to hoodwink the publishers into starting a legit horror magazine called Monsters Attack! in 1988. I contacted some of my favorite creators to create a mini-Warren revival with new comics by such talents as Severin, Steve Ditko, Alex Toth, Gray Morrow, Gene Colan, Pat Boyette and others. About that time, I heard Stanley Harris was looking to unload his Warren material after a few unsuccessful attempts at relaunching the titles. I had an earlier encounter with the company soon after they had bought the Warren catalog at auction. It was ironic that Harris Comics (which was then called Stanley Publications and had evolved

Above: Eureka! An issue late but we finally discovered the legendary unpublished cover by Berni Wrightson for The Spirit. Well, most of it, anyway. Contributor Ronn Sutton explains: “In 1973, Bernie was staying with me for a visit in Toronto and I photocopied the original art in nine sections at a local library. When I later tried to piece it together, I found that one section was missing.” Thanks, Ronn! [Ye editor did major reconstructive work because of the photocopy’s poor quality.] The Spirit ©1999 Will Eisner. 5

of Mad rip-offs over the years, Cracked is the only one to have survived, with its unheralded 40th anniversary in 1998. The main reason (perhaps only reason) for its longevity is the excellent work of ex-Mad artist John Severin. Several “Madmen,” including Al Jaffee, Angelo Torres, Don Edwing, Bill Wray and even editor John Ficarra, first appeared in the pages of Cracked. Jack Davis produced over a hundred pages for the magazine in the early ’60s when he was blackballed from Mad. I was also able to lure Don Martin to Cracked after 30 years at Mad by simply offering his own copyright on his work. Other Mad vets that I got to cross over include Jerry DeFuccio and Lou Silverstone. I also have an amusing anecdote about the time my art director Cliff Mott, assistant Ian Wheeler Nicholson (grandson of DC Comics originator Major Malcolm Wheeler Nicholson) and I took an undercover tour of Mad soon after Martin left and were granted an audience with Bill Gaines! Thanks for your historically significant magazine and continued success!

Above: While our resident cartoonist Rick Pinchera takes a breather to adjust to life as a newlywed (congrats, Rick!) and to kick his art career into high gear, our pal Evan Dorkin has kindly allowed us to reprint a classic strip that originally appeared in his Dork! comic and the book Generation Ecch! (though we’ve slightly altered the cuss words with Evan’s kind permission—ain’t we the prudes!). Our Man Dorkin is one of our fave artistés and he tells us he’s currently hard at work helming a splendiferous Mr. Mxyzptlk project that features an eye-popping array of contributing artists. Keep ye eyes peeled, CBAer! ©1994 Evan Dorkin.

from Myron Fass’ Eerie Publications) now owned Warren, since they had put out fifth-rate Warren rip-offs like Terror Tales and Weird (I also enjoyed meeting Human Torch creator Carl Burgos, who was editing these books). I sold two stories for the new Creepy (which were never printed) and got to see tons of original art, film, file copies and Captain Company inventory which were soon pilfered. I had meetings at Harris to see about purchasing what was left of the Warren inventory and was offered everything for what I thought was the reasonable price of $150,000. Even if all the original art was gone and most of the film in bad condition, I thought there was still much potential. However, after looking into it, Harris could not produce any proof of copyright ownership which was ridiculous. It seems that contrary to the auction ad reprinted in your issue, just physical assets were auctioned and not copyrights. Basically they had as much claim to Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella as anyone. It reminded me of the chaos when different publishers put out their versions of Tower’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, so we passed on it. I was surprised when Harris later released their Vampirella comics. I’m sure they’ve since copyrighted or trademarked Vampi, but it would seem that Warren’s original releases would render them null and that Jim Warren has a pretty strong case for ownership. In reference to your upcoming “Madmen of Mad” issue, I’d like to contribute a short piece on Cracked. After all, despite the dozens

John M. Warren Grand Rapids, Michigan Where would I begin to say how much I enjoyed the first four issues of CBA? 90% of the articles hit the spot exactly and, though my sub just expired, I still intend to buy every issue. (My local retailer needs the business.) Now that you’ve given us two specials on Neal Adams, is there any chance the “other” best artist in the world, Alex Toth, might be covered as thoroughly? The sketchbook, the Zorro reprints, the trade paperbacks and other recent but lesser-known collections seem to indicate there’s a solid market for Toth. Still, I’m hard-pressed to find articles about his career, so CBA may have a unique opportunity to remedy this. [Funny you should mention one of my favorite artists, Mr. Alex Toth, John! With the able help of mutual friend Jim Amash, CBA is ecstatic to announce an upcoming issue devoted to the Master, entitled “Alex Toth: Before I Forget,” featuring an extensive interview and numerous essays by Alex on the history of comic book/strip art and other fascinating subjects. This is the most eagerly anticipated issue for yours truly since I started CBA and I just hope we can give the great storyteller the coverage he deserves. Look for it in early ’00! —JBC] Allen J. Schuler Louisville, Kentucky If you’re a comic book fan who loves intemecine wrangling played out publicly, Comic Book Artist #3 was well worth your price of admission. The letter-to-the-editor section featured a lengthy piece self-titled “Carmine Infantino’s Rebuttal.” Infantino, publisher and editorial director of DC comics during the late ‘60s and early COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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‘70s, took umbrage with information presented in CBA’s first issue, one devoted to “A True Golden Age: DC Comics 1967-74.” CBA editor Jon B. Cooke ran Infantino’s vitriol unedited. As with any piece of personal writing, Infantino’s rebuttal reveals much, not only through the substance of his words, but also through the phrasing of those words—and what they reveal is a bitter man. Before I delve into the substance of Infantino’s screed, I’d like to establish two premises of my own: 1) I accept Infantino’s presentation of facts when he describes what happened during his tenure as publisher and trust his rationales for his actions at the time. And 2) I love Infantino the artist. In my nascent comic buying days of 1964, one of the first titles I began purchasing was Batman. Roughly the third issue I bought was Detective #327, the first “new look” Batman. The art blew me away. Compared to the stuff signed “Bob Kane” in previous issues, this Batman was fluid, anatomically correct, and almost photographic in its realism. As indiscriminate as my taste and critical acumen may have been at the time, I knew I loved the art. I soon discovered that this same wonderful artist drew The Flash. I started buying the comic. I never cared much for the stories or the character, but, boy, that guy Infantino could draw a man in super-speed motion better than anyone. So, I’m not a “Carmine-basher”; I don’t have to be. He does a good job at it himself. He started his rebuttal by denigrating his friends. Saying he initially refused to be interviewed for the offending CBA issue, he recanted only at the urgings of his friends. Rather than listen to his instincts, “I, unfortunately, listened to my friends.” Unfortunately, to be sure. He continued his diatribe with a cryptic reference to agreeing to the interview only “if a certain re-creator [italics his] of comics history, the Californian ‘King’ of Con” were not involved in the publication at all. That reference was over my head. I hear “King” in California connected with comics, and I think of Jack Kirby. Somehow, I don’t think Kirby would have been up to the task. Whom, then, is the allusion to? Beats me. Why would a man as direct and plain spoken as Infantino proves to be dance around specific identification here? In his rebuttal, Infantino presented his view of events discussed elsewhere in that first CBA issue. For example, concerning the creation of various characters, his opinion often contradicts others interviewed: The Hawk and the Dove? Not Ditko; “It was mine.” Bat Lash? Shelly Mayer, Joe Orlando. Not Sergio Aragonés; though “I then went home and plotted the next three years [worth of issues].” Jason’s Quest? Not Mike Sekowsky; “A character I created for myself to do as a newspaper strip.” He detailed why he both hired Dick Giordano (“he had a working relationship with Steve Ditko, Denny O’Neil, and Jim Aparo”) and fired him (“Charlton Press mentality”). Based on Giordano’s own interview in CBA #I, I accept Infantino’s assessment. Giordano admitted that he was a laissez faire editor when it came to working with creators. Contrast that attitude with Infantino’s: “[The editor] must be ready to change directions and have a strong editorial point of view.” Infantino was the guy who “decided to give some visual panel layouts that would be acceptable to my storytelling standards” to Neal Adams, whose layouts were “sacrificing storytelling to show off his art skills.” Plus, “all of Dick’s books lost money—period!” That’s the bottom line. He viewed Len Wein and Marv Wolfman as “two young fans allowed to roam the halls of DC at will... I never felt that Len or Marv should have been given the freedom they had around DC offices.” These two, also interviewed for that first issue, presented their view of “The Battle Over ‘Jericho.” To be kind, let’s say their memories are at odds with Infantino’s. Their imbroglio centered around a story the two wrote for issue 20 of Teen Titans. The plot dealt with racial prejudice and presented a black character. After it was written and drawn, Infantino overrode editor Giordano and jettisoned the work—not, says he, because he was “gun-shy” about the issue selling in the South, but because “inept writing is bad writing.” That the axe didn’t fall due to the issue’s racial subject matter was a point Infantino supported by observing that DC’s Bob Kanigher “was writing [blacks] into his war books since 1961, while [Wein and Wolfman] were still in school.” Plus, concerning the cover of that issue (which was published) Infantino averred that “anyone with half-a-brain would conclude, IF I wanted to hide a Black face I would have it simply redrawn.” Can’t argue with that. He certainly had the Superman faces Kirby drew redrawn. Summer 1999

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I don’t mean to rehash everything Infantino wrote—just bring those who didn’t see the piece up to speed. My larger purpose is to examine Infantino’s attitudes as presented through his rebuttal and perhaps remind all of us to take “facts” which come from memory with a grain—or block—of salt. Part of the offense Infantino took with editor Cooke et al in the whole “Jericho” bicker-battle lay no doubt in the folds of misperception. Infantino called CBA a “tabloid-slanted magazine” and the offending Jericho article “malicious.” Then, he got personal: “[Cooke] spent hours with me in my home and never asked for my version of the Jericho fiasco or about the rest of the misinformation concerning my tenure. Is that balanced reporting?” Cooke did ask Infantino about the bounced Jericho story in that first issue. The Infantino interview, the entire transcript of which he edited and revised prior to its publication, contained a question about the story. Infantino replied, “I rejected it totally. I remember looking at it... and after it was done I thought it was terrible. I wouldn’t print it. As simple as that. I don’t remember any specifics about it now, but I know that I just didn’t like it.” Evidently, he remembered some specifics after that first CBA issue also published interviews with Giordano, Wein, and Wolfman. I suspect that Infantino really didn’t remember much about that Teen Titans issue at the time he was interviewed; I doubt he connected much importance to his decision some 25 years later. After all, how many hard decisions did he make on any given day of his tenure? But, when he saw all the attention devoted to that littleremembered issue in CBA # 1, he must have referred to “copies of all my memos, notes and sales figures [saved] in case the day came when some malcontent would try to re-invent my tenure at DC Comics.” OK. Time etched different memories for different individuals. Is that quite human trait just cause to castigate Cooke and company so vigorously? However correct his version of all that happened during his day—and, as I’ve said, I more readily accept his versions than others—there is still little reason for the complete churlishness Infantino displayed throughout in his rebuttal. I have wondered, occasionally, about Infantino. Since he left his position at DC, the few times I’ve seen him surface, he has inevitably come across as a bitter man. Witness the time he questioned, in print, the now-deified Jack Kirby, by explaining that he cancelled the Fourth World books because of low sales. Infantino was skewered by fans and pros alike. I didn’t understand at the time why the man should have been treated so. Didn’t he actually hire a disgruntled Kirby away from Marvel and give him an almost unfettered forum from which to create? No, Kirby didn’t have everything his way at DC, but no one forced him to come there. He, just like Infantino, had to be held accountable in whatever areas his employer chose. He was, after all, working for a company, not for himself. I can’t imagine Infantino evilly waiting for the opportunity to pull the rug out from under Kirby by dropping the Fourth World opus at the tiniest provocation. As Infantino stated in his rebuttal, “Why would I kill a book that was selling?” I believe him. Think of the accolades that would have come continued on page 96

Above: Shang! What’s shakin’? And what the hell are you doing in a ish devoted to DC Comics??? Oh yeah, it’s just ye ed’s sorry-ass plug to tell our kind readers that next issue is devoted to The Marvel Bullpen 1970-77, with a new spankin’ Frank Brunner cover and interviews with Frank, Marie Severin, Johnny Romita Sr., Dave Cockrum, Paul Gulacy (who did the beautiful Master of Kung-Fu cover above), and many more. We’ve got an extensive essay by Bob Beerbohm on the real story behind comics distribution (trust me, it’ll knocken your sockens off), and articles on the lost Prisoner comic and the Kung-Fu craze. Oh, and yes, Dandy Don McGregor will be bumped no more! Expect a huge interview with the verbose one in CBA #6! We still need to locate P. Craig Russell... can you help? Shang Chi ©1999 Marvel Entertainment.

Public Service

Hello/Good-Bye from W&P! The Words & Pictures Museum of Sequential Art to go virtual!

Since our first issue, Comic Book Artist has been a vocal supporter of the Words & Pictures Museum and it is with profound regret that we see the doors to the “real” museum closed for good. W&P has also been a solid supporter of CBA and The Jack Kirby Collector, sharing photocopies of the vault’s art treasures with us—and much more—often on a moment’s notice. We thank Kevin, Phil, Jack, Joe and, especially, Fiona for all of their gracious and much-appreciated efforts. While we’re gratified that W&P will continue a “virtual” life on the Internet, we’re saddened that there is one fewer institution to take our kids to and celebrate our wonderful artform. Thanks, W&P, and here’s to a long life on the Web!—JBC. 8

The Words & Pictures Museum, currently housed on 140 Main Street in Northampton, Massachusetts, will be closing its galleries to the public permanently on July 16. It is with much regret that we announce this decision. On behalf of the entire Museum we would like to thank all those—including Comic Book Artist— who have made innumerable phone calls, and sent e-mail and letters expressing regret. Thanks also to those in the online community who have expressed their views on this matter via message boards and chat rooms. The following comes from the press release issued on May 5: "After long consideration, discussion and calculation, the key members of staff and myself have decided to close the building and invest our funds into a Virtual Museum," Kevin B. Eastman, Museum Trustee, said recently. "By creating an entirely Virtual Museum, an enormous expansion of our current web site, we can reach millions of interested fans globally—fans who could never make the trip to Northampton." The Virtual Museum will continue to fulfill the mission of the Museum and will offer exhibits, archives and programming for a global audience. The Museum first opened its doors in 1992, in the Roundhouse building (also in Northampton) before relocating to its current location. Since that day, the Museum has become both a local attraction and a tourist destination. The Museum has accepted an offer to purchase the Main Street building and key Museum staff, including Directors Fiona Russell and Joseph Scelsi, MBA, will spearhead the transition and construction of the Virtual Museum as well as oversee the current physical site's closing later this year. Current staffing levels will be maintained until midJuly. While the galleries will close to the public in July, the bookstore will remain open into the Fall. Eastman founded the Museum as a non-profit organization in 1990. Since early in his career, Eastman had a dream to build a museum that would showcase "the art of comic books" in a setting that would bring new appreciation to the medium. "All that I wanted or hoped was that people, your average Joe, might see what I see—that this truly is an amazing art form,” Eastman said. ”An art form that takes great skill and talent to bring to life! Since their inception, comics have been viewed as throwaway kid’s stuff and not only looked down upon by the mass market—even corruptive to the youth—but essentially disowned by all other art forms. Comic art was a place to go if 'real’ artists couldn't make it in the 'real’ art world." In 1984, following a lifelong dream to become a storyteller like those who had inspired him, Eastman co-created and self-published with Peter Laird, the now-legendary Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Amongst Eastman's creative influences, he names comics legends Jack Kirby, Richard Corben, and Frank Miller. To the surprise of the public, the comic “took off" and soon became a worldwide phenomenon of comics, cartoons, movies and toys. The success of TMNT provided Eastman with funding to collect artwork and to build the non-profit Museum, to share this "wonderful world." The Main Street building was acquired in 1994 with the

sole intent of creating a home for the Museum and the comics medium. Eastman donated the building to the Museum that same year along with a grant to fund the new construction and programming. Additionally, his personal art collection was loaned to the organization for exhibits and presentation. Since Oct. 1992, the Museum staff has curated and mounted a number of exhibits. Among the highlights was a collaboration in 1997 with the Friends of Bosnia organization to curate the startling Fax from Sarajevo exhibit: a show based on Joe Kubert’s graphic novel that detailed a family’s plight caught in the grip of war, communicating only via fax with friends and colleagues in the west. The galleries have played host to presentations by the Western Massachusetts Illustrators Guild, the writing of movie director Kevin (Clerks) Smith; the “bawdy, busty, beautiful Broads” of Vaughn Bodé, and looks at the relationship between comics and film. With exhibits tied into the movies, including Aliens, The Crow, TMNT, Batman, Tank Girl and Swamp Thing, the Museum has brought to the art world the work of comic book artists in Hollywood. From the world of Pin-up Art has come our focus on Alberto Vargas, George Petty and Olivia DeBerardinis, among others, while the 1996 Presidential Election inspired a wonderful opportunity to showcase the satire of Pulitzer Prize winner Patrick Oliphant's political cartoons. "We have tried to turn the spotlight on a very varied group of players in the comic book and fantasy illustration genres," Eastman said, "and we've been successful, moving smoothly from kids and family shows to more adult fare; from the underground projects of San Francisco in the early 70's to a celebration of Batman and Superman. It's been a blast and we look forward to continuing to showcase this range and depth, on-line." "The local, regional and comic industry appreciation has been great and I feel privileged to have been able to share the physical presence with so many... which has made the decision to close the doors all that much harder," Eastman said. "Although it has been tremendously satisfying to share and educate so many with the hands on ability of the physical building, it is truly an overwhelmingly exciting feeling to join the global community via the Internet and to continue our work on a whole new level!" Words & Pictures Museum is online at <www.wordsandpictures.org>. The Virtual Museum will continue to use the same domain name and site address. Museum staff will be working to create an expanded on-line home for the Museum throughout the Summer and Fall of 1999. We will maintain our membership in the American Association of Museums and the Cartoon Art Coalition and as such will continue to curate exhibits both on-line and for exhibition in other institutions around the world. Words & Pictures Museum will maintain its nonprofit status and will continue to base its headquarters in Northampton. The virtual Museum will continue with both educational and outreach programming (a small example includes translating our terrific lecture program to a global audience via chat rooms). We hope to remain a vital and important part of the comics, arts and local communities. We hope you'll join us for a hectic schedule of events between now and July 16, and into the future on-line. — Fiona Russell, Museum Curator COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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Changing Times

The Madames & the Girls The DC Writers Purge of 1968 by Mike W. Barr

Above: The Frank Miller illustrations featured in this article originally appeared in the initial version of Mike W. Barr’s piece, published in Frank’s creator rights newsletter, WAP! in August, 1988. Special thanks to Frank for his kind permission. Look for our special “Frank Miller & Company” issue coming early next year, focusing on the artist/writer’s numerous collaborations over the years. All Miller art ©1988 Frank Miller.

Forword to the 1999 version: This article was first written for the August, 1988 issue of WAP!, a newsletter for and by freelance comics personnel. We must have been doing something right, WAP! in its short life caused fierce debate amongst nearly everyone who read it; company reps, the fan press and the freelancers themselves, who can barely agree on the time of day, much less the proper stance for dealing with publishers. WAP! was also the perfect vehicle for an article like “The Madames and the Girls,” focusing on a piece of comics history I’d always found intriguing, and investigated, hoping to separate rumors from truth. I had thought the 1988 version was a more or less definitive account of the facts. As the interview with John Broome—and its Afterword—will reveal, such is far from the case. Still, as Nietzsche wrote, “In the mountains of truth, you never climb in vain.” The whole truth about The DC Writers Purge still remains to be revealed, but a large part of it is brought to light here, and I thank all those quoted herein who gave of their time and plumbed their memories, often for the first time in 20 years. The following version has been somewhat revised for this publication, primarily to accommodate the facts learned in the accompanying piece, “The Last John Broome Interview.” — MWB “A group of veteran writers, including Bill Finger, Gardner Fox and Otto Binder, pressured DC to provide pensions and insurance; they ended up losing their jobs.” — Les Daniels, DC Comics : 60 Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes (Bullfinch Press, 1995) Fans of DC Comics in the late ’60s may have been somewhat bewildered when, over a period of about 18 months, a number of long-time DC writers ceased scripting titles they’d worked on for years. Gardner Fox, a prolific and popular DC writer since the 1930s, the creator of Adam Strange, Star Rovers, Space Museum, Hawkman, and the Golden Age version of The Flash, was the scripter of Justice League of America through #65 (Sept. 1968), after which he was replaced without explanation. His final script for the Silver Age Atom, another character he co-created, was published in the

Feb./Mar. 1969 issue of The Atom and Hawkman #41. What was probably Fox’s last comics script for DC appeared in Detective Comics #384, Feb. 1969. Likewise, John Broome, another popular scripter for DC and creator of “The Atomic Knights,” and writer of the majority of Silver Age scripts for The Flash and Green Lantern, wrote his last story for DC with Green Lantern #75, March 1970. During the Silver Age, each editor at DC had his own “stable” of freelancers, who (with occasional exceptions) worked only for him. (The “stable” system began to disintegrate in the middle to late ’70s, as younger writers chose to work for more than one editor, and as editors sought fresh talent. The Writers Purge helped to end this system by drawing in younger contributors who had not formed concrete relationships with only one client.) Therefore, when an editor left a book, the freelance writers and artists generally went with him—even if the writers and artists created the book. And in those days, writers stuck to features far longer than is the norm today. It was unusual, therefore, for such top talents as Gardner Fox and John Broome—by no means old men (Fox was about 54)—to depart their long-term employer, virtually within a year of each other, yet they did, and with little fanfare. The letter column for JLA #65, Fox’s last issue, contains correspondence from a reader who asks that the book “please continue in this vein.” Editor Julius Schwartz’s perhaps ironic reply: “And we’ll continue in the vein you ask for, no matter what the bloody cost! A ‘new’ penciler introduced in the previous issue; a new writer [Denny O’Neil] in the next one!” Similar lettercol responses, and a change of names in the credit boxes were the only clue that there had been a change of writers at all; had not Schwartz recently begun crediting the creative teams, it would have been difficult to tell there had been a change. Yet other DC writers of long duration had also either departed, or were getting ready to leave. Months earlier, Arnold Drake, creator of Deadman and co-creator of The Doom Patrol, had written the last issue of that book and was writing few other assignments for DC. Other DC writers of long-standing tenure with the company were affected, such as Ed “France” Herron, and Bill Finger (called by Batman creator Bob Kane “the unsung hero of Batman”), the first writer of Batman, and considered by many to be the unacknowledged co-creator of the character. Over a period of approximately 18 months, writers whose total experience measured more than a century, many of whom had written for DC Comics since the company’s early days, many of whom had created some of the company’s most popular and profitable features, left the firm. Some, like Drake and Finger, returned to DC briefly in the ’70s. Fox returned for one “Adam Strange” text story in the ’70s. Broome never returned. Drake and Fox went to Marvel, where Drake scripted X-Men for a while and Fox scripted such titles as Doc Savage, “Dr. Strange,” and Tomb of Dracula. Both left comics soon after. For two decades it was assumed that the above-quoted story— that the writers had been summarily fired because they asked for health insurance—was true. The truth seems to be less clear-cut, and more insidious, and heralds the death knell for the Silver Age of Comics. It’s a story about ageism, about the contempt those who cannot create have for those who can and, of course, it’s a story about politics. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

Summer 1999

“We tried to form a union,” said Bob Haney, co-creator of Teen Titans, Eclipso, Metamorpho, The Doom Patrol, and prolific scripter on such DC titles as The Brave and the Bold, World’s Finest, House of Secrets, and “Unknown Soldier,” among many others. “That would probably be ’66, ’67... There was an attempt to form one in the ’50s... That was squashed in the most horrendous way—people were just kicked out. The attempt we made in the middle ’60s, or late-middle ’60s, included Gardner [Fox]; John [Broome] came to a few meetings... Bill Finger was in on it for a while, Arnold Drake, myself... Mortie [Mort] Meskin came to a few meetings…. “What had prompted the unionization was a terrible meeting that Arnold [Drake] and I had with the publisher [Irwin Donenfeld, DC executive vice president]… We went in to get a raise... and we went in and hassled with this man for an hour, and finally he said something to the effect that he would give a dollar-a-page rate raise, which was ridiculous. And then he said he would only give it to one person at a time, and that I would be the [first] person, which was putting me totally on the spot... And we walked out, because we realized that this was a joke... The attempt to give [the raise] to one person, was to isolate me—or whoever he offered it to—and at the same time to put me on the spot, because if I didn’t take it, nobody would get it.” Haney thought Donenfeld’s offer, even with the ludicrous offer of one dollar a page more, was an attempt to buy him off. “Better he should have said nothing at all, that would have been clear-cut. But this way of trying to isolate us, and divide us, was insulting, of course... “I may have accepted it the next day, because I felt that if I didn’t take it, the other guys wouldn’t get their dollar... My memory is a bit hazy... But I hope to hell I didn’t. The only thing to really do was to walk out and say, ‘Screw you, Jack’… We did walk out, as I recall, but without saying ‘Screw you’… That prompted us to hold the meetings to try to form the union... [The Donenfeld meeting] may have predated the unionization more than just a week or two, it may have been some months. I’m not sure... .” Arnold Drake’s memories of the meeting with Donenfeld are somewhat different, “But it could have happened that way... It came as no surprise to me, because that was the way they worked. Irwin and I had words at one point, because when I asked him for a rather substantial raise, and he did agree to give it to me, he then said, ‘But of course, you’re not gonna mention that to any of the other writers.’ And I said, ‘I’m not going to go out of my way to tell them about it, but I’m not going to lie to them if they ask me.’ And that made him quite angry, because they worked on a basis of secrecy.” Drake named the persons involved: “There was Bob [Haney] and myself... Kurt Schaffenberger... At one point or another it was more than six or eight. I guess it was about 10... At some point [we] had Dave Wood [scripter of Batman and Green Arrow], Otto Binder, France Herron... [Gardner Fox and John Broome] were both involved... John Broome would have made a difference, if John had lived in the country, but he was living... in Paris.” [See accompanying interview with John Broome and Afterword.] When asked how it was determined what the writers would ask for, Haney replied, “Arnold [Drake] was the man who formulated that sort of thing, he had more background and experience than I did at that time.” “[The writers’ movement] was not about page rates,” said Drake. “It was more complicated than that. Page rates are significant, but they did not go to the crux of the thing. The true crux of the thing was the matter of giving the writers some kind of ownership... if not actual ownership, then at least a kind of participation. That was the real issue. What [DC President] Jack Liebowitz did—quite successfully—was to turn it into a page rate issue and order something like a two-dollar raise across the board for everybody... not a significant [raise]… but everybody was very impressed by what they felt was a changing atmosphere, but it did not go to the real root of the problem, which was that writers were to prosper if they were successful in making the company prosper... Summer 1999

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

Partial ownership [of properties] would probably have been the final goal, but that was way off in the distance... We were interested in some kind of a share of the profits, some means of being rewarded for having done a good job... [A union] would have been the logical outcome. At that time... our immediate interest was in getting some kind of recognition for the contribution of the creative people.” Drake confirmed that health insurance was a part of their package. “There were a number of requests, and that was among them. The best they were willing to do was to allow us to buy our insurance through the company, so we would pay a lower rate, but they weren’t willing to take any part of the insurance.” Donenfeld was, according to Drake, willing—albeit grudgingly—to grant raises to the writers, but was unwilling to extend this largess into the area of fully paid medical benefits, profit participation, and partial ownership of characters. Neither Irwin Donenfeld, son of former DC president Harry Donenfeld, nor Jack Liebowitz were highly thought of by the creative community. “[Liebowitz] was basically a bookkeeper,” said Drake. “[It took] a very sophisticated bookkeeper [to] have kept DC alive in the ’50s. So Liebowitz was a ’50s hero, just as his failure to see comics in its fullest context made him the bottleneck of the ’60s... What Liebowitz did do—which was kind of amusing, it was almost an insult to my intelligence—he turned to me at one point during the negotiations to say, ‘You don’t understand. I’m very sympathetic to the points you’re making. When I was a young man I was a Socialist, too!’ The problem was that Liebowitz had a youth of 20 minutes.” Whatever Donenfeld’s priorities were, good relations with the writers does not seem to have been among them. Drake recalls the following resolution of a dispute between himself and Donenfeld, concerning Doom Patrol #121 (Sept.-Oct. 1968), the last issue of that book: “In a kind of petulant retaliation, what Donenfeld did was order that [artist] Bruno Premiani’s [art] be altered. Originally it had [shown] Bruno and myself talking [to the reader], and he removed my figure and put [editor] Murray Boltinoff’s in.”

Above: March 1968 correspondence between John Broome and Julius Schwartz discussing the volcanic atmosphere at the usually sedate DC offices. While not specifically mentioning the DC writers’ situation, the letters do emphasize the monumental changes taking place in the comic book company’s offices. Thanks to Julie Schwartz for sharing these with us. ©1999 Julius Schwartz.

Above, right and next page: This, the final issue of The Doom Patrol (#121) was originally intended by writer/creator Arnold Drake to feature Drake and artist/creator Bruno Premiani directly addressing the reader in a plea to save the book from cancellation. In what Drake called “petulant retaliation” against the writers’ movement, editorial director Irwin Donenfeld ordered Drake’s image to be replaced with that of editor Murray Boltinoff. Needless to say, the book was cancelled. ©1968 DC Comics.

A meeting with Liebowitz followed. His response to the writers’ requests was, according to Haney, “apoplectic... He was apoplectic about most things. [Liebowitz’s feeling] was, ‘These guys don’t know what trouble we’re in.’ Of course, the firm was still doing very well in those days.” “Liebowitz raised technical and legal questions,” said Drake. “Not that there aren’t some significant legal questions. How can you get involved in the matter of ownership on Superman, when it’s been written by so many writers, and when the original writers were screwed out of the ownership to begin with? It is complicated, and the lawyers will tell you that once you start to fool around with the ownership, you may endanger the whole structure of the industry... but you know, there are some pretty clever legal minds, that are able to solve every damn thing known to man, if there is a motivation, if truly both sides want to do it. But that wasn’t the case, obviously. “What they wanted to do was to find a legitimate reason for stalling, and that’s what Liebowitz did, successfully. He said, ‘Let me give it to my attorneys. Let them see if they can work out some marvelous plot that will compensate you without risking our ownership, and I’ll get back to you, but you know, that will take a while.’ And, of course, that was the beginning of the end...I was very well aware of what [Liebowitz] meant, I knew it was a six-month to a year stall... so by the time I got back [Drake had moved to London for personal reasons] this thing will probably be ready to be resolved— but that’s not what happened at all. “What happened was that Carmine [Infantino] moved in at that point, and the whole set-up changed...Once Carmine became the great leader, all those things went by the boards, past relationships went down the drain.” Haney confirms this: “[Liebowitz] stalled it, yes... He dangled a kind of a carrot, a very thin carrot. The big stick was always in the background.” Besides the external roadblock of Liebowitz’s stalling, another, internal obstacle manifested itself—virtually no artists were willing to become involved. “We were trying to get the artists to join,” said Haney. “We never got too far along on this... Our big problem was the artists. Because if we didn’t have the artists with us—writers are somewhat more interchangeable than artists in the business. I don’t put the writers down—sometimes I think they’re more crucial than the artists—but in a way it’s an artists’ medium. If we had had three or four of the major artists, we would have had the clout to go into DC and get some decent conditions, especially in terms of rate... We went to three or four of the major artists; here was the difference: they were doing okay... An artist got $30-40 a page in those days... and they made, in terms of those day’s dollars, a decent income.”

Apparently, only three artists were ever involved with the group: Mort Meskin, Carmine Infantino, and Kurt Schaffenberger. “We only had Kurt,” recalls Haney. “Mortie Meskin was kind of out of things by then, as I recall, and I don’t think we ever had another major artist.” According to both Drake and Haney, Schaffenberger was the only major artist willing to become involved with the group. “We wanted the artists involved, too,” recalls Drake, “but we couldn’t get them... [Schaffenberger] was the only [artist] who had the guts or the intelligence to recognize that this was where it was at. “[Carmine Infantino] did come to one or two [of the initial meetings],” said Haney. “I think Carmine... was not what I would consider a real stand-up guy.” “I’d invited [Carmine] to join us,” said Drake, speaking of the initial days of the writers’ movement. “He said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m on the other side.’ This is when he was an artist, but was busy wooing the hell out of Liebowitz. Liebowitz [retired] first, and chose—handpicked—Carmine.” “I was the only artist in the group,” confirmed Kurt Schaffenberger. “One of my closest friends was Otto Binder, and he was one of the leaders of this movement, and he asked would I do this, and I said yes, because I’d always felt that we were getting short-changed, so I started attending the meetings. The meetings ran on until Otto Binder’s daughter was killed in an automobile accident, and then the whole thing seemed to break up.” Schaffenberger recalled the writers involved: “Arnold Drake... [Gardner Fox] was at one meeting, [John Broome] was one of the ‘steadies’… [France Herron] attended one or two, but he was very sick at this point... It was shortly before he died... Otto Binder was one of the originators... Bob Haney was there, and... Bill Finger.” The meetings were held at varying sites, “at different fellows’ homes in New York,” said Schaffenberger. Schaffenberger was not involved in any direct negotiation with DC executives. “[The writers] were trying to protect me, in a sense, because I was the only artist they’d gotten...so they kept my name pretty much in the background. “[The writers] were all basically pissed off at Mort Weisinger. He was the one individual that precipitated the thing. He gave them absolutely no respect, he gave them nothing but grief... I was in Mort’s office one time when he told Bill Finger—a real constructive piece of criticism—he said, ‘I wouldn’t wipe my ass with this script.’” Schaffenberger confirmed the general tenor of what the writers wanted: “Better rates, reprint rights—a lot of the things that we have today…[Medical benefits] were discussed. [The writers] did let management know that some of the freelancers were not at all happy... [Management’s response was] ‘Get lost.’” Given the deliberateness with which the writers moved, the fact that they knew they were fighting an uphill battle, and their attempts to protect their own, the above-quoted statement—that six or seven middle-aged men somehow “pressured” DC, which was by then a division of worldwide media conglomerate Warner Communications—seems in need of considerable revision. With management turning a deaf ear to the writers’ movement, a strike was suggested.

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

Summer 1999

“We held the meetings,” recalls Haney, “when all this came down, and Arnold said, “Let’s go on strike’... This does not reflect any credit on me... I said, ‘No’... The reason I said no... we had no artists with us. I said, ‘Arnold, if we get two or three of the major artists with us, I promise you, I’ll go out with you. We’ll walk.’ And we could have shut them down, because you cannot lose four or five major writers and three or four major artists... They had a terrific deadline problem always, there... I must admit that I counseled against it, and a few other guys were for it, and a few other guys were against it... And that’s kind of when the union fell apart. “Maybe [Drake] was right in the long run,” Haney continued. “You see, I took a calculated gamble. I thought, ‘Well, if we don’t have the artists, writers they can get quicker and easier, and probably just go right along, and we’ll be done for.’ I thought, ‘What the hell, I’ll do it if we have a chance of winning it.’ I did not think we had a chance... Plus, I was building my house... and the strike was coming at the very worst time for me personally. I had more at stake than anyone at the ‘union’ meetings, so I was being asked to take the biggest risk... At that point, the only guys who would have walked would have been me, Arnold, and one or two other guys. Gardner, I guess. So it didn’t happen. That’s a very crucial part of the story.” Reminded that DC was able to replace the writers very easily, Haney said, “So I guess I was right, in the abstract, but sometimes I wish I had just been in a position or had the balls to just [say] ‘F*ck you guys.’ “[The artists] all turned us down, and that’s when I thought, ‘Oh, well,’ and I walked... Just a few years later... prices began to rise, costs of living began to rise, there were no big raises for the artists, and they began to hurt. And they sort of came back to us and said—some of them did, anyway—’Hey, maybe you guys were right.’ Well, then it was a sort of different period, and it was too late. The corporate changeover took place, and Carmine came in, and all the other changes, and you had rates changing, and it became kind of a different ball game... We said, ‘Well, if we had you guys... we could have maybe had some clout’… See, a lot of these things were given later, voluntarily... but they were given grudgingly and so late in the game.” One of the writers who entered the field in the late ’60s was Mike Friedrich, today head of the Star*Reach artists’ agency. Friedrich hit the ground running, writing such features as Justice League, Batman, The Flash, and Green Lantern for Julius Schwartz. A prolific letterhack and a long-time fan, Friedrich’s professional debut made him at once an example for—and the envy of—every fan who aspired to become a pro. “I was the first new writer for Julie...I sold my first story through the mail,” said Friedrich. “I decided to come to New York...and [write] more, directly, face to face...I started work at DC in 1967...I worked during the Summers in New York [from 196771] and in the Fall of ’71, I worked full-time, after college, at DC until I left the company.” Friedrich was unaware at the time that he seemed to represent, to the DC management, a new generation of talent. “My ego would have liked to have known that at the time, but nobody told me.” Nonetheless, this seems to have been the case, due to special accounting arrangements DC set up for him during the Summer of ’68. However, due to his inexperience, Friedrich did not realize that this treatment was anything other than the norm. Friedrich was unaware, until years after the fact, that writers who had left DC may have been fired. “I did not hear [the rumor of firing] until Bob Haney, or Arnold Drake, or somebody... my memory was that it was Haney, but I’m not positive... wrote a letter to The Comics Journal in the late Seventies... and that was the first I ever heard of it.” Indeed, Friedrich says writers Fox and Broome may have withdrawn from the business due to personal reasons, or due to the quality of the older writers’ work: “I saw Gardner Fox scripts—typical scripts— they were literally 90% copywritten by the editor. So there is some Summer 1999

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validity, in my mind, to Schwartz’s perception that Fox was just not producing adequately, and if someone else popped up, even some 17-year-old kid in California... it [was] reasonable for the editor to pursue [a new writer]. I had no contact with John Broome. By this time, Broome was off in Paris... The impression I always got from Schwartz was that Broome sort of voluntarily withdrew. [Schwartz] never said that out loud, but Schwartz also never indicated that he wasn’t happy with Broome’s stuff... He indicated to me that he was happy with Broome’s material, but that because Broome was now living in Paris... he wasn’t able to do as much work and seemed to have lost most of his interest in doing it.” During that time, Friedrich had some contact with the older generation of writers. “I saw Haney regularly up at the office... during the Summers that I was there... We would have occasional discussions, but they were of a very general nature... We never specifically started talking about [the writers’ movement]… I didn’t hear any of this till like 10 or 15 years later.” Friedrich, naturally, spent more time talking with the younger writers who began entering the field in the late ’60s, like Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, and Gerry Conway. Ironically, the younger writers began discussing among themselves the possibility of some sore of vaguely defined writers’ movement. “I remember that a lot of the younger writers had tentative discussions... I remember a classic meeting out at a guy’s house [a friend whom Friedrich would not name but whom he said is not in the business] who Marv Wolfman and Len Wein and I knew... [We] discussed the idea of some sort of organization among ourselves. It never went anywhere, it was like one of those one-day discussions... but I remember [the subject of] that discussion was ‘how are we going to reach out to the older guys?’… The older guys never reached out to us... about forming some sort of creative organization, a writers’ guild, anything like that... that I’m aware of... I kind of felt, at the time, like I was the new blood, helping to renovate what was sterile work. I didn’t have a lot of respect for what those guys were doing. As an older person now, I feel I was probably fairly arrogant, but now I have a lot more respect for what they were doing than I did when I was 18... I was aware that I was part of the process of sort of moving the old guys aside. Denny O’Neil was a far more active player in that process, he was brought in to do an awful lot of [writing]… but they even brought in another old-timer, in the form of Frank Robbins... and I remember Schwartz [was] extremely

relieved to be dealing with a ‘veteran.’” O’Neil, who began his comics career as a staffer at Marvel, had been freelancing for Charlton, then was brought to DC under the editorial wing of Dick Giordano, along with other Charlton alumni like Steve Skeates, Steve Ditko, and Jim Aparo. Robbins had written and drawn his King Features comic strip, Johnny Hazard, for many years and was widely considered to be one of the most talented disciples of the Caniff school. “It’s conceivable,” said Friedrich, summing up his feelings, “if somebody started to agitate as a writer, that they could perceive that they were being forced out for that agitation, where in fact they could also well have been forced out because they weren’t producing what the market wanted to read.” Asked whether the reasons for management’s discontent with the writers could have been a combination of both, Friedrich said, “Probably. Now that I have 20 years of experience with [comic book] management, I believe that management is capable of doing anything... It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the kind of discussion that would be had between a publisher and an editorial director would be ‘(a) we’ve got these tired old guys, (b) they’re giving us a hard time, (c) let’s try and ease them out.’… That kind of discussion is completely likely.”

“There were two reasons [for the failure of the writers’ effort],” said Drake. “[Lack of participation by artists] was primary; secondary was that the writer was not respected back then, and the artist was. The attitude was, ‘Anybody can write, but not anybody can draw.’” Were any writers actually fired, or did they simply choose not to write any more for DC? Drake: “It was simpler than that. I had lunch with Joe Orlando one day... this was somewhere around 1970, I guess... and Joe put it quite simply. He said, ‘Nobody over the age of 35 is going to write for me.’ So I said, ‘Joe, you’re over 35,’ and he said, ‘I’m the exception to the rule.’ “I don’t think [the writers] were fired so much as they were starved out... [Management] took titles away from them, and they would put them on lesser books... There was a process—whether it was conscious or otherwise—of kind of stripping the guys of their own dignity.” “I don’t think [the writers] were specifically fired,” said Schaffenberger, “—a lot of them didn’t get much work any more after that.” He speculated that the situation may have been more of a freeze-out than an actual dismissal; writers may have simply found that their assignments had been given to other writers, or found themselves demoted to lesser assignments. Asked if his participation in the writers’ movement affected his own career, Schaffenberger said, “I’m not sure. There was period in there, in about 1970—right after Carmine took over—that I didn’t get any work out of DC for

about two years.” Schaffenberger suspected that this was due to his participation, but was not sure. Schaffenberger was not aware that a strike had ever been considered, and speculated the idea was dropped due to lack of participation by a large number of artists. “The movement died [in 1967] with Otto Binder’s daughter. After that, I don’t recall a single meeting we had.” “The word sort of got back that there had been meetings,” said Haney. “There was a certain amount of pressure put on some of the people. I did not, personally, get the pressure... Some of the other people did get more pressure than I did. I don’t know why I didn’t. “The way [DC] did it was for guys to sort of be forced out or quit over a period of some months, I guess it was... But if people walk out overnight, that’s a lot more of a jolt for them, but it didn’t happen that way... I [attended] one more meeting... at someone’s apartment... then I didn’t go anymore—if there were any more— then I began to hear about these guys vanishing, or not being there, or somebody had left. I’d heard about it kind of secondhand.” Most of the writers did not socialize outside the office, and their meetings in the office were only by chance. “Sometimes,” Haney said, “you didn’t see Gardner Fox for months, unless you came in the same day he did... So he could have been out a whole year before I might have been aware of it... I don’t know whether Gardner was force to quit, or he left because he was just disgusted... Arnold [Drake] got sort of forced into the background; there was a certain prejudicial atmosphere... I don’t think anybody was simply called in and [told], ‘You’re out of here because you tried to organize.’ It wasn’t that... I can positively say, I think, that did not happen—but what happened was a tacit pressure, and then there’s the other thing, that if you see that you can’t get anything, can’t get anywhere, that guys quit anyway... They just walk, and I don’t know whether they walked, or whether they were pushed, or [whether they] walked and [were] pushed.” Did any of the DC staff editors know of the writers’ movement? “Jack Schiff knew [of the growing discontent of the writers],” said Drake. “He was somewhat sympathetic... I think Jack probably did try [to intervene on the writers’ behalf]… but they didn’t pay much attention to him. Jack was the ‘house radical’ as far as Liebowitz was concerned... I don’t remember whether he had been pushed out by then [from his job as staff editor] or not... That was probably [a DC executive’s] doing, I would say. [He] probably felt that [George] Kashdan was too sympathetic to the freelancers.” “Jack Schiff, who was a good man, and a liberal man... was aware [of the writers’ movement],” confirmed Haney. “George [Kashdan] was aware...then I think the other type of persons... they’re company men, and they get frightened and angry about that type of thing. They go with the company. But the more liberal element of the editorial staff was on our side. They couldn’t do much, of course, but silently sympathize... Mort [Weisinger] would always be a total company man... He was such an exploitative and manipulative man... And he was buddies with Jack Liebowitz... He despised writers, he despised artists…. “The only editor... fired was George Kashdan,” continued Haney, “and that was unfair, because his books were not doing that badly. They fired him because his attitude was not to kiss ass... It wasn’t Carmine’s doing, particularly, I don’t think, but they felt they had to do something to scare people or shake people up.” Schaffenberger did not know if editors Jack Schiff or George Kashdan knew of the writers’ movement, though he was sure Weisinger knew and disapproved. “He objected to any of the writers and artists discussing rates—strongly objected.” When Liebowitz retired in 1970, Carmine Infantino, best remembered as penciler on The Flash, “Adam Strange,” and “Space Museum,” was made publisher, following a three-year stint as editorial director. Infantino’s credit as editorial director first appeared in the indicia of the DC books dated Aug. 1968, with his name first appearing as publisher in the Oct. 1971 issues. Infantino, a freelance artist throughout most of his career, had been making inroads to a staff COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

Summer 1999

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Creating the Filmation Generation

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

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 • See free previews and order at www.twomorrows.com position for some time. He had begun to attend editorial meetings at his own request, then had begun either laying out or suggesting cover ideas for the magazines, in an attempt to shore up lagging sales. Both Haney and Drake felt that Carmine was intensely loyal to the old guard of Liebowitz and Donenfeld. “[Carmine] was not a bad guy,” said Haney. “Sometimes he was too much of a company man... He was very beholden to Jack Liebowitz, he was loyal to Jack Liebowitz... and Liebowitz was no longer there. He was loyal to those kind of old principles that were not even principles, they were just rotten paternalism, and did not work very well for anybody, including the ‘paternals’… [DC] did need a chief editor... and Carmine, of course, jockeyed himself into the job by threatening to leave. He was one of the sons that Liebowitz valued... and when Donenfeld left, Carmine... was made editorial director. It was the first time we’d had one since Whit [Ellsworth]… Things got a little bit better... Marvel taking away a lot of the market forced DC to begin to at least... treat the writers and artists somewhat better in terms of rates and recognition... But of course, nothing really significant changed until the new regime came in the ’70s.” Carmine Infantino would not talk about the issues covered in this article, but, through a third party, said that most of the writers who ceased to work for DC during that period did so either before he was made editorial director, in 1968, or after his term as publisher was over, in 1976. Any dismissal of writers, continued Infantino’s intermediary, would have been due to the actions of DC editors. No help, apparently, was coming from outside sources either. Said Drake: “We tried to bring in the Writers Guild of America (of which I am a 25-year member)… but we were told... to come to them when we were fully organized and then they would help. Which is like a lifeguard shouting to a drowning man, ‘I’ll save you just as soon as you’ve swum to shore and hung up your suit to dry!” Drake offered these observations as to why the movement failed: “There was this feeling on the part of the artists that when you band together, you lose your individuality. ‘I want to be compensated for my talents, not for some damn political notion!’… [The movement] failed for the simple reason that we had only about six people involved, at the most it would have been eight people... [By the time Carmine became Summer 1999

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editorial director] I don’t think it was necessary [to stop the writers’ movement] it just sort of washed away... When I came back [from London], I recognized that that’s where it was at, that we weren’t going to be able to resurrect [the movement], not for some period of time, because the guys weren’t ready. Once I recognized that, I decided to try to adjust things for myself, to make myself as comfortable as possible there... It was not Liebowitz who dunnit, the enemy was ourselves, as Walt Kelly said, I think.” Haney disagrees with this, to a degree. “Yes, we did do it to ourselves to an extent, but any management with the slightest bit more concern or compassion for its ‘employees’ would have treated us better than these people. They were living in the 16th century as far as respect for the creative people who enabled them to have mansions, limos, and... incomes.” “The original publishers in the comics field,” says Drake, “thought that they were really running brothels. They were the madames, and the writers and artists were the girls. Well, that’s no longer true... Over the last 20 years or so, the comics field has created stars; and those stars have gained power, because a star sells a picture... or a comic book—and he is, as they say, ‘box office’… One of the reasons that they didn’t print writers’ credits in the early days was, I think, the recognition that they wanted to avoid a star system arising, where one day they would have to pay a guy what he was really worth.” At least a recently as the end of my second editorial tenure at DC in 1986, staff editors could be heard making the same argument against giving cover credits to the creative teams, and at least one DC staff editor still feels the same, as the century grinds to a close. Drake summoned up his experience thusly: “It was apparently an idea whose time had not come. Maybe it’s right now, but it doesn’t look like anybody’s going to bother to do it. Now they’re making the mistake of saying, ‘We don’t need it, we’ve got everything that we want.’ That’s dumb. What you need is recognition. You need to be dealt with as a group, not as individuals...What the [freelancers] have gained hasn’t been taken, it has been given to them—and that which is gratuitously given to you can be just as easily snatched back. So if the whole field is going to become truly legitimate, the writers and the artists will one day get together and take what’s rightfully theirs, by speaking with a single voice, instead of trying to go in and negotiate one by one.” 15

CBA Interview

The Last John Broome Interview Mike W. Barr talks to Silver-Agers John & Peg Broome

Conducted by Mike W. Barr

Above: Carmine Infantino pencils and Joe Giella inks depicting a contemplative John Broome from the Batman story in Detective Comics #343. Note the resemblance to a certain DC editor on the dart-covered picture behind John. ©1965 DC Comics.

Meeting John Broome, long one of my favorite comic book writers, at the 1998 San Diego Con was a bigger thrill than I can easily convey here. I had the immense privilege of taking John and his wife Peg to dinner one night and later conducted this interview with John, with Peg taking an active part in providing important facts or prodding John’s memory. You’re not alone in wishing it were longer. Since his time was short, many aspects of John’s long career went untouched; and, since he was already talking about attending other American conventions, and was in good health, I hoped we could pick up at some other meeting. Such was not, alas, to be the case. John Broome died on March 14, 1999, leaving behind many unanswered questions, and even more family, friends, fans, and happy memories. The memory of John Broome that remains with me is of the man’s grace, his good humor and even, in certain aspects, his serenity. His quote concerning the death of Hal Jordan, DC’s Silver Age Green Lantern: “I would never write that story!” has been reported. On the way to the Hotel Marriott to conduct this interview, I mentioned to John that Barry Allen, DC’s Silver Age Flash, had been similarly killed. He made no audible comment, but shook his head once, in disgust. That was his only reply. He refused to dwell in the past, preferring, I believe, to be content with his accomplishments and not stew over what other hands, whose priorities and affections were not his own, had done. There’s a lesson there for everyone who labors in a work-forhire medium; John Broome learned it long ago. Immense gratitude is due to Richard Morrissey, who put together the funding to bring John and Peg Broome to the 1998 San Diego Con. This, then, is The Last John Broome Interview—and I have never more fervently wished to be proven wrong. — MWB ©1999 Michael W. Barr. This interview was conducted in San Diego on August 15, 1998. It was transcribed by Jon B. Cooke. Special thanks to Peg Broome and Julie Schwartz for their gracious assistance.

Mike W. Barr: Mike Barr here with John Broome at the lovely Hotel Marriott. John, how have you been enjoying yourself? John Broome: Pretty good, all things considered. Who was it when they asked him how he was at 83 and he said, “I feel pretty good when you consider the alternative”? MWB: Exactly. [chuckles] John: That’s the way I feel now: I feel pretty good considering the alternative. MWB: Is this the first convention you’ve ever been to? John: Yes. This is the first convention. MWB: Really. You must have heard something about them when you were still in comics. John: Yes. Julie [Schwartz] would tell me about the conventions and he’d ask me to go—but I never went. MWB: They’re sort of a spin-off of the science-fiction conventions that Julie attended. John: I didn’t know about them either. I was never a real sciencefiction writer. MWB: You said [at the panel] that you initially wrote 12 sciencefiction stories for the pulps. John: Just about. I was starting out. I did 12 science-fiction stories—maybe it was a little less, but it was certainly over 10. MWB: Had you done any comic book writing at that time? John: No. I did the science-fiction writing first. MWB: I see. How did you get into comics? John: You see, Julie Schwartz was my agent (we called him the first interplanetary agent). Peg Broome: He was Ray Bradbury’s agent. MWB: Yes, he was Ray Bradbury’s and a bunch of other important science-fiction writers’ agent. John: And he sold about 10 of my science-fiction stories as my agent. Then he got a job at DC and, since I had a good contact with him, I began to write comics for him. MWB: Before that you worked at Fawcett? John: Yeah. For a short time. MWB: How did you get involved with Fawcett? John: I think I met someone who was an editor. I knew a number of people (who now come back to me): Wendell Crowley, Rod Reed, France Herron—but I don’t know which one actually started me off. MWB: You were saying yesterday that you wrote a character called Lance O’Casey who was an explorer, a South Seas-type. John: Yes. Sort of a Joseph Conrad-type character. MWB: Yeah. I’ve read some of those. That kind of character was more popular back then than it is today. John: That may be so. MWB: Today super-heroes seem to be the thing. John: Yes. In those days there was a magazine called South Seas and this kind of story would appear in that magazine. So they took the idea and made it into a comic book called Lance O’Casey. MWB: Did you create that character? John: I don’t think so. It’s hard to remember now, but I don’t think so. MWB: It was pretty much an assignment that was given to you? John: Right. MWB: So you knew Julie through your science-fiction stories; he was your agent. John: That’s right. I don’t think I knew Julie before he was my COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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interplanetary agent. Peg: That’s how you got into science-fiction comics. MWB: So when Julie became an editor over at DC, he brought you into it. Did you feel it was much of a transition going from text-only to visuals of comics? John: I found that it was so much easier to write comics than to write science-fiction that I just leaped into the opportunity. When I started to write them, I discovered that I had a real talent for comics that I didn’t have for science-fiction. [chuckles] I was forcing myself to write science-fiction, but with comics, it all came easy. MWB: That’s interesting. Did you read any of the great comic strips at the time? Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie, Terry & the Pirates? John: Well, there weren’t too many great comic strips at that time. Peg: [to John] They were mostly in newspapers. John: I’m sure I read some, but I really don’t remember very well. MWB: So you found the visual transition very easy? John: Yes. Peg: John also likes to draw so the visual part fit right in. MWB: Oh, so you’re an artist also? John: Sort of, yeah. I have many, many watercolors. They’re $1,000 each if someone wants to buy them! [chuckles] I had showings in New York City, at least three or four showings. But I was never a real artist. Peg: He was a “Sunday painter.” This was in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. He was always doing something. MWB: So you always had an understanding of the visual element and you could translate that to comics? John: Probably. Peg: It just fit neatly. MWB: Yes. That’s good because so many comic book writers don’t... The text fights the visual when they should complement each other. But that was obviously not the case with your scripts. John: I was helped by the fact that someone was going to draw what I imagined. I was helped by that. MWB: Did you ever discuss scripts with the artist? John: The way DC worked, you always worked through the editor. If you had any messages for the artist, you gave it to the editor or wrote it in the script. But, as a rule, you didn’t work hand-inglove with the artist in producing the total story. MWB: Any of the artists you worked with—like Murphy Anderson or Carmine Infantino—did you know them socially at all? John: I knew some of them. Not really, I wouldn’t say socially. Joe Kubert, for example, was kind of a friend. Peg: Sort of a buddy. MWB: Of course, you were quite good friends with Julie; you used to play bridge with him. John: Julie and I were good friends. Peg: More than that: He used to come regularly to our house for weekends. We called him our son! [laughter] John: I was his best man at his wedding and we were very good friends. When he got married, we took care of his wife. So that was a good arrangement. MWB: So those must have been very good times for you. Peg: We were living up in the country for the weekends. It was just about an hour out of New York City, in Duchess County, near Poughkeepsie. We always would have people passing by and Julie used to come for weekends. It was a very nice working relationship and, as John said on the panel, the two of them joked the same way. John: I’m going to tell you something: I think that some people thought I was rather hard on Julie because (although I can’t even imagine it now) someone said that back in those days. MWB: Did you feel that you were hard on him? John: To tell the truth, I thought maybe I was. Peg: Well, I would say that Julie was hard on you at the bridge table! [laughter] John: Maybe that was part of it. As two friends, we could quarrel. MWB: Sometimes two friends can have a discussion that an outsider might think would be hostile—but it’s not really because you Summer 1999

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know how far you can go with a friend. Julie was a shark at the bridge table? Peg: He was an expert. John: The thing I’m trying to say is this: That was Julie’s beginning as an editor and he was not sure of himself at all. I had a history of writing science-fiction; an experience in fiction, see? I had more experience than he did, so I was the more knowledgeable of the two. Peg: I would say “the more argumentative.” [laughs] John: Yes. [laughs] MWB: And since you had worked at Fawcett, you had been in comics longer than Julie had. John: I had that too, yes. So he was, looking back, probably very happy to get someone who had experience to write the stories. He had no experience at all in plotting or arranging stories. With me, it was all instinctive. Maybe I felt that his instinct wasn’t strong enough to match mine, so I might be a little hard on him in writing a story. MWB: Right. So you were more of an instinctive writer, not so much intellectual. John: Let me say it this way: Not so much a writer who applies rules of writing to a task, but one who feels his way. MWB: Did you feel that you learned anything from your own reading? John: I think it was all instinctive. MWB: All the pacing and the plotting?

Above: In Strange Adventures #218, Gil Kane was assigned the splash pencils to the otherwise Broome written and Murphy Anderson illustrated Atomic Knights reprint. Art ©1999 Gil Kane. Atomic Knights ©1999 DC Comics.

Above: Murphy Anderson pencil sketch of the leader to the fondlyrecalled Anderson/Broome creation, the Atomic Knights. Art ©1999 Murphy Anderson. Atomic Knights ©1999 DC Comics. Below: Another Infantino/Giella panel depicting author Broome from Detective Comics #343. ©1965 DC Comics.

John: All instinctive. Peg: It’s like when you do a drawing; it’s instinct. You pick a subject perhaps, but it’s the gift, the inexplicable gift. MWB: With writers and artists, some are very instinctive and others are intellectual. It seems to me (though I met him only a couple of times) Gardner Fox struck me as someone more intellectual, working the plots out more in his mind while when you worked with Julie it was more of an instinctive thing. John: I think so. MWB: So you and Julie would get together and plot out the stories that you worked on. John: I think it was because most of the plotting came from me and I think, as the years went by, it changed. Julie developed this instinct and, at the end, maybe he had it stronger than I did. It was very much different in the beginning. I never thought about that. [chuckles] But it’s absolutely true! MWB: There’s also a difference in the way the books were handled. The Flash was very heavily reliant on the super-villains, they were in almost every issue, and while Green Lantern had super-villains, they weren’t necessarily in every issue. With Green Lantern, you brought in the “Jordan Brothers” stories. Do you remember them? John: When you speak about memory, that’s a dead issue with me. I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with the instinctive part. If you rely on instinct, then it may pass out as easily as it comes in. MWB: Plus you have written so many stories, you can’t be expected to remember all of them. Your mention of instinctive writing is interesting, because we had talked earlier about the Nero Wolfe comic strip which you wrote in the 1950s. Rex Stout, who created Nero Wolfe, was that same kind of writer. John: I had forgotten; I went up to visit Rex Stout. MWB: Did you? Cool! Peg: He had an interview with Rex Stout. John: Oh, yes! I had forgotten about that completely! Even now, thinking about it, I can’t remember much, but I know I went up there to meet him. Because it was necessary to work out the whole long storyline. I was going to write it, he wasn’t going to write it. MWB: His name was on it but you wrote it. John: Yeah, right. So I had to go there. He lived somewhere... MWB: He had a house in Brewster, New York. So that was very close to you? John: Yes. He had a country house. Peg: I didn’t go. If I had gone, I wouldn’t have forgotten, because I love mystery stories. John: Yes. So I went to his country house in Brewster. I remember admiring him. MWB: You read his novels? John: I remember admiring him. I read some of his novels—I don’t know if I was one of his great readers—but I enjoyed his writing. When we met, I was impressed and he was very nice to me. I had more than one meeting with him because we had this script to take care of. Peg: Since Rex Stout’s name was on the strip, he had to okay it. John: That was his job: to okay what I wrote. MWB: This would have been some time in the 1950s? Peg: It would have had to be in the ‘50s. John: It had to be. MWB: After doing the comics for Julie all those years, do you remember how you got a comic strip? Who approached you? Peg: Wasn’t that done through Julie? John: Nero Wolfe? That wasn’t through Julie. Peg: I’m talking about Superman. John: That wasn’t through Julie. It may have been Mort Weisinger. MWB: You did the Superman daily newspaper strip? Peg: You did a lot of those. MWB: That makes sense that Mort Weisinger would have been involved in that because he was the Superman editor at the time. How was your relationship with Mort Weisinger different from your relationship with Julie? John: Julie, as I said, was my friend. Weisinger was never my

friend—but he was a capable editor as far as I know and I had no trouble with him. It was just a good writer/editor relationship. MWB: Did you plot the stories with him the way you did with Julie? John: Yeah. Weisinger was a little more forthright and a little more pushy—and he would insist on doing more plotting than maybe Julie. Julie was no insister. In those days, Julie was much more mild and tentative—he was tentative—and wasn’t sure of himself at all. MWB: That’s not the Julie Schwartz I know! [laughs] John: Weisinger was always pushy! It was built into Weisinger’s character but Julie sort of developed a hard character or shell as the years went by. MWB: [laughs] That’s funny. Peg: I remember a story of when the four of you went to lunch. John: Oh, that was a story. George Kashdan, Jack Schiff... Peg: And you, and someone who had no reaction. He had no reaction when you got poisoned. John: Who was it…? Anyway, the story was: We all ate contaminated corn in a... Peg: A very good restaurant on Lexington Avenue. John: What happened was that I got very sick, Jack Schiff got mildly sick, the third guy (I’ve forgotten who he was), but, George Kashdan had no effects whatever. And we all four ate the corn. Peg: They would all have lunch together and it was very sociable in those days. MWB: Schiff and Kashdan were DC editors in those days? John: Yes, they were both editors. MWB: Jack Schiff was the Batman editor. John: Yes. Kashdan had a couple of books, too. He was a very nice man. MWB: Did you know Murray Boltinoff at all? John: Yes. Quite well. Peg: Was Boltinoff from Brooklyn College? John: I don’t think so. He was one of the earliest editors, and as far as I know, he was there before Julie. I got to have a normal relationship with him as a writer. He always treated me well and I have nothing to say against Boltinoff. MWB: What did you write for him? John: Whatever he was doing. I can’t remember too well. I can’t remember whether he wanted me as much or more as I wanted him! I can’t remember which is which at this date. MWB: They were keeping you busy in those days? John: Yeah. That was the thing: If they felt they weren’t giving me enough work, one of the other editors would—light bulbs going off—suggest that he give me some comic book character—and I would take it if I had the time to do it. MWB: The story that’s made the rounds for years is that, as a freelancer, you only wrote two pages a day. John: I don’t know where that story came from. It’s interesting because this is not the first time I’ve heard it—but I don’t recall it myself or ever saying it. MWB: Sounds like you were pretty busy and you must have written more than two pages a day. John: I must have, I think so. MWB: Assuming five work days, that’s only 40 pages a month. Peg: But once you have the plot, there’s not that much script. There’s not that much to write, so you could type out a script in no time once you had it all lined up. MWB: And as a writer once you get a momentum going, it’s easy to continue. John: Peggy and I moved up to Wingdale, one hour up from New York City by train, and my ordinary form of working—in the first 10 years, let’s say, when our daughter was growing up—was to go into New York once a week (or maybe even once every two weeks) because if I got enough stories to do, I’d do the plotting in New York and then come back and write them in the country place we had. I don’t think I would ever tell anybody that I was doing two pages a day. It’s probably a legend of some kind. Peg: Is that a lot, two pages a day? MWB: From my point of view, no. A good work day for me is something like, say, six pages a day. Two pages a day is not really a great amount of work. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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John: Probably not. Peg: [to John] What would probably happen is that you’d let some days go by and not work, and then have to scramble if you have a deadline. John: Mike, I wanted to ask you—although I don’t know if someone who is being interviewed has any rights at all— MWB: Of course you do. John: May I ask—why are you making this interview? MWB: As I mentioned to you, I want to update the article I wrote in WAP! The version you read was written about 10 years ago and I interviewed all the participants I could find in America. And when I learned you were going to be at the convention, I wanted to talk to you. When Comic Book Artist wanted me to update the article anyway—and when they learned I was going to be talking to you—they asked me to talk to you about your career. John: The other night, at the interview, I gave all I know about the attempt to form a union in DC and I don’t have any more than that. MWB: If we could just go over that briefly, if you don’t mind, for my interview here. John: That’s quite all right. I’ll give it to you very briefly. MWB: Actually, John, if before we do that I could ask you this: You said that when you were living upstate, you would come into New York about once a week or once every two weeks, you would probably plot stories with more than one editor in those days? John: That’s right. MWB: You’d have a morning appointment and an afternoon appointment? John: Maybe so. That’s the way it was. MWB: Once you had the plot worked out, it was fairly a matter of technique then from thereon. Peg: And when we went to Mexico, for example, a lot of scripts were lined up for several months. John: We would go away for lengthy vacations and trips, and I would have the result of several days or weeks of plotting which I would take with me. Peg: And then you would send them back. That’s what made it possible for us to go places and do things, because he didn’t have to report to the office. MWB: That’s one of the advantages of being a freelancer is that you have that freedom. As long as you turn the work in, no one much cares where it comes from. Peg: Well, it worked out with Julie because they got the plot satisfactorily arranged before the script was written. It was a good working arrangement. MWB: In terms of the attempt to unionize, how did that come about from your perspective? John: From my point of view, it came about because (again, it was instinctive) I felt it was immoral for DC or any company of that kind not to pay reprint rights. I knew that movies and— Peg: All the arts. John: Many other media—television and radio—were paying royalties, and I thought that comics should, too. I broached the subject to Irwin Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz. Peg: You didn’t get banned in any way. John: Because they couldn’t afford to take action like that. [chuckles] They showed themselves dead set against any kind of compromise. Liebowitz and Donenfeld didn’t show any weakness at all. So I thought the only way that they were ever going to be impressed by this appeal to their moral nature was to force it down their throats! So I began to talk to the writers, and they thought it was a very dangerous thing. “You’ll go into Liebowitz and he’ll kick you out on your ear, and you won’t get another job!” MWB: The other writers were, who? Gardner Fox... John: Fox, and Bob Haney and France Herron, “Ed” we called him. Otto Binder. How many is that? MWB: That is, I believe, four. John: I made five, and we were only six all together. MWB: George Kashdan, was he one of them? John: No, he was not a writer. Peg: Al Bester? John: No, Bester was not one of our comic writers. [By that time, Bester had been out of comics for several years.—MWB] Summer 1999

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MWB: Arnold Drake? John: Drake! Drake is right! MWB: And Bill Finger? John: Yeah, Finger was one. But apparently, we’re one over now, I think there were only six. I remember going to Drake’s house to talk to him and his wife was scared to death! They were having a child or something like that and she thought I was the devil incarnate! [laughter] Because I was talking union! I remember that, she was crying and Drake tried to calm her down because he knew it was the right thing to do. Anyway, after many months, I got all six writers together and shepherded them into this anteroom and finally into Liebowitz’s office. [chuckles] Liebowitz didn’t even give me a chance to talk; I wanted to make a speech but he never gave me a chance. “Boys,” he says, “I don’t know what you’re doing here,” or something like that, “but I’ve been thinking of giving you all a $2 raise!” Well, everybody just fell on the floor and applauded him! [laughs] And the whole attitude changed. And that was the end of the union. MWB: This was $2 a page? John: For a raise of $2 a page. MWB: What were the rates like in those days? John: I really don’t know. Maybe $6 or $8 a page. It couldn’t have been very much. This could have been before the 1960’s, sometime in the 1950’s. MWB: Really? Because the stories I’ve heard of this type of organizing were in the ’60s sometime. John: Okay, ’60s would be right, I’m wrong. MWB: So your main interest in the unionization was to get reprint rates. Did you care anything about medical benefits? John: No, I didn’t go that far. I only wanted to get reprint rights. I wanted them to

Above: Syndicated Sunday page of Rex Stout’s legendary detective, Nero Wolfe, with script by John Broome and art by Fran Matera. August 18, 1957. ©1957 Columbia Features. Below: Ever the children’s entertainer, John Broome, horsing around in a Tokyo park as an unidentified but bemused spectator looks on. Thanks to Peg Broome for sharing this picture of her late husband. ©1999 Peg Broome.

Top: Left to right: Julius Schwartz, Peg Broome, and John Broome in September 1946. Bottom: Left to right: John Broome, Jean Ordwein (the future Mrs. Schwartz), and Julius Schwartz in September 1946. Thanks to the Great Editor himself, Julie S., for sharing these priceless photographs with CBA. ©1999 Julius Schwartz.

pay for reprinting my stories. I thought it was immoral, illegal and not fattening, but I was going to give them a fat lip if I could! [laughs] MWB: When you say reprint, do you mean overseas reprints as well? Because they translate them into foreign languages for the overseas market. Peg: Anything. John: I meant all reprints. Eventually they paid. MWB: Yes, they do now. But they took a long time. John: But that’s really all I know of that period. MWB: So the attempt, as far as you were concerned, pretty much collapsed when the writers got the $2 a page raise? Peg: And that was a very clever move on their part. MWB: It just yanked the rug out from underneath you—and that pretty much put an end to the movement as far as the writers were concerned? Peg: But the [organization attempt] I read before, [John] didn’t even know about. It was about the health benefits? MWB: Yes. That’s the [organization attempt] I wrote about, and I thought we were talking about the same things here. But they’re not? Peg: They’re not. These are two different periods. The health benefits were much later than this business with the $2 raise. MWB: Ahhh. I see. So the [organization attempt] I wrote about in my article, that was later, then. Peg: The issue [of health benefits] never came up. MWB: So health benefits came up later on, then? Hmm. I see. At that point, were you concerned about health benefits and things of that nature? Is that something you would have wanted to see? John: I think someone questioned me about that at the time. I would have been interested but I don’t recall it happening. MWB: I see. No one approached you at that point about... John: Health benefits, no. MWB: So there was no writer’s movement that you were a part of in the 1960s? The story that has gone around for a number of years was a number of the writers approached DC about medical benefits and were summarily fired. John: I didn’t know about that. MWB: Then that’s not the case? John: Well, I didn’t know about it. MWB: Then when you left DC around 1970 or so, what was your reason for doing so? John: I was just tired of writing comics. Peg: He was written-out. MWB: You had done it for a long time, of course. John: Yeah. MWB: So there was no kind of pressure? You weren’t fired? It was your own decision to leave? John: Yes. Peg: Julie was very disappointed that he stopped. Julie tried to get him to keep on going—but you reach a point. MWB: You’ve done everything you can and that’s pretty much it. John: We’re going to have to cut this short now. MWB: All right. When you left comics, that was your own decision? John: Yes. MWB: There are still a lot of untold things about that era that need to be resolved. Whether it ever will be or not, we don’t know. Peg: He was out of touch by then. MWB: Were you living overseas by then? Peg: Yes. John: We were living overseas by then. Peg: We left the States in 1962. John would go back to New York for a month or so, and get a whole bunch of plots lined up. Then he would come back to Paris and write them and send them back. It

was as if he were living upstate. John: Except Paris was a little prettier. [laughs] MWB: In those days, when you were living in Paris and writing, did you talk to Julie over the phone? John: No. I don’t recall using the phone for that. Not like they do nowadays. Peg: It gradually worked up to Telex and teletype, but not the telephone. MWB: So you had a schedule basically and just kept to the schedule; you wrote the scripts and mailed them in according to your deadlines. John: Toward the end, you mean? When I was living abroad? Yes. At that time, I would come into New York during the Winter for maybe a month and line up a lot of scripts to do during the rest of the year. MWB: I see. So that’s pretty much the questions I have. John: All right, Mike. Peg: But what went on in New York, [John] was out of. MWB: When there was an attempt to organize the writers in the middle ‘60s, you were out of the country by that time? Peg: That’s right. MWB: Did you hear about it at all? John: No, I didn’t hear, all these things that are in your article. I had not known about them. MWB: You were not a participant or privy to any of that? John: That’s right, I wasn’t. MWB: I see. Then there’s some serious revision that needs to be made. John and Peg, thank you very much for your time. Peg: Nice to talk to you. MWB: Nice talking to you. Afterword: At first glance it would seem that John comments about the DC Writers Purge confuse more than they elucidate. He states he was not present for the Writers’ Movement of the late ’60s, a view Bob Haney seems first to contradict, then to support when, in “The Madames and the Girls,” he says: “John [Broome] came to a few meetings…” Later, Haney is quoted as saying: “…[Gardner Fox and John Broome] were both involved...John Broome would have made a difference, if John had lived in the country, but he was living...in Paris.” Kurt Schaffenberger seems to recall Broome as an active presence, saying: “[John Broome] was one of the ‘steadies’.” How to resolve these contradictions, without discarding all we have learned? Haney, early in “Madames,” makes reference to: “…[A]n attempt to form [a Writers’ union] in the ’50s...That was squashed in the most horrendous way—people were just kicked out.” It may be that the organizational attempts Broome recalls here were those of the ’50s. Broome attributes them to the 1960s, or possibly the ’50s, then backtracks when I mentioned the attempt in the late ’60s. However, I may have been wrong to insist on the ’60s as the decade in which Broome’s efforts took place, it could have been in the 1950s since, as Peg Broome says, “We left the States in 1962,” not long after the ’50s had ended. True, Broome’s memories of being given $2 a page rate raise do not quite jell with Haney’s statement that the ’50s movement “…was squashed in the most horrendous way—people were just kicked out,” but there are obviously aspects of this story that we are, as yet, unaware of. Or it may be that there was another attempt at organization in the early 1960s, and that it is this attempt which Broome recalls, with memories of the other participants mingling over time, recalling Broome as being present at meetings which actually happened years earlier. An alternate theory is that he was indeed present at meetings in the late ’60s, while in New York briefly on business trips. This type of research has something in common with archaeology. Like the archaeologist, truth is slowly uncovered, removing sediment a layer at a time. It’s a process for patience using a soft brush, rather than haste wielding a jackhammer. The whole truth may never be known, but at least we know more now than we did before. It’s an important lesson, for what happened to comic book writers and artists in the past can happen again. — MWB May 26, 1999 COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

Summer 1999

The Old Guard

Donenfeld’s Comics A talk with Irwin Donenfeld, 1960s DC Editorial Director Conducted by Jon B. Cooke

Irwin Donenfeld was raised in the comic book business as the son of legendary Harry Donenfeld, one of DC Comics founding fathers. By 1947, Irwin was working for the company in a stint that lasted 20 years in an era when DC was top dog in the field. During his tenure—first as a production assistant and eventually as editorial director—Irwin was intimately involved in many major creative and marketing decisions. While he left the company in early ’68, this interview reveals how the stage was set for the “daring and different” days to come. Thanks to Arlen Schumer for help in locating Irwin. This interview was conducted via phone on March 4, 1998. Comic Book Artist: When did you start working at DC? Irwin Donenfeld: In 1948. I was an assistant to a guy in the production department and he left for various reasons shortly after I was there. Whit Ellsworth, who was our editor, went to California to work on the Superman TV series so that left me. There I was, with only a few years of experience, and I was running the whole department. I never had a title; I was executive vice-president, but I was de facto publisher. We had two divisions: one was Independent News where we distributed books and magazines for other publishers as well as our own, and the publishing end. Paul Sampliner ran the distribution end and Jack Liebowitz ran the whole shooting match. Later the Licensing Corporation of America came along and it was the idea of Jay Emmett, who was Jack’s nephew. Jay was assistant editor and he had this idea and I helped him formulate it, and he went to his uncle who said, “Yeah, go do it!” His job was to license the characters and he started with Superman when the TV show was on the air, but along came Batman which got so incredibly hot you just couldn’t believe it! Anything that had Batman on it sold, and I mean anything! The largest newsstand sale of TV Guide had Batman on the cover. Independent made Playboy a newsstand powerhouse and we also did with Family Circle. CBA: I would assume that the popularity of the show affected the stock of National. Was Jack shopping the company around? Irwin: I imagine but I don’t know too much about that end of the business. Of course, we merged with Kinney which was run by Steve Ross (whom I went to school with). Steve made all kinds of promises to me that he didn’t keep. I was on the board for a while but I left sometime in 1968. I had some personal problems and I was very unhappy with what was going on with Kinney. I just had it. We didn’t sell the company; we merged with Kinney; we traded stock with Kinney and formed a new company. CBA: Did you enjoy working in comics? Irwin: I loved it! I grew up in it and my claim to fame was that I was the first kid in the world to read both Superman and Batman. CBA: You were involved in the creative end? Irwin: Of course. CBA: Who came up with the idea of the checkers on the mid-’60s comics covers? Irwin: Me. In those days, comics were on the newsstands with vertical slots for the magazines. I wanted to have something that showed DC Comics were different than anything else. So I worked it out with Sol Harrison and put that checkerboard across the top. So wherever these magazines were displayed, you could always see a DC comic from way back. It was to distinguish us from anybody else. CBA: Did you groom Carmine Infantino to be editorial director? Irwin: No. He became that when I left. Jack Leibowitz didn’t have Summer 1999

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

anybody else so he put Carmine in that spot. I was the editorial director and he was my assistant. So I taught him every thing that I knew as we went along. CBA: Do you remember two young writers, Len Wein and Marv Wolfman? Irwin: No, they didn’t work for me. CBA: They came up with a Teen Titans story which was about a black super-hero. Irwin: That was after me. CBA: One of them says that you okayed the story that was subsequently squashed. Irwin: That wasn’t me. CBA: Do you remember when Arnold Drake and Bob Haney came to you and said they were starting a union? Irwin: [laughs] That was after me. I have no recollection of it. CBA: Did you work closely with the editors? Irwin: All the editors worked for me but I was also vice president of Independent News. I was the the only one in the whole industry that had a handle on both distribution as well as publishing. We had a field force of many men and individuals who were our representatives in big towns. Every week or month they made a report. The roving men made a report every time that they went into a town. After they wrote their reports, the section on comics came to me and I determined what our national print run was. I wasn’t just the publisher, but I was circulation director and advertising director. We were selling 7,500,000 copies off the newsstand a month—no other magazine was doing that. I knew all the trends because the road men told me, so when I saw what was happening with the romance comics, I said, “Hey! We gotta get in on this!” CBA: Through Independent, you distributed your competitors’ books so you saw the numbers as they came in, specifically Marvel. Irwin: Of course. I knew what everybody was selling, every title, every month. Marvel came from selling 1,200,000 a month and came up to about 3,500,000. I wanted to know why and we analyzed what they were doing. The thing that I noticed mostly about them, besides editorially where they were different, was that their covers were beautiful. That’s why I got a hold of Carmine Infantino and said, “I’m not happy with what we’re doing.” He and I talked about it a long time and I brought him in as my assistant. He went over every single cover and made them more important. Everybody knows that the cover sells the product. I made a book that had photos of the covers of every magazine that we published and when I got the sales reports, I put the numbers underneath the cover. So I

Above: Go-go checks and gorilla cover subjects, two of Irwin Donenfeld’s marketing decisions used for promoting DC Comics in the 1960s Joe Kubert’s cover of Star Spangled War Stories #126. ©1966 DC Comics.

Above: The Donenfeld-era series that brought Joe Orlando—DC’s most successful editor in the ’70s—to “The House That Superman Built.” Written by E. Nelson Bridwell, an unsung hero of the comics company, The Inferior Five was conceived as a satirical jab at Marvel’s increasingly popular super-hero line. Joe submitted this piece to CBA along with the copy-edit of his interview (which appeared in our first issue). The artist/editor passed away last December and will be sorely missed. The Inferior Five ©1999 DC Comics.

followed every single magazine that we produced and I was able to see how certain themes would sell. For example, I discovered that gorillas sell. We had gorilla covers on Star Spangled War Stories or Wonder Woman— you name a magazine, we had a gorilla on it. You know what happened? Sales exceeded our expectations. I found dinosaurs before any one else in the world did! We had dinosaurs on covers you can’t believe! Even in Tomahawk! Sales shot up. CBA: How long would it take to see how well a book sold? Irwin: Most were bi-monthly, so they were on sale for 60 days. The returns started trickling in and after 90 days I would have an idea. After 180 days, I would have a final figure of what the magazine actually sold—but I wasn’t waiting for that final number; so in my book, the first line was a red line and that was the preliminary number. Then when the final figure came in I put it in black under the preliminary. This would affect my thinking about particular covers. CBA: What percentage would be a good selling book in the ’60s? Irwin: 70% would be phenomenal. When Batman was hot we were selling 90%. CBA: Carmine mentioned that Bob Kane had ownership in Batman. Is that true? Irwin: Not while I was there. That was after I left and long after the Batman program. I was divorced from my first wife and I met an incredibly beautiful blonde lady whose father owned a dress company. Her son and mine went to camp together and that’s how we met. She was just divorced, too, so we went out together a couple of times. But I was really getting nowhere with her but she was very nice and very pleasant. She wanted to come up to the office to see how comics are made. So I said sure and brought her up. Bob Kane is sitting at an art table and he takes one look at her and he dies. I mean, he died. “I gotta have her! I gotta have her!” I said, “You can’t have her; I’m going out with her. But, to tell you the truth, I’m not getting anywhere but before I give her to you, what have you got for me?” He said, “I have an absolutely beautiful redhead.” I said, “Okay.” So we swap names and I call the redhead. We go out a couple of times and, before you knew it, I got married to her! Which was great until we got divorced; I got ahold of Kane and said, “I’m going to kill you!” [laughter] CBA: Carmine says that Marvel tried to woo him over but you valued his creativity and gave him a counter-offer. Irwin: That’s true. Carmine was a genius. CBA: Whose idea was it to hire artists as editors? Irwin: I have no idea. I was firing editors, not hiring them. There was a while there when things weren’t going too well and Uncle Jack said to me, “We have too many editors for what we’re producing,” so I was the guy who fired Kashdan and Kanigher. I also got rid of Eddie Eisenberg who was in production. As best as I can recall, Dick Giordano came in after I left. CBA: Bob Kanigher was dismissed? Irwin: I let him go as an editor and then he was able to devote all

of his time as a writer. He didn’t lose any money on the deal; I made sure of that. I had to let him go. I also let go Kashdan and I think Murray Boltinoff had already been gone. CBA: No, Murray continued well into the ’70s. Irwin: That’s right; he did. It was Larry Nadle who died. He edited all the teenage books: Binky, Date with Judy, and the funny animal books. CBA: Do you recall Jack Miller? Did you hire him as an editor? Irwin: Of course. Zena Brody was the first editor of our romance books and she died. It was a horrible thing. She was young and a really beautiful woman. She had a brain hemorrhage and died. She was only in her 20s or 30s. I had one editor who would buy a script and have a copy made. He would pay the writer for the original and then he’d take the script, change the title, and then pay himself for writing the copied script. CBA: Double-dipping! Irwin: No, just single-dipping on his end of it. [chuckles] I caught a double-dip in our yearly audit and I found a whole bunch of scripts (not the originals but copies). I asked him, “How come we have all these scripts, why haven’t we used them, and why are you sitting on all this inventory?” I read a couple of them and said, “Boy, that’s familiar!” [chuckles] The titles were strange... At any rate, the editor died shortly thereafter; he went suddenly with a heart attack. CBA: Mort Weisinger and Bob Kanigher were known for their combative styles with creators. Do you recall volatile situations? Irwin: Mort was cute. A guy would come in with a story and Mort would say, “No, I don’t want you to write that. It’s a lousy idea.” And then he’d give the writer another idea for a story. Now the story he gave out was one someone had just given him and he turned down! So he’d give the writer an idea from another writer! [laughter] Mort is thinking all along that he has everybody buffaloed but before long, one writer says to the other, “How come you wrote my story?” He’d say, “What do you mean your story?” So they knew and it wasn’t a problem; someone would take somebody else’s idea and they’d write it. What did they care? They’d get paid anyway. Kanigher and I used to go skiing together. CBA: Do you recall Kanigher’s paintings? Irwin: Oh yes, of course. You know, Bob Kane was quite a painter. In fact, I always accused him of having a ghost painter. [chuckles] I was just putting him on. Kane made a painting of a church by using a scalpel-type instrument. It was beautiful! I said, “If you don’t like it, I’d like to have it.” He said, “Well, nobody else wants it so you can have it.” CBA: Do you remember Jack Schiff? Irwin: Of course. I was very close with Jack. I was close with all these guys. I worked with them every day. CBA: You knew Max Gaines? Irwin: Sure. Bill Gaines was a very dear friend of mine. Max, of course, was a friend of my father’s. My father was an incredible man, by the way. He was the type of guy who wanted to know you and you eventually wanted to know him. His circle of friends was absolutely incredible; from judges, entertainers, sports people, and crooks. Do you remember the name Frank Costello? He was a very dear friend of his! In fact, when I moved out to Sand’s Point, Frank owned a house right around the corner from me. And he came and visited me one day. He says, [gruffly] “Is Harry Donenfeld here?” My wife said, “No, but we expect him later.” He says, “Tell him Mr. Costello was here. Frank Costello.” And he walked out. She was shocked! She didn’t stop shaking for a week! [laughter] Wherever Dad went, he was known. And I followed in his footsteps, and wherever I went, they’d say, “Oh, you’re Harry’s son!” CBA: What was your biggest accomplishment at DC? Irwin: [laughs] The association with so many incredible people, both in distribution and editorial. Most of the companies in those days were owned by families; all the independent distributors were owned by a family, most of the distributing companies were owned by a family, and we were all very, very close. Even the competitors! As an example, all the executives of the distributing companies had two meetings a year. One was at a golf club and the other was at a hotel where they gambled. Now I’m talking about people who were continued on page 95 COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

Summer 1999

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!

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Panel Discussion

Spotlight on Nick Cardy The 1998 San Diego ComiCon Panel Transcript

What can you say about one of the most delightful artists ever to have work grace the comic book page? Best known for his work on the Teen Titans, Aquaman, and a long and glorious run as DC’s main cover artist during the early- to mid-’70s, Nick Cardy is a superb draftsman with an unerring eye for the sensual and the suspenseful. And he’s also a helluva nice guy. Nick received a hero’s welcome last year as a Guest of Honor of the 1998 San Diego ComiCon, and was given his own panel on August 14. What follows is a transcript of the “Spotlight on Nick Cardy” panel as moderated by Mark Evanier, and joining Nick were Colleen Doran, Marv Wolfman, and Sergio

Aragonés. Very special thanks to Marc Svensson who saved the day for CBA when I found out, midway through transcribing, that my tape was corrupted and Marc supplied his videotape. Mark Evanier: It is a joy to have this gentleman here. We decided last year that we were going to boycott the San Diego convention if they didn’t invite him, but they did. I don’t know anyone who has caused so much excitement—people come up to me and say, “I just met Nick Cardy! Nick Cardy is here!” This man drew the first comic book I ever had a letter printed in; it was in an issue of Aquaman and it was easily the stupidest letter ever printed. [laughter] I’m sure you all know his work—show your love for Mr. Nick Cardy. [sustained applause] We are joined on the panel today by some people who have worked with Nick over the years. One of his closest friends, and one of the best artists in the business, (who is responsible for A Distant Soil) Colleen Doran. [applause] And [dismissively] here’s Marv and Sergio. [laughter, applause]. Marv worked with Nick on... [to Marv] your first professional story? Marv Wolfman: Pretty much. And his last, I think. [laughter] Mark: And Sergio did a book with Nick called... Audience: Bat Lash. Mark: Which has probably set some record for a book with the least number of issues and the most people who remember it in this business. We’ll get to Bat Lash soon but I want to ask Nick a couple of questions to start with here. First, how do you feel about this convention? You’ve never been to the San Diego ComiCon before; is this amazing? Nick Cardy: Well, I’ll tell ya: If I knew that there was going to be this many people coming out to see me, I’d have learned a soft shoe dance or something—[laughter] but I’m surprised and tickled to death to find that a lot of people like my work. Mark: We’ve all loved your work and I think a lot of people feel the same way that I do: You see a certain person’s work and you feel that you know the guy. You’re always reliable and the characters have such a life, I knew that these books were drawn by a nice guy. Let’s go back and talk about your beginnings in this business. Nick: The first commercial work was doing “Lady Luck” with Will Eisner in 1940. Mark: But he didn’t start you on “Lady Luck.” Nick: Right. I was working at Eisner & Iger. They had a studio and I was working as one of the staff. In those days they didn’t have comic houses; they had little studios where they produced the stories on order from different publishers. I was in the bullpen. So when I first went in to Eisner’s studio, he said, “Well, we have a drawing table but we don’t have taborets. Go to the local grocery store and get a couple of orange crates and use them until the new taborets we ordered come in.” So I got the orange crate, and used it to place my ink and my lunch. [chuckles] Then I found out there were some guys who were working there for several years and they also had orange crates. [laughter] At that time, I was only getting about $18 a week. Mark: How old were you? Nick: I was 18 or 19. One time Iger came up to me and said, “Nick, I want you to look in your pay envelope this week. We’ve got a surprise for you.” I looked in it and found a 50¢ raise. [laughter] I spent a few years there. I did “Quicksilver” and a few Quality strips—when I look at those things now, I just wish they’d take them off the market. They’re so awful! [laughter] Really! I did nice features, COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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but I gave characters flat heads... [chuckles]. Mark: Who else was working at Eisner & Iger at the time? Lou Fine? Nick: I remember Lou Fine, George Tuska, Charlie Sultan. Bob Powell came in later when I was doing “Lady Luck.” He was sitting behind me. He would help a kid around the block—tell a newcomer to take it easy and that sort of thing. When I worked on “Lady Luck,” Will Eisner had rented an apartment at Tudor City in New York (which, at that time, were very nice apartment houses). He had one room where he worked, and the other room took up all the rest of the paraphernalia. I sat next to Will’s door, Bob Powell sat next to me; Tex Blaisdell used to come in, and Chuck Cuidera (who was doing Blackhawk) was there. Every now and then, Eisner would come out. I was sitting at that board for years. It was a learning experience. Watching Lou Fine work—his work was like a fine painting; it took a long time to do it but it was a brilliant piece of work. In my opinion, for drawing, you couldn’t beat Lou Fine; he was terrific. I think Will Eisner had a coarser line but his work was more dramatic and he told a better story. We approached it like this: A person can read a book and get a story done one way, but if you give a story to an artist, he’s like a movie director and he individualizes that story. And each artist makes a different interpretation every time. Movie directors influenced Eisner and myself. Did you ever see the movie And Then There Were None directed by Rene Clair? That’s fantastic! That’s basically the early years. Audience: You were just out of high school? It was your first job? Nick: Yeah, I was just out of high school at 18. It was my first job. Mark: At this point, what did you want to do career-wise? Were comics something to do for a couple of years? Nick: I wanted to be an illustrator, y’see. I think most of the guys wanted to be illustrators—but to be one you had to have an agent and illustration was a big competitive field. With comics, you at least had some money to eat and you could learn and develop. I used to go to museums and to the illustrator societies. And I would study the illustrators. Most of the comic artists would study other comic artists, but I wanted to be an illustrator, so I learned from the illustrators. That helped me a lot. And as I kept going along, I noticed through the years that my work changed and got very tight. Toward the end, my work got to be what I wanted. Audience: Do you recall the illustrators by name? Nick: There were quite a few artists I admired, but the first one that impressed me most was Degas (because of his design). Monet was one of my favorites. I went through the whole gauntlet. Of the illustrators, Robert Fawcett was one of my favorites. I knew of Colby Whitmore and quite a few down the line. An artist when he paints knows in what direction he wants to go; so you take a little bit from this guy—you say, “I like the way he does hair,” and you take that. After you’ve copied it a while, it dissipates and you develop your own style. It was the learning underneath that you do. Good basic design Summer 1999

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structure. There’s a lot of artists who paint today and do comics, but they’re not telling stories. They draw individual illustrations—and they’re good! They’re brilliant—but sometimes they don’t tell a story. Mark: So you worked for Eisner and Iger, and a couple of other houses, but then you went into the War. Nick: After Eisner, I went to Fiction House and I did a few stories there (I think it was “Camilla”), and then I went into the service. Mark: Let me ask you about your war record. Nick: [chuckles] It starts like a little fish and I don’t know how long I was going to make it, y’know? One bomb could’ve been... Mark: Tell them about the honors you received. Audience: Whose army were you in? Patton’s army?

Above: The second page to the rejected “The Titans Fit the Battle of Jericho” story originally slated to appear in Teen Titans #20. Various other pages appear throughout this issue. Thanks to Jim Long for sharing his find! Jim tells us he bought this single page for $5 at a comic convention in the early ’70s! Art ©1999 Nick Cardy.

Above: Another fine Nick Cardy page from The Brave and the Bold, this one from #92, featuring the first and only appearance of British crimefighting trio, The Bat Squad!. Words by Bob Haney. ©1970 DC Comics.

Nick: This is what happened: I went into the 66th Infantry Division, and while I was there, they had a competition for the patch design of the division. I don’t know if you ever saw the patch with a black panther with his mouth open; well, I did that. Before I won the competition, I had been getting up at 6:00 in the morning, going out in the field, going through maneuvers, and I noticed that all the guys up at headquarters were still sleeping. I thought, “Gee, I don’t want to keep doing this.” So, after I won the competition, I went up to headquarters, and I worked in a department. Then some other General wanted me—you see, there are certain corps in the Army; there are 10 divisions in one corps. General Shelby Burke saw my cartoons in the Officers Club and he said he wanted me in to work in his corps. They said, “We can’t send you as a private so we’ll promote you to corporal.” But the only opening they had for a corporal was in the motor pool. [laughter] They sent me to Europe and a guy said, “You’re in the motor pool; we could use you. We’ll put you in a tank.” I said, “I don’t know how to even drive a truck!” [laughter] So, they put me in a tank. If you ever go to Europe and you see a lot of buildings with no corners on them, those are the ones I turned! [laughter] I was an assistant tank driver and we were trailing other tanks, on our way to relieve another division. We had all these soldiers of the 104th Infantry packed on the back of a tank and were just following the other tanks. It was monotonous; you’d go and you’d stop. The tank driver, Tommy, said, “Nick, this is boring. You drive for a while. When the tank in front of us stops, you stop.” So I took over and followed the tank. We went for about a quarter mile and then we stopped. All these guys came running up to the tank from in front of us, climbing up and yelling at us. The tank engine is really loud so you could just see their mouths moving. This went on and it happened about three times. Finally we all stopped, I got out of the driver’s seat and Tommy took over again. And these guys ran up to the tank again and when they saw my friend Tommy the driver, they started chewing him out. They were cursing like mad! What had happened was the tank was very wide and, as we were going down the road, I drove so close to the trees I was brushing the guys off the tank! And they were running to try and catch up with me! [laughter] So there were a lot of little silly things like that; it had its good points and bad. I was wounded twice and, after the war, they said, “We can use an artist.” Now, they tell me! [laughs] So I worked for Information and Education in France.

Mark: You came back with a few decorations? Nick: Two Purple Hearts. [applause] I was just one of many. I wouldn’t have been there if they hadn’t sent me there. There were no heroes out there. I never saw men go into battle who were heroes; sometimes you’re so scared. One incident was when we spearheaded into Germany—the first ones in. We were the Third Armored Division, under General Hodges, and we went through Belgium and were the first in Cologne. My tank commander had his head blown off when we were ambushed by SS troopers with bazookas. I didn’t even realize he was dead—I just saw the flash in the turret. Afterwards they wanted us to clean out the tank (which was splattered with what was left of the commander) but I said, “No way.” That night we went to the bathroom—European bathrooms are different in that they didn’t have urinals, just a wall—and we were standing there doing our business and this German came in and stood along side of me. He looked at me and I looked at him, and we just ran! [laughter] There were no heroes. Mark: You received two Purple Hearts: One for working with Mort Weisinger... [laughter] Nick: [laughs] I never worked with Mort. Mark: You got out of the service and went back to Fiction House for a while. Then you eventually hooked up with DC. Nick: When I got out, I started doing advertising. I decided after the service that I wasn’t going back to cartooning, so I was doing full color covers for magazines. Crossword puzzle magazines and other jobs here and there. In-between that, I was in a studio with a couple of other artists, and I got to do the Tarzan daily newspaper strip. Burne Hogarth asked me if I wanted to do it and he sent me the script. I worked on that for about a year. I always visualized Tarzan in the jungle but after the first week, the story took place in the desert with Arabs or in some temple with a goddess. I said, “Where are the trees? I want the trees and the monkeys!” Everybody looks at my Tarzan and says. “Where’s the jungle?” I also worked on Casey Ruggles for Warren Tufts—who was a good imitator of Alex Raymond—and then I started working for DC on Gangbusters. There’s some nice work in that book. Mark: You worked on just about everything for DC: Teen Titans, Aquaman, Congo Bill, Tomahawk, The Brave and the Bold, a lot of romance stories. Marv, let’s talk about your involvement with Nick on Teen Titans. What can you tell us about this? Marv: We did a couple of stories. The very first one was one that Nick inked. It was the origin of Wonder Girl—I keep doing the origin of Wonder Girl [laughter]—and this was back in 1969. Nick and Gil Kane worked on it together, and it was just absolutely a beautiful job. The thing about Nick’s stuff—and the reason I was so thrilled that he did that particular story—is that as you’re growing up as a teenage boy, looking at pictures of Mera, you grow up a lot faster. [laughter] Nick: The funny thing is I get reactions. All these guys who liked Mera always want a sketch with the boobs smaller or bigger. “I like your drawing of Wonder Girl but make her a little bigger!” [laughter] But I only do them one way. [chuckles] Marv: The second Teen Titans was a story that no one has ever seen printed. It was a story that Len Wein and I co-wrote that was originally intended for Teen Titans #20. It was “The Titans Fit the Battle of Jericho,” and Nick did probably one of the most incredible art jobs I had ever seen up to that time. [To Nick] You did it in a style I had not seen before; you were using glue or something and were rubbing it off. Nick: I tried everything. If I remember—and somebody showed me some copies of that job—there were these three black kids jumping on the back of a bus. Instead of drawing around the lights, I did it like a woodblock print. I put the black down first and then put on the whites. It had a different effect. Marv: It was absolutely brilliant to see because that was a technique I sort of remembered from art school and Nick did it so magnificently. The story hadn’t been published, though it was written, penciled, inked, lettered, colored, and sent to the printers. But it was pulled back. It would have featured DC’s first black super-hero. The story was never published. It was pulled back at the very last second for whatever reason. It was lost for a long time and some pages have finally showed up in Comic Book Artist. I’m thrilled to see these COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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pages again because it was one of my very early stories and Nick’s artwork is just so magnificent. We were just stunned how beautiful this job was, and for it never to have seen print was just awful. Nick: I remember when I was doing it, they had to take some pages out—I read about it as I don’t have a good memory—and had Neal Adams do some work. Marv: After they decided not to publish the story, Neal Adams sat down and, over a weekend and using about five or six pages of the original story that Nick had drawn, drew the other 18 or 19 pages. Nick inked the job and it was finished in less than a week to meet the shipping date. Back then, DC was six to eight months ahead of schedule—as opposed to six to eight days [laughter]—and Nick and Neal turned out a magnificent job in less than a week. These were two guys who were working not only fast, but brilliantly. Nick’s original work was even better. Nick: I don’t remember, but thanks! Mark: What was the first job of Nick’s you were cognizant of? Marv: Probably his romance stories. Then Aquaman. I have a memories of his girls because they were so much more attractive than anybody else’s at the time. Nick: How old were you when you first came up to DC? Marv: I was a fetus. [laughter] Nick: You and Len! Marv: At one point, we were interns up there in our young teens. I went to the High School of Art and Science, about five blocks away from DC. So I was showing up between when I was 13 and 16. They weren’t used to having fans up there at the time so they let us in. It was like, “We don’t know who these people are but, sure, why not?” Fandom did not exist at that particular time. Because I went to school a few blocks away, I would go and see Nick, Carmine, Murphy Anderson—it was just a real thrill. You just had to look at Nick’s artwork on Aquaman and the romance books and you had the feeling that you were welcome into it. I don’t know how to phrase that well, but you just felt good when you looked at it. There are some artists you can talk about the technical achievements, but you look at Nick’s work and you liked the characters—they just felt good to you. Mark: Colleen, what of Nick’s work first impressed you? Colleen Doran: Aquaman. These guys are all going “Hoot, hoot, hoot,” over the girls, but I was going “Hoot, hoot, hoot” over Aquaman! [laughter] Babe-ilicious! Mark: [To Nick] The obvious question is, did you model your characters on real people? Nick: When I used to draw women, it depended on what the women were in the story. If they were villainesses, I’d lean toward one way; if they were ideal women—like Madeline Carroll or Grace Kelly—I’d lean another. I’d give a heroine very straight features; if I wanted to draw a saucy girl—Susan Hayward with a little turned-up nose—I’d do it that way. If I was drawing a woman who was partvillainess, part-heroine, I would go a little toward Ava Gardner and make her just a little meaner looking but with nice features. Pretty girls can be just as mean. Every time they showed a villain they always showed him ugly. I’ve known some ugly guys who are pretty good; most of my friends are that way! [laughter] I studied girls a lot... Marv: So did we! [laughter] Nick: I mean artistically! I tried to pick up from the illustrators and the painters who had beautiful ways of displaying their women. The women were always in decent poses—even when they were running. I did learn from a lot of good illustrators: John Petty, a wonderful pinup artist; John Gannon was a terrific illustrator of women; Colby Whitmore and all these illustrators did some really beautiful women. I’d say, “The leg is a little longer from the thigh.” Say you’re drawing a figure and if you put a small head on it, it looks longer; but if you put on a larger head, that figure looks a lot shorter. So it used to be that the heads were in proportion but I’d make the necks a little longer and it would work. People have a certain form and grace to them when they move—women especially—so that is what I tried to replicate. Mark: Colleen, what inspiration did you get from Nick’s work? Colleen: It’s pretty amazing really. I was going through some of my old sketch books about a year ago and they’re full of Nick Cardy swipes. I still have the first issue of Teen Titans that I ever read and Summer 1999

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(though I don’t remember the name of the story) it had them all being in a club and there’s a wagon-wheel chandelier and Donna leaps up onto it and swings across the room. I have one picture and, I swear to God, there’s at least six or seven sketches in my sketchbook of the running back-shot which I did over and over and over, trying to understand what he was doing. It’s page after page after page of me trying to draw like him. Nick: I’m sorry for you. [laughter] Colleen: The forms were very solid and the people looked likeable; there’s a likability about your work that is very appealing to me. Your characters were very attractive and pretty—and even when they weren’t, they weren’t threatening to me as a little girl which I certainly appreciated. The guys were cute. And they actually looked like young people. You get a lot of people who draw teenagers and they look like they’re 35. I was at the World Science Fiction Convention last week and they actually had teenagers dressed as Wonder Girl and Superboy; it was so funny because they looked so young. [laughter] Marv: Another thing that was being done at Marvel and DC at the time (that Nick broke out of) was to have teenagers look like they were eight years old, too. It was one way or the other. But Nick made them look the correct age. Nick: Because they came up and had these little infants. [laughter] I’ll tell you the truth: Years ago, I would go on the street and see a nice little kid and pat him on the shoulder—if his mother was there

(now, you can’t do that!)… nowadays when I think of the kids reading super-heroes in today’s world, I go “Oh, my God!” y’know? They had a kid in “Congo Bill”…. Marv: We were younger than the Teen Titans—but almost that age—when I was reading it, and all the other artists drew them to look nine years old. And I knew that I didn’t look like that at that age. So when you started to draw those characters, suddenly they looked like what teenagers should look like. Again, that was something that brought me into the book. Mark: Nick, how did you feel when a lot of the Teen Titans issues were being drawn by other artists? Gil Kane, Neal Adams, George Tuska, Frank Springer, Artie Saaf…. Nick: I think it was in transition. What happened was that they were getting ready to do Bat Lash and I was already doing Aquaman and Teen Titans. But then my schedule started getting a little crowded. I always penciled and inked my work; I always did that. But I would never pencil because when I penciled I did it very loose and I picked it out with my brush. It was easier in latter years because my work was looser, but at first I used to pencil very tight and I would erase a lot. But after a while I got it to where I could just make the outline and pick it up with a brush. And if I gave anyone those pencils to ink, I would have driven them bananas because they couldn’t have found the right line. I just did a lot of sketches, y’see. But when I got Neal Adams and Gil Kane, their work was so clean. But every

job that I did for Teen Titans with Gil and Neal, I would always put my own personal touch on the brush. If they had eyes on a girl a certain way, I would put in my eyes in their eyes—the way I draw eyes. Mark: Did you find it restrictive? Working on somebody else’s pencils—did it challenge you as much artistically or did you resent it at times? Nick: I’ll tell ya: Y’know, when you’re doing your own work, you create, you design it, but then when you get somebody else’s work, you don’t have that much influence. What happens is, you just ink it as best and as quick as you can. But it’s always interesting to see what it would be like inking Neal Adams or Gil Kane. Mark: Did you pick up anything educationally from working with these people’s work? Nick: Mike Sekowsky had a way of drawing an arm or a leg that was almost standard with almost everything he did. He had a pattern. Mike was so fast that one time I ran into Murray Boltinoff’s office and I was delivering a job. Mike was in with Murray who said, “Mike, this is an awful job! You were in a hurry. It’s awful!” So, Murray gave Mike another script and said, “Take your time.” In the meanwhile, Mike had just been married and he invited me up to his house for dinner. There on the counter was the 24-pages already finished. [laughter] I said, “Is that the assignment you just picked up?” He said, “Yeah, but Murray’s worried so I’m holding it for an extra week.” [laughter] So then, when he brought it in, I was delivering a job at the same time, and he handed the job to Murray. Murray looked at it and says, “Now, Mike, isn’t that a lot better?” [laughter, applause] Mike had a style. I inked quite a few things with Mike; he did a Witching Hour cover that was very effective that I liked inking and they did a nice color job on it. But there are a lot of stories that I’ve done that some other people have been getting credit for. Mark: Let’s get to Bat Lash. Sergio, what do you remember about the creation of Bat Lash and your involvement? Sergio Aragonés: I was, by that time, living in New York and I was called by Joe Orlando (a friend of mine for many years who worked at Mad) and Carmine Infantino. We went to a restaurant next to DC Comics and they talked about new projects and stuff. They said they wanted to create a different western and they had the name, Bat Lash. I said, “Don’t say anymore. I’ll bring you something.” So I went home and thought of a more European western. In those times, all the westerns were very, very aggressive with the cliché of the American Cowboy—with very beautiful clothes and able to shoot guns out of other people’s hands. I have adored the western I brought in ideas and sketches and they liked what I did. They took it to Nick and said, “Go ahead!” It’s very hard because I write the way I talk—pretty bad. [laughter] People don’t understand so what I do to save time (and it’s much easier for me because I’m more visual) I draw my scripts and put in very basic dialogue. I would put in notes to the artist saying, “Please don’t use this as reference!” [laughter] Instead of writing about a saucer, for instance, it was just as easy for me to draw a saucer. So I would do the scripts on 81/2” x 11” paper, divided into panels, and I would draw the story very crudely—but with no intention for the artist to follow the drawings. When I saw the first work that Nick did, I was so emotional. I don’t want to damn any other artist but the most human artist is Nick; he draws people like they are. There’s a humanity in everything he draws. He understands people because he comes from illustration and the fine arts. He knows that underneath a person there is a skeleton and on it there’s some muscles, but that person isn’t always flexing—they’re just people. When the comic came out, it was real. He was fantastic. [to Nick] The impression your work gave was that it was real. It was terrific and I loved it. In those days, for expediency, editors would assign other people’s scripts so they could buy time and have their rear ends covered. So a couple of other stories were written by... [to Nick] one of them was by you? Nick: [chuckles] #2. I threw a little slapstick in that one. Sergio: The thing is every villain looked like me in that issue. [laughter] You drew me as the villain! Nick: I drew you as the hero! Sergio: Heroes are blond. When I saw the story, he had drawn me as the villain and called him “Sergio”! [laughter] I was the antagonist of the story! COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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Nick: Y’know what it was? Orlando says, “If you can, make this guy look like Sergio.” But I didn’t want to make a copy of Sergio so I made this guy resemble Sergio though I didn’t use his way of speech. Anyway, I didn’t know how it affected you at all! Sergio: But I was a handsome fellow back then... and the way you drew me... [laughter] Nick: Sergio and I would encounter each other in the hallway or in an elevator—as soon as we would see each other—and there was always a competition to see who was the quickest draw. [laughter] People used to think we were nuts. Mark: Nobody draws quicker than Sergio. [laughter] Nick: Sergio is a wonderful guy and I really love his work. I think he’s a wonderful human being. He’s one of the nice guys. [applause] Sergio: We didn’t go very far with Bat Lash because I was trying to take a chronological license—his era was not exactly the same time as the Mexican Revolution but it was close. But Bat Lash was a type of western very few people attempted then; it was set in the late 1800s. So I had planned for Bat Lash to go to Mexico and make a long saga of it. Carmine told me he wanted Bat to have a brother so that it would have conflict and based on the landowner war going on with Mexico, I made it so he was raised by a Mexican family. Carmine wanted a gun strapped on the brother’s leg... Nick: A shotgun. He was hunting Bat Lash. Sergio: The name of their Priest was Don Pasquale, my father’s name. [laughter] I loved that comic book because it was really as well-drawn as a western should be. Why didn’t it last long? Nick: Carmine told me that it didn’t do too well in the States but when he went to Europe, they were amazed that it stopped because they wanted more of it. They liked it better there. Sergio: The Europeans love westerns. Today you can still find incredibly well-drawn western comics in Europe. When Europeans come to the United States they rent a Cadillac and drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. [laughter] They cannot believe the distances and the desert! They drive around and go, “Yippee!” [laughter] They have this fascination. Mark: [To Nick] Is Bat Lash your favorite comic book? Nick: All comics come from a mold, but Bat Lash didn’t fit into a mold. This was different. We were more or less free to do whatever we felt. In other words, the writer didn’t constrict the artist; the artist didn’t interfere with the writer. With Denny O’Neil and Sergio, we worked things out. We were rooting for the end product. How I drew it was something else. But there was a freedom and I enjoyed it. [to Sergio] Did you get one of my Bat Lash pages? Sergio: I bought it from a collector. Nick: That was one of my better pages. It had a horse running with a nice dark shadow. I think that was in the series that you were supposed to be in. Sergio: That’s correct. Nick: You and Bat Lash were fighting... no, not you! [laughter] They were fighting over the girl over the crypt. This girl was a villainess but she was beautiful, and she was making dopes out of Bat Lash and... what was his name? Sergio: Sergio! [laughter] Nick: Yes! Sergio: It was a classic con: This guy was trying to get the money from the bank and, of course, the girl played the men against each other. Nick: Each had a certain time to meet her so she had dates with both of them. It was competition, y’know? It was a different kind of story. Mark: Let’s open up to questions. Scott [Shaw!]? Scott Shaw!: Nick, on Bat Lash your storytelling just flowered. I always loved that panel where the kids are dropping the mice and they’re tumbling down. Was that your idea or was that in Sergio’s thumbnails? Sergio: That was not my story. Nick: I created that. There was some influence from Mark Twain. Little childish pranks that were pulled on a community. Bat Lash was being roped into a marriage with this family who had a shotgun on him. Bat had arranged with these kids to climb up onto the beams so when the ceremony was ready they would release all these mice. All the people were screaming and Bat got out of it. That was a little... Sergio: You wrote that story... Nick: Yeah, I think so. Sergio: With the Indians... Nick: Well, the Indians... the thing I focused on in #2 was the little girl getting shot and the anger in Bat’s eyes. The Indians were secondary. There’s that panel where you see the girl being shot in Bat Summer 1999

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Lash’s pupils. (But she doesn’t really get shot; her father gave her a cigar case which the bullet hit and knocked her out; Bat Lash thought she was dead and he went mad and was killing everybody.) Audience: I know you did most of the characters DC had, but were there any you wished you had done more of? Nick: I would have liked to have done a little more Bat Lash. I did a few The Brave and the Bold stories with Batman and the Black Canary that was one of my most challenging. I used strong dramatic blacks. There was also “The Rebel in the Streets” in B&B that I really liked. That one had a lot of nice shots. The last one I did was The Shroud where I had The Bat Squad, and it was so completely loose; with that fog, I could do anything. Audience: In the early ’70s, you seemed to be doing all of DC’s covers. You were a really good choice because of your sense of composition. What was that like? Nick: There were so many good artists up there who were doing the covers. There was a gap when I wasn’t getting work and Carmine wanted me to work on the covers. And I was doing all of them. I could design them the way I wanted. At first I was restricted with what I could do with the Aquaman covers, but Carmine said, “Nick, you have a free hand so do whatever you want.” On Aquaman, instead of putting the logo on top, I put it across the bottom with the word “Aquaman” spelled out in stalagmites. If I wanted an explosion, the figures would form the explosive effect. A cover is on the stands with maybe 50 other covers. The reader had hardly a second to look at each one of those, so it’s got to be interesting. So that’s the premise of my covers: very simple design that would jump out at you. Mark: Did you ever color your own covers? Nick: No, I wish I did. Audience: What have you been up to these last few years? Nick: Keeping out of mischief. [laughter] I’ve been working on reproductions of some of my covers that people have commissioned. I just did one of the most popular ones— when Wonder Girl changed her costume. [Editor’s note: A lively discussion of Nick’s movie poster work followed and we regret that due to space limitations, we had to excise a significant portion. Be sure to look for the forthcoming book, The Art of Nick Cardy, from Coates Publishing in the near future, for an extensive, in-depth look at the artist’s entire career! Look at the ad below.]

Alex Toth: Before I Forget On Frank Robbins, DC Comics’ Batman, and The Shadow

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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!

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(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!

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“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!

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“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”!

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CBA Interview

Gil Kane: Man of Action A chat about Captain Action and his late ’60s DC work conducted by Jon B. Cooke

Gil Kane, a creative force with innumerable comics publishing houses since the ’40s, is primarily known as one of the great DC Silver Age artists. Best remembered for his definitive renditions of The Atom and Green Lantern of the ’60s, Gil also did memorable stories for Joe Orlando’s mystery books by the close of the decade, and— before moving on to his own projects (His Name Is... Savage and Blackmark) and eventually Marvel (an era Gil was interviewed about in CBA #2)—the creator had a remarkable stint as writer and artist on the shortlived Captain Action series. This interview was conducted by phone on February 21, 1998 and was copy-edited by the artist.

Comic Book Artist: Did the stories get formulaic to you after a while in the mid- to late-‘60s—the “Time Pool” stories by Gardner Fox, for instance? Gil Kane: I always tried to push my own material on them and occasionally they would let me do something on my own. I wanted to do a caballero western that I had made up called Don Caballero— sort of a Zorro character—so they let me do it. I was writing that and occasionally a Johnny Thunder story. I didn’t get in there often. After Kanigher left, I got to do more, but that was later on. CBA: So you worked from full scripts? Ever make any changes? Gil: I had to fight just to get an extra panel of action! Julie had one script where virtually not even one punch was thrown. They were all puzzles—how could the Green Lantern be at two places at the same time? That’s the way that he liked it. Then I created The Atom and brought it into Julie because the westerns were dropping and I needed more work. It was a combination of Doll Man and their old Atom character and I did up some drawings and Julie showed it to somebody and it was okayed. So I did those two characters, primarily which still wasn’t enough to keep me busy. I’d occasionally do stuff for Jack Schiff. I did a lot of science fiction for Julie and those covers. CBA: Did you go into the DC offices often? Gil: I used to like going into the offices but I worked at home. I would get in about twice a week but I would make sure that I would get in early enough to do lunch. There were a million restaurants there and we’d go and argue [laughs]. There would always be Julie and whoever else was there that day, Frank Giacoia, Carmine Infantino, and a couple of other people. We would do nothing but argue and debate comics! I used to love going in for lunch. CBA: Did you debate where comics were going? Gil: Oh, I’d give them advice all of the time but they didn’t give a damn. CBA: Part of the joy and frustration about enjoying your work was finding it—you wouldn’t stay too long in any one place. Gil: I worked at DC for an unbroken period and the only trouble was when they would decide to fold a number of books because of bad sales. They didn’t do that very often. DC hardly ever made changes. In fact, some of the artists during the ‘30s were still working there in the ‘60s. George Papp, Al Plastino, Howard Sherman, Wayne Boring—all of those guys—but ultimately those guys all went out. Superman underwent enormous changes, Batman was taken away from Bob Kane (who wasn’t doing it anyhow). What I’m saying is, there was a period all through the late ‘40s and ‘50s in which I never knew a single week without work. CBA: You did long runs of Green Lantern and The Atom. Gil: As a matter of fact, I only stopped them because I started His Name Is... Savage and also managed to sell Blackmark to Bantam. CBA: With Captain Action, did you tell Julie that you wanted to write as well as draw it? Gil: He picked me to draw it but I said that I wanted to write it. Jim Shooter wrote the first two issues and after he left I lobbied for the material. Shooter was only a teenager. I had already written some westerns for Julie so he accepted my offer and it turned into one of the happiest experiences ever in comics simply because I was so selfindulgent with the writing. The girl Katherine, who plays the ghostly wife of Captain Action was modeled after my own wife. I was doing everything that I could think of doing. But mostly I gave them speeches and they were always rationalizing some point of view. I remember an eloquent speech that Dr. Evil gave at the very end, tryCOMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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ing to build understanding between other worlds and this one and, son of a gun, it just came out. I really, really enjoyed it. Not that Captain Action was an intellectual strip at all but I was saying things in it that I felt deeply or thought about. I started right off with a cataclysm and I thought that I was really going great. Julie was very sympathetic through all of my efforts to write when he would allow me but most of the other editors were just totally unsympathetic. CBA: You had a very complex villain in Dr. Evil. Gil: Yeah, right! He was a very rational villain! That was the thing about George Bernard Shaw who would debate both sides of an issue and he would rationalize it so that even in his plays the worst villain—the munitions maker and so on—had a perfectly reasonable point of view for what he did. I just loved that and put all that stuff in their mouths! CBA: You seemed influenced by what was going on at Marvel. Gil: I was going back and forth because DC would be very, very rigid. I had trouble getting work beyond The Atom and Green Lantern to keep me going. So I would go over to Marvel, doing the Hulk and had a little trouble with Stan who thought that all of my figures looked homosexual. He wanted me to imitate Jack Kirby. CBA: Did you go into Captain Action knowing that it was only going to be three more issues? Gil: I didn’t know that it was going to last three more issues. It wasn’t until the fourth one when they told me that it would end with the next. I was really unhappy about it because I felt that I finally had something of my own, something that had my stamp as penciler and writer. Whatever crazy notion I had I felt free to utilize if it suited the material. It was a blow to me. Then Carmine became the Editorial Director. (Carmine used to be my partner when we were teenagers for about six months. We fought like cats and dogs. We never really got along.) So when he became Editorial Director, I left and started working full-time for Marvel. Whenever Marvel would run dry (and that was only because of the scheduling because I was doing most of their covers at that point and a lot of interior work as well), I would occasionally go over to Joe Orlando who wanted to give me work. There’s this story, “And His Name is Kane” and the whole idea behind that was Carmine getting back at me. Clearly because I had the material outline I knew what they were going to do but they did everything they could to needle me. I tried to get back at them as much as possible by drawing Carmine in there, I drew Mike Friedrich with a face full of ulcers, and I drew Joe Orlando as a monster. I tried to get back at them. It really didn’t level me or anything. The job came out pretty well. Wally inked it. CBA: Joe Orlando was an untried commodity when Carmine hired him but he proved to be a successful editor. Gil: They started doing comedy material and thought because of Orlando’s experience with Mad he would serve. He turned out to be one of Carmine’s most intimate and trusted assistants and as a result, Joe was able to expand. He became a very forceful editor with strong ideas. CBA: When did Carmine hire Mike Sekowsky as editor? Gil: Mike was an extremely literate person and very bright. He was difficult to get along with because he was a snappish, waspish type. He could level you with humor and cutting remarks but at the same time, he was a very loyal friend and very perceptive. He was doing a lot of romance and they put him on Wonder Woman. CBA: Why was his stay as editor so short? Gil: My understanding is that he would argue and debate everybody. Carmine found him too difficult to work with. He was sort of forced out. CBA: Did you admire Dick Giordano’s books at the time? Gil: Dick’s great skill was his ability to get along with everybody. Nobody was mad at Dick. He was an intelligent guy who didn’t create provocative situations between him and the creative people while at the same time he carried through the publisher’s intent. CBA: Did you plot those issues of Green Lantern just before the O’Neil/Adams run? Gil: I worked on them. By that time, Julie was loosening up and I then had my choice of inking or not inking and to my regret I inked too much because I was rapping everything out—I had a studio and had to make payments. Summer 1999

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CBA: Did you have GL go on the road? Gil: No. That was all Julie. The changes happened because the Revolution had taken place at DC. All of the sudden, all of the old editors were out and Julie was one of the last remnants as editor. The reins of control had changed. Marvel had already outpaced them so they were looking to do things that were attractive. Neal became a powerhouse up there and a lot of what he wanted he was able to achieve because he did some terrific work for them. That’s about the time when I lost interest in DC generally and was looking to achieve something on my own through Savage or Blackmark and set myself off so that I had more control over what I did and have a freer range of expression. It was a battle all of the time. Stan and I once had a very serious talk and he said, “I can’t understand how DC had you working all of those years and never made you an editor.” So I said, “Why haven’t you?” He never said anything after that. I guess I wasn’t a company man. CBA: When Carmine came on and started hiring artists as editors did you ever consider lobbying for a position? Gil: I knew that never in a million years would he have hired me. We only started talking because it was essential to get work but we would never discuss anything except business. CBA: Did you admire any of the books that were coming out? You actually did some issues of The Hawk and the Dove. Gil: They let me do some of the plotting and writing on some of that stuff, too. I used to work so quickly that I would pencil and outline some of the material. I had a certain amount of freedom because they were so desperate to get the stuff in on time. Up until the time that Carmine and I had that falling out, I was doing a lot of work especially for Dick Giordano. I hated Trapani’s inks! I was putting stuff out as quickly as possible and it was hit or miss. I’m not especially proud of my efforts for that period except for the fact that I just worked all the time.

CBA Interview

“A Quiet Pitched Battle from Day One” Talking with Neal Adams on his hell-raisin’ DC days Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Neal Adams was the first—and ultimately most influential—”Young Turk” creator to arrive at an otherwise staid and dull “PostBatmania” DC Comics in the late ’60s. His ultra-realistic illustrative approach invigorated nearly every DC cover for a period and his depiction of Deadman was an instant fan favorite. A pioneer of creator’s rights, the artist helped pull the industry (kicking and screaming, some would say) into an era of increased respect for artists and writers—culminated by Adams’ 1976 victory for Siegel and Shuster in receiving their proper recognition as the creators of the character that built DC Comics. The following interview was conducted by phone on February 6 and 10, 1998, and was copy-edited by Neal.

Below: Dick Giordano (that’s the guy praying on the left) said, “Neal Adams and I were the ‘young Turks’ [at DC]. We bonded immediately and we decided to make things happen.” Neal’s the skeptical fellow on the right in this posed shot used for a 1972 fumetti story, “The Great American Dream” in Crazy #1. Thanks to Dick for the loan.

Comic Book Artist: The first work you did at DC was for Bob Kanigher. How was it working for Bob? Neal Adams: Bob is a mean, cantankerous person so I wouldn’t say that it was a pleasure, but something of a burden. [laughs] Though I must admit that I like Bob Kanigher and I think that he’s very professional in his way. I liked him then and I like him now. I think that crankiness is a very good character trait—certainly it has to be with Julie Schwartz having it as well as Bob. He was not an easy man to work with but I worked with him comfortably. CBA: Were you glad to be out of the syndicate? Neal: In fact, I had done a sample six weeks of a comic strip called Tangent and I was submitting it to get work. I was also interested in doing illustration work and took six months in which time I worked on the Tangent comic strip samples and a portfolio of painted illustrations. It was one of the goals of my life to become an illustrator—I had done illustration work before that but this was a very serious attempt. I started to take my portfolio around and left it in the care of an advertising agency and I went back a week later to get it but it was gone. So I was in a pretty bad situation because I had not sold the new strip and my whole portfolio was missing, never to have been found. It’s not as though I had saved a lot of money. I was doing some advertising work but I needed something steady, so I thought that I would try comic books in an effort to get over the hump. I went to Jim Warren’s place, met Archie Goodwin and he gave me work right away. I found Archie to be an amicable and wonderful person, probably one of the easiest people in the world to do business with. He wrote every story that I did (save one) and I was very pleased with his ability to structure a story—the concept of a beginning, a middle and an end has always pleased me. I had done an awful lot of the writing on the Ben Casey comic strip, with my syndicate’s approval, so I was very comfortable with Archie. Each story that I did was an experiment, doing one story in pencil, another in wash, another in a very comic book technique, one with radical layouts as I was given a tremendous amount of freedom to experiment. But, in a way, I was putting too much into each story. So I thought that I’d go over to DC Comics because I liked the quality of their war books. In my teenage years, Mort Drucker, Russ Heath, and Joe Kubert were the best artists at DC comics and they did war stories, so what better place for me to go and get work? After all, what else was there?

CBA: Did you comfortably adapt to the comics pages after years of syndicate work? Neal: For me, it really wasn’t restrictive at all. I considered it, in fact, freedom, and I was able to open up and blast out. I was able to do things I never had the opportunity to try before. When you’re doing daily comic strips, you have to tell a story in one strip and there are three panels to do it in, the phrase,”beginning, middle and end” has a new meaning. [laughter] That’s pretty much where you’re at and if you don’t hook ’em there, you’re dead. To get this kind of freedom was wonderful! I was totally infected by the comic book bug and I continue to be. If anybody calls me anything in my lifetime, I prefer to be called a comic book artist. CBA: Was there a period when you went overboard with layouts? Neal: I think some people who imitated me went overboard, and there still are some. There are a couple of pages that probably could have been done differently but usually those pages were the form of an experiment. Failed experiments is one of the hallmarks of my work and are grist for the mill. I’m not the type of person that goes back and does it over again because I didn’t like it, I go on and hope that people get it, and forgive my trespasses. CBA: It’s significant that you were doing experiments in a place that, in your words, was stuck in a time warp that remained 1952. Neal: There were so many things that I felt were missed at DC. There’s a realm of subtlety that sounds too artsy-fartsy but on the level that’s more clear. When I was in high school, Sol Harrison (of DC Comics) came and gave a talk. He showed us some pages of original art that made those of us who loved the stuff just faint. The pages were done twice-up, 200% of the printed page. When I started in comics, the pages were being drawn at one-and-a-half up; 150% of the printed size, and you could look at the whole page on your desk in one glance, but the twice-up, you couldn’t. It seemed to me, after my experience with comic strips, that the artist could think of the page as a single thing as well as a series of panels. So the fact that people didn’t think of the concept of designing the entire page seemed to be shocking. To sweep the eye through a page and use design in the service of telling a story, not just as an artistic endeavor, and make a person read a page faster or slower; to irritate the eye or caress it; to allow certain attitudes to build up while you’re reading a story and to fight those attitudes, is entertainment. When I look at my Batman stories, I slide through the stories like I was on butter, but when I look at my X-Men stories, I am forced to stop and look at things because of the jagged shapes that stop me and make the story longer. The impression is that the “Batman” stories are shorter and the X-Men are longer but that’s not necessarily the case. It has to do with design and how I chose to tell a story. You can lose a reader with design. For example, I did a “Batman/ Creeper” story and in the middle of that I lost the reader because I did this fancy thing with bricks falling down, with pictures on each brick. As a reader, my brain stopped with that page. It was too confusing to read. There were things that one could do that people just never thought about before and I don’t COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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Neal: When Carmine “accepted” the position of art director, they offered me Deadman. It seemed like a stupid character to me at the time but he had a lot of muscles and a good costume—and, finally, it was different—so I figured, what the hell. To me, it’s the unknown that’s fun. I did The Spectre after Murphy Anderson, who did a pretty good job so I didn’t think that I was going to contribute much to the book. After my first issue, the fans wrote and told me just that. There were a lot of things at DC that weren’t done right—Batman, Green Lantern. But “Deadman” was this wildcard and Carmine didn’t want to do it. Carmine’s “Deadman” looked pretty good and it was the first thing that had come out of DC at the time that I liked so when I got the chance, I did the book. I did a couple of Jack Miller scripts (but Jack’s days were numbered), one by Bob Kanigher (a two-parter that I combined into one book), a script by Arnold Drake (that was rejected by editorial) and, in the end, I wrote it. Deadman was getting mish-moshed scriptwise because everybody wanted to write it. Everybody was handing in scripts and concepts and they were firing all over the place but they didn’t seem to track the story. Giordano became editor and I submitted my outline and he used mine. I had a pretty good time. CBA: Was it a breath of fresh air when Dick arrived? Neal: And, boy, it sure needed it up there! Dick was terrific. First of all, he was new though he had worked for a company that made

know that when other artists picked up my work and said, “Oh, look what he’s doing—I’m going to try that, too,” that they understood the thinking behind it. Very often, they thought, “Oh, he’s free to do this so I’m free to do it,” without considering the reasons behind the approach. Just because you see something that you like doesn’t mean that you know why you like it. There were a lot of things through those stories that I boldly communicated, and many that I did but weren’t obvious. In my opinion, there were certain things in the business that had nothing to do with the blasting out and creating a revolution but had more to do with making more of the medium. Finding things that we hadn’t really done and doing them was something worth exploring. This is a rich field. CBA: Did DC welcome your approach? Neal: They didn’t know what the hell was going on. Believe me, it was a pitched battle from day one. What I managed to do there and in my career is to do enough of the stuff that they liked so that I could be free to do the stuff that they didn’t understand. For example, it was easy for me to do the Deadman [Strange Adventures] covers that I did even though nobody at DC knew the production methods I was discussing except certain people in the production department. They had no idea what I was trying to do, but as long as I was doing Superman covers that helped them sell comic books, ones that had a little girl pointing at Superman and saying, “Yes, that’s the man that killed my daddy,” they let me be weird! I did a Deadman cover with a big face of a character called the Eagle done as a drop-out with a little figure of Deadman, and when I went to show it, the immediate response was, “It’s just a little figure of Deadman in the corner! That’s not a cover.” I said, “No, look at the design and let me show you the cover overlay.” They were baffled, saying, “Color? We’re not talking about overlays!” I just told them to trust me and they said, “Do a couple of Superman covers and you can do your stupid Deadman cover.” It was like pulling teeth. There was enough good will to allow me to do it but only as long as I came through with the other stuff. CBA: One suspects that syndicated strips paid pretty well compared to comic books... Neal: That’s not necessarily true. With Ben Casey, I had partners— Desilu Productions, the syndicate, and Jerry Capp, the writer. When you’re sharing this much, your take is pretty small. But remember: I landed the strip when I was 20 years old and you could have said that I was going to do it for $10 a week, I would have done it. I started a family at the same age. I always made money doing advertising. Because I came into comics at a time when nobody else came in, I had to take care of business. There was no path in front of me to walk so I had to make that path as I went along. I shored up my way as much as I could so I did a lot of advertising work CBA: When the other new creators started coming into DC, would they hang out with you? Neal: Sure. Even though I was young at the time, I was a professional and I didn’t think of myself when I went to DC and Marvel as being somebody who was breaking into the comic book field. To a certain extent I was affected by the world that I live in and that comic books was indeed a step down. It was my own personal joy in doing comics that made me realize what the potential was. I did comics after having lost an illustration portfolio and trying to sell another comic strip. I did Archie pages and I got beyond it and did a comic strip, and I was planning to be an illustrator. It was not until the joy of doing comics hit me that I realized that this was what I wanted to do. This was great! CBA: Did you immediately start receiving fan mail? Neal: I think so. But at DC, it was as though I had fallen out of the sky. I thought that if I had done a syndicated strip I should be known, but nobody knew me. When I worked at DC they’d say, “I don’t think that we can do this,” I would say, “Wait a second! Every advertising agency and magazine in the country does this kind of work. It’s not that hard to do: let me show you.” It was appalling how little was known. I wasn’t arrogant about it—though I may lampoon myself that way—but I really was walking into a place that was lost in time. And I was trying to think of all sorts of ways to bring them forward. It was a very strange place for me to be. CBA: You were given the “Deadman” book...

Above: In 1959, Neal produced two sample pages in an unsuccessful attempt to impress the DC editors and break into the business. One was a war page and the other featured a character “I didn’t even like,” Adam Strange. Above is a more recent (though undated) version of the hero by Neal. Adam Strange ©1999 DC Comics.

* In a letter to The Comics Journal #45, March 1979, Haney wrote: “My script [for The Brave and the Bold #86] was changed from about halfway through into something new and strange. I felt I had fallen full fathom five without an Ariel to soothe my angst. When I bitched to N.A., we had a bit of a confrontation. He had taken it upon himself to “improve” my script without consulting me or ye ed... Allow that Adams’ rewrite had a certain flashy style, it had nothing much to do with my script and I informed him never to change any more scripts.” 38

him fly by the seat of his pants, so he wasn’t a strict editor. He edited and read everything, but he didn’t clamp down on the writers and make them go in a certain direction. You can recognize a Julie Schwartz story or a Bob Kanigher story or a Murray Boltinoff story, but you couldn’t recognize a Dick Giordano story that easily. He let the writers express their personalities. Dick was a breath of fresh air. Absolutely. CBA: You worked with Mike Friedrich on The Spectre. Did you use his script or did you throw it out and plot it yourself? Neal: No, I used it totally. I was trying to give guys their first break so we could alter DC Comics and make it a slightly younger company. So when Mike came in, he wanted to do a story and, if I agreed to do it, it was pretty much a given that he’d get to do it. We got together a little bit but basically it was his story and I think he did a terrific job. I followed it so I could show my faith to the editor and say, “See, he writes a good story.” It wouldn’t have helped Mike in the pursuit of a career, if I took his story and changed it totally. He must be given strong credit for that. CBA: Bob Haney has mentioned how you deviated from his script in The Brave and the Bold.* Neal: Really? I don’t think that I changed any of his dialogue. I would take sequences that were written clearly for the daytime and have them happen at night. I would emphasize certain things in a story and maybe pile panels that were written for one page and move them to another so I could expand on another page because there was very little going on. If you have a lot of dialogue, there’s ways of compacting it and making it interesting so you can expand in another area. That wasn’t done that much in comic books. The writers were typically writing five and six panel pages and you couldn’t expand very much with that. I felt that the page demarcation isn’t quite that important to a script because it’s just an arbitrary thing that the writer puts in, so if I shove a couple of panels to the previous page and still tell the story, then I can open up the next page. I’m not affecting the writing; I’m affecting the storytelling. That may be what Bob was talking about and I think that Bob Haney got an awful lot of attention when I was doing those things, and I don’t think that he resents too much what I was able to do. He has the ability to write a very rich story. In fact, now that I think about it, I can almost guarantee that I didn’t change a word of Bob’s copy. Any changes were made by Murray Boltinoff, the editor. CBA: Did the cancellation of “Deadman” in Strange Adventures come as a surprise? Neal: They have a concept in the comic book business called affidavit returns. If you send 50 comic books to your local distributor, and he tells you that he didn’t sell 40 of them, he doesn’t have to rip off the covers or cut the title off and return it to you like he once had to; he has to sign a piece of paper that says he destroyed the 40 copies. It was the beginnings of comic conventions and comics dealers in those days and the question you have to ask is, where did they get the books they sold? The place they got them was out the back door of their local comics distributors who invariably had a table in that backroom that had Playboy magazines, Marvel Comics, DC Comics and other magazines. For 25% of the cover price you could buy those magazines. In light of that, Strange Adventures “didn’t sell well enough,” so they cancelled it. I did the X-Men for 10 issues and they “didn’t sell well enough to continue,” so they cancelled it. Green Lantern/Green Arrow “didn’t sell well enough,” so they cancelled it. On the other hand, I have perhaps signed tens, if not hundreds of thousands of these comic books at conventions. On the other hand, the comics that I did covers for—Superman or Superboy—would rise 10 or 15% in sales just because I did the covers. That meant that the collectors weren’t rapacious enough to collect those simply because I just did the covers but the ones which I

drew the insides. That was a very strange phenomenon. The books that were stand-out and did really well didn’t have better sales than any of the other books; sometimes less. The reason? They were disappearing out of the back of the distributors’ warehouses. Why did they cancel the book? I think we may have some dishonest people in the magazine distribution business... or not. Remember also... when sales weren’t doing well, apparently the numbers are lowered. When numbers go down and it’s a good book, in those days fan-dealers would dive in and buy as many copies from the distributors “cash table” as they could. Mysteriously, the “apparent” sales would continue to drop. DC knew they had a “hot book,” but sales continued into the dumpster. Hell, when I went over to do work at Marvel, they told me “Deadman” was the only DC book they read at Marvel. Carmine was baffled and remains baffled to this day, but, remember, Carmine was publisher in name only. He apparently didn’t ever understand how sales figures worked on “newsstand sales.” For those of you who care, it works like this: After one month you are told what percentage of your books were returned. As each succeeding month goes by, your returns increase while (obviously) your sales go down. This goes on for a final figure at six months. (Some returns trickle in even then.) If returns come in after six months and they’re valid, the distributor makes an accommodation. But six months is it. Your sales never rise because sales are based on returns. Carmine never quite understood sales and “returns,” and a lot of misinformation was disseminated at DC in those days, to the detriment of editorial and creative. Personally, I made friends in the accounting, record-keeping and production departments. After a while I knew more than the editors and sometimes I shared that information with some very confused and misinformed folk. If you doubt my information, please remember Continuity Comics were on the newsstands for about three years and we are a “handson” publisher. CBA: Did you have aspirations to one day become publisher of DC? Neal: No, I had no interest at all at that time. The only reason I have become a publisher at all is because Pacific Comics went bankrupt and rather than lose about $40,000 that was owed to me, I decided to publish myself. Nor have I had an interest in being a boss. I still spend 90% of my time writing and drawing. I have to be a boss—I have no choice. If I was publisher at DC, I would be a qualityand dollar-oriented publisher. CBA: Why did you form Continuity? Neal: It was made clear in a number of ways that the folks at DC Comics really didn’t need me around there anymore. Originally I was either going to an art studio, doing art for advertising, or I found myself up at DC Comics, almost every day, in a room where there was an Art-O-Graph and where we hatched our plots to make DC Comics better than it was. At a certain point, they made it clear that it wasn’t necessary for me to come in anymore. I could have made a play then for a position at DC but I had no real interest. I thought that I could duke it out and I might even win but what would I have won? Basically, things were on the move and I was doing work for Marvel and DC, so why didn’t I just get my own studio? Dick’s presence was no longer needed at DC at that point and we both came to the conclusion that we should have a studio together and that led to the thought, why don’t we have a little company here? CBA: Did you meet Steve Ross [CEO of Warner Communications]? Neal: Not directly. Steve Ross used DC Comics to climb up to Warners. It’s a helluva interesting story that he started with parking garages and undertaking establishments and went on to DC Comics, of all things, and then on to Warner Brothers. That’s a meteoric rise of incredible proportions. I was there when the Kinney executives moved in. I was there when the word was: the best way to train an executive is to have him work in a mortuary because he would learn how to handle people which was Steve Ross’ philosophy. I think that he wanted his executives to be at DC Comics but I don’t think he was essentially interested in the company. He left it in the hands of Jack Leibowitz who had the corner office. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

Summer 1999

Before you get your bowels in an uproar, remember...

...it’s just a comic book... Neal here. (nealadams.com). Ohhh-kay, for those of you who may have taken an interest in my upcoming project, i’m going to tell you what it’s about, partially. But first record this: I’ve been working on this project, on and off, for 26 years. This is dense stuff, but understandable. I will show and prove (or not) the following: 1. That the Earth grew in size and that is the reason and explanation for continental drift. Prove! No Victoria, there is no Pangea!

2. I will show, therefore, that all planets, moons and suns grew. And therefore the ‘Big Bang’ Theory is a “Pig in a Poke”, and not correct.

3. I will prove matter cannot be created or destroyed and that the positron (otherwise known by current science as antimatter) is in fact a primitive proton and not antimatter at all.

4. I will prove mass does not equal attraction.

5. I will prove gravity is not a “new force”, but electromagnetic in nature.

6. I will prove the speed of light is not a universal constant. But time and space is.

7. I will prove light is neither a a wave nor a particle (nor both).

8. I will show you what those gigantic ‘craters’ on the Moon are and show exactly what Mars ‘was’.

9. I will show you what the inside of the Earth looks like. And the list goes on...

ATLANTIC NOW

PACIFIC NOW

I have been a very, very, very, very busy puppy. Please join me in this adventure. If all I say in my book and show on my tape is wrong, we will all have a great time disproving it. Just to whet your appetite, pull out any definitive book on the Pangea theory of Earth’s development and compare it to these 4 pictures. And think... Very hard. ATLANTIC 400,000,000 YEARS AGO

PACIFIC 400,000,000 YEARS AGO

CBA Interview

Man Behind the Bat (Lash) Talking with Sergio Aragonés from Romance to Plop! Conducted by Jon B. Cooke

Above right: An early Sergio Aragonés drawing (circa 1949-51). “The guy with the hood was very much ‘taken’ from the Spanish character, Capitan Misterio by Emilio Treixas,” said Sergio. ©1999 Sergio Aragonés. Below: Three influential cartoonists. The crowd scene is by French cartoonist Dubout; the village scene by Oski; and the giraffe gag is by the renowned Mordillo, “a great European cartoonist from Argentina,” Sergio explained. All are © their respective artists.

We all know what Sergio Aragonés does—he is a cartoonist par excellence, a masterful storyteller and hilarious wit who hasn’t missed an appearance in Mad magazine in the last 37 years (okay, once! But that was the Post Office’s fault!). But what you may not know is the kind of man he is. Allow me a quick story: After my ceaseless badgering for an interview (which took place via phone on April 4, 1999) and me giving unforgiveably short turnaround time for a copy-edit of same (plus a copyedit of his participation in the Cardy Panel), I started hounding the artist for his illustrated DC comic scripts, photos, correspondence, childhood drawings, cartoons by influential artists, and notes from meetings of over 25 years ago, all no doubt buried deep in an attic somewhere. And I needed it in a day or so. Sure, I was ashamed but I’m thinking it’s for the great good—for Comics History, dammit! What I didn’t know was that Mad had assigned him the “Mad Looks at Star Wars: Episode 1” at the same time and they expanded it from something like three to seven pages. And they literally needed it in three days. But, in spite of three sleepless nights of brainstorming and unrelentless work, Sergio pulled through for CBA (all the while cursing me, no doubt), and I thank him. You are the man, Sergio. Comic Book Artist: You arrived in the United States from Mexico in 1962, and you immediately get work at Mad? Sergio Aragonés: Yeah. I went to a lot of smaller magazines but everybody kept saying, “Your cartoons are crazy enough—go to Mad.” And I went. CBA: Were you familiar with American comic books in Mexico? Sergio: Yes, but I was not a fan or serious reader of comics. I read them sporadically and I was more

familiar with the ones which were translated into Spanish (because my English was pretty bad). CBA: Did you have particular favorites? Sergio: Sure. Donald Duck by Carl Barks. The Spirit by Will Eisner (which was translated into Spanish in the ‘40s). One that I remember dearly was Blackhawk; I loved that. I was fascinated by Reed Crandall’s positioning; the hand-pointing and things like that. CBA: Were you more attracted to adventure strips? Sergio: Yes. The super-heroes were never very big with me because of my age. I was born in 1937. CBA: When I see your earlier Mad work, you seemed to have been influenced by Virgil Partch. Sergio: Oh, absolutely. Partch was one of my main influences. I got a lot of strips from Argentina in our daily newspaper so I was also influenced by a cartoonist called Oski (who also influenced Mordillo who is very popular in Europe). Mordillo did animation for a long time but he had his own strip and puzzles with zillions of people. Oski was a very good cartoonist, influencing a lot of European and Argentinian cartoonists and I was one of them. I was also very influenced by the French cartoonists who did pantomime cartoons. When I was young, pantomimes were easier to understand. CBA: Did you go directly from Mexico to New York? Sergio: I took a bus from Mexico City. To save money, I slept on the bus and I was a tourist during the day. I’d take a shower at the bus station. CBA: Did you aspire to do comic books or was it basically to break into the gag strip market? Sergio: I did gags. Comics never entered my head. I always drew comics as a kid but on my own; I never published anything. They were just my own adventures from out of my head. I drew adventure stuff—pirates and things. CBA: Did you have particular characters you created? Sergio: Yeah. I had a couple of brothers having adventures. I had a character who was very much like Zorro. I always wanted to do one like Tarzan. [laughs] But I never studied art so I didn’t know how to draw. I was always the funny guy in class so I did gags. CBA: But, along with gags, you seem to have a natural grasp of storytelling. The marginal cartoons are tiny stories unto themselves. Were you conscious of trying to be a storyteller as well as a joker? Sergio: When you do cartoons, usually the cartoon itself is a story. I was more concerned about what I was going to say than how I was going to say it. Really, the drawing didn’t make any difference; it was a few squiggles and I would say what I wanted to say. It was more that Mad wanted stories with more panels instead of one gag. I do the “Mad Looks at…” and they want more than one panel per gag because I was already doing one-panel gags in the margins. So they wanted more of a little story. There was no problem finding little tales to do in four or five panels instead of just one. CBA: Probably the most memorable piece you did, for me, was the double-page spread of Woodstock [“I Remember, I Remember the Wondrous Woodstock Music Fair,” Mad #134]. My eyes were suddenly open to your style and sheer storytelling ability. You had so much detail going on and the rendering was really fine work. Sergio: That was a series of poems written by Frank Jacobs and I just illustrated Woodstock. There was a French cartoonist called Dubout and he would do lots of drawings of very complicated city-towns COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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and trains with lots of people. He would draw bullfighting jokes and render everybody in the audience with all the little whiskers and Band-aids. He was a very crazy cartoonist. That part I didn’t do that much but he was an exceptional French cartoonist. When I was a kid, I was just amazed because I would follow all of the people in it. I was always fascinated by masses of people. CBA: “Woodstock” was the first time you got to do it in Mad? Sergio: Yes. CBA: And was it well-received? Sergio: Oh, please, yes! To this day, because it sold in an auction, I have done numerous commissions reproducing that work. CBA: Through working at Mad, you met Joe Orlando? Sergio: Yes. I had gone to Europe for two years (1966-67) and when I came back, Joe was not with Mad anymore but was working at DC. When I went to see him, Vince Colletta was there waiting for two romance scripts (and the guy who was supposed to deliver them didn’t show up), so I said to Joe, “Why don’t you go to lunch with Vince and when you come back, I’ll give you the stories. What do you need?” Joe said, “I need two stories of seven pages each.” So I went to the cafeteria while they went out for lunch and I wrote the stories. When he came back, I gave them to him, he liked them, he gave them to the artist, and that was it! He said, “Hey, I didn’t know you wrote stories!” I said, “Sure! I didn’t know either! You needed them done!” [laughter] CBA: What made you think you could do it? Did you see it as a business opportunity? Sergio: No. I have always written so it was the normal thing to do. There’s no mystery about it. I have always written in my head but I just never had the chance to do it for publication. The opportunity was there and, after Joe and Vince left for lunch, I went to the DC comics library and read issues of Young Romance—the comic he needed stories for—and I realized that the plots were very basic. So I wrote about how I met my first wife; I just made a few changes. Instead of being a cartoonist, I made the man a mariachi singer and I used a very classic formula of boy meets girl, something happens, and they get together in the end. What I did was draw it instead of writing it. I divided my pages into six panels and drew the story. I wrote in very thick English (because my English was worse than it is right now) and put in very basic dialogue which Joe would fix. CBA: Joe sent me one of your Young Romance scripts and I ran it in CBA #1. It was great! Did you deliver scripts on a regular basis? Sergio: Well, Joe wanted more because he liked the style. So I did a lot of writing for House of Mystery and anything that came out of my head, I’d bring to him and, if he liked it, he would buy it. Mostly he liked everything because the plots were fresh because I was a new writer of twenty-something. I was a young man and the stories Summer 1999

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were good and different. They were not the same rehash; they were brand-new stories and Joe liked them a lot. There were different twists in all of them. I wanted to do humor. When I was in Europe, I saw all the new comic book material that was coming out—such as Moebius’s Lt. Blueberry—and I realized that a lot of stories were drawn humorously even though the writing was serious. So I figured, “Hey! This is what I want to do!” Suddenly I realized that there was a market for what I did and the market was European comics. Well, to my surprise when I came back to the States, the undergrounds started to emerge and it was amazing that all these young kids were doing humorous stories. Here the comics were typically divided into material for children or adults; if it had funny drawings, it was for children. There were very, very few strips drawn in a funny style for adults. Roy Crane’s Captain Easy and Buz Sawyer were the closest to adventure humor which I loved (I was just enthralled with his artwork but my problem was I couldn’t draw that well so I wouldn’t even attempt it! [laughter]). CBA: When did you first see the undergrounds? Sergio: When I was living in New York as soon as I got back from Europe. There was a newspaper called Yellow Dog and suddenly there was a plethora of them all over New York, and I bought them all. I was fascinated by these kids who would talk about anything they wanted! By then, I was a little too old to work in the undergrounds because I had never been in their position of being deprived or into a drug society or sexual revolution, or any of that. My problem was generational. CBA: Would you say you were more conservative? Sergio: Oh yes, totally! I was already establishment. But I still thought the undergrounds were great. I could have faked it but I could have faked painting also, but that’s not what I do. CBA: Were you particularly intrigued by any of the underground cartoonists? Sergio: Yes. Crumb was exceptional; he really jumped out. There was a story that really amazed me: Binky Brown Meets the Virgin Mary by Justin Green. I thought that was terrific. His loose style and that story!

Above left: Another early Aragonés drawing, showing a scene to be replayed in his Bat Lash! Above: The splash page to Sergio’s first DC scripted story, from Young Romance #155. Mariachis rule! ©1968 DC Comics. Below: The three responsible for “The Poster Plague,” from House of Mystery #202, just after accepting their ACBA Shazam! Award for Best Story in 1972. Left to right: writer Steve Skeates, editor Joe Orlando, and artist Sergio Aragonés. When sharing this photo, Sergio added this note: “Steve didn’t want to go up to the stage without a jacket, so I loaned him mine.”

Above: First page to an Aragonés Stanley and His Monster script. Sergio also wrote numerous mystery stories, romances, teenage humor, and even The Adventures of Jerry Lewis. Stanley and His Monster ©1999 DC Comics.

And, for the first time, I saw women cartoonists doing funny stuff. It was outrageous! And it was great. CBA: So seeing that stuff motivated you to push to do more stories yourself (if not necessarily in the underground genre)? Sergio: The fact that suddenly there was an opening, yes. I was trying to convince Joe Orlando to do humor comics because I saw that they were successful in Europe, where there were science-fiction stories done in a humorous style. They didn’t have to be realistic— but it was impossible at DC. The closest we came was to do Plop! By then, I explained to Joe that we could do a humor magazine with gags and stuff and then he convinced Carmine and we did it—but by then I was moving to California so my involvement ended. CBA: When you were in Europe, did you want to break into that market? Sergio: No. My father had passed away and I had to go to Spain to meet the needs of my family. Because of tradition, I became the head of my family and I had to go and meet my relatives. In my head, yes, my agenda was to meet every cartoonist that I could. The first thing I did when I went to Spain was to visit a magazine called La Codorniz (which was sent to me by my family when I was a kid) which was a political magazine with cartoons (but not comics). I told them that it would be a great honor for me if they would publish my work and the editor was delighted because he already knew my work from Mad. He said, “Oh man,are you sure?” I said, “Yeah!” So they published a few of my cartoons. So that was a great treat. CBA: And during the same period you were still sending material

back to Mad? Sergio: Yes. That was between 1966 and ’67. CBA: Prior to doing work with Joe Orlando at DC, you did most of your own writing at Mad? Sergio: Everything I did, I wrote myself. I did some illustration for others. I did a series, for instance, called “What’s a Winner; What’s a Loser,” that was written by a whole bunch of people like Al Jaffee and Larry Siegel, which I would illustrate (because I was hired as an illustrator). But I never drew to what the other guys had written; I created my own gags to go with the article. I created vignettes that had nothing to do with the writing. They were different and they had my point of view. I never got paid as a writer but, to me, it was important that the gags were mine. CBA: So, in essence, you were doing your own writing. You did some romance and mystery stories. Sergio: And I wrote some Jerry Lewis stories (which Bob Oskner drew) and I did a couple of Inferior Fives with Joe Orlando. I mostly did horror stuff and then I started doing single pages for the horror and war books. Joe Kubert bought a few of the one-page gags. CBA: But you missed a big one there... you forgot you wrote Bat Lash. Sergio: Of course! Joe and Carmine called me and said they wanted to do a different kind of cowboy. So we sat in the coffee house and they said, “We need a cowboy and his name is Bat Lash—and we want him to be different.” I said, “Sure! Don’t worry about it.” So I went home and, the way I always do it, I came back in with the stories. CBA: According to a number of people, including Joe and Carmine, Sheldon Mayer came up with some initial concepts for Bat Lash. Do you recall his influence? Was it a clean slate as far as you knew when you first became involved? Sergio: They had never mentioned that it had already been written by anybody else. They just told me that they wanted a different kind of story. The stories were completely mine. Of course, they took my story and did what Mark Evanier does with my Groo stories, which was to dialogue the books. Denny O’Neil would do the dialogue. I always drew my stories; I never used a typewriter in my life. I would send my Bat Lash stories in on letter-size pages, divided in six panels, and I would draw the script. They would add details—for instance, Carmine would call me in and say, “Hey, we want to have a story with Bat Lash’s brother to add conflict.” I said, “Sure,” and I wrote about a brother as a bounty hunter. The idea, for instance, of the sawed-off shotgun came from them; they called me in and said, “We want the brother to have a shotgun like in the TV series Wanted: Dead or Alive with Steve McQueen.” So I said, “Okay, sure.” I sketched the brother with a poncho (like Clint Eastwood) so he could hide the gun. I also called a character Don Pasquale which was my father’s name. This page, next and pg. 46: Six pages of Sergio’s script to an unfinished Bat Lash story, pgs. 6-12. An example of a typical Aragonés script, done in cartoon and sometimes broken English, but always entertaining. See CBA #1 for a complete Aragonés’ romance script. Bat Lash ©1999 DC Comics.

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I didn’t write the second issue of Bat Lash because in those days they would assign a lot of people to the books; but while I wanted to use humor in the stories, I didn’t want people laughing at Bat Lash. In that story, Bat Lash was a clown who would fall down and would climb onto things; the other characters were cartoony and it was weird. The stories I didn’t write were strange. CBA: Was Joe happy with the way the book was developing? The house ad drawn by Joe featured a much grimmer character that seemed humorless. Sergio: They fought. They wanted Jonah Hex-type of stories who was a character very much more into that House of Mystery/horror kind of stuff. As a matter of fact, they had a title called All-Star Western and they were going to cancel it. But they had to create a new title to replace it because in those days, distribution demanded that DC and Marvel had a certain number of titles to fill a certain amount of rack space. So I suggested they try a different kind of western (though I didn’t create Jonah Hex at all). They shouldn’t lose a title but create a character who could eventually spin off into his own comic, to use the title as a stepping stone—and that happened though I didn’t have anything to do with the creation of that. CBA: So you were obviously regularly in the offices. Sergio: It was my home. Before Carmine became editorial director, the publisher was Mark Inglesias and he owned the marina where I kept my boat. [chuckles] So I was there not only as a cartoonist but also as a friend of Mark’s. After I visited Mad every day, I would go, visit with Mark and talk boats. CBA: What were the offices like? Sergio: They were efficient. There was a lot of activity and the place was smaller than it is now. Everybody was in and out of everybody else’s office. It was very, very friendly and there was a lot of camaraderie. CBA: Do you recall meeting Neal Adams there? Sergio: Yes, and many other artists. It was fascinating. CBA: You had the regular gig with Mad magazine, so were you able to do as much as you wanted to? Sergio: In those days, if your sales didn’t reach a certain percentage, comics had to be dropped (even though the sales were twice what they are now). When we did so many issues of Plop!, I was disenchanted with the direction of the comic and I was involved in a completely different way than I wanted to be. One of the original ideas I had for Plop! was that I wanted DC to hire underground artists (because by then the undergrounds were on their way out). There were so many good cartoony comic artists you could tap for stories that were really humorously drawn. But the problem with that book is they gave the serious artists humorous work and it got back to what I was always trying to avoid—a realistic humorous style. CBA: Bernie Wrightson did some stories. Even Frank Robbins... Sergio: Yes, and I don’t have an objection to their work but I didn’t

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want Plop! to be that. I wanted Plop! to be cartoony like when they used Lee Marrs because her style was exactly what I wanted the book to be (not that I had any instrument in her hiring). I wanted humorous people drawing humor—but it was never to be. They used very mediocre stories because they didn’t have any budget to pay for good cartoons. CBA: What was Joe Orlando like? Sergio: Oh, he was a terrific fellow. He was a good ol’ Italian homeboy from New York. Whenever you met him he was like your best friend. You never felt that he was the boss but he was a friend that you’d do whatever he wanted. CBA: Was he a prankster? Sergio: Yeah, he was fun. He was a nice man. He’d tell jokes and he loved to eat. I went with him on one of the early Mad trips to Paris and we would share meals. I was very close to him because he was very European, very Latino. We were friends from Day One. CBA: You two worked together pretty closely. How did “The Poster Plague” develop? Sergio: I had been doing just single pages, right? And I kept telling Joe that I wanted to draw humor stories and he says that there isn’t any place for them. (And there wasn’t then.) I tried to convince him that we could draw humorous story and it would be fun and people would accept them. But they kept saying, “No, we just want serious artists.” There were very few stories drawn in a humorous style. He found the story and he said, “Okay. What can you do with this?” And that story wasn’t written for humor; it was a serious story but nobody wanted to do it. DC had already bought it so they had it in the drawer for a while! They said, “Okay, we got this story so let’s get rid of it and have Sergio draw it. [laughter] It would look better in a humorous style.” The story was a little too silly for them. So I drew it and it was my first story ever in comic book form. CBA: And there was quite an impact from that story. Sergio: I drew it, they published it, and people liked it. CBA: Yeah. You won a Shazam! award, right?

Above: Sergio shared a lot of DC correspondence with us. This is a 5/23/68 letter from Joe Orlando that says:”…One bit of bad news. They are dropping Stanley & His Monster. Unfortunately they did not give our material a chance—it was dropped on the sales record of the book put out by the previous editor. If our three books come back in sales—Carmine promised me we would go ahead with it... Please send some Scooter—as they really want to develop a teenage line. Try to develop the Scooter stories more visual—slapstick—pie in the face bit—pratfalls... as in the Archie series,” giving credence to Joe’s statements that Scooter was just a calculated rip-off of Archie Comics.

Sergio: [laughs] That’s right! I’m looking at it right here! CBA: So that story was the realization that led to Plop!? Sergio: Yes, that’s correct. We saw we had a chance to do that type of story and Joe convinced Carmine (or the other way around). I mostly dealt with Joe. But when we were first conceiving the comic, the three of us—Carmine, Joe and I—were sitting there and trying to think of a title. We wanted to call it something related to black humor. But we couldn’t call it Black Humor because people would think these were racial cartoons. They kept trying to think of a name for it and I said the name didn’t mean a thing. And Carmine says, “Well, what do you want to call it? Plop!?” I said, “Yeah! ‘Plop!’ That’s a good name!” He said, “Just like that?” And I said, “Yeah! It will work!” Once you establish the name, it will take with an audience. So I drew a series of drawings with things going “plop!” and I did it to establish the name. And it worked. CBA: Plop! was comic book-size but it didn’t have any advertising. It seemed to

be intended differently than the rest of the DC line. Did you aspire to see it more on the magazine racks rather than the comics racks? Sergio: Yes. I didn’t want advertising because I thought with humor you didn’t have to have ad pages. It could stand on its own and eventually, of course, make it a magazine more in the style of [French magazine] Pilote with gags and stories. CBA: Did you want to integrate Plop! as closely with the other mystery books as it was? Sergio: No. CBA: So you didn’t want the hosts Cain and Abel particularly? Sergio: No, that was not my idea at all. But because in comics there was always someone introducing stories, they wanted to have the intros. I wrote those (and they would put the dialogue in, of course). They went more for the horror thing though I wanted it to have totally humorous stories eventually. But when they came to me, there was already a black humor approach. CBA: Do you think the horror angle was used because, by that time, Kinney/Warner Communications—owner of DC—had purchased Mad magazine, and you didn’t want to go into competition with Mad? Sergio: No. It never even entered my mind. It probably entered their mind. CBA: It was odd that the humor comic had a horror slant. Sergio: But Joe was always into that kind of humor. CBA: Yeah, he had a rather dark streak to his humor. [laughter] You say you also wrote some mystery stories... Sergio: But I wrote serious stories, not humorous ones. And whoever was in charge then would put in the dialogue. CBA: Did you have any interest in doing super-hero stories? Sergio: No. CBA: So, as super-heroes continued to become dominant, was your anthology story market drying up? Sergio: Well, no. I wanted to do the whole thing. I didn’t want to only write; I wanted to draw my own stories. By then I had developed a couple of characters that I wanted to do. Among them was Groo (though I hadn’t named him yet—I wanted to do a barbarian type of thing). And another thing I wanted to do since I was a kid was a silly Tarzan. So, all through the ’70s, I was home drawing these concepts, writing up stories where I wanted to take these characters. When I moved to the West Coast and I was already tired of trying to convince them to publish humor, I wanted to own my own characters. Even Marvel said, “Let’s look at it but no way are you going to own it.” I said, “Well, I’m going to keep it for myself.” So I approached Mark Evanier (because we were friends and he lived close to my studio) and I said, “I cannot write proper English so if I do a comic with you, will you help me?” He said, “Sure. I’d be glad to.” So I showed him a story that was completely without words— which was the story that appeared in Destroyer Duck which I had completed a couple of years prior—and from then on we’ve worked together. CBA: How many hours a day do you work? Are you constantly working? Sergio: 14 hours. Yes, I’m constantly working. I’ve always worked like that. Half of the day I write for Mad or the comics, so I’m always working. But I also have hobbies: I do carpentry and I build model boats, so while I’m doing that, I’m thinking—I’m writing. My mind is on the story. And then I stop what I’m doing, and write notes. So I’m always working. CBA: After you did “The Poster Plague,” and you were becoming more involved at DC, did people sit up and take notice that you weren’t “just” a gag cartoonist? Were you treated differently? Sergio: Yes. They said, “What are you doing here? We’re trying to get away from comics! Why are you trying to get back into them?” CBA: [laughs] You took heat for it? Sergio: I took a lot of heat! Don’t forget that in those times, the pay was ridiculous in comics. I was making at Mad probably $100 a page when comics were paying $6 a page! That was the proportion. I would get $100 for an illustration and the comics paid $50 a page for art. So everybody said, “What are you doing!?” Al Feldstein (probably one of the most underrated guys in the business) wrote, COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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drew, and did everything in those EC Comics... CBA: So it didn’t necessarily take Joe Orlando for you to realize you could write stories. You always wanted to write but Joe opened up a real opportunity, correct? Sergio: I didn’t only want to write them; I wanted to draw. One of the things that happened when I arrived in the United States, I went to Esquire magazine as a freelancer—I went to many magazines before going to Mad—and they liked my ideas and they wanted to buy them, but they wanted to give them to other artists because they didn’t like my drawings. But I didn’t want to sell my stories without my art. I didn’t know that buying just the ideas was customary in this country. The concept was totally alien to me. CBA: Around the late ’60s, you were also an actor? Sergio: Well, my father was a movie producer so I came from the industry. I was an actor in college; I did pantomime, but not to have a career in acting but to improve my cartooning. I studied with Alejandro Jodorowsky who was a superb mime—one of the best ever—and he worked with Marcel Marceau. When he was in Mexico, he opened up a pantomime school and I wanted to apply pantomime to my cartoons, so I did it with him. He was always into comics and he’s one of the most popular French writers—he wrote The Incal with Moebius—and he’s just a genius. He was a great influence on me. CBA: You performed in American television? Sergio: Yes, because I was hired first as a cartoonist for the animation. Because I was there, I did the acting but not because I was an actor. It was just a psychological continuation. It was fun. I did animation for the shows TV Bloopers and Practical Jokes, [the 1979 revival of] Laugh-In, and one called Speak Up, America. CBA: Did you ever consider doing your own animated series? Sergio: No. I like print and it’s always been my métier. Maybe people don’t understand when I’m not pursuing the bucks but I’m just enjoying doing what I’m doing. CBA: So what happened with DC? Were you disenchanted with where Plop! was going and you didn’t see a proper outlet for your work? Sergio: Well, by the last issues of Plop!, the direction wasn’t what I wanted and I just did the intros. That was it. It was the same thing as Bat Lash; once you see you don’t have control, it’s sad. It was not where I wanted to be. CBA: Did the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns influence you at all? There’s a real European sensibility to that book. Sergio: Yes, I wanted more of that aspect, very much so. Don’t forget that in Europe, the western is a mythology. In the U.S., we still have the western—it’s real; we’re living it. We still have people with guns and shoot-outs and the sheriff and everything. The West is here. I can drive 20 miles from my home and I’m in a western town; this is reality. But, in Europe, that myth is like science-fiction. They cannot conceive of such open spaces and they have created this mythology. You can see it in Lt. Blueberry and in other European comics that they believe in the myth that is larger than life. CBA: What was your highpoint working at DC? Sergio: It still is my highpoint. DC is a great company and I have great admiration for where Paul Levitz and Jenette Kahn have taken the company. I think they’re doing great.

Above: Sergio hears that Bat Lash is getting hassled by the Comics Code as revealed in this February 26, 1969 letter from DC editorial director Carmine Infantino and editor Joe Orlando.

Available at www.twomorrows.com Summer 1999

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CBA Interview

Country Boy from the City Howard Post spins yarns about comics and Anthro Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Hey, what did I know about Howard Post? Not much, that’s for sure. I knew he wrote and drew a syndicated strip called The Dropouts for umpteen years, worked at New York City’s School of Visual Arts (teaching on staff alongside Carmine Infantino, Sal Amendola, and the late Joe Orlando), and of course, he was the creator/writer/artist of the short-lived but eminently delightful 1968 DC comic book, Anthro. What I didn’t know was that he is a charming, engaging conversationalist with a long career in American comics. Howard is a man just chockful of wonderful and hilarious tales of the comic book days of yore. This interview took place on April 27, 1999 by telephone and was copy-edited by the artist.

Comic Book Artist: Let’s start at the beginning. Are you originally from New York City? Howard Post: I was born in 1926 on the island of Manhattan, and I don’t know how much more central you can get than that. I grew up in Coney Island, Sheep’s Head Bay area, and then for a long stretch in the Bronx. CBA: What sort of childhood was it? Howard: It was beautiful. It was Tom Sawyer. The Bronx was rural and I was just a couple of miles from the Bronx Zoo. I was in that park on a regular basis, fishing, rafting, swimming, and gathering a lot of nature stuff. I seem to have been very dedicated to nature real early in the game. I’d shake bats out of trees; I’d catch crayfish; I’d go fishing with bent pins; that kind of stuff. It was beautiful on that old Bronx River. We even had otters! CBA: It seems a pretty atypical experience for kids growing up in New York City? Howard: That’s right. We had this park and I was in it all the time. After school, I’d grab my milk and cookies and race into the woods. CBA: [laughs] When did you begin your affinity for art? Howard: [chuckles] I think when I was born. I may have started rather early; just to entertain myself drawing these things. I could have been four or five. I used to draw on a piece of paper while lying on the floor, and my father would come home from work and he’d squat down next to me me and say, “The lion’s jaw is broader than that, y’know?” CBA: Did your father have an artistic background? Howard: Yeah. I didn’t know how great it was until one day after his passage I found a book of his full of dress designs he had made himself. He was in the fashion business, mostly in furs; he was a cutter. What he had drawn were his own designs for coats and dresses and they were just exquisite. He never ever let on that he could draw like that; we never knew he had that in him. He was busy making a living, as hard and fast as he could. We’re talking about bringing up a family in Depression days. CBA: Did you follow the funnies in the newspapers? Howard: I did! It was a minor

dedication, nothing obsessive. I remember Dick Tracy in the Daily News. The Journal-American had some stuff in it and we got that, too. I remember all the really attractive strips: Hal Foster and Krazy Kat, Nancy and Sluggo. It was nice. When I got older, I liked Milton Caniff, Alex Raymond, and guys like that. CBA: Did you get into comic books at all? Howard: Comics, I got into it in a backwards way: My dad got sick and he had to go to a tuberculosis hospital. Suddenly I was shackled with responsibilities of caring for a family of four. I was about 16 or 17 and I had gone to school of my own volition (which I was paying for) to study animation. I actually became a delivery boy and saved money, and I went to the (now-extinct) Hastings School of Animation in New York. It was after I had seen Fantasia when I had become so obsessed with animation. A friend of mine had gone to the school and he had left to go into the Army and I figured I should catch as much learning as I could before I got drafted. So I went into that school and then my father precipitously got ill and I got deferments, almost monthly. (They never gave you a broad deferment; you had to check in every month, they would review your situation, and they would defer you on a monthly basis.) Here I was supporting a family of four so they seemed to put me at the end of the line for a while. With my knowledge of animation that I acquired at the school, I volunteered to work for Paramount and they took me on there, paying me a big $24 a week. But that wasn’t enough. CBA: Paramount had an animation studio in New York? Howard: Paramount had what was called Famous Studios, which was really Max Fleischer’s Florida studio transported to New York. I got in there as an in-betweener but it wasn’t a helluva lot of money and it wasn’t enough. This was in the early 1940s. I couldn’t make enough money and some of the guys talked about trying to sell comics to the comic book publishers, but they went out and tried but they bombed. They said, “Why don’t you try it?” So I did. I went over to L.B. Cole who was running a place and I took my stuff to him (as discretely as I could because I didn’t want to embarrass myself with Paramount). So I left it there during lunch and they rejected it. I got it back and took it across the street to Bernie Baily’s outfit (which was on 43rd St.; Lenny Cole was on 42nd St.) and Bernie bought it. But the next month, my story came out in one of L.B. Cole’s comic books as well as Bernie’s! Someone had traced off my story when I left it up at Cole’s over lunch! Would you believe it? [laughter] That was my introduction to comics. CBA: [laughs] They swiped you when you weren’t even a professional yet? Howard: Not only that: When the comic came out I found out who did it and the guy wanted me to work for him! He had just gotten a big deal to do a whole book based on my story. He gave me an advance of $800, more money than I’d ever seen in my life! [chuckles] I said I’d do it under one condition: That he just keep me in the clear. (Bernie had asked me, after seeing the story he bought in a rival comic book, “Are you selling this to everybody?” I said, “No, they traced it off on me!”) I told him to verify what happened on paper—it may never come up but as long as I had his confession for protection... He said okay because he wanted me on that job. So he gave me that piece of paper, and when Lenny Cole’s outfit found out about it—Cole’s seemed some kind of criminal outfit, into black market paper, and I heard all kinds of stuff—I got a phone call from a lady one day who said, “Post, you’d better not make any trouble for us. If you speak up against us, you’re going to be in deep trouble. We have ways of taking care of you.” [laughter] I’m 17 years old, I COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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just sold my first job, and this is what I wind up with! [riotous laughter] The actual tracer of my work gave me an advance of $800 (he had to get the book out in a hurry) and I cashed the check that day—that minute!—because I didn’t believe it was valid. I went home and said, “I got something for you, Ma.” She said, “What ’tis it?” (My mother had a thick Scottish accent) and I said, “It’s money. Here it is.” She said, “I will not take it if you dinna get this honestly! I will not accept it!” She had never seen this kind of money either! I said, “Well, Ma, I have to admit I didn’t get it honestly; I got it for drawing cartoons!” [laughter] So she was kind of pleased and awed, and that helped us pull the family together—and it put my father at ease while he was in the hospital. CBA: Your father had TB? Howard: Yeah, and they had to take one lung from him. They collapsed one lung—that’s the way they did it in those days—and he seemed to survive that for five, ten years. (We’re talking about a guy who smoked three packs a day on his one lung after the operation.) CBA: Do you recall the name of the comic you received the advance for? Howard: All I do remember is that it was about a little Indian and some bears. The first thing I had done for Bernie Baily was a story about a little Indian on a bear hunt. It was a couple of pages. So this guy had presented my idea to a publisher to get out a whole book of it and I ended up with half of the money! But I really couldn’t take on half the work because there was such a deadline and the guy— who, by the way, is legend in the industry by the name of Holly Chambers—did two-thirds of the work, saying, “Keep the money.” He worked overnight to do it; he’d buy himself half a pound of marijuana, seal up the doors and windows, and work through the night. I came in the next morning to find a tremendous amount of work; he’s slumped over the desk in this fog of smoke with finished drawings stacked up by his desk. It was fantastic. So the work kept coming and I kept working up at that studio until one day Chambers got himself a gun. He said, “You gotta walk me to this hotel because I want to show you something.” We go up to this hotel and he’d buy heroin and bring it back to the studio. When I saw that I said, “This ain’t for me. This is a little too rich for my blood.” There was a day when he didn’t have a needle and he put the heroin into him by actually taking a razor blade, cutting his vein open, and putting the stuff on his open vein and he popped it from there. Imagine this naive kid watching this! I gotta tell ya, I was more naive than most guys my age—my idea of adventure was going into the woods and checking out the bats! Suddenly I’m precipitated into the city, with this stuff swirling around my head, I felt like Candide! [laughter] What an introduction! I told him that was it; I had to stay home and work there to be near my mother. (At the time, my mother had gotten sick and developed an anemia they thought was pernicious. It was costing me a fortune—$75 a week which was more salary than what most people made—just to keep her full of shots and alive. I made her go to another doctor who diagnosed her as a simple anemic so I think the other doctor was taking us because I was the “rich cartoonist”! Do you believe it? [laughs]) So the first comic book work I sold was to Bernie Baily, who was a wonderful, wonderful shoestring entrepreneur, and he was paying the going rate. It was $15 a page, pencil, inks, story—everything! CBA: Bernie was packaging comics for other publishers? Howard: He was packaging it but I think he was a publisher himself. I’m sure he had money partners who were involved with him, but it was a small house and he was scraping along. But he had wonderful people working for him. He was an artist himself who had appeared in syndication in P.M., a now-extinct newspaper, with a comic strip (whose name I can’t remember). Bernie was a good artist, and he had such respect for art that when he heard that Charlie Voight was looking for work, Bernie hired him. Charlie was a historical cartoonist who had once done a syndicated strip—I think for the Journal-American—called Toofer A. Nickel, which had the most beautiful pen and brush work you’d ever seen in your life. Very few people know of him but he was a magnificent technician emerging from an era when technique was emphasized. We’re talking about the Charles Dana Gibson era with all that penwork and that exquisite knowledge of movement, anatomy, and facial characteristics. Charlie Summer 1999

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wasn’t Gibson but in his own genre, he was tops. Whenever I went up to Bernie’s to deliver something, there was Charlie Voight working at a desk and you could hear him work, because that pen was going! Making greys, you’d hear one stroke after the other: Chit-chit-chitcha! He was doing hatch and this beautiful grey would show up, and then he’d smack in some blacks—just watching Charlie Voight, I’d sit there for hours, enraptured with the brilliance of his technique. He was a wonderful, wonderful man. Unfortunately for him, the bottle had taken him down. But Bernie kept him going. CBA: Did you know Gil Kane when he worked for Bernie? Howard: I knew Gil and I still know him. We’re not in communication but I bump into him on occasion at a party. CBA: Gil told me some amusing stories about working with Bernie. Howard: Bernie was a real Broadway character. CBA: So did you hang out with other comics people? Howard: I got a story you’re going to love: I’m up at Bernie’s outfit, right? I’m looking at the make-readies and, in comic books in those days in order to qualify for mailing, you had to have two or three pages of pure copy, text pages, and I’m looking over one of the books and I see a couple of tiny illustrations. Now, you have to understand that at this point I believe that I’m the best artist around

Below: Howard originally drew the diving damsel in the total bare-all but was ordered to wrap her up in this, the splash page to Showcase #74. 1968 DC Comics.

and I can make stuff funnier than anybody, but I look at these tiny little illustrations in the text and I said, “My God! Who is this guy? He’s a country mile ahead of me!” I thought I was the only one so I went to Bernie and asked, “Who the hell is doing this?” And Bernie said, “Frank Frazetta.” “Who’s that?” “A 13-year-old kid whose father brings him up here!” [laughs] Can you believe it? And that was little Frankie! They were humorous drawings done with his imagination—he’s a brilliant technician; just a genius. CBA: How long did you work in comics during the 1940s? Howard: I worked right through, along with working at Paramount who was in essential war work and U.S. intelligence. My next deal was with DC and I went up there and got myself $15 a page for just illustrating—pencil and ink—and I did this thing called Jiminy Crockett, about a little kid who imagined fairyland things. I used to do the covers and they were beautiful. I used to love doing these carved trees and at that time Walt Kelly was doing comic books for Dell. I used to be an admirer of his and I got some of my technical ideas from him. Somewhere along the line they saw me from over at Dell, and they called me up. Walt Kelly had just sold a syndicated strip, Albert and Pogo (which actually came out of a comic book), and he wasn’t going to do the comic books any more, and Dell asked me if I would do it. I said, “Sure, I’d be glad to.” They said, “Would you show us some samples of Kelly’s style?” So I sat down and wrote, in rhyme, a three- or four-page story about The Wee People, and it was funny as hell and a labor of love. It was pretty and jumpin’ all over the page and everything. So I presented it at this meeting with Dell publisher Oscar Lebeck, Walt Kelly, and me. Oscar said, “This is it! You’re welcome to work for us.” (While we sat there, I kept asking Walt things like, “How do you keep your line so fine and under such control?” And he told me, “When you’re making a long line or filling a black, twirl your brush and it comes to a point. The next time you want a fine point, you got it!”) I was so proud I said, “I’d love to work for you.” I was figuring I’d be making $20-25 a page so I asked, “How much am I going to get?” Oscar said, “We’ll give you

$15 a page.” I said, “$15 a page? I get that working for the Superman people just for drawing; I don’t have to write anything for that kind of money.” But he said, “This is an opportunity for you and we can give you a bonus at the end of the year.” I said, “I get a bonus at the end of the year anyway!” I didn’t work for him. I sold him that story and it stayed there. I think that Oscar, Walt and everybody were going to get a cut from my work and I couldn’t afford that. I had as much responsibility as they had but they figured that I was a kid and that my daddy was taking care of me. But it wasn’t so. CBA: What kind of comic books did you primarily do? Howard: I was working at DC on that fantasy thing, then I went over to Stan Lee and I’d do humor stuff. I did something called Nellie the Nurse and I packaged a whole series of comic books called Animal Antics for Timely. I was also working at DC at the same time doing westerns, Rodeo Rick, and (even though I was freelance) they’d say, “Why don’t you come up here to work?” I didn’t have a studio and I went up there and sat next to a guy named Jack Alderman (who was a brilliant cartoonist), who had a very nervous quality about him and he ultimately ended up in the booby hatch for a while. (Then he’d come back and he said, “If they ever send you to a place like that, get a room on the sunny side of the building!) [laughter] He was so terrific he introduced me to a whole new way of thinking when I was doing the westerns. He would paint his panels first in a non-photographic blue ink and then he would smack on the blacks and the stuff would jump! He was fantastic. And I used what I learned from him on Rodeo Rick. CBA: Was Rodeo Rick a straight western strip? Howard: Yes. And straight was so demanding. We called the straight guys “wrinkle artists,” and I asked myself, “What the hell am I doing here taking twice as long to get the same check?” So as long as they were buying these cartoony, funny things, I would stay doing that. CBA: You were obviously attracted to the natural, pastoral kind of humor strips? Howard: I used to drive the editors crazy with gags because when I sent in the penciled pages (because they wanted to approve the pencils), I’d bring it up to the varied, uptight editors up at DC who were so dedicated and inflexible, and the pencils would have (for instance) a cow jumping over the moon and I’d stick a little sign on the moon just to irk ‘em saying, “Cow Found with Udder Man,” or something like that. I’d get this call, “Howard! What have you done in these pencils! If this ever gets by...!” [chuckles] I knew it would never get by, but I thought they’d get a laugh out of it. I will say this for myself: I was my own censor when I wrote for comics and I was very, very stringent. I didn’t want to write anything that would corrupt anybody. I came from a very Puritanical background and I never did anything that could be vaguely interpreted as immoral, indecent or anything like that. I just wouldn’t touch it with a fork. And I used to resent some of the stuff they gave me in script and I would edit the objectionable stuff out because they weren’t watching close enough. CBA: You did funny animal and western strips; did you also do adventure and super-hero material? Howard: I never did much super-hero stuff; it didn’t appeal to me. I was so busy and I wasn’t going to change horses in midstream. It was so much easier to do the funny stuff. If you wanted to tell a funny story, you take a rabbit and a pig with a house in the background (which you learned to draw when you were five years old). For a terrain, if you wanted a hill, you drew a curved line. If you wanted it flat, you just drew a flat line. And that was it! It was fast and easy, with the idea to tell the story as simply as possible. In that simplification, you found a great many timesaving devices. Instead of sitting there all day drawing wrinkles with blacks, whites, shadows, painting and fancy lighting effects; that really wasn’t called for in the humor stuff. CBA: You said that when you got a chance to sit with Walt Kelly, you quizzed him. Were there any other artists that you admired and sought out? Howard: There were guys I knew who were friends. Frank Frazetta showed me a lot of his private collection of drawings and they were wonderful! When the guy wasn’t drawing commercially, he was drawing all the time. That, to me, is the mark of real genius COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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which I never had; I had other entertainments. I used to like to go fishing, y’know? That was my thing. I had a much more European attitude in that I worked to live. There are some guys who live to work and that ain’t my bag. Most of my friends were artists. CBA: Were you content to remain in comics or did you view syndicated strips as a goal? Howard: I didn’t care. I was busy doing my thing and it was easy, non-taxing, and I didn’t want to get involved in anything that would engender work! [laughs] I told my mother I was earning a dishonest living and I was! [laughter] CBA: How many pages could you do in a week? Howard: I really forget; it depends. It was so unroutinized with me. Once I started working steady, I considered myself semi-retired from the minute I got into the business. So if I’d stick my nose out the window and smell trout 100 miles away (I swear to you, I could really smell ‘em!), I’d say, “Well, it’s fishing time.” And I’d get in the car and drive 100 or 150 miles up to the Catskills and the Beaverkill River or the east branch of the Delaware and I’d have myself a day of fishing that I’d never swap for an extra couple hundred bucks. It wouldn’t matter. That was the idea behind doing the kind of productive work where you could make a living and keep some time for yourself. So I used to work three or four days a week and cool it the rest; other times I used to love to look at fine art. I’d go down to the Met or the galleries on Madison and just park my car and ramble through the showings. I just wasn’t that dedicated to making money just to pay the bills. A lot of guys would ask, “What the hell are you doing? You’re looking at pictures when you could be making all this dough!” I had all the assignments I could handle, y’know? I said, “Man, that’s what I’m working for! I’m working to live!” It was a different attitude from the get-go but I saw a lot of guys who took it very seriously. Frank Giacoia was a guy who had a studio a half a block from me and we used to have lunch together. Frank was wonderful. He was a magnificent artist for DC and he used to do his stuff up on an easel. I’d love his work! But he would say, “No, I don’t particularly like this,” and he’d erase the whole damned thing! That’s how seriously he took it. He was a perfectionist and he thought he’d be judged by every line (and I guess we are) but he was being too harsh a judge upon himself. His stuff was radiant; that’s how good it was. You get that wonderful shiver that goes up your spine when you see a great work of art, like with Frazetta; I look at Frank Giacoia’s work and I’d say, “God, isn’t he good!” CBA: As the ’50s progressed, you continued working on humor comics? Howard: Yeah, I was doing all that stuff and (I don’t know how I timed it out) I was doing all kinds of work for DC and other publishers including Stan Lee. CBA: Did you deal with Sheldon Mayer at DC? Howard: Shelly was one of the best artists at DC! I remember Shelly well! He did some of the most beautiful and humorous stuff. Scribbly was just marvelous and, in fact, Joe Orlando, Carmine Infantino and I honored Sheldon Mayer on what we considered his retirement by giving him a big party at DC and everyone made a drawing for him. It was wonderful. I also knew Bob Oskner and we were pretty close because, subsequently, I moved to Jersey just a couple of miles from him. I used to go visit him and we’d get together. He was a terrific guy and a very sweet man. CBA: Just like his drawings. Howard: Yeah, just like his drawings. At DC, I did Binky after he did. And I did the Bob Hope book and the Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis book; I did a whole lot of stuff for DC. In fact, Whit Ellsworth was there when they just joined the Comics Code and there was a big convention at DC. Whit (who was the boss editor) had me do the posters for the convention and it was fun! I had to draw gorillas running off with nude women and stuff like that. It was a takeoff on what we were going to get rid of! We never printed the lewd stuff but he had me make all these lewd posters. There were guys with bullet holes in them; 3-D bullet holes like Fearless Fosdick. [chuckles] We had a helluva lot of fun in those days. CBA: Were you working in DC’s offices? Howard: I would sometimes go in there and work. But then I got my own studio and I’d work there. I had a little studio in the village with the most beautiful marble fireplace but it was tiny. It was just Summer 1999

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one and a half rooms. I was there with a friend of mine and it was freezing and snowing really heavy; it was the coldest night of the year. My buddy, Jack Mendelsohn, was one of the guys I had met up at Paramount and we were very, very close. He looked out the window and said, “Geesh, I can’t go all the way home to Brooklyn in this!” It was late. I said, “Why don’t you stay over?” He said, “But there’s only one bed.” I said, “We’ll sleep foot-to-head. Don’t worry about it!” It got so cold in the place that I took all my comic books and burned them in the fireplace! [laughter] CBA: That’s one expensive fire! Howard: That was one big heavy fire, but I’ll tell ya, it was bright! Every different color on those covers gave off a different colored flare. It was fantastic! It was like watching fireworks; we’d sit there looking at it and they’d be exploding in different colors! Very expensive fireworks! I must have burned 50 issues to keep it going. That was funny. Next A.M., the woman who ran the place came in (as was her custom in the morning to put tea on my table), and saw Jack’s big, bushy head of hair and she thought it was a woman and she told me I had to find other quarters because I wasn’t supposed to bring women in there! (Of course, she didn’t know when I did!) But I was kicked out for bringing my buddy there! [laughter] Oh man, I had to be in the center of the maelstrom at all times.

CBA: Were you concerned when the Kefauver Hearings against comics took place? Howard: Fred Wertham was worse than the Kefauver Committee. That man was stupid. He blamed everything on comics because it was facile and easy to do. I knew a guy who had some kind of pull with radio. He was just a radio promoter and he provided guests for late night talk shows. Do you remember Barry Gray? Barry was an eminent talk show host at night. We were in the car with some girls and we had the radio on and Barry Gray was on knocking all comic books. He loved to jump on trends as did a lot of hosts. I said, “If I could get my hands on that guy, I’ll bust his chops.” My buddy said, “Would you like to get on his show and contest him?” I said, “I sure would.” So he said, “C’mon, let’s go.” We went down to Chandler’s Restaurant where Barry was holding court, we got in, and someone went up and said to him, “We have a comic book artist here,” and I went up to him. He started asking me, “How do you feel about corrupting children?” I said, “Wait a minute! I do fantasy stuff. The Three Blind Mice is dirtier and meaner than anything I ever wrote or illustrated. [I started to do a monologue] Do you think Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin are corrupt and evil?” He said, “Absolutely not!” (Because he was one of their big champions, y’know?) I said, “That’s one of the comic books I’m doing, so why do you want to take bread out of my mouth? That’s what you’re doing by making hasty judgements.” He was kind of embarrassed. I was intimidated by him because the man has a head two feet long [chuckles], and he’s sitting in that booth with the light on him with everyone staring. He’s this great big handsome man with a gigantic head but I managed to hold my own pretty good because when I got down from there and started walking down the aisle, everybody was applauding and wanted to buy me a drink! [laughter] Barry Gray hustled me off, saying, “Thank you, Mr. Post. Perhaps another time.” [laughs] I really put him down that night even though I was gentle about it. I was defensive because he was taking bread from my mouth and I wanted him to know the truth; that comic books weren’t nearly as corrupting as a lot of other influences around. I was a hero to every drunk in that place! [chuckles] A lot of people knew the guy was kind of snide and for him to come off second-best in a verbal competition was very pleasant for some of those people around there. CBA: Did you enjoy the nightlife? Howard: No, I wasn’t a nightclubber. Night life was just getting close to a woman. And that was it. I never went for dope or any of that stuff. I told the guys, “I can find the best intoxicant in a good looking woman.” That’s as pleasant a time as I could spend in my youth. What else do you want to do? Go fishin’ and involve yourself in an occasional romance. CBA: Are you a bachelor? Howard: No, I’m a widower. I lost my wife about 20 years ago. For a couple of years I had to bring up both my daughters by myself. It was tough; bringing up females is a terrible ordeal for a man. I guess males, too; if you’re bringing up a son, you’re always afraid that he’s going to kill himself in a car or something like that. You bring up a daughter and you’re afraid she’s going to kill you! [laughter] CBA: When did you get married? Howard: 1960 or somewhere around there. I don’t remember dates and, forgive me, Seymour,

but I also don’t remember names well either. [laughter] CBA: So, through the Wertham crisis, you worked steady for DC? Howard: Well, I started doing storyboards for Paramount because they were doing a series of shows for King Features: Barney Google, Snuffy Smith, Krazy Kat, Beetle Baily. So I was writing and drawing the storyboards for them. Apparently I did them good enough so that when Paramount’s director Seymour Kneitel died, the studio invited me to make a presentation for the directorship. And I did, and they hired me. I became the director of Paramount Cartoon Studios, a place where I worked as a lackey 20 years before. CBA: Was this before or after you got married? Howard: Maybe just after. CBA: So you obviously left DC and comic books behind. Howard: Yes. By the way, I was also in with Harvey Comics. I was doing Hot Stuf’ and Spooky. Warren Kremer was doing Casper at the time. I did The Ghostly Trio. On occasion, I’d write the fillers, the one-page gags. Sid Jacobson, who was the editor at the time, would say, “Howard, I need gags for page 9 and page 12, so give me one ‘Spooky’ and one ‘Hot Stuf’.’” I’d sit down and pencil the gags right on paper, they’d be okayed and then I’d ink them up. CBA: Do you remember the page rate? Howard: I really can’t. It wasn’t top money but it was regular money, y’know? Harvey actually paid for my house and kids and every other damn thing! CBA: So you did a lot of pages! Howard: A tremendous amount. I worked for Harvey on a steady basis, along with Warren Kremer and Ernie Colón. CBA: What was Ernie like? Howard: As a person? Oh, I love Ernie. He’s terrific. We used to be drinking pals—only to the degree that I was a married and driving man. I would sober up considerably before I got back in the car to go home. We had a good time, were good friends, and we enjoyed each other. All the cartoonists were good buddies. At that point, I had met Leonard Starr who was a fellow Music & Arter—I went to the High School of Music & Art in New York. He invited me to share his studio which he ran with John Prentice. They became really fast friends of mine. John is the most gentlemanly man I have ever met in my life. He changed my life. When I got into that studio, I saw how a man is supposed to behave. He is a gigantic man and he is stateof-the-art with Rib Kirby; nobody could come near him. He followed Alex Raymond without a beat. When real giants like John have a flaw, it’s obtrusive because you expect perfection. That man taught me how to be a man. CBA: How so? Howard: He was exemplary in most of his behavior. Maritally, he wasn’t very successful, though Stan Drake was worse! I think Stan had four or five wives which he was supporting night and day. He was sleeping on the floor! When I visited Stan and John’s studios in Connecticut (which were in the same building), I would drop up and see Stan first and he would be there fast asleep on the floor in a cloud of smoke. He’d be working night and day to pay his alimony and support that he actually signed on to take. He’d marry a woman, adopt the children, and wind up supporting them. He got himself into some bad things. (At this edit, I’m sorry to say my best friend, John Prentice, just died by cancer of the lung contracted from asbestos while on Navy duty in the boiler room during WWII.) Most of my friends today are artists and cartoonists. Maybe we ain’t so bad collectively. [laughter] I shared a studio with himself, Joe Kubert, and Alex Toth. There were the three of us up there. Alex was okay; he was just fine. Joe was a little rough because he was like a weightlifter; he’d come behind you and pick you up, swirling you around a couple of times! [chuckles] He was terrific and he’s a sweet, sweet man. We all shared a studio in a photographer’s apartment on Park Avenue; the photographer was Brad Smith, an old friend of mine. I got so fed up that year I said, “I have to go back to the earth.” Brad’s father was a farmer and I volunteered to work on the farm. So I went up there to get away from the drawing board before I was married, and I started working on that farm. Now, Joe Kubert gave me two weeks; Brad Smith was convinced I would stay there for the whole Summer. Two weeks after I arrived, Joe and Brad came up in Kubert’s big open convertible Chrysler station wagon (with the wood paneling on the sides)—a gorgeous car—and honked the horn. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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I looked out the window and Joe said, “Howie, Brad and I got a bet on how long you’re going to stay. Brad says you’ll stay all Summer and I say you’ll last two weeks.” I said, “Brad, give Joe the money!” [laughter] I said, “Stay there, Joe.” I packed my duffel bag and threw it out the window into the wagon. Brad’s father was one of those Yankees who really exploited my ass. I was shucking corn, picking up bales that weighed more than I did (mainly because I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of the farm boys), and I learned how to do it. Farm work is the hardest work you can do. I could sleep on a rock. CBA: How long did you last at Paramount? Howard: About a year and a half as directorproducer. I had a schedule of movies I had to make and it was tough. I started to create a few movies that were okay. I did a Honey Halfwitch movie which you may still occasionally see on Nick at Night. I hired Shari Lewis to be the voice. I wrote the music and the theme song. Shari and I became fast friends when I moved to California. Shari was the most alive woman I knew. When she died, it broke me up. CBA: What prompted the move to California? Howard: I had become so involved in movies and storyboarding, before I went out there and was offered a choice in New York: Write The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine or take the job at Paramount. (I had been doing the Beatles animated series for television and they wanted me to do the feature.) Paramount was exactly what I wanted to do: Create, do music, and whatever I wanted. I recommended my friend, Jack Mendelsohn (a brilliantly funny man), for Yellow Submarine and he got the deal. That proved to be carte blanche to everything out in Hollywood and he’s been writing sitcoms out there for years. Once you get a credit like that, you’re in. CBA: Yellow Submarine was in the late ’60s. How did DC fit into the chronology? Howard: I kept going back and forth, drifting around. Joe Orlando and Carmine Infantino were together at DC and I wanted to become syndicated about that time. All my buddies had a syndicated strip, and I figured it was time for me because I felt like the outside man in my crowd. I started submitting sample strips and one of the presentations was Anthro. Just as a pleasant pastime, I used to reconstruct heads and faces around Neanderthal skulls. And that’s where Anthro came into the picture, believe it or not. I tried to submit Anthro (as you read it) to the newspaper syndicates and everybody said, “Man, don’t bother with this stuff. This is adventure.” I said, “But it’s funny!” They said, “Nah, it’s adventure and no papers will buy it. The editors are not buying adventure.” So I told this to John Prentice and he said, “Why don’t you try Carmine? You don’t want to waste this.” I said okay and called Carmine up, and he said, [gruffly] “Do it!” That’s the way he said it! [laughter] (I just saw him at Tex Blaisdell’s memorial service and he’s still the same and I’m still the same, only much older!) (Cartoonists are a great bunch and I really appreciate them. Too bad their wives don’t! [laughter] It’s because most of the guys worked at home... and they got divorced for it! [laughter] I knew Bob Ludlum in this here town and suddenly he sold his first novel for a marvelous amount of money. So he started working at home. So I said to his wife, “Mary, how does it feel to be the wife of a successful novelist?” She said, “Listen, I married him for better or worse, but not for lunch!” [laughter]) CBA: What was your thinking behind Anthro? Howard: Passion. It was just passion. Having been involved in nature—trees, fishing, and all that stuff—was to me the vestiges of what we were when we first were formed on this Earth. When we were first evolving as Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals (whatever the heck we were), just out of the pre-hominoid stages and into the early toolmaking period, that’s what you feel when you’re in the woods; when you’re integrating with nature. So it came very, very easily to me that this was just a thing of survival with humor. When you look Summer 1999

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at the premise of a Neanderthal kidnapping a Cro-Magnon woman and, because it was the custom when there was no one to take care of her mother, they kicked the old lady out and the Neanderthals had an instant mother-in-law! [laughter] So you had the business of survival along with the humor. If they went out to hunt mammoth, and he came back with a huge salmon, the mother-in-law would have some complaint about it: [sarcastically] “Ahh, look at the ‘brave hunter’! Send ‘im for a mammoth and he brings back a fish! Well, that’s to be expected with the men of his tribe!” [laughter] Jean Auel (who wrote Clan of the Cave Bear) had to have read me thoroughly, but before she got to the publisher, I went to Warner and said, “Guys, this has to be turned into a novel.” And they just looked at me. And maybe because I wasn’t putting out for any of them, they didn’t give a damn. “Aww, that’s a comic book,” they must have thought. And that was it. CBA: Was it your thinking to bring modern day problems in a prehistoric context? I recall the cover blurb on his first Showcase appearance was “This Could Be You!” Howard: That was Joe Orlando’s idea. I had arguments because I was doing a real thing. One of the Museum of Natural History curators lives in my town, and I had gone to the museum and seen the head of a huge canid (a dog-like animal) and the skull was a yard long. I said to the curator, “Doctor, I’m writing a story and I want to put my characters around with this canid.” He laughed and said, “It’s impossible. Man is only 175,000 years old and this animal is 200,000 years old.” That’s the way these guys think. So I went ahead and wrote a huge editorial about how man is not just 175,000 years old; he is probably 2,000,000 years old. (As we all later found out, I hit it right on the money. But I know they’re going to find another prehominid predating the latest find, I know it!) The paleontological establishment only determine history with the latest discovery; they’re not thinking. They need cartoonists to do the thinking. [laughter] CBA: So you must have done a lot of research. Howard: Not a lot. No, just some reading for fun on paleoanthropology. I just created the face of the Neanderthal father. The CroMagnons look pretty much like what we look like today. Anthro had a brother named Lart who was maimed. Again, that custom, if you can’t produce for yourself in those days, you were unwanted in the tribe. When the kid was wounded by the giant dog and limps off to die in the snow, Anthro searches for him and finally finds the kid, builds him a crutch. When the kid hobbles home, Anthro, behind him, hollers, “Now, wait for me! Now that I’ve made you that device, you’re trying to humiliate your brother!” It was touching stuff, man,

Above: Two dailies of Howard’s long-running syndicated newspaper strip, The Dropouts. The artist didn’t have any originals handy but he shared with us a photocopy from the Italian magazine, Linus. Howard added his paraphrase of the gag. ©1969 United Features Syndicate.

Above: Howard reteamed with his old Harvey editor Sid Jacobson to work on the Marvel kiddie comics imprint, Star Comics, in the ’80s. The artist stayed on to do numerous licensed books for the House of Ideas. Heathcliff ©1999 Creators Syndicate.

and it just came off the pen. These characters were so defined that the damn thing wrote itself! I tell you, I was chasing the plot! [laughter] I mean it! They were doing these things and I was following them as fast as I could. I suddenly realized that was what writers mean when they talk about the little miracles they get when they’re writing. When your characters are defined, they do things before you do them for ‘em! So I wound up working at Hanna-Barbera, working for Joe Barbera who was probably the best animation writer/director of the bunch. I used to write pretty good and bring my stuff into him, and for every five gags I wrote, he topped them with a secondary gag off of each one, so there were ten gags instead of five when I walked out of his office. That’s how good he was. I was in good company there. I was with Lars Borne and Alex Lowey, two of the greatest writers and storyboard men in animation. We used to have lunch every Friday with Mike Maltese, who was the boss writer at Warner Brothers, and we’d spend that lunch just telling each other gags until we fell down. It was a really, really exciting time. CBA: On the very first cover of Anthro (in Showcase) you had your name pretty prominently displayed as “by Howie Post.” Did you have a reputation at the time? Howard: It was a come-back reputation at DC because I had done a lot of stuff for them previously. But I never had the kind of name that super-hero artists get. They get enormous names, but super-heroes just wasn’t my bent—I didn’t care about them. I didn’t want to draw or write that way. Anthro was a completely different illustrative style. The stories were predicated in reality. Joe Orlando used to tell me we were getting subscriptions from anthropology professors. CBA: That stuff was fun! Howard: Well, the kids ain’t crazy about that; they want guys with muscles and 25-pound handguns. CBA: There was an issue where Wally Wood inked the story. Howard: There was that one issue where Joe felt maybe that kind of inking would be better. It didn’t make a difference. I’ll tell you one thing that was gratifying about that: I had to make a phone call in a candy store in downtown New York. Right in my purview from the phone booth was a comic book rack. I’m talking on the phone and looking at the rack. I see Anthro and I see a beautiful woman in her 30s come in wearing a gorgeous gold-colored tweed suit. She came in and stopped at the magazine rack and thumbed her way through all the comics, stopped at Anthro, picked it up and walked out with it. That was redemption, right there! What’s a 35-year-old woman buying Anthro for? I’ll tell you what she’s buying Anthro for: Anthro was full of romance. They had a lot of clinches in there and a lot of good-looking men and women... and buff! When I started out that first story, I had the woman diving into the water naked on that splash page when I drew it. It wasn’t obscenely naked; she was just diving into the water. But they made me put clothes on her. [chuckles] CBA: Was the book cancelled or were you getting too busy? Howard: I forget how many issues it ran but it was about a 12month period and it was cancelled. I said, “What the hell is going on?” And Joe said, “We don’t know. You sell out in L.A., you sell out in Chicago, you sell marvelously in New York. But you don’t sell any

place else.” Joe came back while I was doing something else months later, and he said, “We found out what it was: It was distribution. They were just dumping.” It was very small comfort to me because that was the best thing I’ve probably ever done. CBA: It was just wonderful. Howard: If you enjoyed it, Jon, you gotta know that I was enjoying it. You were seeing it happen but I got to see it happen before anybody else! CBA: You didn’t even stop to catch your breath: When Anthro was cancelled, you began the syndicated strip, The Dropouts. Howard: Immediately. It just hit right. I did it for United Features Syndicate, though everybody was saying [whispering], “Don’t go with them.” I said, “What do you mean?” I got the hottest start of any strip they had up there because I handled the promotion. I put conk shells in every letter to every editor; I got tan-colored stock and had them burn the edges so it looked like something you got out of a bottle; I wrote some fancy copy and all the editors bought it. It got off to a great start. I walked into the bullpen and one of the cartoonists asked me, “Why are you with this syndicate?” I said, “Well, they’re the Peanuts people.” He said, “Peanuts sells itself. Once you plateau with this outfit, you ain’t going to make another paper. These guys take orders; they don’t know how to sell.” And he was right. Once it plateaued, it never snowballed into anything bigger than that. CBA: What was the premise of the strip? Howard: It was about two guys on a desert island. I wrote it in anger one day. When they shot down Anthro at the Daily News, they said, “We’re only buying funny stuff,” and I said, “Well, I’m a funny man! What the hell am I trying to do selling straight stuff?!” I put a piece of paper down on the passenger seat in my car—right next to me—and I had six gags by the time I got home. I thought to myself, “What’s a strip that no one has ever done and yet is always in cartooning? Two guys on a desert island!” So that’s what I did. That night I had 10 more gags, the next day another 10, and after a while I had enough for a presentation. I must have done 50 gags and I only submitted those gags that made me laugh out loud. By the time I got them all submitted all over the place, I had four offers. And I picked the one that didn’t do me that much good. But you never know. CBA: But it lasted 16 years? Howard: Yeah. 16 years is a pretty good run. Again, it helped my semi-retirement because I used to do a week’s worth of strips in about three days. The toughest part was the writing; to write something funny every day is a tough gig. CBA: Did you do all of your own writing? Howard: Well, I wanted to get ahead and ease up on myself, so I figured I’d hire a writer. I hired a writer who was a spot cartoonist for the slick magazines, and I gave him $100 a day and all he had to do was bring me some rough gags. I would go to his house and we’d work them out there. So I was driving 40 miles to get out to this guy and his ideas weren’t gags, even though he was a funny man. He was supposed to write five gags and he couldn’t. It wasn’t working and it was costing me a fortune. I used to have to go home and salvage one or two out of his five gags. So I was actually working harder and I was getting less money for it, so I had to give up on it. We tried it for a month. I liked the guy and he became a good friend. CBA: An awful lot of cartoonists have told me that a syndicated strip was the Holy Grail, but those who did get a strip, found it to be so gruelling that it was just physically devastating. Howard: The writing was difficult but drawing funny stuff was the boon of the whole thing, because I had done them by rote for so long. After the first couple of months, you could draw it in your sleep. Writing the gags was tough and, if you’re a harsh judge of your material, it was tougher. And I was a harsh judge. Unfortunately I did not know that to have a boffo laugh is not that important, believe it or not. It’s always great to have a good laugh but identification is more important. Charlie Schulz taught me that; I met him in the hallway of my syndicate and I said, “Oh, Mr. Schultz, it’s so good to see you.” He said, “Call me Sparky.” [chuckles] He said, “Did you see my television show the other day? I made practically all those extreme poses.” He had this childish enthusiasm and this childish need for recognition, and that’s what drives him. There’s something COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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beautifully childlike about Charlie Schulz and he’s one of the geniuses of all time. I’d like to make the kind of money where you can build your own skating rink, your own church, build your own city! [laughs] Y’know, create your own fantasy and live in it! So 16 years wasn’t a bad run. I wound up going back to my old editor Sid Jacobson when he was at Marvel [Star Comics] doing the humor books. But humor was an uphill struggle. I did things like Madballs, Police Academy, and anything that was humorous. We’d jump on trends and I’d illustrate it but we’d jump on it just as it was starting to curve down. So we’d get a four or five month run out of it and then it would be over, and go on to the next one. It was that kind of thing. CBA: So Star Comics was the last time you worked in comics? Howard: I think. I did a lot of writing for Joe Orlando on the Warner Brothers stuff, and it was up there where Joe suggested to me (and I didn’t need the work) a teaching position. I asked him, “Where are you going, Joe?” He said, “I’m going Above: Recent licensing art by said, “My father had a dietary philosophy: First of all, you eat dandeto teach at the School of Visual Arts.” I said, “Do you like it?” He Howard Post for a Golden lions all day long with everything. If you’re healthy, eat a lot of olive said, “I love it! You oughta do that. I’m going to recommend you; Storybook. All characters ©1999 oil. If you’re sick, eat castor oil.” [laughs] Four years later, I’m burywhy don’t you call them up?” So I said, “That would be interesting.” DC Comics. ing Joe. I couldn’t believe it. It was terrible. I loved Joe Orlando. He So that’s how I mitigated working at the School. I’m teaching two was a good, good man. And he was brilliant. He was a brilliant classes there now: Cartooning and Storyboarding for Film. I’m kept artist, writer and editor; and he was a brilliant leader. He could elicit pretty busy and I do give private instruction to one student. the best from you every time. We were robbed. When I think about CBA: Do you see a lot of talent coming through? Joe, I realize the good do die young. Howard: [Pauses] I have some artists in the class who start with I once practically attended my own funeral: I was at a party at an enormous amount of talent but they’re just not getting past the Mort Walker’s and a woman came up to me and said, “All of the indulgence. It’s a self-indulgent thing; they’re just drawing supercartoonists are not represented here.” I said, “What do you mean?” heroes, making the same mistakes which some of the artists they She said, “Well, you know Howard Post passed away.” I said, “Ohh, emulate have already made: Making bow-legged characters who when was that?” She said, “A few years back. Didn’t you hear about look like they’ve been riding a barrel for years. It reminds me: Milton it?” I said, “No, no.” And I quoted Mark Twain and said, “The Caniff was our deity (and, by the way, I knew the man and I never knew a finer gentleman—he was one of some very rare people—plus rumors of his demise are greatly exaggerated!” She said, “What do you mean?” I said, “I’m Howard Post.” She was so embarrassed but he was the most elegant man I ever knew, immaculately dressed) it was something. She was thinking of a late friend of mine, Warren and I remember when they opened the Palm Cafe out on the West King, editorial cartoonist of the Daily News. Coast. Milt and I were there with Mel Lazarus (of Momma and Miss CBA: What was the highpoint working in comics? Peach strip fame), and the three of us were eating lobster and steak Howard: I think it was the people. Mostly it was the cartoonists; (because we had decorated the walls with our cartoons) and we I’m still friendly with guys I worked with 45 years ago! I was on the were living it up. He was a hemophiliac all his life. phone yesterday with Warren Kremer. I see these guys all the time. A whole generation of cartoonists admired and emulated Milton These people are part of your heritage and they Caniff’s work; his black-&-white values, his characters, his storybecome part of your family. telling, his atmospheric backgrounds. You could glide into the Yangtse River right through his panels. But Milt wasn’t all that good at drawing hands. Fingers looked like carrots. Well, that generation of his MONTHLY! Edited and published by Robin Snyder emulators wound up doing beautiful black-&white atmospheric panels and interesting characters with lots of fat black wrinkles on their sleeves. But a gang of them wound up doing hands like batches of carrots. That’s admiration! CBA: How do you recall Joe Orlando? Howard: I was very close to Joe. He was an exemplary man in every way. We used to have mano y manos with him cooking something at home for lunch and bringing it to Warners (or I would cook something) and we’d chomp away at the desk, saying, “That’s not bad but it needs more oregano”—that kind of thing. [laughs] We had a lot of fun. I remember five years ago we buried his father—who was something like 95 years of age—and I said, “Joe, look at your father: he lived alone and he was a heavy guy. How do you attribute this ancient age to this guy?” He

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CBA Interview

Shadows of Reality Dennis O’Neil discusses his years at DC Conducted by Jon B. Cooke In his day, Dennis O’Neil was the most celebrated writer at DC Comics, helping to usher in a new relevant era at the company. With such artists as Neal Adams, the writer revitalized Batman, introduced sociological, political and environmental themes to such comics as Justice League of America and the highly-regarded Green Lantern/Green Arrow, and received some media attention for his efforts. Dennis continues to work for DC, now as group editor of the Batman family of comics. This interview was conducted via telephone on February 16 and March 26, 1998. It was copy-edited by Dennis.

Above: Getting ready to hit the road: Hal encounters Oliver for the first time in the pages of Green Lantern (#76) and the legendary team of Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams give readers a dozenissue (and unforgettable) run for their money. ©1970 DC Comics.

Comic Book Artist: You served in the Navy after college. Were you a civilian journalist after your duty? Dennis O’Neil: After the military hitch, I went back to St. Louis and for about a year was a substitute teacher for sixth grade to senior high school. One day a week, I drove a station wagon for my father who was a grocer. I thought that this was not what I wanted to do with my life, so I answered an ad that was in Editor & Publisher magazine for a beat reporter in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, a little town about 110 miles up the Mississippi from St. Louis. I worked there for only about six months but it had such a huge effect on my life that it seems longer than it was. CBA: You were single? Dennis: I was dating a woman who would eventually become my wife. One of my tasks was to fill a children’s page every second week and that was not easy to do in a small town in the Summer when there’s no school activities. I would commute back and forth, go to St. Louis to hang out with my pals and see my girlfriend on weekends. I noticed that I started seeing comic books again so I bought a few—they were early Marvels—and I was very entertained by them. They were really a lot better than I remember these things being. So I did some crude, rudimentary investigating and got enough material

by sending letters to the addresses in the comic books and did a couple of articles on the return of comic books. Then Roy Thomas got in touch with me. As it turned out his parents subscribed to the paper. So on a Sunday afternoon driving back to Cape from St. Louis, I stopped and saw Roy, who had just accepted a job in New York in the comic book field. So I did a third article on Roy Thomas. He came over a couple of times to my apartment and hung out. We were never going to be best friends but we got along just fine. About a month after he moved to New York, he sent me the Marvel writer’s test because Stan Lee was looking for another assistant. Marvel was exploding—booming! The test was just four pages of Jack Kirby artwork from a Fantastic Four Annual only with no word balloons and my job was to add copy. I don’t even think that I drew balloons in. Why not do it? The whole thing was just strange so I did it, sent it in, and a week later I had come back from covering a suicide and got a letter from Marvel offering me a job. I was disgusted with the paper job and had gotten a call from my girlfriend—who had moved to Boston—who was stone broke because of a money screw-up so God was clearly telling me to move to the East coast. It was just too goofy not to do. CBA: So you saw comics as a pit-stop, so to speak? Dennis: I never thought about a career and never thought that far ahead. It was just an interesting thing to do. CBA: So you went to Marvel. Did you get on at the office? Dennis: It was not a wonderfully congenial environment for someone like me. [laughs] It was a very suit-and-tie place back then but I am very grateful for the six months that I worked as Stan’s assistant because that’s where I learned the basics and the scales, the rudiments of comic book writing. CBA: Could you have stayed or did you leave by mutual agreement? Dennis: It wasn’t working out. I’m not sure why and Stan isn’t sure either—I see him maybe once a year and like him very much now though I think that we’re probably miles apart in most ways—so neither of us know exactly what happened. CBA: Stan gave you the nickname, “Denny”? Dennis: Yeah. “Dandy Denny.” The first thing I did for Marvel was for Patsy & Hedy and Millie the Model, so for those I was “Denny-O” but when I graduated to “Dr. Strange,” I became “Dandy Denny.” [laughs] Could have been worse—Roy was “Rascally Roy” or “Roy the Boy.” Smilin’ Stan stuck us all with a Marvel nickname. CBA: Did you meet “Sturdy” Steve Ditko? Dennis: I ran into him at the office. Steve was going to parties back then. I would give Steve a plot for “Dr. Strange” and I’d get the artwork back after so many weeks. He probably plotted the first couple of issues. I have the worst memory in the world. My recollection is giving Steve plots but they were nothing like we do now; they were two or three paragraphs. What I didn’t know, because I was young and very dumb, was that I had lucked into one of the best storytellers in the business. I still think that Ditko is second to nobody in that aspect. He knows how to tell a story, leave room for copy, and how to leave quiet moments here and there where you can sneak in your exposition. CBA: How did you hook up with Dick Giordano? Dennis: Somebody told me that there was this guy from Derby, Connecticut, who was in town on Thursday mornings and you could go up to some office that they rented on Fifth Avenue. So I went up and talked to him and came away with an assignment. So that COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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became one of my regular freelance rounds on Thursday morning at 11:00. CBA: How did you like working for Dick? Dennis: It was wonderful. At that time, I received more freedom than I had ever had on a commercial job. By that time I had published a couple of short stories and you had considerable freedom with those but those gigs were few and far between and they weren’t going to feed the kid. Dick had a thing that I have run into only one or two times with editors—Weezie Simonson used to have it too—they never gave you a direct order or told you what to do and yet somehow they managed to get your best work. In Dick’s case it was remarkable because the pay was laughable! [laughs] I think that we were getting $4 a page at Charlton and it zoomed up to $5 before we quit. Even for the ’60s that was bad money but we worked very hard for him. Both Skeates and I did stuff that was as good as we were capable of at the time. CBA: Do you have any favorites? Dennis: There’s one thing I did called “Children of Doom” that occasionally would make people’s “Ten Best” lists. That was another emergency job and it was for Charlton Premiere which was a Showcase-like thing with something different every month. There was a psychedelic romance planned and virtually at the last minute they found out that they didn’t have rights—there was some legal reason that they couldn’t publish it—so Dick called and said that he needed a script by Thursday and he didn’t care what it was about. It had to be 20 pages. That was the first socially relevant job that I ever did. It was an anti-war piece which by today’s standards is not radical at all but at the time we were making a statement. Pat Boyette got the art assignment and something in it turned him on because he did work that was really good and interesting. CBA: How long did your Charlton stint last? Dennis: About a year. Then Dick got hired by DC and asked five of us if we would like to come along. He said, “How would you like to do exactly what you’re doing now, except make three times the money?” I didn’t need a whole lot of persuading. So we rode his coattails into DC. I don’t think that I would have ever thought to go up there looking for work. DC had this foreboding reputation as the old line comic book company. I didn’t think that they would be sympathetic to a young, quasi-hippie like me but Dick got us in and now the rest is history. CBA: So you didn’t have an inkling of the writers’ movement that took place at the time? Dennis: Paul Levitz told me about that eight years ago. At the time, I didn’t have a clue. I would have had a real problem with it. On the one hand, I had a non-working wife and a kid to support, and on the other I would have had real moral problems with being a scab. We were young and real dumb so we thought that they loved our work—that’s why they’re hiring us! Paul had told me that, no, it was because they had decided to fire most of the writers. So we were warm bodies who knew how to type. CBA: So when you replaced Gardner Fox on Justice League, you had no inkling? Dennis: For the first few months, I worked only for Dick and then he had a falling-out with the powers-that-be so he left. I had gotten introduced to Julie and he’d given me a Green Lantern story to do which I did to his satisfaction and that started a relationship. I worked for Murray Boltinoff on Challengers of the Unknown for a while and did a couple of jobs for Joe Orlando. I was a freelance writer who showed up once a week and there was nothing formal about any of the relationships. CBA: When you first came to DC, did you feel like they were hiring you guys to invigorate things and that you were a part of something? Dennis: It was just a better-paying freelance gig doing what I knew how to do. I never really thought about a career or anything like that. These were people who were willing to give me work. I took it! CBA: What was your first job at DC? Dennis: I got Bomba, the Jungle Boy. I had no objection to the assignment and as I remember it, it was kind of fun. CBA: Were you involved in the development of the Creeper? Dennis: No. Somebody else—and I never found out who—wrote Summer 1999

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the first issue. I took it from there and changed the characterization a lot and I don’t think that Steve Ditko liked that. He never complained aloud but now looking back I don’t think that he could have liked it. CBA: So you guys didn’t co-plot at all? Dennis: No, I don’t think so. Steve is a very good professional and if he is willing to do it at all, he will do the job. There are times when he’s not willing to do it but he’ll let you know that. CBA: Steve Skeates told me that Ditko used none of his plots. Dennis: Steve was doing The Hawk and the Dove. I was like Nelson Rockefeller compared to Skeates who was a real serious hippie! I also felt that those characters, as they were conceived back then, were a losing proposition. How are you going to dramatize the dove half in the super-hero genre? Now we might have ways to do it. CBA: Why did Steve quit Beware the Creeper? Dennis: I don’t know. I would run into him at parties once in a while and I remember telling him that I had been on a peace march and he expressed disapproval of that. Steve, as I’m sure you know, is very conservative. He was not as vehement as he might have gotten later but he left very little doubt as to where he stood on the issue. CBA: How come you used the pseudonym, Sergius O’Shaugnessy? Dennis: I was doing the political stuff and was also working for Stan. I thought that I’d best keep the two professional identities separate. I was probably overreacting at the time but it seemed wise and

Above: Dennis calls his Batman story, “The Secret of the Waiting Grave,” from Detective Comics #395, “technically one of the best things that I’ve ever done.” Here’s Neal Adams’ cover to that classic issue. ©1970 DC Comics.

prudent to become someone else when I was working for Dick Giordano. CBA: Were you involved in the creation of Bat Lash? Dennis: No. I’m very proud of that series and I can brag about it because I had very little to do with it. I had no idea who wrote the first issue in Showcase. I started with Bat Lash #1 and the method was that Sergio Aragonés would do the story in his cartoons and he would write it visually. Then it was given to Nick Cardy whom I think did the best work of his life and I came in at the very end of the process, adding dialogue and captions to Nick’s pencils. I think that the book was 20 years ahead of its time as we were dealing with a real anti-hero and a fairly complex character with characterization that went a little bit farther than just wearing a funny hat. We gave the world a rat bastard who had some little core of decency. He would do ratty things but he would regret them. Somebody devised the wonderful visual gimmick of the flower in the hat that when he was about to do something really foul, he would take the flower out and throw it away. I think that the book was a commercial failure but we never saw sales figures and neither did the editor. Nobody knows how or why decisions were made. I have asked for years that Bat Lash be collected and I always hear the same thing: westerns don’t sell and they can’t afford to do it. That’s a shame because if ever any of that early stuff deserved to be put between book covers, it’s that series.

CBA: So your first ongoing series after Bat Lash was Justice League of America? Dennis: Somewhere in there I got to be flavor of the week; the hot young writer though it’s nothing close to what the equivalent is today. It did pretty much guarantee me just about as much work as I could do. CBA: In those post-campy days, comics were becoming hip. Did it feel cool to be working in comics? Dennis: Sure. We believed after a while that we were doing something new, different and interesting especially after GL/GA. Neal and I started to get invited to universities. It’s no secret that I went through a real bad five or six years and I think that I was well-suited for failure and didn’t at all know how to handle success. I was drinking and engaging in various other sorts of disreputable behavior. I lost a marriage, I lost my staff position at DC after a year and I made a pretty thorough mess of things. It was not all that success but I think that that was a contributing factor. CBA: You went from the light touch of Dick Giordano to the strong guiding hand of Julie Schwartz. Was the transition easy? Dennis: Easy as pie. If I’d known that I was going to work for this living legend, it might have been hard, but he was this kind of guy who didn’t warm to me first because I had this long hair and was wearing a pirate shirt or something into his office. Julie was very much a suit-and-tie guy but he did give me the one job and he later said that he didn’t need to do the panel-by-panel plotting with us young guys. At first, we would talk for an hour and a half to two hours but after a year or so, the plotting conferences were 30 minutes to an hour, even less. He was very useful to me on those occasions when I didn’t have anything—if I went in there with a blank slate, he would write something on it. If I went in there with an idea, he would sit and listen to it and maybe make a suggestion and then I’d go away and write the story. So I think that his method of working changed at about that time because I don’t think that he felt that he needed to do the eight-hour plotting sessions anymore. CBA: Was that because character-driven stories were becoming more popular over the heavily plotted stories? Dennis: It may be that. That could have a lot to do with it. Julie was able to adapt. The biggest single problem with people is that they get stuck somewhere but Julie saw that the business was changing, in some ways for the better, and he went with that. I still have a wonderfully cordial relationship with Julie. I see him once a week and we talk for 15-20 minutes. He kind of knew when to let me alone and when to give me direction, and that’s high praise—I can’t say anything better of an editor than that. CBA: Did you lobby to have more relevant material and was there a publisher edict? Dennis: My recollection of the relevant stuff is Julie saying that we got this book and it’s failing, do you have anything that you want to try? I was flavor of the week and I had already done some stories themed on peace for Charlton and I thought, “Yeah, sure, I got something that I’d like to try”: combine my two professional identities, because I was still doing journalism and, to some degree, still a very weak-tea peace activist. I was suddenly given more freedom than I was accustomed to, and I said if you want to try something, try it. So I did and wrote Green Lantern #76 assuming that Gil Kane would get the art job. He was the usual GL artist but somehow Neal Adams ended up with the job. I looked at it and I was delighted—apparently everyone was delighted—so that set the direction for the magazine. I can’t recall whose idea it was to team the two Greens but I remember that as a writer I would need two characters to articulate each side to an issue. Hal Jordan would stand for middle America conservatism, and Ollie being the East Village radical. People always assumed that my politics were Ollie’s and though I was closer to his than Hal’s, I was not Ollie Queen. CBA: In the final story as printed, did Neal Adams have anything to do with the plotting? Dennis: Neal just followed the script and did a wonderful job. Later on, he made changes and I would rather not talk about them but there were two stories where the material was not all mine. CBA: Was there any real world impact because of GL/GA #76? Dennis: It’s now a quarter century later and I can now give a qualified yes to that. At the time, if I had an agenda, it was this: I COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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saw the world in really sorry shape and thought that I am really too old to think of creative solutions to these problems, but maybe if we got kids to start thinking about the problems early enough and give them an awareness of these problems, maybe they will be able to come up with the answers. In none of those books, did we ever present any solutions to the problems. We felt that the story was in the conflict with the characters and not in solving the big problems. I don’t have solutions and I’m not sure a comic book would be the place to present them if I did. We weren’t so egotistical as to think that we could solve anything. We were very careful to deliver super-hero stories. They had all of the stuff that you bought super-heroes for. I used the basic structure that I now call the “Three-X Structure”: Set-up to major action plot point, to act two where the conflict is developed, to the second major plot point leading to conclusion. There were the requisite action scenes and nobody talked for more than a few panels. I was aware that this thing had to keep moving as this was about action and not deep cogitation. We were always careful to deliver a solid super-hero story. CBA: You mentioned in the Comic Book Marketplace interview that you were attacked by Gloria Steinem for changes made in Wonder Woman. How did she find out about the changes? Dennis: She wrote an introduction to a Wonder Woman collection and that’s what I was referring to. She didn’t mention me by name. I now have sympathy for her point and I see where she’s coming from but I didn’t at the time. CBA: You wrote the book right when she lost her super-powers. Jack Miller was editing the book…. Dennis: Then it devolved to me as an editor. I saw nothing of Mike Sekowsky except seeing him in the office once in a while. I didn’t know the guy. I became aware after a while that I wasn’t writing it anymore after Mike became editor though I was never officially told that. It was just when I realized that I hadn’t gotten a Wonder Woman assignment in three months, asked about it and that’s when I learned that I was no longer on the job. CBA: Did you have any affection for the book? Dennis: I thought that it was an interesting one to do and bear in mind that I was still struggling to support a family, so the loss of an assignment was a loss of money that you have to find somewhere else. The most interesting thing I did in my tenure as editor was to give a couple of issues to Samuel R. Delaney to write. I had read a couple of his novels, was knocked out by his writing, and ran into him at a convention. We discovered that we lived a block apart. He got interested in comic books. I remember a couple of times he would bring over a bottle of bourbon which would keep me occupied for the evening and he would read through my collection of comic books. He wrote the introduction to the first GL/GA paperback collection and remains very friendly towards comics. CBA: Why did you lose the editorship of Wonder Woman? Dennis: I don’t remember. That was edging into my bad year so Lord knows. My ex-wife, who has her moments of genuine wit, says that for a time I was distinguishable from a Bowery bum only by address. CBA: Do you think GL/GA’s cancellation was affected by the Governor of Florida’s reaction to the Agnew and Nixon parody? Dennis: We were not told anything but I heard that there were rumblings from down South and I heard that some issues never got off the train in certain cities—they didn’t even unwrap them. I guess we got some nasty letters but it was a very closed shop and you never heard anything that you didn’t need to know to get your job done. CBA: Was it discomforting to work in that kind of environment? Dennis: I wasn’t around it—I was in and out but I have a sense that a lot of the guys were not happy with what they were doing. Most of those guys were refugees from other media and people did not think that comics were a reputable way to make a living. It’s terrible, but people pretty much believed all the slander that was thrown at the medium in the ’50s. We’re the bad boys. Look how the industry reacted to the Kefauver Hearings: instead of fighting them, which was what Bill Gaines wanted to do, they capitulated saying, “Yeah, we’re terrible. We’re awful. Please don’t hurt us and Summer 1999

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we’ll fix things up.” The reality was, when weren’t DC Comics squeaky clean? There was maybe ten percent of those hundreds and hundreds of titles published that someone might have found objectionable. Basically, we had nothing to be ashamed of even by the most conservative moral standards. CBA: Do you think it’s worth examining DC Comics between ’67 and ’74? Dennis: I think so. The medium just started to realize its potential and flex its muscles a little bit. We began to realize that we have parity with all of the other art forms. There is no kind of material that we should declare off-limits to ourselves. What upsets me about the current scene is the tendency to flame people (to borrow from computer jargon). I don’t like mudslinging. I still have my little list of things that I’m pissed off about 30 years later but there’s nothing I can do about them. I don’t think that there’s anybody intentionally dissing me. There’s some pieces of individual issues of GL/GA that I don’t like and today I may exercise the option to take my name off of them but there is no point to raking up those dead coals after all of this time. As to what was going on in the office during that time, I have the impression that it wasn’t a happy shop. CBA: Sometimes the books were cancelled quickly…. Dennis: We had books that were cancelled sometimes after three issues. I was doing a sword-&-sorcery title called “Nightmaster” and I think that I was promised six issues and was told after two to wrap 57

the story up in the next issue. The way the business was run then, they could not have possibly had accurate sales figures that soon. So the question is: Why were these books cancelled? You always heard sales but I really don’t have a clear picture of how it worked like that. I don’t know that they had sales figures—at least, reliable ones. CBA: Under the new regime, did you seek out what those sales figures were? Dennis: Paul Levitz, who is the antithesis of most of his predecessors, will tell you anything that he knows and he’ll tell you that in some cases the figures don’t exist because the records have gotten lost or God knows. The company has moved about a dozen times. CBA: Do you believe in your gut that GL/GA was not selling? Dennis: I don’t think that I argued with them. The notoriety was pretty heady stuff with Neal and I going around to universities and getting interviewed by real, honest-to-God journalists. We were starting to be taken seriously. I accepted the verdict and I’m sure that I was feeling disappointed, but on the other hand I had reason to believe that they weren’t going to let me starve. I was disappointed a lot in those days and some of my young colleagues think that I’m calloused but you find ways to protect yourself. You build little walls so you don’t get completely demoralized. CBA: Comics seemed to dance around the issue of the major moral issue that was facing our country: Vietnam. Did you want to attempt to deal with that issue? Dennis: I probably thought that that was too big and too serious. I was against the war and for a time I lived in terror that I was going to be called back into active duty in the Navy. My protest against the war as far as comics was very personal: I refused to work on any book with a military hero. I realize that there were a lot of decent and honorable people in the military who believed that the war was necessary but I thought that for the duration I was not in any way going to express approval of any military organization. CBA: So you wouldn’t work on any DC war book? Dennis: I would have refused the assignment. CBA: Did you guys have a big story conference when you planned the “new” Superman? Dennis: I remember Julie and me talking about it. We learned from Marvel—I had worked for them as did Skeates, Len and Marv and we all learned from Stan, more than we realized. So in a way, Marvel was coming to DC. For a long time at DC there was no attempt to give heroes any conflict—the essence of drama, a lesson which I think we all learned from Stan. I have a sense that comics were artistically flourishing then like with the comics by Neal and myself. One of the reasons maybe that those stories are successful is that we had been in the business long enough to have a full tool kit.

We knew how to do comics and we had learned a lot from Stan, Gardner, Arnold and all of those guys. They had nobody to learn from because comics virtually didn’t exist before 1938 so basically more than any creators in the history we knew how to do it. If we brought anything to the table, it was taking those tools and using them in the service of more serious stories and certainly more serious themes. CBA: Did you embrace the idea of taking on the hallmark character of DC, Superman? Dennis: I thought that it was going to be an interesting assignment. I knew that I couldn’t do that guy that I 58

had been reading because if you were Superman as he was before— my favorite scene is when he blows out a sun, takes a deep breath and puff, out goes the sun... you’re talking about God. It was established at one point that he could search every room in Metropolis at a tenth of a second. So how are you going to put that guy in a conflict and be internally consistent? You’d find yourself inventing reasons why he didn’t solve the problems by the second page. Those reasons tend to be talky and they slow the story down, so it was just simple writing technique. I am not capable of dealing with an omnipotent character because I have to find a way to get the hero in trouble if the story is going to be interesting. And I don’t like stopping the story to explain which is just bad technique. Not to do so would have been internally inconsistent, another cardinal sin. So, taking on Superman, I said, “I’m going to have to change him.” I think that faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound is enough for anybody. And we didn’t take it that far back; he still could fly and had X-ray vision but it was necessary for me to scale the guy down so that he was something resembling human to deal with it on a technical level. You don’t want to do story after story of “Is Lois Lane going to find out his secret identity?” That stuff is light and not very dramatic and the conflicts are silly. CBA: Superman #233 was a great new beginning. Dennis: We took away the great crutch—how are you going to get Superman in trouble; put kryptonite in the story again, and again, and again... how much of that stuff got to the Earth, for God’s sake? And if you had all these other Kryptonian characters running around, what makes him special? It’s built-in to the idea of what super-heroes are that they be unique and you weren’t going to have that if you had the Bottle City of Kandor, Supergirl and the 98% of the citizens of Krypton that must have survived that explosion and found their way to Earth. CBA: Julie recalls that it was a reluctant assignment for you. Dennis: Julie remembers those things far better than I do. I’ve heard him say that recently and I will defer to him as I wasn’t taking notes at the time. I remember walking off the Justice League after doing 17 issues and that was real hubris—I must have really been feeling my oats because it was a good assignment. But I thought, “Geez, this is the third time in six months that I’ve used an alien invasion as the story conflict!” You had three characters with the power of the average Greek god and the other inconsistency—a battle I’m still fighting today—is how do you put, say, Batman and the Atom in the same story as The Flash and Green Lantern—two demigods—a guy who can make himself real small, another guy who’s real smart, and a guy who can blow out suns. How do you create a conflict for that wide a spectrum of characters? Maybe somebody could do it but it wasn’t me. I absolutely ran out of steam. CBA: Was your favorite experience on JLA the development of the Black Canary? Dennis: Yeah, that was a good story because we actually got to kill off a central character. We also did a socially relevant story about pollution that predated GL/GA by a little while. I based that story on something that really happened: a river catching fire. I remember that with fondness but in all honesty I have not even looked at those stories since I read them when they were published—I look at very little published work. CBA: How about “The Night of the Reaper”? Dennis: That was interesting in that it was dimly based on something that really happened. If you look closely at that story, you’ll see Gerry Conway, Bernie Wrightson, Marv, Al Weiss, Tom Fagan and me. We all went up to Rutland and had [laughs] an interesting, boozy evening. I was having dinner with Harlan Ellison a few weeks later and he supplied the idea of the Nazi refugee and the story just all fell into place. It was one of those gifts a writer receives every once in a while—yeah, it’s all there and now all you have to do is sit down and write it. It’s amusing to look at it and see how young we all were! [laughs] It’s not the best idea to dwell on the past too much and if I am still a viable writer after 30-something years, it’s because that I don’t really care an awful lot about what I did back then. CBA: Are you proud of the stuff you did back then? Dennis: Being this grey eminence now, people tell me and I read that the Green Lantern opened up the medium and showed people COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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new ways to do comics thematically. That’s a pretty nice thing to have on your résumé. The fascination with comics for me has always been the language. Comics are a language that is at its best a seamless unity of image and copy; of right brain and left brain that adds up to something that conveys information and emotion. CBA: Do you think that introducing relevancy to comics was successful? Dennis: There are two GL/GA stories that I think were compromised. There’s one that I think is an atrocity and for space considerations (not because I didn’t want them to include it) they didn’t include it in the Hard Travelin’ Heroes collection. That was my Women’s Lib story (and Chip Delaney’s favorite in the run—go figure) and I remember thinking as a good liberal that that was a story that I ought to be writing and I also now know that emotionally I was at least five years away from being able to accept that. I was basically a shanty Irish kid from north St. Louis and my understanding of what Women’s Lib was all about was woefully inadequate. Basically my paradigm of womanhood was house dress, kitchen, bedroom, take care of the kids and have dinner waiting. Only because I felt that I ought to be espousing it did I do so. I felt that that story just failed all over the place because the writer was just not up to dealing with the material. CBA: Was it becoming an “Issue of the Month” book? Dennis: The Women’s Lib issue was the only one that I did not feel passionately concerned about as a citizen and as a father. We did two stories about the environment and it’s still an issue I give the most to. And racial equality which is just survival—we have to clean up that act. The American Indian thing I was not close to emotionally but I think that we got lucky and the story works anyway. Basically that stuff was the same material I would have covered if I were writing magazine articles or novels rather than comic books because I was honestly, genuinely concerned about those issues. CBA: Was the three-parter that saw print in The Flash in the can when they cancelled the book? Dennis: Julie said that we’re ending the magazine with this issue but we’re continuing “GL/GA” as a back-up in The Flash. In some ways, that three-as-one story is my favorite of the run because that’s the first time we dealt with pure character. That was not a relevancy issue, but what happens when you kill somebody. The story was about the character and nothing else. If the magazine had continued I think that we would have gone in that direction because basically I was out of causes. Everything that I had really cared about, I had already written about and some of them more than once. CBA: Do you recall “Nightmaster” being shelved at all? Dennis: Jerry Grandenetti came in to do the first issue and I don’t think that he had any enduring interest in doing the series. (Parenthetically, my title for the series was just, “Night,” and Murray suggested that we change it to “Nightmaster.”) I think it was my original pitch because DC wasn’t doing any sword-&-sorcery, which was in the air at the time and it had possibilities as a comic. As it was with so many things, I was looking for a gig and I remember thinking about it on a visit to St. Louis, naming some of the characters after ex-roommates. CBA: Did you work closely with Bernie? Dennis: I probably met him. I never discussed plots or storylines with him any more than with Neal. It basically wasn’t the way it was done. CBA: Did you lobby for the position as editor? Dennis: No. Carmine called me up one day and asked me if I wanted to edit some books and I’d be paid for it. I said, “Sure.” I was a freelance editor which I think meant that they got an editor’s service without having to pay for the benefits. I wasn’t officially on staff and paid so much per book. As I look back, I was probably one of the worst editors in history. I had no idea what the hell I was doing. We had really good luck with some of the projects—The Shadow somehow came out very well despite my slipshod attitude. But some of them didn’t come out so well. CBA: When you took over the editorship of Wonder Woman, you brought on Fritz Leiber’s characters, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. Where did that idea come from? Summer 1999

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Dennis: I was interested in doing them as a comic book and I can only guess that they got permission to do it. At any rate, nobody told me that I shouldn’t do it. Wonder Woman was the title that I had available to me and, then as now, it’s a good idea to launch a new title within an established one. CBA: Was it in response to Conan? Dennis: Yeah, I guess it was. Roy was doing Conan, and sword&-sorcery was clearly a form that was congenial to comics. The Conan type of material—large barbarians and slaughtering hordes—is not my kind of melodrama. So I looked for a way to do sword-&sorcery differently and I was incredibly naive about the comic book market. I proceeded on the assumption that if I enjoyed it, other people would enjoy it. That has been proven wrong again and again and again. CBA: Did Fritz see the job? Dennis: I assume he did. I never had the chance to ever speak with him though I tried. I went to San Francisco and tried to track him down but failed. CBA: But it didn’t click. Dennis: We never really knew why things were cancelled. We never saw sales figures. It was a very autocratic business. You come in and somebody tells you, “We’re cancelling your book and that’s

Above: Hey, just who did the uncredited writing chores to the exquisite Alex Toth illustrated Black Canary serial in Adventure Comics #418-419? Definitely an early-’70s highpoint in comics. ©1972 DC Comics.

Above: The Shadow that almost was. Bernie Wrightson finished the above page, intending to take on art chores for the crimefighter’s new book while simultaneously doing Swamp Thing! But then he came to his senses. DC used the page anyway as a house ad promoting the impending O’Neil/Kaluta series. ©1973 DC Comics. The Shadow ©1999 Condé Nast.

that.” There was no way to plead your case because they were the boss and you did as you were told. I had a lot of books suddenly prematurely cancelled and I knew enough to know that if they had any sales figures at all, they didn’t have final accurate ones. And in some cases I question whether they had any sales figures at all. So somebody up the line thought it wasn’t working or didn’t like it—who knows? CBA: Perhaps I misspoke: Didn’t Swords of Sorcery come out in pretty short order and those characters were in there? Dennis: Yeah. I would assume that I got permission to incorporate them into a Wonder Woman story because I’m sure by that time we had decided to do the book. So that was just a little launching pad; a way to call attention to the book. Remember: in those days there was no solicitation and no marketing to speak of. CBA: Did you have much dealings with the press with the success of Green Lantern/Green Arrow? Dennis: Very little. I did no major television at the time. The first press that came out of GL/GA did not mention Neal or me, which I was very angry about. I don’t know if that was deliberate but I kind of suspect that it wasn’t. Other people who were no more used to dealing with the press than I was dealt with this reporter from the Village Voice. There were a couple of articles at least before Neal and I began to get the spotlight. The first piece was in The Voice. Then

we started getting invitations to talk at colleges. I don’t remember talking to many reporters and I remember being briefly on television when I went to speak at Michael Uslan’s class in Indiana which CBS covered. I think I was on for three seconds. CBA: You were planning the drug issues of GL/GA for some time. You researched the problem and went to halfway houses. The company knew about it and there was a plan, right? Dennis: That was about five or six issues into the run and we had gotten enough attention by then. So everybody was hip to it. CBA: The plan was Carmine was going to push the Comics Code. Do you remember when the Spider-Man drug issues came out? Dennis: I was one of the people who was brought in to help arbitrate that situation. I was the token young snot writer. I remember going up there, Stan made his case to Len Darvin, the Code’s administrator, and the result was that Stan published those without the seal. I was down on Len at the time and now I realize that he was basically a pretty good guy who was really interested in the other half of the job—the non-censor aspect—which was promoting comic books, which his successors have pretty much neglected. CBA: With the GL/GA drug books; did you feel like you were doing innovative, cutting-edge material? Dennis: I remember talking to a few colleagues at the time and by that point we were aware that we were pushing the envelope. We were aware that we were doing something in comics that had never been done before. That was reasonably exciting and it was a lot more excitement than what I expected to get from a writing job. All things being equal, if you write something that you care about, it’ll show. I was concerned as a father and a citizen with much of what we were writing about. CBA: In “Peril in Plastic,” you used a sound effect that resembled a young artist’s name. Whose idea was that? Dennis: I think Mike Kaluta’s. I do remember that Kaluta later told me that his father was going to sue me but that was a joke. Today we wouldn’t do it for exactly that reason. CBA: Did you and Neal get along politically? As an outsider, it seems to me that you guys share certain beliefs about racial equality for instance. Creatively, at least, you seemed to click very well. Dennis: On some subconscious level, we resonated and we somehow agreed on the right way to do comics. But I remember that on environmental issues, we couldn’t be further apart. We’re just very, very different. We’re carbon-based life forms and, apart from that, I don’t know how much similarity there is. CBA: Would you work with Neal again? Dennis: I have tried several times and I would work with him again because I think that a job by us would be heavily arted but there is also the possibility that we might do a damn good comic book. Commercially it would be a good thing to do because people your age are now ordering comics—they grew up reading us (which makes me feel ancient)—and I would be curious to see how good a job we could do but I don’t think that it’s going to happen. If I had any kind of reasonable assurance that Neal would draw the script that I wrote, I would be glad to write one. CBA: You had two serious deviations from your GL/GA scripts; one was the ending to the drug issues and the other involved the Issac story. What was the problem with the latter? Dennis: I don’t remember anymore how much of that was changed. CBA: Was it the impulsive destruction of the planes by Green Lantern at the end? Dennis: No! That was one of the rare exceptions. That was Neal’s idea and I agreed to do that. I was a little uncomfortable because it seemed a little gratuitous but it didn’t screw up my story and it did give a strong ending. CBA: Were you dragged into Shazam!? Dennis: No, I was very eager to do it because I loved Captain Marvel as a kid and I saw a chance to do a cheerful, upbeat superhero. Julie chose me because I was the flavor of the week. CBA: “Week”? You were his favorite writer for five years or more! Dennis: It was a long week. CBA: Was Shazam! successful? Dennis: I don’t think so. I don’t think that anybody has made that character work since the ’40s. In the used back issue market, everybody COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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and that was coming a lot more from him than from me. CBA: And then Justice, Inc. came out... Dennis: With art by Kirby! Little did I know what a treasure I had. I read one of the novels and felt that it was comic book material because it was visual. CBA: What work would you most want to be remembered for? Dennis: There were maybe a dozen Batman stories that I’d be happy to write today though I’d write them a bit differently. “A Vow from the Grave” is technically one of the best things that I’ve ever done. It solves the problem of how you do a real detective story in 15 pages with clues and if the reader was really paying attention, he could beat Batman to the solution to the identity of the real killer. The idea of stranding the circus on a mountaintop during a storm was good melodrama. CBA: Do you still feel a passion for it? Dennis: I get the same satisfaction that one gets from building a good table—doing an honorable job well. I don’t get on those soaring heights anymore—I don’t know anybody who is 58 years old and is likely to have that—but that does not, in any way, mean that I don’t like what I’m doing. The one thing that’s been consistent in a very erratic life is storytelling. I started telling neighborhood kids stories when I was about seven or eight years old and now I’m 58 and still in effect sitting on the front porch though it’s gotten to be a very big neighborhood.

Above: Okay, here’s another technically unpublished cover that’s probably better described as slightly altered. Note that our hero was flopped in the published version, made to face the villain. Great art by the unforgivably underrated Frank Robbins! ©1974 DC Comics. The Shadow ©1999 Condé Nast.

expected that one to be eventually going multiples of hundreds of dollars but you can get it for about a dime. I think it’s looked upon as a failure. I don’t even think that I have a copy of that anymore. I was trying to do the kind of material that I thought was Captain Marvel but there were two things wrong: one, I wasn’t doing it well and, second, even if I had, it was a really different world by then. CBA: You were known as the relevant writer. You established a sense of continuity in Superman and Green Lantern. Was it considered for you to write to your strengths in Shazam!? Dennis: Probably not. It’s hard to imagine a mistake we didn’t make. The only thing I say in extenuation is that nobody who has tried it since has had better luck. CBA: Did you have any relationship with C.C. Beck? Dennis: No. I understand he hated my stuff and I think he changed some of it, but I don’t remember clearly. CBA: Was it the wrong book at the wrong time? Dennis: That would be my guess. There’s no way to objectively get to the truth of that but comics had moved in a way that I wasn’t aware of or had consciously realized. They leaped several levels upward in sophistication and I don’t think that kids were satisfied with the very simple, cheerful and sunny stories. That was not what they bought comics for. It would have been wonderful had it worked to get the field out of the doom and gloom bag. CBA: With Captain Marvel, The Shadow, and The Avenger, you were riding a wave of nostalgia. Do you think that the preponderance of these revivals was a reaction to the relevancy that had taken place in comics? Dennis: I was looking to be a more pure storyteller. It was material and stuff we could do. If you read Walter Gibson’s novels, The Shadow was a visual character—though on radio his power was invisibility which was never very good for comics. I got a hold of some of the the ’40s Street & Smith comics that Gibson wrote and they were really pretty good. CBA: At first, who did you earmark to be artist for the strip? Dennis: That was a real headache. Alex Toth at first and that didn’t work out. Then I got in touch with Jim Steranko who wanted to do the whole thing; in effect, to package the book. I don’t know how I would have felt about that but in any case, that was not the way that DC operated, so that was not possible. Then I went to Bernie and, finally, Mike Kaluta. It was a long trek. CBA: Mike says that he volunteered for the job, but were you interested in Mike for the job? Dennis: Oh, yeah. Sure. I thought that he would be a good choice and I think that he is a good Shadow artist. CBA: You really clicked with The Shadow, regardless of the artist. You seemed to have a good time with it. Dennis: It was one I remember and it was never a chore to do those strips. I had a few little liberal qualms about his tendency to shoot first and not even bother to ask questions later. I got around it by playing him as a god, as an impersonal force, and after the first issue or two, we never gave him thought balloons. That was the first series that I had done that I denied myself that tool. I gave it to other characters but I didn’t want the reader to feel that he knew The Shadow. I didn’t want The Shadow to be perceived as a human being but as this impersonal force for justice that was always right. If you make him human, then you have problems with the fact that he shoots people a lot. I didn’t want to soften that as it seemed integral to the appeal of the character. This guy dealt justice and to hell with due process! As Steranko says, The Shadow didn’t believe in the death penalty, he was the death penalty. CBA: You were also editor of the book. While the writing was a breeze, was the editing tough? Dennis: I made a lot of phone calls. As I recall, it was pretty tough and it got very easy. The last bunch of issues with E.R. Cruz was no particular problem. I have no idea who put me on to him—probably Orlando. I thought that he did a good job because he had never been to the U.S., so his notions of what America was like came entirely from old Warner Brothers movies (which normally would be a handicap but in this case, I thought it worked very much for the series). CBA: Did you lobby for Kaluta to remain on the series? Dennis: I don’t think so. Again, I don’t remember. It was clear that he wasn’t going to continue on the book, for whatever reason

CBA Interview

Sam J. Glanzman Interview The Autobiography of Sam J. Glanzman Conducted by Jon B. Cooke with Don Mangus CBA is proud to present our special tribute to Sam J. Glanzman, one of the more underrated cartoonists of our time. While much of our section focuses on his work for the Joe Kubert-edited DC war comics in the late-’60s/’70s, Sam has had a diverse career throughout the history of comics, with memorable stays at Dell (Kona) and Charlton (The Lonely War of Willy Schultz). He still works in the field (notably as inker for the Joe R. Lansdale/Tim Truman Jonah Hex graphic novels and mini-series). CBA thanks Sam and Don Mangus (quite possibly Sam’s number one fan) for their help and their patience as this section finally sees print (as it was originally intended—as were many interviews in this issue—for CBA #1) and we hope it does them justice. The following interview was conducted through the mail in November, 1997. “…Glanzman was a bit of a maverick, freelancers used to caution each other that they’d better use pseudonyms when moonlighting for upstart publishers, lest they offend their principal employers (when Mike Esposito and Gene Colan first started working for Marvel they were Mickey Demeo and Adam Austin), so Sam, to conceal his defection, had Charlton call him ‘D.C. Glanzman’…” — page 111, The Comic Book Heroes by Gerard Jones and Will Jacobs, 2nd Edition, 1997.

Comic Book Artist: Is the above quote accurate? Sam J. Glanzman: The quote is absolutely wrong. Some of these so-called “historians” either don‘t do their homework, or are getting their facts not from the horse‘s mouth, but rather from the horse‘s ass. The D.C. Glanzman working for Charlton was my kid brother, David Charles Glanzman, who is not an artist, but who did some writing for Charlton. Secondly, I was doing work for Charlton, Dell and Gilbertson (the Classics Illustrated line), all at the same time,

at one point, and no one said beans about it. No one “cautioned” me, as the quote states. I never heard such a thing. Who the hell makes this stuff up? CBA: When did you start working for DC Comics? Sam: I’m pretty much a disorganized guy, I never kept accurate books and no longer have any of my old comic books. As far as I can remember, I started with DC in the late ‘60s. CBA: How was Dick Giordano as an editor at Charlton? Sam: I don’t quite understand the question. As a person, he was as likable as anyone, neat in appearance, and business-like. An editor, that was his title, and to me, he was just a guy to turn my work over to. We didn’t fight and we didn’t hold hands! CBA: When did you start working in comic books? Sam: I did my first job in 1940-1941. It was “The Flyman,” and the job included story, pencils, inks, and lettering at $7.50 a page. I was 16 or 17 at the time. CBA: Who is “Sam Decker”? Sam: Yours truly! During the war in Europe, a lot of people were blaming the Jews for Hitler‘s war. Weird, right? But true! Anyway, Glanzman is a Jewish name. Louis (“L.S.”), my older brother, and I used the name “Decker,” my mother’s maiden name, to get past some prejudiced bastards in comics. CBA: What comic books did you draw before World War II? Ron Goulart’s The Great History of Comics credits you with an “Amazing Man” story for Centaur. Sam: So who the hell is this fellow, Ron Goulart? Anyway, the guy is wrong, wrong, wrong! My older brother, Louis Glanzman, (a.k.a. “L.S.G.”, or “L.S. Decker”), drew the "Amazing Man,” not me!!! CBA: What’s the tale behind the start of the U.S.S. Stevens series? Sam: How it came to be published, is that what you mean? Well, I offered it to DC when Robert Kanigher was the editor and he turned it down. Later, I tried again, when Joe Kubert was made the editor around 1968. Joe liked it, and that was that. CBA: How frequently would you talk with Kubert? Sam: About as much as I did with any editor, just enough to say, “Hi, here’s the job,” and “Bye.” It was only later, when Joe was no longer my editor, that I visited him at his school and got to know him well. CBA: Did you visit the DC offices regularly? Sam: Only to pick up or turn work in. I never hung around to B.S. or kiss ass. CBA: What did you think of the “Make War No More” emblem that ended every DC war story for a time? Sam: Nothing. CBA: Did you receive assignments in bunches, or did you simply deliver stories? Sam: I don’t know what you mean by “bunches.” Sometimes, I’d have Charlton and Dell jobs at the same time, if that‘s what you mean. Also, once a month I'd have this job from Outdoor Life magazine, a feature called “This Happened To Me.” That “bunched” up, as you say, with my monthly DC “Haunted Tank” job. Incidentally, that Outdoor Life job was a sweetheart! It was just like a comic book page, only it paid eight times as much as a comic book page! CBA: Did you write full scripts for approval? Sam: No! I do my stories in thumbnails. About the only things ever changed by editors, or corrected, were my spelling and punctuation. CBA: Did you have story conferences with Kubert? Sam: No. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

Summer 1999

CBA: The U.S.S. Stevens story “Toro” was atypical, in that unlike most of the other Stevens tales, it was a five-page story rather than the usual four-pager. Were you given the extra space for this story by the editor, Archie Goodwin? Sam: Like all my stories, I just did it. I don't recall the reason for the fivepagers. Perhaps I was asked to do a fivepager, then again, perhaps I just did a five-pager and Archie put it in as such. CBA: The few stories that you did for the Goodwin-edited issues were quite sensitive: “Toro,” “The Islands were Meant for Love,” etc. Was Archie a good editor? Sam: There you go again! Wad'da ya' mean “a good editor”? Archie was as good or as bad an editor as anyone. I really don't understand that question. I can only assume by the question, that some artists have found some editors as nice guys, or as bastards. Perhaps I was fortunate in that I just met the nice guys. I never had a run-in with any of ’em. I always made my deadline. That was my job an’ I guess that made ’em happy. CBA: Kubert would sometimes redraw your panels, did you have concerns about that? Sam: Hell no! Actually, Joe only did it once, on one panel. Are you kidding? I was very pleased, you might even say honored. I respect Joe as an artist. Yeah, and he's a nice guy, too. CBA: Did Kubert ever do pencil work, which you subsequently inked, on any U.S.S. Stevens stories? Sam: No! Much as I like Joe and his work, I wouldn‘t want him, or anyone, to have anything to do with the Stevens [stories], ’ceptin’ the lettering. CBA: How was Joe Kubert as an editor? Sam: Again, with the editor crap! Joe was fine. Actually, Joe was the only one who ever said “Nice job Sam,” or “Bad job, Sam.” The other editors simply reached across the desk and took the jobs I handed them. Joe was helpful. Back to your question, I think I’m beginning to know what you want to know, but I can’t answer you, ’cause who am I to judge? CBA: Did you ever meet the other artists on the DC war books, such as: Russ Heath, Ric Estrada, John Severin, Frank Thorne, Ken Barr, or Alex Toth? Sam: No! I never hung around the offices long enough, or if I did, it was probably such a short encounter that I just don’t remember. CBA: Was there a real “Captain T. A. Rakov,” “Ox Swanson,”or “Buck Taylor”? Sam: Yes! Only it was Lt. Comm. Rakov and yes, an Ox and Buck. I kept changing their last names for reasons of my own. Buck was really “Asiatic,” or “whack-o” to you, if you don’t understand the first expression. CBA: The U.S.S. Stevens story “Kamikaze” ranks as one of your most profound stories. You served in the United States Navy against one of the most tenacious and vicious enemies in its history, the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces. Yet, in this four page story, you revealed a sensitive understanding of the Japanese pilot’s motive in his suicide mission. Didn’t you hate the enemy, knowing the carnage of Okinawa? Sam: If I hated the enemy or not, what has that got to do with my writing something bad, or something good, about the ”enemy“? I hope I am not guilty of grouping a class of people as good or bad. The story “Kamikaze” was about an individual Kamikaze (there is no plural or “s” on kamikaze), who were brave, valiant, and loyal warriors. Summer 1999

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

And yes, Okinawa was hell, as was Bataan, as was Iwo Jima, as was... you name it! CBA: When did you perceive the human face of the Künko warrior? Sam: Künko means “brave.” I believe the first dead Japanese warrior I saw was on... what island? I don‘t remember, only God knows. Anyway, this human being, a Japanese (I could still see the tattered remnants of his uniform) was flattened out on a jungle dirt road, face up and trucks and tanks were still rolling over him. Perhaps you’ve seen a dead rabbit, squirrel or frog squashed flat. Think of it, a human being, squashed flat on a dirt road, face up, trucks rolling over him, with other human beings(?) pissing on him and laughing... and somewhere, in a distant land, a mother is praying for her son! CBA: Did you keep a diary while in the Navy? Sam: I started one, if you could call it a diary. CBA: Was it a “blueprint” for your stories? Sam: Not really. My son, in Washington, D.C., got me a copy of the ship’s log on microfiche. It brought back many memories I’d forgotten. CBA: What's the story behind the two Marvel graphic novels, “A Sailor's Story”and “Winds, Dreams and Dragons,” your autobiographies of your U.S.S. Stevens years? Did Marvel editor Larry Hama appreciate your DC work and actively approach you for these projects? Sam: Jim Shooter and Larry Hama were talking ’bout something. One day, while I was in the office, Shooter said something to Larry, and then he walked out, at which time Larry turned to me and said something like, “How's about doing a graphic novel, Sam?” “What about?” says I. “Anything,” says he. “How about your time at sea aboard ship?” “Okay,” I said, and that was that. I don’t know if Larry appreciated me (as you asked), but in my appreciation of him, I gave Larry the cover from my second graphic novel, “Winds, Dreams and Dragons.” CBA: Did the graphic novels grow out of your Savage Tales magazine stories? Sam: No! The Savage Tales stories, “Of War and Peace” by “Mas” (Sam spelled backwards), had nothing to do with the graphic novels. CBA: Did DC editor Kim Yale approach you for the “Home of the Brave” story in the Sgt. Rock Special? Sam: About Kim Yale; she was a real sweetheart. I hadn’t worked for DC for some time, when Kim (who I’d never met, or even heard of) called and asked if I would do a U.S.S. Stevens story for her. I said, “Yes, how many pages?” She replied, “Ten.” My answer was then, “O.K., but I don't know what it’ll be about." Kim just said, “Do it.” So, I just did it, story, pencils, inks, and letters. All the time I was working on it, Kim hadn’t the slightest idea what it was going to be about, until I sent her the completed, finished job. That’s how much confidence she

Below: Sam Glanzman and his “Lucky” dog at the Ramapo Comic Con XIII this past May. Photo by Mike Gartland.

continued on page 68 63

Glanzman Tribute

My Life as a Cartoonist The Autobiography of Sam J. Glanzman As told to Don Mangus I was born at home on December 7, 1924 in Baltimore, Maryland. In those days, quite a few of us “old-timers” were born at home. I spent my pre-teen days in Virginia. I can remember living in a cabin, with an outhouse about 50 feet away, and the trips there during the Winter were as cold as the North and South Poles combined! I went to Sims Eaton School in Hampton and walked to Langley Field to go to the Army movie house and picnicked at Buckro Beach. I had an Indian friend by the name of Ralph Cloud.

Above: Young Sam Glanzman’s first published work: Fly-Man for the pocket-size Spitfire Comics #1, 1941.“My cover, my story and my lettering— $7.50 a page,” Sam explained.

His father was a fat old Indian who used to test parachutes at Langley, and Ralph had a swayback mare he used to ride. The mare had a cyst, or boil, some kind of damn lump, at the base of her neck that the old Indian sank a railroad spike into to let it drain. They used the damn fool thing for a pommel, or saddle horn! My folks moved to New York and I spent my teen years on Long Island. At that time it was rural, almost country. I remember one time when it was underwater, least ways where we lived in Rockaway. After a big storm the ocean had come in and met the bay, flooding our neck of the woods. The kids had a lot of fun floatin' around on doors and stuff, playing pirates and shipwrecked sailors. Of course the parents didn't think it was much fun. Anyway, in about 1936 or ’37, my older brother Louis S. Glanzman (who signed his work “LSG,” “Lew Glanz” or “L.S. Decker”) got into comic book illustrating. I followed him in about 1939 or ‘40 and my first published feature was “The Fly Man.” I believe it was published by The Comic Corporation of America. [Spitfire Comics, published by Harvey Comics—Don Mangus] About that time, or maybe right after the war, I did some stuff for Charles Biro and Bob Wood, when they had a place on 42nd Street and Grand Central. I also did some work for Leon Harvey. It

might have been “Shock Gibson,” for one or two issues, not much more than that, because the name “Shock Gibson” kind of rings a bell with me, but I do not claim it as the absolute truth. I also did some jobs for Parents magazine, who put out a comic book called Heroic Comics. My editor was Ralph Ellsworth, if I remember correctly. I also did some work for Street and Smith. That crazy outfit paid by the panel rather than the page! They didn’t last too long. A lot of publishing outfits were “fly by nights” that flew the coop before paying the artist for his work. Since my birthday fell in December, I wasn’t able to join in World War II until December of 1942. I didn't get in combat until ’43. By then, my older brother, Louis, was in the Army Air Corps. Back then, there was no Air Force, so the Army and the Navy had their own air wings. Since I had lived on Long Island, worked on a clam boat, and generally messed around in the water a lot (I used to row my boat in the marshes making believe I was Prince Valiant), I joined the Navy. I had never finished the 10th grade. When I joined up, I asked for sea duty. I wanted a ship and, by God, I got one! After the war I bummed around a bit and worked in lumber mills, cabinet shops, and boat yards. I had a buddy who was a bartender. Hoo Boy! I used to get free drinks, boilermakers, and he used to slip dollar bills into his sock every once in a while, instead of putting them into the cash register. Well, he got caught at it. It seems the boss had a “peep hole” in the room behind the bar. About this time I met my first wife and I had to get steady work and quit fooling around. I went to work at Republic Aircraft. The Korean War was on then. I was installing machine guns on Republic’s “Thunderchief” (or maybe it was the “Thunderjet”). It wasn’t long after this that my wife saw an ad in the newspapers. An outfit was looking for comic book artists. When I first got out of the service I didn’t want to work in comic books, so I tried book illustration. I did some work for Grosset and Dunlap, Random House, and Simon and Schuster. It paid better than comics, but I just couldn’t get enough work. Now back to the newspaper ad, it was Charlton Comics and I accepted the work. They gave me a pile of work, so I quit Republic Aircraft and became a full-time artist during the fifties, all the while raising three beautiful children. I now have five lovely grandchildren, the eldest of them being 15 now. I started on Charlton’s war books, Fightin' Army, Fightin' Navy, Fightin' Marines and God knows what else. I eventually did full books, cover to cover, working on features such as The Lonely War of Willy Schultz, The Jungle Tales of Tarzan, Hercules, to name just a few... Joe Gill wrote most of the scripts. I didn't do any writing at Charlton. Later, I hooked up with Gilbertson, who published the Classics Illustrated line. I did a lot of work for their World Around Us series. After that, I worked at Dell comics on another pile of books, again mostly cover to cover. For Dell I did among others, Combat, Kona, Garrison's Gorillas, and Tales of the Green Beret (where the editor insisted I work in Joe Kubert style, as Joe was drawing the syndicated COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

Summer 1999

newspaper strip at the time). Somewhere along the line, about 1969, I started working for DC Comics. I started with my U.S.S. Stevens series, also did “Battle Album,” “Warrior,” and created the Dioramas for the war line. I also hooked up with Outdoor Life magazine at this time and turned in a monthly feature, “This Happened to Me,” a true adventure story or “docu-drama” that had happened to sportsmen in the wilds. After I had worked on over 100 issues of G.I. Combat (featuring "The Haunted Tank"), DC dropped their war line in 1987, so I hopped over to Marvel Comics and met editors Larry Hama and Pat Redding, both nice people. I worked on their Semper-Fi series and also a feature in Savage Tales magazine called, “Of War and Peace, by Mas.” That went bust and I did two graphic novels for Epic, A Sailor's Story Books 1 and 2. Bingo! That was the end of my stint with Marvel. The damn editors classify an artist and he’s stuck! I can draw something besides war! I did one job for Warren Publishing's Vampirella magazine which featured my first writing, on the story “The Sword of Light.” I didn't care too much for the editor, so I never did anything for them again. In 1989, I did two graphic novels for Tim Truman’s outfit, Four Winds Publishing, Attu Books 1 and 2. Ever since I started in comics, I have almost always done my own pencils and inks. No one has ever inked over my pencils, mainly because it’s impossible! My pencils are glorified stick figures. Not until the past couple of years have I inked someone’s pencils, starting with Tim Truman's Jonah Hex (at Vertigo), then a couple of Turoks (Acclaim), Zorros (Topps), and an Impulse. At present, I am remarried and living in upstate New York. My latest work has been for Mojo Press, an publishing outfit from Texas. Joe Lansdale has written a 64-pager that I’ll be drawing. It’s kinda grim, according to the first eight pages of script. Lots of action, shootin’ and that kind of stuff. It’s about a black cowboy and it's called Red Range, a Western Adventure. My life as a cartoonist? It isn’t much different than when I worked at Republic Aircraft, except that I can sleep late and take off as many days as I want. I still ride my motorcycle, and build a piece of furniture now and then. I’m always looking for a good

game of poker or pinochle. I love to shoot craps. I have a dog by the name of Luc-Kee. Lately, I’m into black powder shootin’. I built a couple of “cap and ball” rifles. I do a little pumpin’ iron, so’s what little muscle I’ve got, don’t turn to fat, and, oh yeah, I did a little fencing in my time. I would have loved to have challenged Bob Kanigher to a duel. Ha! Yeah, that’d have been somethin’! I’m kind of “old and rusty” now. I guess he could beat me, so don’t get any ideas! Adios, and keep your back to the wall…! — SJG, December 1997

CBA’s Jon B. Cooke is back with his new mag, Comic Book Creator! 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, talks to TODD McFARLANE about his new show-all book, 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, all-color COMIC BOOK CREATOR! (And don’t miss the double-size Summer Special #2, paying tribute to JOE KUBERT, this July!

80 pages, $8.95 • Full-color • Quarterly Digital Edition: $3.95 Subscriptions: 4 ISSUES, $36 US with FREE Digital Editions • DIGITAL ONLY: $15.80 ($45 First Class US • $50 Canada, $65 First Class International) • Subscriptions include the double-size Summer Special

Glanzman Tribute

In Only Four Pages... The Best of Sam Glanzman’s U.S.S. Stevens Stories by Don Mangus & Andrew Steven

Don Mangus and Andrew Steven are DC war comic enthusiasts and original art collectors. They share many interests in art, among which is an unswerving admiration of the war art of Sam Glanzman, and are pleased to offer this salute to one of the greats of comics! 66

In only four pages, Sam Glanzman can tell a more gripping, faster moving, and more meaningful story than most cartoonists with forty. Scattered as back-up stories throughout the DC war titles of the late ’60s and ’70s, Glanzman crafted vivid mini-dramas based on his experiences as a young sailor during World War II. Each story is unique in its characterization, theme, and layout; cartooning tour-de-forces of the short-story form, seldom seen in the comic book since Will Eisner set the standard with his strip, The Spirit. What makes these tales so remarkable is the unmistakable ring of truth that resounded throughout—a truth that surpasses even Harvey Kurtzman's brilliant EC war stories, no doubt by virtue of the fact that the stories are torn from the salty sea and sweat-drenched, bloodsoaked diary of Sam J. Glanzman, and based upon his memories of shipmates aboard the destroyer, U.S.S. Stevens, during the greatest conflict this planet has known, World War II. War is a harrowing challenge to a young man’s spirit and soul. The gauntlet of emotions runs vast and profound. Fear, anger, hatred, sorrow, pain, and shock are commonplace. Yet, in the struggle to cope and survive, a serviceman also experiences humor, camaraderie, dreams, and mystical visions, all snatched in the times between battle. Strangely enough, for some, World War II was the best time of their lives, as well as the worst. Each of the U.S.S. Stevens stories is a brilliant illumination of the emotions and psycho-drama of naval warfare. Here are short descriptions of what we consider ten of Glanzman’s most memorable and moving tales! “…And Fear Crippled Andy Payne” (OAAW #304): Sailor Andy Payne, traumatized by the horrors of war, amputates his fingers in a desperate bid for a medical discharge to escape the Stevens, and the war. The story grimly explains, “There is no escape from fear once it has taken hold. The eye may see beauty and the ear may hear laughter, but mirrored on the brain is darkness... and fear like a slow, shuffling giant hovers over... and fear crippled Andy Payne! War is a frightening thing... and there are no cowards in war... for it can cripple a brave man's body or his mind…” “What Do They Know of War?” (OAAW#244): The Stevens lays off a small, war-torn Pacific Island after destroying an unsalvageable allied ship. A poverty-stricken family of three (a father, his daughter, and son) receive permission to board the Stevens, in order

to barter for much needed food and provisions. A randy sailor crudely propositions the daughter and is sternly reprimanded by the Officer of the Deck. The young woman speaks out, “No. Please, let me say something first. This man laughs at us, for we are poor... he is fat... while we starve! He sleeps contented... while we grovel for food. If he wants me, he can take me as his! Let him rob us of our last shred of dignity. No, please do not censure him. He too, is a victim, like us,of this Hellish war.“ As the family drifts away, the father mutters,“Warriors! What do they know about... war?” “Ride the Baka” (OAAW #248) “Pinky” Berkman is startled as a new Japanese weapon, the Baka, a suicide-piloted and rocket-propelled bomb, narrowly misses the Stevens. The crew wonders, “Had this pilot intentionally missed... hoping to exhaust his fuel and somehow land... miraculously safe? His mission was to destroy DD 479 and he failed... but he rode the Baka! It never failed…” Blam! The Baka explodes in empty sea! “Color Me Brave” (OAAW #247) Steward mate 1st Class Mac Stringer, of the USS Oklahoma, courageously leads his drowning shipmates to safety, at the risk of his own life, as the Oklahoma is sunk at Pearl Harbor. Upon returning to sea duty, his comrades are disturbed by the Navy’s failure to promote the heroic Mac beyond the rank of Steward. They grumble, “I don't get it! There ain‘t a man aboard, knows as much about guns or the whole dang ship! An’ seems to me the Navy always uses guys like Stringer as Stewards. It’s stupid, if you ask me... just because his color is black!” What color is brave? “The Sea is Calm... The Sky is Bright” (OAAW #257) A young sailor struggles over what to write, in a letter home to his mother. Not wanting to burden her with the horrors and fears he has experienced at Okinawa, he purges his mind with a horrific “thought letter.“ Feverish visions of hellish, incendiary death flood his soul. Finally, he begins his sanitized letter, “Dear Mom, I’m fine... The sea is calm... the sky is bright…” “Toro” (OFF #148) The Stevens takes on a new passenger at New Caledonia, a strangely sensitive and effeminate man, headed Stateside, who goes only by the name “Toro.” Granted liberty at Manila, the crew is surpriseattacked by hidden Japanese hold-outs. Toro, who moments before had been smelling flowers and cavorting with butterflies, attacks the resisters with savage, “berserker” intensity. Slashing several soldiers to death with a double-bladed knife hidden on his body, he chases a final victim off a cliff, and then leaps off, to his death. Stunned, the crew later learns, “Toro was a Marine trained as a ‘special killing’ Marine. The knife, a rarity is called a Toro... this man loved beauty in life... the delicate scents, shapes, and colors of nature... the killing had been too much for this man with the beautiful soul. He was to be given a Class B medical discharge... Toro had gone insane!” “King of the Hill” (SSWS #174) One of Glanzman’s most surreal stories begins mundanely enough: Lying off Borneo, the Stevens shells an easy target. The ship docks at a supply depot to take on ammunition and make repairs. A 'snipe' detail discovers crates of fresh fruit and vegetables and sneaks them past the O.D., instead of loading crates of ammo. While the supply sergeant is raising hell about the stolen supplies, a rock ape is seen stealing food, atop a ziggurat of crates, and is blamed for the missing provisions. Instead of simply scaring the ape off, a Marine decides to have some fun, scales the mound, and bonks the ape on the head with his helmet, to the glee of his comrades. High comedy turns to tragedy, as the ape ferociously COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

Summer 1999

maims and kills the Marine. Shooting the ape too late, ”The small knot of men were shocked beyond belief... a fun-loving foolish Marine who had survived the real horrors of Guadalcanal... did not survive a make-believe game of King of the Hill!” “Another Kunko Warrior” (OFF #140): A mail team of three sailors lands after Marines have taken an island. Surveying the dead littering the beach, the sailors remark within earshot of a war-weary Marine, “So that’s one of the soldiers! He don’t look like much to me!… Yeah, betcha‘ I could take on three o’ them shrimps at one time.” The haggard Marine sourly grunts, “Shut your damn mouth Swabbie!” A montage of the battle two days before ends with a lone Japanese soldier surrounded by eight bayonet-wielding Marines. The Marine pleads, “N-no, y’can’t just kill him! Give him a chance to surrender!“ Defiantly, the Japanese soldier replies, “I never surrender!” The story concludes, ”But one lone Marine has dug a grave for one Japanese warrior near the water's edge... Kunko: Japanese word for respected, valiant, courageous.“ Shut your damn mouth, Swabbie! “Lucky, Save Me” (OAAW #275) In Glanzman’s most tender story, one of love and hope, a kamikaze pilot destroys the Starboard gun of the Stevens. Walt Rasmussen is “burnt to a near crisp,” yet clings to life. As the crew transports him to sick bay, Walt cries out over and over, “Lucky... save me…” Amazed, a crewman comments, “Skipper, it’s unbelievable, a man just can‘t survive in that condition.” The skipper replies, “But he did and that’s what counts. Something’s keeping him alive. He keeps saying ‘Lucky,’ almost like he‘s talking to somebody.” An idyllic, pastoral flashback set in Oneonta, New York, portrays young Walt playing cowboys and indians, and happily romping with his black Labrador retriever, Lucky. As he is 'shot' in his make-believe battle,the youngster cries out, “Lucky... save me.“ While Walt lies in a burn care unit, a medic grimly declares,“Only the Lord knows if he’ll live…” The final panel tears at your heart with the closing line, “Somewhere on a mountaintop sits a dog who knows nothing of the Gods of Wars... but he knows that Walt Rasmussen will soon be coming... home.” “Dreams” (GIC #152) The story begins, “Sometimes a ship must spend months at sea... whereupon it becomes a planet, orbiting in space, a world in and of itself! A world sometimes difficult to survive…“. A montage of various crewmen’s pleasant daydreams is vaporized by a Zero attack. The story concludes, “Every Gunner had his sight trained on the meatball... and speared it in mid-air! The flaming ball etched a high arc and disappeared in a violent eruption: like the spontaneous flash of a camera, now the sky was empty... not a trace of the enemy plane remained, but perhaps it never existed! Perhaps, this was all a dream…” Equally remarkable as Glanzman's portrayal of the war-torn human condition, was his confident and innovative graphic storytelling, always used to evoke a mood, and advance the four page narratives. With no “padding” to spare, these tales emerge as poetry-laden, condensed dramas, perfect in their form and execution, like comic book haiku. Among the stories in which Glanzman boldly experimented with layout, drawing and design are: “Kamikaze” (OAAW #235) Glanzman spins the tale of Tatsuno Sakigawa, a kamikaze pilot who reviews his decision to make the ultimate sacrifice in a series of flashbacks, portrayed as a mad jumble of colors, feelings and memories; of time and space intercut. A caption reads, “A kaleidoscope of thoughts sent his mind’s-eye back…” The fire bombing of Tatsuno’s world has shattered his sense of tradition forever, and now he is prepared to avenge its fragmentation. A repetitive, three-tiered page layout sets up a rhythm that creates a deadly metaphor for the inexorable passage of time, sealing both Tatsuno and Japan’s fate. “Where…” (OAAW #262) A picture is worth a thousand words! In this story, large panels show the destructive aftermath of war, in deadly pantomime. On the final page a sailor is “buried at sea,” and a monumental black-&-white panel of a wounded soldier alone in a vast graveyard screams, “Where have all the heroes gone?“ “I am Old Glory” (OAAW #282) This is Glanzman’s rousing, patriotic salute to the American Flag. The first page opens with The Star-Spangled Banner lyrics as the Stevens Summer 1999

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

is locked in mortal combat with Zeros. On the following pages the flag speaks of its evolution at the bottom of each page,while the battle rages on above. Closing the story is an essay, “I am Old Glory,” written by young Sam Glanzman at the beginning of the war, a heartfelt display of love and service to his country. “Why?” (OAAW #308) Heroic,and inspired portrayals of handsome Japanese pilots, crashing to fiery deaths on the decks of battleships, underscore the terrible waste of war. The final page eulogizes, “Yes... a soldier is in his prime; in his youth; and wars are fought by the young; and wrought by the old. And the young do die; and the old do cry; and I wonder why... why?” “Cabbages and Kings” (OFF #132) This story renders the sublime power of the sea, as Bo'sn Egloff struggles mightily against a raging typhoon, to secure the Steven’s ties and rescue a sailor washed overboard. Each panel is a dynamic masterpiece of man’s war against hostile elements. The story ends in triumph, as “Bo'sn Egloff beat the typhoon in all its unleashed anger... this time!”

“A Nightmare from the Beginning…” (OFF #139) This tale uses thin, ghostly linework, in combination with surreal visions of an ape, smoke, fire, and a mad Captain, during a psychotic hallucination of a sailor who is lost in a maze of “a nightmare within a nightmare within the nightmare of war!” “Comic Strip” (OFF #138), “Missing: 320 Men” (GIC #145), “Between the Pages” (OAAW #293) All view the war through the eyes and drawings of Jerry Boyle, a cartoonist aboard the Stevens, and no doubt Sam Glanzman’s alter-ego. Perhaps crystallizing the artist Glanzman’s view of his time on the Stevens, “Comic Strip” ends: “Jerry Boyle drew few pictures of the hell of war... He found that those sights and emotions were impossible for him to draw: the terrible scenes of violence... waste... and sorrow... he carried deep in his heart... his soul... and even time will not fade those scenes, as it will the drawn pictures on the pages of a small, blue covered book!”

Sam J.Glanzman’s U.S.S. Stevens stories stand as the American war comic book’s finest moments! Neither glamorized depictions of jingoistic heroism, nor self-absorbed, maudlin memories of battles lost, his cartoon vignettes instead show the raw, heartfelt effects of war on all involved, with unparalleled economy and artistry, the absolute crowning examples of storytelling in the war genre. 67

S.J.G. continued from page 63

had in me. Damn!! And, we had never met. Incidentally, I had Tim Truman to thank for that job. He recommended me to Kim.

CBA: Do you have a personal favorite U.S.S. Stevens story? Sam: “Color Me Brave.” Not because of the art, because it’s really bad, but for what it said, and because it was in response to a fan letter. CBA: How do you want to be remembered when the accurate history of comics is finally written? Sam: Hell! Just remember me! CBA: Can we expect any more U.S.S. Stevens tales in the future? Sam: If you want more, you’ll have to write to some’a them goddamn publishers. I think they think I’m dead. CBA: Did you receive fan mail in the ’70s? Sam: Yes, quite a bit. At that time I’d turn my work in to the office personally and pick it up then.

CBA: And today? Sam: Since I’ve moved upstate, I do everything by mail. Perhaps I get fan mail, mailed to DC or whoever, but if so, it never reaches me. CBA: Has a collection of your short stories ever been suggested? Sam: Yes. Joe Kubert once suggested a complete book of U.S.S. Stevens stories to DC, but nothing gelled. CBA: Did you consider the DC war books at the time special? Sam: Nope! They were a bunch of crap! What? You want me to lie to you?! No way! CBA: Did you admire the work of Heath, Toth, Severin or other artists? Sam: Joe Kubert’s work is a beautiful song, Ric Estrada’s work is art. Tim Truman, not because he is a friend of mine do I say this, but Tim’s art is fantastic. In comic books, these are the only worthwhile artists I am aware of, excluding some great overseas stuff. CBA: You worked on over a hundred issues of G.I. Combat drawing the Haunted Tank. Did you have contact with Robert Kanigher? Sam: I had a lot of contact with Kanigher. CBA: What was he like? Sam: That’s for those who like him and for those who don’t, to say. As for me, he was the guy that wrote the scripts (“Haunted Tank”) that I drew, and the guy that always seemed to have a banana in his briefcase. CBA: Any other story ideas brewing? Sam: As far as writing done by myself, no. I did a real nice Robin Hood job, about 4 issues worth, and only one issue has been published. I consider it one of my best pieces, and I'd sure like to see the rest printed up. At present, I am working on a 64-pager for Mojo Press, with Ben Ostrander as publisher, and Rick Klaw as editor. Joe Lansdale will be writing it. The story is about a black cowboy. Nothing else is currently on the shelf.

U.S.S. Stevens Checklist Compiled by Don Mangus Our Army at War 218 “Frightened Boys or Fighting Men?” 220 “The Idiot” 222 “Black Smoke” 223 “Künko Warrior” 225 “Bucket Head” 227 “Death of a Ship” 230 “Cause and Cure” 231 “In the Frying Pan” 232 “Buck Taylor, You Can’t Fool Me” 235 “Kamikaze” 238 “XDD 479” 240 “Vela Lavella” 241 “Batmen” 244 “What Do They Know About War?” 245 “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the War” 247 “Color Me Brave” 68

248 “Ride the Baka” 256 “Portuguese Man of War” 257 “The Sea is Calm, the Sky is Bright” 258 “The Kiyi” 259 “Accident” 261 “Today is Tomorrow” 262 “Where…” 265 “Rocco’s Roost” 266 “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” 267 “Moon Glow” 275 “Lucky, Save Me” 281 “Heads I Win, Tails You Lose” 282 “I am Old Glory” 284 “Glance into Glanzman” (Twopage biography) 293 “Between the Pages” 298 “Not Granted”

Sgt. Rock 304 “And Fear Crippled Andy Payne” 308 “Why?” 384 “Comic Strip” (reprints OFF #138) G.I. Combat 145 “Missing: 320 Men” 150 “Hip Shot” 151 “Red Ribbon” 152 “Dreams” 153 “Mail Call” Our Fighting Forces 125 “The Browning Shot” 126 “One-Two-Three” 127 “Dragonfly” 128 “How Many Fathoms?” 132 “Cabbages and Kings” 134 “Intsingtao” 136 “Imperivum Nepiuni Regis”

138 “Comic Strip” 139 “A Nightmare” 140 “Another Künko Warrior” 141 “Buck Taylor” ("origin" of the Stevens’ namesake) 143 “Tailor Mades” 148 “Toro” Sgt. Rock Special (1992) 1 “???” Star-Spangled War Stories 153 “Double Rescue” 167 “The Islands Were Meant for Love” 171 “Who to Believe?” 172 “The Thousand-Stitch Belt” 174 “King of the Hill” Weird War Tales “Wait”

“This is the Ship that War Built” Savage Tales “Of War and Peace: Tales by MAS” 7 “In a Gentlemanly Way” 8 “Rescued by Luck” 9 “Even Dead Birds Have Wings” ”My Son, My Son” (unpublished) Marvel Graphic Novels 1987 “A Sailor’s Story” 1989 “A Sailor’s Story – Wind,Dreams and Dragons” America at War: The Best of DC War Comics (TPB) 1979 Reprints “Kamikaze” (from OAAW #235)

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Summer 1999

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CBA Interview

Skeating on Thin Ice Talking with Steve Skeates about his DC Years Conducted by Jon B. Cooke

Steve Skeates (pronounced “skates”) made a memorable impression as a “Young Turk” new writer at DC in the late ’60s/early ’70s, especially on Aquaman as part of the “S.A.G.” team (Skeates as writer, Jim Aparo as artist, and Dick Giordano as editor). He received two Shazam! awards for his scripts of “The Poster Plague” (the Sergio Aragonés-drawn House of Mystery story which led to the development of Plop!) and “The Gourmet” (drawn by Bernie Wrightson and appearing in Plop! #1). This interview was conducted by phone on December 9, 1997, and was copy-edited by Steve.

Comic Book Artist: How did you get involved in comics? Steve Skeates: I really liked the early Stan Lee Marvel comics—particularly Iron Man—and that’s what got me into thinking about writing for comics. I just came upon them at one time and the covers looked different than anything I’d ever seen on the stands. I bought one and liked it so I hunted out the rest of the Marvel line while I was in college. I was facing graduation so I was applying to newspapers for reporting jobs and I decided, why not send out letters to what I figured were the four major comic book companies? I got a call from Stan Lee and, based on my letter, he hired me as an assistant editor over the phone! It was a strange, serendipitous situation where I wrote the letter in more or less comic book form. I was unaware that Stan had run an ad in The New York Times looking for people to apply for a job, asking them to make their applications in comic book form. I didn’t know that he had done that and probably if I had known I probably would have overdone it! I kept the job for a couple of weeks and then I found out that being an assistant editor meant being a glorified proofreader which was fine with me but my proofreading wasn’t fine with them. I was just terrible. So they suggested that I move over to just being a writer for them which I did for a while doing westerns. Then I got a job doing stories for Tower Comics. I was just moving too slowly at Marvel. They had me on the westerns and they didn’t trust me doing any of the super-hero stuff yet. There just weren’t enough westerns to make a good living at, especially living in New York City. CBA: So you went for the Tower interview while you were still working for Marvel? Steve: I stole a couple of make-readys—the black-&-white stats— from Marvel that had my name on ’em and had not been published at that point and took them during the noon hour while everybody was out at lunch. I grabbed a couple and took them over to Tower to show them my name. I got the job and snuck the stats back in before anyone came back from lunch! I spoke with Samm Schwartz at Tower, who came from Archie Comics and he knew that kind of comic but didn’t know what he was doing super-hero-wise. Basically Woody [Wally Wood] was the acting editor of THUNDER Agents, anyway. At that point, Marvel had a rule that if you worked any place

else, you didn’t work for them. So once I started working for Tower, Marvel let me go. Stan Lee called me into his office and said, “We understand that you’re working for Tower, so you’re no longer working here.” Stan was pretty firm about it. I was out of there. So, I got a freelance writing job and I did all but two of the “Lightning” stories, some “NoMan” stories, the “THUNDER Squad,” and Undersea Agents. These were full script jobs. I enjoyed the tenpage format and the lighter copy which took a while to get used to. My first “Lightning” stories have the characters peeking out from behind the balloons because I was so used to the Marvel style. They used lettering that was much larger than what Marvel used. I would just turn in my scripts and not really closely work with any artists. I did work with Woody on a couple of things including “Double for Dynamo,” and I would occasionally do a conference with Woody. Woody was a fun guy to work with—totally irresponsible! Mike Sekowsky did most of my “Lightning” stories and Chic Stone later took over from him but I never talked to either one of them. CBA: Did you hang out with the other young writers? Steve: In the later ‘60s, I remember hanging out and getting together with Denny O’Neil, Gary Friedrich and Roy Thomas. Somewhere in there, Conway and Mike Friedrich showed up. I lived in New York City for a short time, during the time I worked for Marvel, Tower and Charlton. As soon as The Hawk and the Dove and Aquaman started, I moved to Alfred, New York. The rumors had started, but I stayed on at Tower until the bitter end. I went to a convention during that time and I was the only person working for Tower at the con so I was asked to appear on a panel. Dick Giordano was on that panel and so once I had heard that Tower was folding I called up Dick and said, “Remember me?” So that’s how I got work at Charlton. CBA: Did you meet the other Charlton artists? Steve: I’m not sure if it was at the Charlton N.Y. office or at some party, but at some point along that time I met Steve Ditko. He was quiet, sort of introverted. He was very stand-offish. He was there and I said a few things to him but there was not a conversation. I really enjoyed working with Jim Aparo on “Thane of Bagarth” at Charlton. It was a back-up in Hercules. It was a Prince Valiant type thing but it was based on Beowulf. It was done in a pseudo-archaic language with really nice artwork. Dick, me and everybody went over to DC but I still kept doing work for Charlton. So did Jim Aparo. I liked Dick as an editor. At Charlton, he was so over-burdened with all this stuff and, as long as we didn’t go insane, he pretty much left us on our own. So that was a great learning experience because if we did something wrong that wasn’t caught, we’d be embarrassed enough not to do that again. It was an enjoyable way to learn how to do the work. Dick rarely asked for changes because he was overseeing so much. I remember one time after he probably hadn’t read any of his romance comics in about a year—he was just accepting jobs from people he thought were doing a good job—and when he finally read one he saw that the guy who was writing it had gotten so poetic that the stuff made no sense at all! Dick went through the roof and said, “How long has he been doing this?!” It was probably impossible for him to read them all. CBA: You didn't seem keen on doing super-heroes. Steve: I loved doing the westerns at Charlton because they were a lot different from the almost TV-like westerns at Marvel. The Charlton westerns were grim and gritty stories about aging gunfighters who were not having a great time. It was a lot of fun, primal stuff COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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that I really enjoyed writing. I wrote at least a dozen Kid Montana stories and I really enjoyed doing those. I loved the “Captain Doom” stories. He was a one-armed guy who wore a Civil War Confederate outfit, riding around getting into trouble—and trying to settle down but being unable to. Most people wanted to do Batman but I really never had the desire. The super-heroes that I got into were really fringe characters in one way or another. Aquaman basically didn’t have a secret identity. The same with Plastic Man. So I liked that aspect of those two. And the Teen Titans were teenagers and I think that the concept of superheroes is such an adolescent idea anyway that it fit. CBA: How did you hear about the DC gig? Steve: Dick got in touch with us—the only one I’ve ever discussed this with was Denny—and Dick just called us up and said, “We’ve got this offer to work for DC and there’s a lot more money in it. I’m moving over there. Do you want to go?” I was a little bit trepidatious about it because I had applied for work at DC previously and I had not gotten anywhere. I felt that these people were not creative and that DC was a non-creative businesslike thing. This was during the period when they were basically embarrassed to be doing comics. Hiding behind the name of National Periodicals, rather than DC Comics so you didn’t know what they did behind those doors. I tried out for editorial position with Mort Weisinger and his whole attitude was just a turn-off and the fact that they didn’t hire me was even more of a turn-off. So the idea of working for them later on bothered me but since it was Dick, I thought, “Why not?” CBA: Was it a package deal? Steve: It sort of felt like a package deal but a rather loose one at that. I wasn’t being told to move and Dick was just suggesting it. CBA: What books did you first work on at DC? Steve: Dick basically had two books for me and Denny. One apiece. They were Aquaman and Bomba the Jungle Boy. We were supposed to drop in at DC and meet with Dick in his new office at some point—we were given a week or so to do that. I got in there the day before Denny did and was given the choice. I chose Aquaman. If Denny had beaten me into the office, I would have ended up with Bomba. As soon as that book fell apart, Denny started working more and more for Julie. After we started working there, I got the feeling that things were finally changing at DC. When I heard we were going over, I thought that we were just going to be absorbed into their house style. CBA: Dick seemed like the hot editor of the day. Steve: There was some point where Dick beat out Stan Lee as editor of the year at the Alley Awards. I remember that being a big deal and everybody celebrating. CBA: Was there any overall planning by DC? Steve: We occasionally would have big editorial or story conferences. I remember we were in a room with a long table and I would be there, Denny, Dick, Carmine and everybody who worked there. Just creative—editors and writers. It was always the idea of changing the direction of something. Quite often it would be something that I had no control over or anything to do with yet I would end up at these meetings. One was about changing the direction of Superman and I never worked on Superman! Why was I there? They discussed how they could change this or that. CBA: Were there many creative constraints at DC? Steve: There was quite a bit of freedom but there was also things that you had to get used to. At Charlton, I never wrote a plot outline. I just brought in a completed script and sold it. Suddenly I had to plot my Aquaman stories and I had to get used to that but it didn’t seem like much of an imposition. At one point, Aquaman was selling really well and yet no one at the office was reading it. We were just off in our own little corner doing our own little thing. Fans were reading it but our peers weren’t reading it at all. CBA: What was the genesis of The Hawk and the Dove? Steve: It was developed by committee. There was Dick, Carmine, Ditko and me. Carmine came up with the title and he attended all the meetings. Part of the concept was to directly appeal to, I don’t know, the counter-culture. My main contribution was that they had to say their names to change into the characters. They were trying to come up with a “Shazam,” a magic word and I said, “Why don’t we Summer 1999

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have them just say their character names?” They went along with that. I also created the community in which they lived, the college town. Steve Ditko came up with the major concepts, the costumes, the powers, the characters— just about everything. The judge was definitely his idea. CBA: Were there changes made in your stories? Steve: It was strange. A lot of changes would happen after I turned in a script. Quite often, my idea of what to do with the Dove was have him do brave stuff and then it would be changed by either Dick or Steve into the Hawk doing that stuff. They’d say it was out of character for the Dove. They seemed to be equating Dove with wimp, wuss, coward or whatever. And I don’t really think it was because they were more hawkish. I just don’t think that they knew what a dove was. There was all sorts of problems along those lines but since I was doing it from a distance—I was upstate living on a college campus, which is why I made it a college town—so, basically any complaint I had would be after the fact. As a matter of fact, Ditko and Denny would have more fights over Beware the Creeper than I had with Steve over The Hawk and the Dove. That’s because Denny was right there and would go in, complain and yell at Dick or Steve. What could I do long distance? Complain about the book after it was published? Fait accompli. There were all sorts of problems with the Showcase issue. Although a lot of people have said that they really like that issue, I think a major problem with it was that Dick was trying to please the Comics Code. One of the rules was that you couldn’t question authority so every time I had the Dove say something against the U.S. government, Dick would change that to some sort of nebulous “they.” To me it comes off as terribly written with a lot of pronouns without any nouns that they are referring back to. CBA: Was it more comfortable working on the title after Steve left? Steve: Once Steve left and Gil Kane came in I tried to bring the conflict to a head and change the direction of the book by making the Dove such a loser that he had to change. Gil never understood where the characterization was going and thought I was a raving hawk myself! I felt that the only way to solve the problem that had been set up in the series was to take it to its absolute worst and bring Dove to the breaking point and bring him back up from there. That was where I was going but the book didn’t stay around long enough

to do that. CBA: Why did Steve leave the book? Steve: From what I understand, Steve left because he was sick. That is what I was told. CBA: You had a reputation as DC's resident hippie. I was surprised to realize that worked on them. Steve: I had people like Roger Brand, who was working in undergrounds, meet me and say, “Gee, you’re not the raving hawk I thought you were.” Because he thought I was from reading those books. The first book I wrote full script, and then Ditko redid it, extending some scenes and cutting out others. So then I had to go back and do it Marvel-style even though I had already done the script. That was sort of a hassle. The second story (The Hawk and the Dove #1) we did do Marvel-style from the start and they changed so much of my plot that I told them to write the plot themselves for the next one. I said, “I really don’t want to write these plots because you’re just going to change them anyway. So you write the next one” Ditko took me up on it and the next issue was the jailbreak storyline. When the book went to Gil, it went back to straight scripts and I felt more in control. I was trying to make some sense out of the characters. The story called “The Sell-Out” was inspired by the movie, The President’s Analyst. I hadn’t seen the issue with “The Sell-Out” for a long time and somebody only recently sent me a copy. I was surprised how much I like that story. I think I did a nice job on that one. I like the Gil Kane-written story, too. He wrote it because I had gone out of town and hadn’t told Dick that I was leaving town for a couple of weeks on vacation. He couldn’t find me and by the time he did, he told me that he had given it to Gil to write. I was the unavailable prima donna. CBA: Aquaman seemed to me the perfect example of what DC was capable of doing for all their books. Steve: Aquaman was a lot of fun. Jim and I just seemed to hit it off. Our minds seemed to hit the same wavelength. I did the stories full script, and it got to the point where often my picture descriptions were only one word. He was able to give me exactly what I wanted from very limited descriptions. I don’t think the relationship was the same at Charlton because the material was so different. We were on the same wavelength for at least a year before we even met each other! My favorites are the last ones. CBA: Beautiful as they

were, the covers never showed action that went inside the book. Steve: It never bothered me. The one that bothered Dick was one that happened when he was on vacation. He always approved the cover ideas and being out of town, the job fell to Carmine. That’s the one where Aquaman is tied to the giant’s foot and that is so unlike anything that is happening in the story that Dick was very upset about that one. It never bothered me. I loved Nick Cardy’s covers. I think that one of the reasons the book sold was those covers. He did a cover for the one Spectre that I did; the one with the lines radiating out from the Spectre. That book was one of my rare forays into Julie Schwartz’s books; just before it became a mystery book. Julie was trying to save it and to try new things. It was the issue in which the Spectre goes blind. Really nice Grandenetti art job with Murphy Anderson inks. They worked great together. That’s one of my favorite comics that I did at DC. Julie was weird. I was unprepared for how he does things. You’re supposed to go in there with a germ of an idea and then work it out with him. I went in with a full plot and when you do that he more or less throws your plot out of the window. He just takes an idea out of it and we worked it out from there in the office. So what I did with that full plot I had walked in there with was to sell it to Charlton as a “Dr. Graves” story. What we came up with in that Spectre story was so different from my plot that no one was going to recognize that this was the plot I walked in there with originally. CBA: Whose idea was it to do the long story arc in Aquaman? Steve: It was basically Dick’s idea and that I treat it more as a western than anything else. He said that outright. I think it was his idea to have Mera kidnapped and I took it from there. I liked the idea and everything we did with the book. I liked the fact that we started out with a nine-part story. I never had that much interest in doing super-heroes. I just went with what I wanted to do and it seemed to work. I really like those two issues of that Spillane-type story with Aquaman in a trench coat. Aparo’s drawing was great on that. CBA: What was the problem with Aquaman #56? The book had a continued storyline but was abruptly cancelled, breaking a 12-yearold's heart...! Steve: The thing that Carmine apparently got upset about (which I found out about after the fact and which was a stumbling block for me to get any work at DC for some time) was I heard that he read “The Creature that Devoured Detroit” (Aquaman #56) and didn’t like it. I heard he thought that it was too complicated and too confusing. So apparently the word went down to the other editors to basically not hire me. Dick wasn’t there any more. I knew nothing of this and I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t get any work. Later Joe Orlando was feeling benevolent, I guess, and finally hired me. “The Creature That Devoured Detroit” has every word in it that I had in my script. Usually Dick would cut something out of my scripts—I was too wordy. I was always too wordy. So the fact that he didn’t cut anything out of that one suggests to me that he was overworked. Julie Schwartz and Denny O’Neil (when he was editor) had a rule that there would be no more than 35 words in a panel. There is a panel in Aquaman #56 that has 135 words. Basically the reason that Aquaman got cancelled is that Dick wanted to edit it on a freelance basis and Carmine just didn’t want any freelance editors. The book was on shaky ground. Dick and I were told that if the latest sales figures didn’t go down, the book would go on for another six months. The figures came in and the sales were even up but still it got cancelled. I think that Carmine just didn’t want to have a freelance editor, for whatever reason. I was trying very much for an underground flavor in #56. The suburban couple watching TV, being oblivious to the coming destruction and more upset that their TV show was being interrupted. Quite a while later, Roy Thomas gave me the idea to write the second part in the last issue of the Sub-Mariner book. It was unfortunate that the story took so long to finally get printed as I plotted the story and gave it to Roy two years before it was published. If it had happened sooner more people would have recognized the fact that it was a cross-company sequel. I did sell the script to the next issue of Aquaman. It was never drawn. I wish I had a copy of the script. I remember that it started with Aquaman stumbling out of the building with various bullet COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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wounds, passing out in an alley and someone finding him. The only other thing I remember is that it guest-starred the Green Arrow. We set up for that a couple issues before in a back-up story called “Computer Trap.” In the background in one of the scenes, standing in a line under the water is the Green Arrow, making no sense at all. It was Jim’s idea. (Before the “Deadman” back-up, Jim put in a rock formation in the shape of Deadman with his usual stance: fist-raised and screaming at the gods.) CBA: The issues with the “Deadman” back-ups were extraordinary. Why did you decide to do them? Steve: Because Jim needed time off. To some extent the fillers that we did were set-ups and springboards for future stories. Dick had asked me, “Why do you always do a 23-page story? Why not do a 20-page story and throw in a back-up?” I don’t know why but I didn’t think it was a bad idea because then I could set-up for future stories. The back-ups came in the last issues so I never got to the bigger story that they were leading up to. I enjoyed the way that those back-up stories worked. It was after I had written the first two Aquaman chapters that everybody at DC was trying to get the back-up slot. Wein, Wolfman and Gerry Conway were giving Dick ideas but he didn’t like any of them until Neal suggested a story that tied into the Aquaman stories. Dick told me just prior to my writing the third issue and I had all sorts of things I was going to tie up in the third issue but I left them dangling. I thought, “Okay, Neal can handle it!” That was fun. I remember that Neal was waiting in the coffee room at DC for me to bring in the script of the third one. He didn’t start his part until he had read all of mine. He was a little upset about the loose ends. I remember him yelling at me in the coffee room. Aparo even put his own fingerprints in one of those way-out page designs. CBA: Your stories started having the same social relevance that was permeating the other DC books. Steve: “As the Sea Dies” was my first issue that was really consciously socially-relevant—trying to do Denny O’Neil. You could chalk it up to jealousy. Denny was getting all of this publicity for doing the social consciousness stuff and Aquaman, which I thought I was doing a good job on, was not getting anywhere near the press. He was getting into newspapers and magazines—not just fanzines, but mainstream stuff. I did that issue just to show that I could do it. I did get a little publicity—I remember some magazine compared that with a Green Lantern. I enjoyed playing with the form while Denny was off playing with the content. I think that social relevance has a place in comics. It wasn’t anything that I was particularly interested in. I was having more fun in other areas. I thought it was time for a comedy story so we did “Is California Sinking?” I enjoyed making fun of Harlan Ellison. Whenever he came to New York, Harlan would end up at these sci-fi fan parties that Denny, Gerry and I would also get invited to. I knew that he was somewhat upset with my title, “The City on the Edge of Nowhere,” which was similar to the name of his Star Trek episode, “The City on the Edge of Forever.” I hadn’t talked to him since I had done that so I said, “Oh yeah, he’s upset? Wait until he sees this!” So I did the Elliott Harlanson character. CBA: You finally got to work with the other Aquaman artist, Nick Cardy, on Teen Titans. Steve: Nick had done a couple of my issues before I met him. I remember meeting him around the time I did “Greed Kills,” because I had asked for a very psychedelic opening page and Nick was apologizing for not doing that—but I thought his page was a much better idea than my original! A lot of people like the first two issues that I did but I’m not too crazy about them. I always liked “Greed Kills” and “Some Call it Noise.” I do like the way I handled the character of Lilith. That last issue, I only wrote the first half. It was finished off by Haney. I actually sold Dick an entire issue which he passed on to Boltinoff who threw out the last half of my story and Haney wrote something different. CBA: Your story in House of Mystery, "The Poster Plague," is said to have led to the development of Plop! Steve: “The Poster Plague” won me my first Shazam award and basically it was the basis for Plop! In Plop! they had the “ZA” proSummer 1999

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duction numbers, ever noticed them? That’s for Zany, the original name for Plop! It was going to be super-hero parodies—short, little two-pagers and I saw a couple of them. John Albano was writing them and they weren’t bad but a whole book of these things just didn’t seem like a great idea. It didn’t seem like a particularly good book they were developing. At the same time I was trying to develop some humorous horror stories, trying to extend that particular combination. Horror stories in comics are essentially punchline stories anyway, so there already is a connection so I was trying to milk it. “The Poster Plague” was originally written for Warren and it got rejected. It was not intended as a cartoon-style story—that was Joe Orlando’s idea. At that point at DC, you didn’t turn in a full script but rather a plot to be approved and then that became a full script. It was almost unheard of that I would come in with a full script but I explained that I had written it for another company and it was turned down. Joe liked it so much that he basically changed the whole of Zany into Plop! He bought the story for House of Mystery and gave it to Sergio Aragonés to draw. Then in a conference about Zany, Carmine said to Joe, “Why don’t you call it ‘Plop!’ like that sound effect in that Skeates’ story?” The sound effect in my story was actually “Klop!” and that’s what Joe started saying but somebody chimed in, “No, no, Plop! That’s it! The title of magazine!” So three letters were mine and one letter was Carmine’s. CBA: You had a great story in the first issue. Steve: “The Gourmet” in Plop! #1 was my second Shazam award. When I accepted the award, I thanked the National Lampoon for publishing the Rodriguez cartoon I stole the idea from! The book developed its own tone but the problem was that Joe never recognized what that tone was. It had this very cynical attitude—thanks to being released during the Watergate era—and the basic attitude of Plop! was that all institutions are evil and the innocent are the only ones who really get stepped on. That was the underlying theme of that whole book and I think that it developed it on its own. Consider, for example, “A Likely Story,” which appeared in #8 but was bought for #2. By the time that got into the magazine, it no longer fit into what the magazine had evolved into. DC had a lot of hopes for Plop! but it just never came together like they wanted it to. Once they put ads in it, I think that killed it. It was set-up to have this laid-back pace which just didn’t work with a limited number of pages. Dave Manak and Lee Marrs did some nice stuff. CBA: How do you rate your DC experience? Steve: It was basically positive. There were some definite low points but I really enjoyed a lot of that stuff—Aquaman, The Hawk and the Dove, and Plop! very much. Sometimes stuff got by in spite of management. Like Aquaman when nobody was reading it. I have a feeling that they might have clamped down had anybody noticed what we were doing over there in that corner. The thing about having Carmine as Editorial Director is that I guess he didn’t read that much. A lot of people were getting away with things because he apparently didn’t read the stuff. CBA: How do you want to be remembered? Steve: I keep telling people the stuff I most want to be remembered for is the Under Dog book I wrote at Gold Key. I had to do basic super-hero stories and make them rhyme!

Above: Would you buy slightly used Witching Hour inventory from this man? It’s editor/artist Dick Giordano, hamming it up for “The Great American Dream” fumetti story (from Crazy #1). ©1972 Marvel Entertainment.

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#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!

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#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!

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#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!

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(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!

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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

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CBA Interview

Breaking into the Ranks Interview with Marv Wolfman on his early DC days Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Below: Another page from the rejected Teen Titans #20 story, “The Titans Fit the Battle of Jericho,” co-written by Marv and drawn by Nick Cardy. See CBA #1 for a detailed article on the controversial incident. Teen Titans ©1968 DC Comics.

Marv Wolfman is probably best recalled for his exceptional, long run scripting Tomb of Dracula for Marvel throughout the ’70s, and for his development of The New Teen Titans in the ’80s. The writer also had a shortlived (but fondly-recalled by this editor) team-up with Gil Kane as the writer/artist team on Superman in the early ’80s. Marv served a number of editorial positions at both DC and Marvel, notably as editor-in-chief of Marvel. This interview was conducted via telephone on February 9, 1998. It was copy-edited by Marv.

Comic Book Artist: Where you a big DC fan as a kid? Marv Wolfman: I’ve been a DC fan since the early ‘50s when Superman first started as a TV show. I had never seen anything like that show before—remember, I was just a little kid and there was nothing else on TV remotely like it. At the end of the show there was the legend “Superman is based on the copyrighted character appearing in Superman and Action Comics magazines.” As soon as the show was over my friend and I rushed and brought our first comic books—either Action Comics or Superboy. I don’t know what I expected but they were wonderful. I was immediately hooked and began to collect them. That grew into wanting to write and draw my own comics which led to my becoming a professional. CBA: When did you first meet up with Len Wein? Marv: I was in junior high school and I had a letter published in Mystery in Space. Somebody named Ron called me who had tracked down my number from the address in the letter column. He lived in Levittown and I was living in Queens. As it turned out, purely by a comic book-like coincidence, my sister lived in Levittown and I was coming out to visit her the very next day. So Ron and his friend Len came to meet me and that was the beginning. CBA: Were you a regular letter hack? Marv: Not as big as some but I certainly wrote an awful lot of them. It was fun to see my name in print but I really wanted to give my opinions of what I’d read. Whatever else people may say about me, they know I always have an opinion, even if I have no idea what I’m talking about. Seeing your name in print as a kid certainly was a kick and where else back then could you do that? There were letter columns back in the old DC Comics but for a long time there were no addresses, just name and city. Julie Schwartz, however, came from fandom and helped found science fiction fandom. He made it possible for comic fans to get in touch with each other. I was sent copies of the only two fanzines published at the time (Rocket’s Blast and The Comic Reader) because my address was in the letter column and within a few months I became a contributor. I was one of the few fans living in New York who visited the DC offices on a regular basis. CBA: You started as an artist, though.... Marv: Yeah, but I contributed to fanzines as both a writer and an artist. Back in the ’60s DC gave tours of the offices every Thursday. My high school—the High School of Art & Design—was only about six blocks from DC so I would go over to the offices after school and take the tours. I got to know everybody and find out what was happening in the comics. Back then, there were so few fans that it was considered a novelty and they got a kick out of it. They would tell me what was going on and then I would send a letter to the Comic Reader and give them the news. This was important because there were no weekly newszines or Internet chat groups like today so whenever I would do a report, the zines would print it. CBA: What was the purpose of these tours? Was it that if a kid crashed on Monday and was annoying, they would say, “Come on down on Thursday and we’ll show you the place”? Marv: They just did tours, I don’t know why. They had somebody who would take you around and show you where the editors worked. It was a very tiny office at the time. They would bring you to the production department where two artists worked all of the time—then it was Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson. They had regular tables and were there nearly every single time we toured. So you got to know the professionals. This was early on in fandom and no one had ever paid attention to the pros before so it must have been a big kick for them and they enjoyed it. Also, although we COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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were fans—we weren’t annoying. We were in awe. CBA: You guys would dress in jackets and ties? Marv: That’s only when we became professionals. We had to dress that way because that was the standard. We were considered kids— heck, we were kids—but DC was very formal and as we wanted to be considered professionals we had to wear suits and ties like everyone else. Of course, this being the ’60s, we slowly demolished that nod to civility. You have to realize they were very suspicious of us. Remember, at DC no one new had entered comics in 20-25 years. There were literally no new writers. All the writers at the time were probably older than I am now, and here we were, young kids coming in, and nobody knew how to deal with us. In time we completely changed the way the system worked. As we got more and more assignments and they wanted us more we started to dress the way we wanted to dress. We knew we had an effect when Julie stopped wearing white shirts and started wearing colored shirts! We were probably the first people to come in wearing jeans and that sort of clothing. And that’s the writers. When the younger artists came in, forget it! All hell broke loose. CBA: Do you remember the writers’ movement in the late ’60s? Were you aware of it? Marv: Not at all. That was before me. I became aware in the last 15 years or so when it started to get publicity and people from back then started to talk about it. We had no idea. We obviously were the hedge against the older writers but we didn’t know that. What would we have done had we known? I have no idea. We were working at the same time as those writers. Don’t forget that we were big fans—we loved what we did—and a lot of those people did not love the industry. It was purely a job for them. The trouble was the older writers weren’t paying attention to what was going on in the field. Marvel was doing phenomenal business and was taking over from DC. We knew the Marvel stuff inside and out while they were not paying any attention to the market. Eventually, the editors recognized that and wanted to deal with us. I was both a DC and Marvel fan. My approach was to combine the excitement of the early Marvel stuff with DC’s stories. My favorite writer at DC was John Broome and my favorite at Marvel was, of course, Stan. Whether I achieved that is something else. CBA: Were you and Len the best of friends? Marv: Yes. We still are. CBA: How did you break-in? Marv: You might remember that DC was publishing a comic called Blackhawk. The editors made a major change in the characters, from people who were essentially soldiers into something they themselves called “The Junk Heap Heroes.” In my mind they totally ruined the Blackhawks. So, in my arrogance, I wrote a spec script which turned them back into the soldiers they were and I mailed it to the editor. Naturally, I never heard anything from him. Several years later I got a call from Dick Giordano who had just started working at DC (I had already met Dick at comic conventions so he knew who I was) and he said that he had just found an envelope in his desk, unopened for two years and wondered if I wanted him to still read it. I said yes, he read it and bought it. Bob Haney rewrote the dialogue but it was my story and that was my first DC sale. CBA: Did Dick clue you in that Blackhawk was doomed to cancellation? Marv: No. Dick was also a big Blackhawk fan and he had hoped we’d be able to fix the plummeting sales. Unfortunately, Blackhawk was doomed. The last issue was the one after mine. CBA: Dick told me his plan was to get Reed Crandall. Marv: I was so excited because Reed did Blackhawk for Quality Comics and I loved his art. Unfortunately, he never did do it. Just before the deadline the script was given to Pat Boyette who did the entire job—penciled, inked and lettered in less than a week. It’s not the greatest job Pat ever did but not bad considering how quickly he had to do it. I have all the artwork for that book. The cover was excellent. CBA: Were you trying to push yourself as an artist at DC? Marv: Long before my fanzine days ended, I realized that I was a far better writer than an artist. The art helped me to think visually and consequently I think that helped me break into comics because I could think as an artist but I wrote as a writer. I always wanted to be Summer 1999

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an artist. I still draw and I’m still bad. I could have become a mediocre inker. Everyone seemed to like my writing and everyone thought that I was just fair as an artist. I also found that I enjoyed writing more. Art was too much of a struggle because I just wasn’t good at it. CBA: What books did you aspire to work on at DC? Marv: Superman. It’s still my favorite character and I wish that I were writing it today. CBA: Were you showing up at DC every day? Marv: No, only when I had to hand in an assignment and that was rarely because it was very hard getting assignments then—remember, they didn’t trust us. We were the kids and had we known about the political situation at the time, we would have understood that we were going against the old writers but we had no idea. We thought that we were at a place that simply didn’t like kids, that it was just a generational thing. By the time Dick came in, things started to change. There were only one or two of the old editors left and Julie never had a problem with us (though you would think that he would have because he was the old guy but he was a fan himself and he never had an age problem with any of the writers or artist—he just went for the talent he thought would work). Most of the other editors were replaced with editors who were far younger—in their thirties rather than their sixties. I don’t have an age problem with working with people either older or younger because I came in with

a generation who didn’t care about the age thing while the older generation did not know what to make of comics because the field was changing very quickly. Marvel was shaking up DC because they had no concept why Marvel was selling. I remember being an assistant editor in 1971 and being told by everyone that the reason why Marvel was outselling DC was because of bad artwork, and I was going, “No, no, no! Marvel is selling because they have better stories.” That was not well taken, as you can imagine. CBA: And Marvel’s great co-creator, Jack Kirby, came to DC. Marv: I remember opening up the first Jack Kirby story at DC and I read it before anybody else. Everyone knew that I was a friend of Jack so that’s why I was assigned to write the editorial page for that book [Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #133]. CBA: You worked with Len as a writing team? Marv: Not as often as people think. We did a couple of stories together, but not that many. CBA: Len mentioned an incident you two were involved in…. Marv: Some work was stolen—artwork and bound volumes—out of the DC library. They assumed, because we were the young kids/fans/art collectors (and remember, back then, professionals did not want their art), that we took it. Two years later, Phil Seuling, the man who invented the direct market, reported that he was offered the goods by one of the DC editors. Of course by that point Joe and

Dick were buying our stories on a semi-regular basis anyway. What the publisher at the time forgot was that since we were fans we’d never dream of taking anything from the offices. We were vindicated and, unfortunately, the editor who was taking the art—because he needed to raise money for hospital treatments—died. I won’t say who it was, but he was a good man, despite inadvertently being responsible for our blacklisting. There is a lot of 1940s and ‘50s DC art that managed to survive because we saved it. Back then DC used to incinerate their old artwork. When I was interning at DC one Summer they had me cut up all the artwork before it went to the incinerator. I was told, however, that I could keep some of the art I cut up, only after it was cut. So I very carefully cut the pages between the panel borders and taped them back together later. A lot of artwork was saved in that fashion. I interned at DC for two Summers. They knew I was an art student so I did cover separations and anything else that they wanted. Len wasn’t an intern because he lived all the way out on Long Island but sometimes he would come into the city and they’d give him small jobs to do. This was before we ever sold anything. CBA: Did you hang out in Neal Adams office much? Marv: We started selling individually before Neal came to DC so by the time he came, we were the young professionals. We all hung together. Neal was directly across the hall from Dick Giordano and Julie Schwartz’s office, if I recall correctly, at 575 Lexington. CBA: So when the finished piece made it to Julie, were you guys pretty much out of there? Marv: We were still doing stuff like a short stories for House of Secrets. Because of the blacklist, we couldn’t get really big work but that slowly changed, and we slowly began getting work again. CBA: What happened with Dick Giordano? Marv: The books weren’t selling, unfortunately. CBA: So you left DC for a time? Marv: I became a teacher and wrote very intermittently at that point. Then I came back to DC as Joe Kubert’s assistant editor. Joe was only in a few days a week so he needed an assistant. He had met me at the conventions and knew that I was a professional. I was one of the very few young people who was entering the business at that point. He hired me. CBA: How was the experience? Marv: It was wonderful. I learned an awful lot. One of the lessons I learned was when I wrote an “Unknown Soldier” story, full script, in which Joe ignored every single scene description that I wrote. He kept all the dialogue but repasted it his own way. I learned more about storytelling from that than I ever could have learned from anyone else. His storytelling is masterful. I learned to think fast. We had a call to do a reprint because an “Unknown Soldier” story never came in and he said, “Find a ‘Sgt. Rock’ story and turn it into an ‘Unknown Soldier’ story.” We had it done in one afternoon and we started to do that on a regular basis whenever certain people were late. Rather than just take a straight reprint, we would convert it. I did a lot of rewriting and slowly learned how to be an editor. CBA: Comic Book Profiles quotes you as saying that Joe was sometimes hard to work with. Marv: Joe had a temper and he was very, very difficult to work with. He had very precise ways he wanted me to work. But, I learned so much from him, and my respect for Joe right to this day is strong. He’s one of the best artists that this business has ever seen. CBA: What did you work on with Joe? Marv: I was the assistant on Tarzan of the Apes and convinced them to do “John Carter” because I was a big, big John Carter fan. I wrote that for Joe and then wrote it in Weird Worlds. Then I wrote it at Marvel as well. I worked on “Beyond the Farthest Star” for Joe and every so often I’d do re-writes on the war stories. CBA: Did you do a story with Len drawn by— Marv: Russ Heath? CBA: [laughs] How in heaven’s name did you know I was going to say his name? Marv: It’s the only story that Len and I did for Joe Kubert. We had come up with this very weird concept comparing World War II to a cavemen war, showing that war is war no matter the time period. The story dealt with soldiers trying to get to the only pool of water in continued on page 95

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CBA Interview

An Illegitimate Son of Superman Talking with Swamp Thing co-creator Len Wein Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Len Wein blossomed as a writer at DC Comics during the early ’70s, arguably reaching his nadir with the oft-remembered Swamp Thing. (For Len’s recollections on the genesis of Swamp Thing, please refer to the article, “A Tale from the Swamp,” in CBA #1.) He also had a very memorable stint as scribe on the Jim Aparo-drawn Phantom Stranger series just before arriving on Swampy. Since those heady days, Len wrote nearly the entire Marvel line at one time or another and even served as Editor-in-Chief for a spell. This interview was conducted by phone on February 5, 1998 and was approved by Len. Comic Book Artist: How did you get involved with DC? Len Wein: Back in the early and mid ‘60s, DC would have an office tour on Thursdays. I was relatively local—I lived on Long Island—and I would go into the city to take the tour at least once a month, sometimes more often. Marv Wolfman often came with me, so we became familiar to the folks up there. From the time I was in eighth grade, I knew that I wanted to be in the comics business—as an artist. One of my junior high school art teachers actually told me that I had artistic talent, so I said, “Oh, good. I’ll be a comic book artist!” CBA: Who was your favorite artist? Len: At that point, Jack Kirby. CBA: So you were into Marvel as well as DC at the time. Len: As a reader, I used to collect everything. CBA: Were you from the same neighborhood as Marv? Len: Not completely. We lived about 20 miles apart—he was in Queens and I was on Long Island. We met through the letter column of Mystery in Space. Another friend and I were looking for relatively local comic fans to start a fan club to get together and share our common interests. So this friend and I saw Marv’s name and address in the column and decided to call him. Coincidentally, I lived in Levittown, the cliché of the east, and so did Marv’s older sister. He was coming out to visit her that weekend, so we got together and became friends. That was many, many, many years ago. CBA: What were the DC offices like at the time? Len: A guy named Walter from the production department conducted the tour every Thursday at noon and Marv and I became fixtures there. We would walk through the production department, look at the art on the wall, and marvel at just being there in the heart of the comic book business. That’s were I first met Julie Schwartz, Neal Adams, and many other people. CBA: Did Mark Hanerfeld— Len: Mark was one of us. Marv, Andy Yanchus, myself and Mark (along with others whose names you won’t recognize—they led normal lives) formed our own fan club called TISOS—The Illegitimate Sons of Superman. CBA: [laughs] What was the atmosphere like in the office? Len: It was a business. Everyone wore jackets and ties—it was like a grown-up place to go as opposed to what we turned it into in later years. Frequently, the editors would ask us what we thought of some artwork or upcoming project. It was very odd for them to have guys our age showing up all the time, so they started to recognize us and solicited our opinions. Though I don’t think that we made an ounce of difference in their decisions until we actually became a part of the company. CBA: Did you strike up a rapport? Len: I guess I must have because they didn’t fire me. We spoke to Summer 1999

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Julie, Jack Miller (who was a very dear man) and a few others up there on a fairly regular basis. CBA: When did you start submitting work? Len: By the time I was in junior high and Marv was a year or so older, we decided that we were going to work together on things and so we worked on various fanzines. Dick Giordano over at Charlton seemed to be very accessible at that point, so we put together some samples and hoped to get some work. It took us so long to actually put the samples together that by the time we were ready to submit it, Dick had already moved to DC. CBA: Were you into organized fandom? Len: You’re kidding, right? I helped throw the first comics convention in New York! You’re talking to the man who coined the phrase, “ComiCon.” In 1964, our guests were Tom Gill (who drew the Lone Ranger newspaper strip), Steve Ditko (believe it or not), Flo Steinberg (Marvel’s secretary) and one dealer in the back of the room, some guy named Phil Seuling. It was a oneday convention held on a Saturday. There was a fair turnout. Ron Fradkin, Bernie Bubnis and I organized it. CBA: Roy Thomas didn’t suggest you for the job to Dick? You just went up to DC? Len: We were so amateurish, Marv and I went up there one day with our samples to see Dick, but we didn’t even make an appointment. We just showed up at the door at 575 Lexington Avenue and, of course, we picked the day that Dick was out sick. We were standing there looking all forlorn when back from lunch comes Carmine Infantino and Joe Orlando. They looked at us and our portfolio, asked what were were doing there, and we told them that we wanted to be in the business. Carmine said, “Show your samples to my boy Joey here and if he likes it, you guys are in.” So Joe took our portfolio back to his office and we sat through the longest halfhour of our lives waiting. Finally he

Below: As Joe Orlando revealed in CBA #1, the mystery book host-siblings, Cain and Abel, were based physically on writer Len Wein and assistant editor Mark Hanerfeld, respectively. Here the “brothers” grin for the camera during a visit to the Rutland Vermont Halloween parade (and subsequent party at Tom Fagan’s mansion!). Thanks to Mark for loan of the picture.

came out and said that the art needed some work, but he really liked the writing. So he asked us if we were interested in submitting stories to his House of Mystery comic. Now, I had never really written, except to give myself stuff to draw. I mean, our plan was for me to be the artist—Marv was going to be the writer. But we went home and separately came up with a bunch of ideas, came back to DC within 48 hours and Joe bought a

couple of the premises we submitted. That’s how I got into the business. The first story I wrote never saw print. It was called “The Final Days of Nicholas Toombs.” Jack Sparling drew it and it’s still somewhere in the DC archives. CBA: Did you sell material in rapid succession? Len: It started with those few short stories and sort of snowballed from there. Next thing we sold was a Teen Titans story to Dick Giordano, then we started selling mystery stories on a regular basis. We had a great training ground. Back in those days, there were anthology books, places to learn your craft by working on small stuff before you were on to bigger things. CBA: Were you aware that suddenly a lot of older writers weren’t working there anymore after requesting health benefits? Len: No. I didn’t know anything about that. CBA: Did you freelancers keep tabs on each other? Len: Back then, there was something called First Friday. Back in the

days when Jeff Jones was married to the lady who is now Louise Simonson, they had a big apartment over on West 79th St., on the Upper West Side, and the first Friday night of each month, whoever felt like it (which was frequently dozens of us) would gather at their place, eat pizza, drink soda and schmooze about the business. CBA: Were you excited to know that Dick Giordano was at DC? Did it feel like a change was taking place? Len: I don’t think that I ever thought of it as anything but an opportunity to be taken. As I said, we didn’t even know enough to make an appointment before we went up there! CBA: The first story you sold to Dick was that Red Star story in Teen Titans #18 that Bill Draut drew? Len: Yes. CBA: What was your first regular assignment? Len: Probably The Phantom Stranger, which was a very frustrating experience. I had been a fan of the original series, which was one of those oddball little DC books that I collected back when I was a kid, picking up back issues at conventions. I remember seeing one or two of them on the stands when I was very young but I hadn’t bought them. I was also an fan of the old radio shows like The Shadow and The Whistler, and that book reminded me of them—it was a rip-off of them actually! I was lobbying for Joe to do The Phantom Stranger when he was looking for another mystery title. I said, “This is great— cool!” and I pushed and pushed and pushed. I made Joe read the original stuff. I set up scenarios for things that could be done and he said, “This is terrific; I agree completely,” and he gave the assignment to Mike Friedrich! I sat there and said, “Excuse me?” Originally the book was reprints of the original series with some art changes and Mike wrote framing sequences around them. Then, by the fourth issue, Marv and I did the framing sequences and eventually I took over the book by myself. That’s what probably made my reputation. I started working with Jim Aparo, who I didn’t meet until many years later. He never came to the office and just mailed his work in. We had a couple of telephone conferences and I remember he was a soft-spoken guy. Neil Gaiman and I keep trying to convince DC to reprint that run of The Phantom Stranger that I wrote—Neil says it was influential to him and a number of others. Now that DC is doing many more of these bound volumes—their back order business is very profitable— I’m hoping that maybe this year they’ll finally put together a package of those Phantom Strangers. The chronology I remember is that Friedrich was let go of the series early on, then Marv and I either together or apart did some frames, and then Bob Kanigher came in. Then Jim came in. Bob was brilliant, but also crazy in his own way, and Joe finally said to him, “No, you can’t do it anymore.” And I got the gig from Bob. CBA: Were you looking for a super-hero gig? Len: I was happy to have anything regular. I was just glad to be there. There was a weird period between when I started working for DC and when I came into my own, when I didn’t do much work for DC. There was a problem early on when Marv and I took over the Metal Men where we only did one issue and we were let go. A bunch of original artwork, back when they started to realize it had value, disappeared from the office over a short period of time. And since we were the only new kids there—everyone else there had been there for many years—it was assumed that we had stolen the stuff. We argued that we had nothing to do with it but, of course, who believes kids? We were essentially let go as [a DC executive] told everybody not to use us and that we weren’t trustworthy. Many of the editors backed off, but Dick, God love him, didn’t give a damn what [the executive] had to say and gave us whatever work he could. So I went over to Gold Key, which was just a block away from DC in those days. They were doing all sorts of books including Twilight Zone, Boris Karloff’s Tales of Terror, Mod Wheels, Star Trek and others. I was doing Hot Wheels for Dick when I showed up at Gold Key’s door one day, looking for work. Wally Greene and Paul Kuhn, very dear men, were the editors there, and the company generally had older writers and artists working for them who had been there for many years. They said, “Why are you here?” I said, “I’d like to work for you guys.” They looked at each other, then back at me, and said, “Why?” I showed them some samples and ended up working for them for two or three years. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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CBA: Was it helpful to write in other genres? Len: I think one of the reasons the industry has the problems it has today is because many of the writers don’t know how to write anything but super-hero stories. I praise the independents who use the medium to tell all kinds of stories that aren’t super-hero. CBA: Could you make a decent living writing for comics? Len: When I started out I lived at home, but after two years in the business, I got an apartment which I shared with Gerry Conway— we roomed together for about a year. Gerry, like Joe Kubert and Jim Shooter, was a child prodigy, and started in the business at the age of 13. We followed each other through various books and then Gerry left for Marvel. He’s actually the reason I ended up at Marvel, luring me over at Roy Thomas’ behest on a book-by-book basis— Gerry kept giving up books that I would end up with. So that, one day, I just woke up and noticed that I wasn’t at DC anymore. CBA: Were you still working with Marv? Len: At that point, Marv and I pretty much developed our separate careers. During that period when DC fired us, Marv left the business, for the most part, and became an art teacher. I just kept doggedly pursuing what I wanted and went to Gold Key, Skywald, and all over the place for anybody who would pay me. CBA: But you weren’t gone that long from DC? Len: I worked on and off for DC for about six months and I got a very good education. Marv moved out to Long Island and kept busy until the business cooled down. DC had discovered that the person who had actually stolen the artwork (whose identity I obviously will not reveal) was one of their old editors of many, many years, who was selling the artwork to keep up payments to his mistress. That’s when they said, “We’re sorry. Come back.” Dick, of course, was pushing for us to stay all of the time. CBA: Did it feel like a sterile environment at DC? Len: No, not at all. We made it as much fun as we could. We made our own reality. By the time I had gotten there, Bob Kanigher had had his medical problems and he wasn’t editing anymore, just writing. I worked for Joe Orlando, Dick, Mike Sekowsky, Julie, and those guys kept me as busy as possible. CBA: What kind of guy was Mike Sekowsky? Len: He was a dear man, but a very odd duck. He was the first comic book professional that I ever met. When I was about 12, he lived next door to my aunt on the other side of Levittown. They became acquaintances and she knew that I loved comics so she introduced us. One afternoon Marv and I went over to Mike’s place and watched him draw the Justice League of America. To show you how far back this goes, back when original art had no value: as we were getting ready to leave, Mike said, “Look, I have a pile of junk upstairs and if you want it, you kids can take it or else I’m going to throw it away.” He came down with an armful of artwork that was a foot thick and started doling it out. I got some Kubert artwork— the first “Viking Prince” story—and covers from early issues of The Brave and the Bold. I’ve traded much of it away over the years. Mike was a gruff, big bear of a guy, 6’4”, 250 pounds, with a shock of white hair with a widow’s peak. In later years, he came out here to L.A. to do storyboard work for animation, which he was perfect for. At heart, he was a decent guy, but he was kind of scary! CBA: What was Jack Miller like? Len: Jack was a very talented man and I always liked him a lot. An old gentleman that was around for many years and he was a terrific writer—those early “Deadman” stories were all his. CBA: Did you know George Kashdan? Len: Yeah, and as a matter of fact, in later years, George ended up working for me when I was editing various mystery books. A very nice guy who was Peter Lawford-like: well-dressed, amiable and always did a solid, professional job. CBA: Murray Boltinoff? Len: Murray always reminded me of a chipmunk. He was a short guy, 5’4”-5” and he prided himself on never buying anyone’s first story. He wanted to make sure someone else thought the work was good first. Just before I got into the problem of the stolen artwork, I started selling things to Murray, getting the go-ahead to do a Tomahawk and a Challengers of the Unknown story. The day after he accepted the assignment for me to write them, this thing with the artwork hit the fan and he retracted the offer. Summer 1999

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CBA: So you were really just out on your ass? Len: I would occasionally go in and visit Dick. Though technically I couldn’t work for them, Dick never cared what [management] said. Nor did Julie. I’ll never forget the legendary day after Carmine became publisher, when he and Julie got into a big fight in the hall about something, and Carmine started threatening him. Julie said, “Look, I was here before you got here and I’ll be here after you’re gone.” And Julie was right. CBA: Did you have a relationship with Carmine? Len: Sure. I even talked him into doing that first “Human Target” story. Back in those days, on Friday evenings, some of us would go out after work to a pub across the street called Friar Tuck’s, which served good drinks and nice dinners. We’d eat, hang out and talk about the business. Every once in a while, Carmine—very lonely at the top—would join us. So one night, under circumstances I no longer recall, he and I were the last guys left in the bar. Everyone else had gone and we were just sitting around talking about the business, and Carmine was in his cups, as they say; he was a little bit blitzed. We just talked about things and he talked about how he hated being publisher and how he would much rather be an artist. I said, “If you could draw anything, what would you like to draw?” He said, “I’d love to do a good mystery or detective story like the old Danger Trail

Above: Courtesy of Ronn Sutton, here’s the uncensored Swamp Thing #3, page 13. When published, the Comics Code forced DC to remove the hypodermic from the first two panels, and the flames engulfing the monster in panel six. Words by Len Wein and art by Bernie Wrightson. ©1973 DC Comics.

continued on page 95 81

CBA Interview

Like a Bat Out of Hell Chatting with Bernie Wrightson, DC’s Monster Maker Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Bernie Wrightson epitomizes the “New Blood” that arrived at DC in the late ’60s and then-editorial director Carmine Infantino’s ability to recognize extraordinary talent. Along with Mike Kaluta, Bernie began as a somewhat crude (if obviously talented) artist empowered with an intense enthusiasm for the art form, and he flowered at DC to become an exceptional world-class artist of enormous capability. Before moving on to Warren to create some of his finest achievements (which were explored in his interview in our last issue), Bernie left a lasting impact on Joe Orlando’s mystery books, most notably on the Orlando-Wein-Wrightson-Saladino masterpiece, Swamp Thing. This interview was conducted by telephone on March 15, 1998 and it was approved by the artist. Special thanks are owed to the aforementioned Michael Wm. Kaluta.

Comic Book Artist: Did you always have an interest in comics? Bernie Wrightson: When I was a kid of six or seven, I read the EC horror comics off the stands. My mother didn’t know about them or she would have ripped ’em up and thrown them out! There was a candy and cigar store down the street that had a big display window with little window seats. A whole wall of this place was covered with comic books, and I went there with friends. Of course, the first thing I gravitated to was the horror comics, and it didn’t take long to realize that the EC comics were the best. They also rented comics for 2¢ each and you could sit in the window and read them, so it was a babysitting service for the neighborhood. If I found one that was particularly disturbing, I’d buy it. Haunt of Fear #27 was under the mattress of my bed for about a year before my mother found it. I read that thing to tatters like it was pornography! It was a forbidden fruit and that issue with the classic Ingels cover and the lead story, “About Face” really grabbed me. It was so f*cking twisted! I loved it! It was almost like a drug; I had to have more and more of it because it would last long. CBA: So you started drawing? Bernie: I’ve been drawing for as long as I remember. I went to Catholic school and have vivid memories of getting into trouble for drawing in my textbook—always, always pictures of monsters. It wasn’t just the comics because in 1952 they re-released the old Universal monster movies to television. We had the horror host, Dr. Lucifer, who was played by this old B-western actor, Richard Dix, who was on his last legs doing this Shock Theatre thing. CBA: When did you see comic books as a possibility for a job? Bernie: Probably in the mid-’60s when they reprinted some of the ECs in those Ballantine paperbacks with the great Frazetta covers and I remembered that this was the stuff that really creeped me out as a kid. By then, I was old enough to realize that someone actually drew these and then I became interested in finding out who these people were. I could recognize the styles and differentiate. What really got me into it was seeing

the stuff in black-&-white as drawings instead of this totally finished, fully colored thing in a comic book. I could see that these pictures were made of lines which had never really occurred to me previously. CBA: You were self-taught? Bernie: I never went to art school but I took that artists correspondence course and it really was a good course. I took the illustration course which was founded by Albert Dorne, Robert Fawcett, Norman Rockwell—really the top guys—and the instruction books were filled with drawings by these guys. You could see the process how they worked. CBA: Drawing is a terribly solitary act; did you reach a point when you had to decide whether you’d choose a social life or just sit alone and draw? Bernie: My friends were out dating, having fun, hanging out and learning how to be real, regular people and I stayed home and drew. Because drawing was my passion and my total focus, it was all that I wanted to do. To this day, 50 years old, I’m still an emotional retard. I have the hardest time relating to people and still have a hard time getting a date! I literally played hooky the day they gave this information out at school. I was a complete willing outcast. CBA: When I first saw your work, I thought that you were a Golden Age artist. Bernie: A lot of people come up to me at conventions and say, “Oh my God! You’re a lot younger than I expected!” They expect me to be in my 70s. CBA: Your work seems to have a singular reverence to the work of premier EC artist Graham Ingels. Bernie: It wasn’t just Ghastly; it was Frazetta and Jack Davis. I was lucky. I got attracted to these old school, top of the line guys. My drawing background comes more out of illustration than out of comic books. Myself, Kaluta, Jeff Jones—basically the whole Studio— came out of an older tradition like storytelling pictures. I was just always attracted to the art. CBA: How did you find out that there were people like you out there? Bernie: I was in an art show in Baltimore, an outdoor thing, and anybody who could lift a brush could enter work in this thing. It was around a big reservoir and you hung your pictures on this metal fence. I had these huge paintings I did after getting into the Frazetta paperback covers and it was barbarians, vampires, blood and gore, and really creepy sh*t. This 13-year-old kid came up and started talking about horror comics. I was 17 and I’m thinking that he was awful young to remember the horror comics and he said, “Oh, I have a complete set of EC Comics.” So he invited me over—he was the son of a rich doctor—and sure enough, he had a complete run. Needless to say, we became best friends and I was up there every weekend. That’s when I realized that I had just scratched the surface of EC—I hadn’t seen nearly any of them! Anyway, he told me about this convention in New York where Frazetta was going to be guest of honor and I scraped together train fare. That’s were I met Kaluta, Jeff, and a whole bunch of people. CBA: Did you have comic art with you? Bernie: I had a big envelope full of drawings. No comic book stuff but little single pictures. Some were very oddly shaped because I would cut the best part of the picture out. It was werewolves, monsters, barbarians, wizards—Universal meets Frank Frazetta. I started showing this stuff and meeting other artists. I had seen Jeff Jones’ work in Creepy so I was a fan of his. People are starting to crowd around and they’re starting to buy this stuff! I’m there selling drawings COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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for $2, $3, and $5! I didn’t have a table—I’m just sitting in the middle of the convention floor and there’s money flying at me! I made something like $70 and this was incredible to me! There I was with an empty envelope and people were just fawning all over me, saying, “This is great stuff! Why aren’t you working professionally?” I’m just an 18-year-old kid, thinking, “Jesus, what is this?” CBA: Al Williamson got you into comics? Bernie: Yeah, he was very instrumental. The following year, I attended a comic book convention and he was one of the guys who saw my work. By that time, I had done an eight-page comic book story called “Uncle Bill’s Barrel” for a fanzine for these guys that I met the year before. It was the only real comic book work that I had and I was showing it around. Al saw it and he thought that it was good enough to get Dick Giordano to come over and look at it. Dick thought it was good enough to show Carmine. Carmine took one look at it and says, “This kid is good. We oughta give him work.” And he punches me in the arm, puts his arm around me, and says, “You f*cking kid!” I didn’t know what to make of this because these guys were like Mafia, fast-talking Italian guys. I had never met people like this before! So I was a little intimidated and there was Carmine who looked like a really big Edward G. Robinson with the cigar and everything. These guys looked like gangsters! CBA: You obviously left an impression. How did they follow-up? Bernie: I didn’t take any of this very seriously, so I went back to my newspaper job at the Baltimore Sun. A couple of weeks go by, Kaluta calls and he says, “Al Williamson is looking for you because Dick Giordano is looking for you because Carmine Infantino is looking for you! They want to give you a sword-&-sorcery comic book!” So I called Carmine and he said that they had this book called “Nightmaster” and they wanted me to draw it. As I recall, I left the newspaper later that same week, packed up all of my stuff, got a UHaul trailer, and moved to New York. CBA: Just like that? On the promise of a comic book job? Bernie: Just like that. It was $30 a page pencil and inks. The really amazing thing was that I was able to live on that rate in New York City! This was 1968 and I had a third-floor walk-up apartment in a neighborhood I later learned was called “Needle Row,” on 77th St., real close to the American Museum of Natural History. The first week that I was there, I was robbed! I didn’t know anything! I was just this green kid from the South. But it only cost $23 a week. So I went down to DC and they gave me the first issue of “Nightmaster” in Showcase. I did the first seven pages in pencil and it was so bad because I froze up because I felt that my life depended on it—this was my career! I just sweated over every line and the result was just completely overworked and over-thought. It was very stiff and lifeless. I took it in and I could see immediately that everyone’s face fell. I thought that this was it, the shortest career on record, I’m finished. Carmine, very gently and sweetly, took me aside and said, “Look, I’ve seen this before and I know exactly what’s going on. We shouldn’t have given you a book right off the bat. You’re intimidated and we’re going to take you off of this. We’ll give the first issue to someone else and we’ll put you on the fillers for the mystery books to break you in.” And so they gave me to Joe Orlando over in the House of Mystery where I started getting these little two and three-page scripts by Marv Wolfman and Len Wein. They shelved “Nightmaster” and then, after I was there maybe five months, they gave it to Jerry Grandenetti and he did the first issue. Then, for whatever reason, they decided to continue the series, came to me and said that I had loosened up enough to be able to handle a book. By that time, I said, “Yes, I can.” And, of course, I couldn’t handle the assignment so Kaluta, Jeff, Hickman and Steve Harper all helped on that because it was an awful lot of work. I wasn’t really intimidated by it and thought that the script was silly. We read it and said, “Man, this really sucks.” None of us was really into it except to get the job done. CBA: Did you enjoy doing the short stories for Orlando? Bernie: I still enjoy the short stuff! Gimme a good story that’s just a few pages long and I can really pour on the steam and do a real bang-up job. Then I can just get it done and move on to the next thing. To this day, I’m not good with an on-going series. I’m just too slow and I lose interest. CBA: Your work matured in very short order in those short stories. Summer 1999

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Bernie: I had an awful lot of help from Joe Orlando. He was the best guy for me and any young artist. I learned so much from him in my first couple of years in comics. I would bring stuff in and Joe, in his very kind, non-judgmental, gentle way would find a panel on the page and take out his pad of tracing paper that he kept in his desk. He’d take a sheet out and lay it over, and he’d say, “Y’know, you might want to think about this,” and he would redraw the panel very quickly, with stick figures. He would teach composition and shortcuts that enhance the work. He had a way of thinking pictorially that I had never before been exposed to or would have considered. He was there, pointing me very gently in the right direction. He was very much a mentor who really cared about me. I really valued his opinion and I really treasure the experience of having worked with him. CBA: What makes Joe such a good storyteller? Bernie: I think it’s instinctual. I think that if Joe hadn’t gone into comics and his career had taken a different path, he might have been a filmmaker. Joe is just a natural storyteller and understands the process of telling a story through pictures. I always ended up coming back to Joe at DC. CBA: You were obviously very well-suited to doing short stories. Did you ever aspire to doing a series? Bernie: Just Swamp Thing which I took on because I had never done a series before. Before that, I had the short stories in the House of Mystery, a couple of horror stories for Marvel, the covers, and introduction pages—little jobs like that. I could do a cover in a day or two, get paid, I could make my share of the rent, and not have to work for another week or two. All of us were like that and it gave us a lot of time to play.

Above: Looks like an unfinished House of Mystery/Secrets cover to us. By the glorious Bernie Wrightson in his 1970s prime. Thanks to Conrad Eschenberg for sharing this image! Art ©1999 Bernie Wrightson.

Above: Another Ronn Sutton gift! Ronn writes, “It is my belief that this is an unpublished 1973 Wrightson cover. It bears great resemblance to House of Mystery #256 and Secrets of the Haunted House #5.” Ye editor did some extensive retouching on this image and I hope I didn’t go too far... the image beyond the doorway was very fuzzy and I can only pray I did an proper job. Are there limits to reconstruction? Did I go too far? Your comments are welcome and my apologies to Mr. Wrightson. Art ©1999 Bernie Wrightson

CBA: Did you go in with your own cover ideas or did Joe come up with them? Bernie: It was half and half. The one with the bat on the guy’s back was totally my idea; just me farting around and thinking that it would be a cool picture. I did it, took it in and they used it for a cover. To be absolutely honest, I never looked inside the book to see if they had somebody write a story about it. Sometimes it would be the other way around where they would have a story and ask me to do a cover for it. So I would do a riff on that. Somebody would sometimes come up to me with a cover idea. I remember a few occasions getting into it with Carmine about covers. I would want to do something fairly stark and simple and Carmine would come in and keep adding elements to it, saying, “Oh no, you gotta put a haunted house back here... Put a cat in the foreground... It still needs something—you got a big blank space over here….” That was just once in a while. Generally, I got an incredible amount of freedom on those things and I got spoiled very early on. They seemed happy. CBA: I noticed looking at the cover to House of Secrets #92, that it was part of this company-wide trend with gothic romance. Bernie: They hired Jeff Jones for a really short time because he had done these paperback book covers and he was really unhappy with that. They wanted something very specific but for some reason they couldn’t communicate exactly what it was they wanted to any of the artists. They really didn’t know what they wanted. You would bring something in and they would look at it with a puzzled look on

their faces. “No! It needs something here…” Well, if they told me what they wanted to begin with, I would have given them that! CBA: Was the Comics Code a problem for you guys? Bernie: They sent back the original script for Swamp Thing because Alec Holland died and was resurrected. They said, “This means that he is the walking dead and we do not permit zombies.” So it had to be rewritten so that Alec Holland did not die. We later got up to #5 or #6 when we received a panicked call from somebody at the Code who said, “You can’t do this! This figure is undraped!” They were saying that Swamp Thing was naked! Joe said, “You want us to put purple pants on him?” And they said, “Yes!” Joe went to bat for us in the face of total boneheaded ignorance and went through, panel by panel, from #1 showing that he had always been undraped—he was a monster! It has no genitalia and if it did, you couldn’t see it because it was always in shadow. You can’t even see the crack of its ass if it even had an ass! CBA: You inked an issue of GL/GA. Did you have anything to do with the “Kaloota” sound effect? Bernie: Mike had just gotten started and he was this kid hanging around. It took him longer to get steady work because his inking style wasn’t this slick, firm line like Dick Giordano or Murphy Anderson. So it took him longer to get work but his drawing was always f*cking solid. Neal got it into his head one day that Kaluta was not a name but a funny sound, and he was just going around the office going, “Ka-loo-ta! Ka-loo-ta!” It was just one of these silly things that Denny picked up on and they put it in the book. CBA: Ever since going to the SCARP con, you were very much a part of a social scene. Bernie: I guess so. As far as I was concerned, we were just kids who were friends. We were hanging out and we just really loved comics and drawing. There was no sense that we were participating in comic book history being made—that didn’t come until years later. I don’t know about Michael or any of the other guys, but I didn’t realize the importance of those times until somebody told me. They showed me all these comics from that period and they said, “Look at the quality of the stuff you were doing; the work you put into it, and the love and passion that comes through. Look at what a motivating force you were in the industry.” I’m looking at it and I have a tough time with this “motivating force” sh*t. The day I admit that I was a motivating force is the day I’m really going to be old—so I’m just never going to admit that. CBA: You were going to First Fridays? Bernie: Jeff Jones started those and they were terrific parties! We’d all get together and talk shop—comics, movies. Friendships were really forged and cemented. Some people met the loves of their lives! It was just great! CBA: What’s the story behind the Batman tale, “Night of the Reaper”? Bernie: We were all guest characters in that. That started as a real party at Tom Fagan’s in Rutland, Vermont. He used to throw these Halloween parties at the big mansion where he was caretaker. It was just hell and gone from New York, out in the country, a five hour drive way, way out in the woods. One year, Weiss, O’Neil, Hanerfeld, Wein, Wolfman and Conway all went. I remember Denny, Alan and me getting really drunk and stoned and we went out for a walk. It was freezing cold and we lost sight of the house. We start making up scary stories and, of course, we are all in this altered state of consciousness so it gets really, really creepy. For me it was just laughs—we got lost, creeped each other out, and then came back. But I guess it really affected Denny who came back and wrote the story. He made us characters because it was a “true” story. CBA: There was another party at Marv Wolfman’s house where you and Len talked in a parked car. Bernie: I recall Len offered me the “Swamp Thing” short story to draw that night. The deadline was really tight and I remember doing most of the work on a weekend. I had help from Kaluta, Jeff, Weiss and Louise. I remember that to save time we photographed the whole thing. The bad guy is Kaluta who could make himself look really oily. I parted his hair in the middle and he had this great moustache. Of course, I was the hero because the girl was Louise Jones, Jeff’s wife, who I had a crush on and I got to put my arm around her. CBA: Did everybody have a crush on Weezie? COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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Bernie: Yeah, I think everybody did. She was a helluva girl who was really sweet and outgoing. She was just a doll. The kind of girl that everybody wished was their girl. She still is a very sweet woman who I just love to death. CBA: Was House of Secrets #92 a rare example of using live models in your work? Bernie: I use photo reference from time to time and I blame Jeff for that. Jeff had some really good cameras, his own enlarger and dark room, and he got me interested in photography. It was just a passing interest but Jeff used a lot of photo reference. I really like the way that the story turned out and I was passionate about it. I had just broken up with a girl at the time and this story really touched that in me, so I just poured my heart and soul into it. We did the story and I pretty much forgot about it. The issue came out and apparently it was their best-selling book that month, beating out Superman and Batman. They got a lot of fan mail on it. Anyway, I went out of town for a week, came back and people are telling me, “It’s great news! We hear that you’re doing a Swamp Thing book!” I’m saying, “What ‘Swamp Thing’ book?” It took an effort for me to remember what Swamp Thing was! So I went into the office and they said, “Yeah, we want to do a book.” My immediate reaction was: “What are you crazy? You want to do a period book?” Joe said, “No, we’re going to change it around, update it and retell it in modern terms.” I was a little skeptical at first and I really needed Len to come and talk me into it. I needed him to say, “This isn’t what you think. This is what we’re going to do: we’re going to do this comic book that has a monster for a hero and nobody will have ever seen anything like this. We’re going to do our best to make a commercial success without sacrificing any integrity.” Once I heard that, it was, “Okay, I’ll sign on.” The way we approached it, it was a new thing and a pretty innovative idea. CBA: Conceptually the book seemed to become a monster movie version every issue. Bernie: It seemed to become that after a while. We needed a conflict and he needed a different foe in every issue. It became so that we would sit around and try to come up with the new monster every issue which the Swamp Thing would fight and win the day. I just got bored. CBA: You became a bona fide star in comics with Swamp Thing. How did that affect you? Bernie: I got kind of cocky. I think my ego grew way out of proportion to the talent that backed it up. I had all this notoriety and celebrity, but at the same time I would tell my self that it’s only f*cking comic books! It’s not like politics or being a movie star. I can’t go into Macy’s and buy things on my face—nobody knows who I am! Kaluta and I would be doing a signing at a convention and he would lean over and point at the

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crowd and say, “There’s your public.” [laughs] It was pretty awful where we’d make fun of the fans. At the same time, we recognized the fact that we wouldn’t be in this position if it weren’t for them. My feeling has always been that these people have been touched by my work in some way that is singularly important to them and I know what that is like. I remember being that six-year-old kid, drooling over the Graham Ingels drawings in EC comics. CBA: Did you plan to draw The Shadow? Bernie: At one time, yeah. I was doing Swamp Thing which was bi-monthly, and I thought, “Yeah, I can do another book!” I said I could do The Shadow and then I kind of sat myself down and gave myself a good talking to. “Look, kid: you can barely get through an issue of Swamp Thing without the next one coming along!” CBA: Were you involved with the genesis of Plop!? Bernie: No. I think that was Joe’s idea and I remember him coming to me with it. I said, “‘Plop!’ What a stupid name for a comic book!” “The Gourmet” was written specifically for Plop! I remember that Joe, Steve Skeates and I were hanging around in the DC offices and somebody had a copy of National Lampoon with a cartoon by Sam Gross which had a frog on this skateboard-thing with no legs, wheeling himself out of the kitchen into a restaurant dining room sadly looking at the diners. There was a sign up that read “Tonight’s Special: Frog’s Legs.” We were laughing at this sick joke and that’s where the story got started. The other story I did about the artist was a straight House of Mystery story. Joe was always showing me these awful scripts that this guy was turning in and they were always so silly! Joe said that he always had to give them to someone else to rewrite. So we took this straight story and made a few minor changes to it and we did it cold as a humor thing. We had a lot of fun. CBA: You did 10 issues of Swamp Thing and then you were pretty much gone from DC. Bernie: After Swamp Thing, I felt burnt-out on color comics. I would look back over those 10 issues and say, “Man, you can’t see linework and the color’s all dark and murky!” So I started working for Warren, doing stuff in black-&-white. I was just looking for a change. I felt that I really wanted to stretch and grow. I felt that I couldn’t do that at DC because everything they do is in color, and there’s the Code. They weren’t going to allow me to do the kind of horror stories that I wanted to do. I was really itching to do stuff in black-&-white using pen and ink, wash, and markers. CBA: How would you characterize your five years or so at DC? Bernie: I was pretty happy. I was absolutely in the right place at the right time. There’s so much luck involved in this!

CBA Interview

The Man Behind the Shadow Interview with artist Michael William Kaluta Conducted by Jon B. Cooke

It’s difficult to write a dispassionate intro to a Kaluta interview for ye editor because, well, Mike means a lot to the Brothers Cooke. During our 1973 visit to the Seuling Comic Art Convention, my younger brother, Andy, and I—country boys way out of our Rhode Island element—spent a lot of time in Michael W. Kaluta’s company, who was as gentle, kind and gracious a person as you could ever be blessed to share time with. July 4, 1973 was precisely the day when Kaluta hit it big—The Shadow #1 was released at the con and everybody wanted his attention. And yet the big guy found time to chat with these 12- and 14-year-olds, allowing us to hang behind the table, and pretty much be our protector in the mean ole city. That’s something you can’t forget. And a few years later, when I couldn’t attend the Con and poor Andy was trapped in the hotel because of a torrential downpour, Mike took my brother under his wing and stayed up with him all night in the Commodore’s lobby. It’s taken me over 25 years to properly say it, but thank you, Mike. This interview was conducted by phone on March 13, 1998 and was copyedited by Michael. Comic Book Artist: Were you much of a comics reader as a kid? Michael Wm. Kaluta: I wasn’t a student of comics when I was young, I was a plain old reader. Junior high school was the time when I stopped reading any kind of comic books avidly and high school was when I started reading Edgar Rice Burroughs avidly, looking at the illustrations. In the year I took off between high school and college, I met Steve Hickman, a big Burroughs fan. Then, through Hickman I met Steve Harper, who had the information about all of the old ERB illustrators. It was a real shot in the arm to see all this imagery that obviously had inspired Roy Krenkel and Frank Frazetta. We all loved ERB and the illustrations; we loved those worlds almost to the point of wanting to go and leave this life behind. Most of the time the two Steves and I were together, we were drawing and drawing and drawing. CBA: I was fortunate enough to see, hanging on Carmine Infantino’s apartment wall, an original by St. John and across the room is your illustration for the masthead for the Korak, Son of Tarzan letters page. MWK: That’s not my masthead drawing. The one that Carmine has was actually by Roy Krenkel and inked by Jeff Jones. It’s inked on vellum because Roy had done his in ballpoint—and it’s pure Roy. It

looks like my style because Roy so influenced me. The reason that I know that it’s not Roy’s original is because I have Roy’s ballpoint original in my Studio. It’s flattering to hear I did that art but it’s not too surprising. I studied Roy—who said, “Don’t study from my work because you’ll just learn my mistakes!” I told him that his mistakes are gold. If I’d have done that beautiful Korak figure, leaning to the side shooting the arrow straight up, I’d have just retired. Hickman, Harper and I got to New York in 1967 to attend the SCARP Con, where we met up with the guys from the EC fanzine Spa-Fon: Rich Hauser and Helmut Mueller. We hung out at Phil Seuling’s table and he was, of course, always willing to introduce us to all the good artists. This young Catholic kid from Baltimore, Bernie Wrightson, was at the convention and he won an award for best young talent. We all met, hit it off and went everywhere together. The guys from Chicago said, “Frank [Frazetta] is upstairs and he wants to meet you,” so we ran up nine flights. We were too impatient to wait for the elevator! We all had portfolios under our arms and we went to Frank’s room. Ellie was there and so were their kids. Frank was on his hands and knees trying to plug a TV set in for his kids to watch cartoons. Then he looked through our portfolios, one by one, as we were standing there, awestruck to be in the presence of the Master. I don’t remember what he said to me, if anything, because Bernie had presented him with a drawing and Frank said, “Look, here’s a bunch of Johnny Comet originals—go pick one.” They were Sunday pages! It was flawless work! Later, the Chicago Boys, with Bob Barrett and Frank, brought Frazetta’s originals to the hotel. We had this big artfest up in the room and everybody there went absolutely bugf*ck looking at this stuff. It was also very sobering because after staring holes through the paperback covers the originals were so much more painterly with so much incredible depth—I was not the only guy to think “…might as well just give up... this guy is too good!” CBA: What were your aspirations as a young artist? MWK: I never even thought about being an illustrator or comic book artist. I’d just finished my second year of college... I didn’t know what I was going to do, stay in school or join the Army. After the next SCARP convention, Phil Seuling contacted me and said that Al Williamson had seen stuff that I did and was interested in talking to me about maybe helping with a story. That flipped me out. At the next New York Convention I went up to Al and he gave me a script that he was having trouble getting in to. He asked me to stretch it out. “Give me plenty of boots, girls, dinosaurs and stuff” he said. I made seven pages into 12. Al still has my fumbling pencil originals and, unless he gets mad at me, we won’t tell anyone. They’re really awful, awful stuff. I was so uptight about doing the job that I just rendered and detailed it to death. Later Al did a fine job with the story and let me doodle a bit on a page or two. DC published it under the title, “The Beautiful Beast.” CBA: Did you meet Jeff Jones at around this time? MWK: 1967... Jeff had been the winner of best young talent at the previous SCARP convention and so we got to meet him there and see some of his originals. Fairly amazing. We (Steve Hickman, Steve Harper, Bernie and I) went to his apartment uptown in New York—in the same building Bernie and I would eventually live. CBA: Was this the place where First Fridays was held? MWK: The First Friday get togethers I remember best took place in Jeff and Weezie’s new apartment on the sixth floor. It had a very large living room. Anywhere from five or six to 25-30 people would show up. It was a very eclectic crowd; one one hand, you had Bill Stillwell who was studying to become a surgeon and on the other, COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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CBA: How did you get back to work at DC Comics? MWK: I can’t recall. Somehow I ended up back there, probably by just hanging out in the coffee room. Every once in a while we’d hang out in Neal Adams’ special room watching him draw—he had this big projector that would blow-up his little sketches onto the drawing paper. I always had my portfolio along and at one point, Julie Schwartz came to the door and announced that he needed a good science fiction artist to do a five-page story. He asked, “Who do you know? Who’s good?” And I poked my head around the door and said, “I’m pretty good and I have some stuff.” He bellowed to me, “Who’re you?” And I said, “Mike Kaluta.” “Kaluta? I’ve heard that name before.” The reason he heard that name is due to Neal using it as a sound effect in the “Peril in Plastic” story from Green Lantern/ Green Arrow—everybody in the office had been chanting, “Ka-looota! Ka-looo-ta!” for weeks. Julie looked through my stuff, said it was okay, and he gave me the Amazing World of Krypton story. Besides a pile of covers later on, I worked with Julie on just that one job. We were friends ever since but, boy, he made me erase so much stuff. I kept putting in more than he thought the story needed. His old time Superman approach was very much aimed at younger readers— nothing and everything was left to the imagination. One day a bunch of professionals had met at the office to go on a field trip to Sparta, the comic book printers and see how things

Larry Hama, fresh back from Vietnam with sunglasses and camouflage clothing (a frightening-looking man; a sweetheart who looked like a warrior—which was what he was!). Then there would be little Rick Bryant…. CBA: So there was a Marvel crowd who would hang out at their own place, and your own crowd at First Fridays? MWK: The First Fridays were open to all, but the crowd tended to be folks who wanted to go on and do anything that had to do with comics or painting. None of us had become “company men” yet. Roy Krenkel was usually the center of attention when he was around because he was so funny and so unusual. He was always the teacher. We’d all sit around talking about our stuff and where we wanted to go. Roy would show us old-time illustrators from his vast collection. Everybody drank in the art and inspiration. CBA: How did you become involved with DC? MWK: When I first came to New York, in January 1969, I went right out the 60 miles to Al Williamson’s place and stayed there, working on the story I’d penciled, helping out with Al’s daily strip (Secret Agent Corrigan) and looking at his phenomenal original art collection—more Hal Foster originals than I ever dreamed of seeing. After two weeks, I got a call from Bernie who said I had received a package from Charlton Comics with a script enclosed. Al said, “Hey, that’s real work! Off you go.” Al had talked to Dick Giordano, who at the time was an editor at Charlton, to see if he could give me a job. Before anything could come of that, Dick went over to DC Comics. Charlton still had my samples... I guess they liked them... out of the blue, Charlton sent me a three-page script, full of adventure, and those hard to draw subjects: people and horses. I drew it for $20 a page, sweating every line and turned the pencils in. Then they told me the pencils were lost but offered me another script. This one was a western. Al had given me all this great horse reference from The Cisco Kid newspaper daily proofs. That helped me immensely. After the western, Charlton gave me a romance story which I tried my best on but I turned in a real goofy job. So the editors finally realized that I wasn’t a western or romance artist and they found the adventure strip pencil pages that they’d misplaced. So I inked that, sent it in and got my other $10. About that time Al said that I ought to go over and see Dick at DC Comics. I had been going over there with Bernie who was drawing the “Nightmaster” stories at the time. One time, Bernie and I were sitting in the little lobby and Dick came out to escort him in. I said, “If you have a little one- or two-page script lying around…” Bernie comes out later with a big Cheshire grin on his face and says, “Here you go,” handing me a two-page script. I must have spent four or five weeks just going around and around with these two pages! I did it, took the pencils in and Dick started to teach me the rudiments of storytelling. I had just been doing drawings. He taught me with overlays but said, “Don’t change this—just ink this up. We’ll give you another one.” Dick eventually gave me three two-page strips, one Bernie helped with a lot with the figurework (I had been helping Bernie with the “Nightmaster” stories, helping to draw the panoramas that Bernie was uncomfortable drawing... it was a trade-off). The wonderful thing was, that after those three stories, Dick gave me a five-pager, “The Coming of Ghaglan,” that I went absolutely crazy on and had the greatest time doing. I used Zip-A-Tone (without even asking, as far as I can remember), did all these neat effect things and brought it in. Everybody loved the story saying it was so unusual and graphic (even though the drawing was somewhat crude). It looked like I’d get more work soon. But Dick went freelance again and he was the only editor I knew there! I should have talked to the other editors but I just didn’t even think to schmooze around. So then I had my hiatus from DC for maybe a year or so. CBA: On average, how long did it take for you to do a page? MWK: Three days. For me, my overhead was so low that any kind of money was pure gold. I have no idea how I made it through some of those months of slow work. CBA: Did you want a regular gig or to go along project-by-project? MWK: I didn’t even think about doing regular comic book work. One thing that frightened me about comics was that I never knew how to draw the same face twice—but I later learned that people give you a lot of leeway (especially kids) and the faces don’t have to look the same.

Above: A rough but way-cool initial cover design for Batman #242, courtesy of the artist. Actually judging from the logo design, MWK may’ve intended this for Detective Comics. Art ©1999 MWK. Batman ©1999 DC Comics

were done. I felt a misanthropic wave and didn’t want to be there so I went up to the empty office and was doodling. Carmine Infantino, then publisher of DC Comics, came by and said, “Mikey, ever thought about doing covers? I think you’d do good covers. Tell you what: Drop off a few Batman ideas and I’ll see what we can do.” So I started drawing them up and took them in. Carmine picked one and that became my first of a successful run Detective Comics covers. I was flattered beyond belief. CBA: Would Carmine do the breakdowns to the covers? MWK: Rarely ones that I followed. He would do one but I would do my own thing and he would say, “That’s great, Mikey, do that.” Once, he said, “No, do it like I drew it,” and the finish looked just like an Infantino layout—a ghost coming through a wall with upper body, one knee and one hand coming through the bricks. I caught hell from my editor but Carmine had wanted it that way. Carmine was very, very good to me. I wasn’t a Neal Adams or Bernie Wrightson. My stuff was much cruder. Enthusiasm, mood and possibly concept might have carried my stuff but I had no real technique. Somehow they dug my potential and I’m very grateful to all the people up at DC. Carmine was always there and he always had a good word to say. Neal would always help me out and walk me through stuff—sometimes to my detriment. There was one mystery story I did about a boxer who gets bitten by an ant. Neal helped me with the layouts—there’s all these little Neal Adams’ clichés in the

story that don’t really work with my novice style. However, there’s some really nice drawings of city scenes in that story... images that would eventually blossom in the Shadow material. At one point while I was doing the House of Mystery and House of Secrets covers, Joe Orlando came into the room where I was sketching and said, “Listen, DC is getting the license to the Edgar Rice Burroughs characters. Is there anything that you’d like to do?” I said, “John Carter of Mars!” But Joe said, “No, no. Murphy Anderson has wanted to do that since he was a kid. What else? Tarzan?” I knew I wasn’t going to get any of the big ones so I said, “How about ‘Carson of Venus’?” He said, “I don’t know if I remember that one.” He got Len Wein to do the scripting and I did the drawing. It was a good team. Eventually Len left for other things and it came down to me to adapt and draw it myself. CBA: Joe Kubert fondly explains how absolutely, painstakingly literal your adaptations were. MWK: That was my intent although I skipped a scene and caught all hell from the Burroughs fans. I was so hungry to get to the airplane and make Carson the character Burroughs intended, the Aviator, and in my haste I left out a primal scene that everyone loves (and Frazetta did so beautifully on the cover of Lost on Venus). I just kind of skipped it. The one place where Joe Kubert and I bumped heads was when I drew a scene on board a ship where Carson and his other captives were planning a mutiny. I had a shot of Carson and a whole bunch of close-ups of five or six faces. When the galleys came out, Joe had put lines on their faces, lines atop of their eyes, beards, and mustaches over the characters’ faces and I did my version of hitting the roof. (It’s very difficult to hit the roof when you’re talking to Joe Kubert, of course, because he could just stand up and poke you!) I said, “Joe, what did you do?” He said, “Well, you handed in a job where the drawings weren’t finished.” I said, “Yes, they were! You put beards on these guys but Venusian guys don’t have facial hair—it’s a big deal in the books!” He actually did his version of an apology: “Maybe you knew what you were doing and maybe I was wrong doing that.” That’s the story that I tell whenever I can, to Joe’s charming discomfort. He’s invited me once or twice to the commencement exercises at the Joe Kubert School in New Jersey—with the big turkey dinner and all—and I’d tell that story so the youngsters would giggle about him. But, after that incident, Joe would just let me do what I wanted with Carson until DC could no longer afford to publish it. They were paying a lot to ERB, Inc., and to the artists. At this time they also found all those great artists over in the Philippines and Spain who would work for chump change (great money to them but a third or a quarter of what I was being paid). DC said if I could do an entire page for $26, including the lettering, I could continue. I tried but I just couldn’t for that kind of money. CBA: Did you begrudge that? MWK: Yeah! That was my baby! I really did like ‘Carson of Venus.’ As a kid I’d read the stories over and over again—I liked the character and loved the world. I had all sorts of plans of getting him through the zombies and off to Havatoo, the industrial city. In the comics, I got right to before he got to the Dark Castle—I had adapted two books and the beginning of the third. There were four books in all. CBA: Was there any discussion to finish the adaptations? MWK: Sure, but not by DC Comics. Right now, Dark Horse has the ERB license and if they could just find the originals, or good copies, they’d want to reprint the DC stuff and add as much as I could handle. I’d probably draw in the Basto/Tharban sequence I left out 25 years ago. At this time I’ve finished a cover for Dark Horse Presents featuring Carson. His poor airplane has crashed again and he’s sitting in a swamp looking off where Duare’s face looms in the distance. CBA: Why did Carmine and Joe Orlando go off to the Philippines looking for artists? MWK: They went all over the world looking for new artists. CBA: It seemed like a slap in the face to you guys getting in the Filipino artists—as wonderful as some of them were... MWK: That took Carson of Venus away from me, but it was my working on The Shadow at the time, doing such slow work and thinking way too much about the material, which got me way behind deadline. Doing 20 pencil and ink pages every two months COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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plus writing and drawing the five “Carson” back-up pages was way beyond what I was capable of at the time. In my own way I got the job done, but at the cost of my editors’ nerves. I missed a Shadow issue by dithering around for a number of months and came back with the sixth issue, which I had in on time. I decided, at that point, that I knew what I wanted to do. “Carson” was gone. All I had was The Shadow. I decided to focus in, draw the stuff, and get it done— become a real journeyman. But DC said that they’d rather that I get off the book because I wasn’t doing it fast enough. So I said, “Okay,” and folded. I went into a funk for a while, stopped drawing comics. The next art that happened was a pile posters that came out from Chris Zavisa. Single image illustrations—what I was destined to do, anyway. CBA: What was the genesis of The Shadow? Carmine remembers it as you were the one pushing it. MWK: Nope. I had no use for The Shadow. I had read a couple of the Belmont books in junior high school—they were the bad ones and I never had read any of the good ones, the original pulps. But in 1973 I was hanging out in the DC coffee room with Steve Harper. Denny O’Neil and Steve Skeates were there. They were kind of blue, shaking their heads, and I asked what was the matter. “Well, we can’t find anybody to draw The Shadow.” Bernie was supposed to have done it—he did that beautiful one-page lead-in—but he got the Swamp Thing series to do. They’d asked Jim Aparo but he was way too busy. Jim Steranko wanted it but also had a friend he wanted as writer. Denny was to write it. Alex Toth really wanted to do it but he definitely wanted to write it himself. (That series he did called The Fox was probably from the layouts he did for a Shadow pitch.) Toth was real keen to do it and that would have been real interesting to see! So, Harper said, “I really think that they want you to ask them to do it.” I said, “What are you, nuts? I’ve never done 20 pages—I can’t do that!” He said, “Go ahead and ask them.” So I said to Denny: “I’d like to do it if you want.” He said, “Hold on. I’ll be right back.” He went off to talk to Carmine, came back and said, “You got it.” It was very exciting to think that it went that fast. With the first script I had three months to draw and I sunk everything I had into it. I had a great time doing it and it was very well received. They published that sample page by Bernie as a house ad. It was the one with the fake guns. Bernie never has cared about the reality of objects. He did people and folds downs so beautifully, but he never gave a damn about what a .45 or an airplane looks like. One small point of pride that I can take is that, gee, I know what a .45 looks like! [laughs] If I could have rendered them like Bernie did his fake ones maybe my life could have been easier. CBA: Did you do a lot of research? MWK: Yeah, but I also relied on my cityscapes to evoke mood. It was all I could lean against. That and the fact that I knew what machines looked like. Getting to draw The Shadow was a very lucky break and I’m surprised that I got as much done as I did. CBA: You were jazzed doing the book. MWK: Absolutely, though I really knew nothing about the character. I called up Steve Hickman and asked, “What’s this guy all about?” I started getting packages from people I had never heard from before. They introduced themselves as big Shadow fans and gave me tons of reference material. This stuff just flowed into the house. I started knowing a lot more about the character than even Denny seemed to know. That might have been my downfall because I got a little edgy with him over a few of the story elements—he had been the writer on GL/GA and those were the kind of stories I thought I was going to get. What I got was The Shadow and at the time, I didn’t appreciate it a bit. I thought that it was just tame old stuff and I would just gild the lily, making it as look good as I could. About five years after doing them, I read all the stories back-to-back and realized how good they were—how Denny’s stories melded with my art and finally I understood why people liked the stuff so much. For some reason, when I was drawing them I wanted the stories to be “more”—and I didn’t even know what I meant by that. But Denny did exactly what was needed. They were great stories. CBA: Did you want more violence? MWK: More “’30s.” The most violence that appeared was in the art. Denny would say, “I’m not sure we should be doing this,” because, in that first issue I drew the Shadow actually killing someSummer 1999

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body. It’s very unsung, but it might be one of the first times under the Comics Code that a star of a book actually kills somebody in such an off-hand manner. Strangely to us, we got a lot of crayoned letters demanding more and congratulating us for not messing around. CBA: What is the nationality of your name? MWK: Russian. Byelorus, from a little town, Dyubchick, near Minsk. It means “moneybag.” CBA: Did they tell you that they were going to use your name as a sound effect in GL/GA? MWK: Don’t you know the story that goes along with that? Neal Adams loved the sound of my name and it’s because of that a lot of work at DC became available to me. He had a little poem: “Kalutaberry wine tastes so fine/Kaluta-kaluta-kaluta!” He just made up these little ditties and they stuck in his mind. So when “Peril in Plastic” came along, they needed a name for the widgit in the story and a sound effect for the machine that made them, so Neal said “Kaluta.” (I have to think it was Neal’s Idea.) I knew about it from that point and I was highly flattered. Denny gave me a copy of the proofs two months before the book came out, and I said, “Oh, this is great!” I read it, laughed, and was quite touched, actually. After I drank my fill of this, I sent it to my parents and wrote, “Check this out.” A couple days later, I got a call from my dad who said, “Son, I read that comic book.” I said, “Well, what do you think?” He said, “Well, I think I’m gonna sue them!” I stammered, “What?! For what reason?” He said, “I never gave them permission to use my name.” Then he cracked up and said, “I’m not going to sue them but, I’ll tell you what: next time you see this writer, Denny O’Neil, tell him your dad’s going to sue him. Just like that. Let’s see what he does.” I said, “Okay, I’ll try it out.” So, when next I saw Denny walking down the hallway at the office, I said, “Denny, I’m really embarrassed but my dad’s going to sue.” Denny freaks and I’m trying to say that I have nothing against it, but it’s my dad—what can I do? Off he goes and off I go, going our separate ways and... I forget to tell him it’s a joke! Honest to God, I didn’t mean for it to go for as long as it did, but it had to have been days if not weeks. So later, I’m in the office and here comes Denny. “Tell your dad that I’m ready. My lawyer and I are ready for the lawsuit.” I said, “Denny, that was a joke.” I don’t remember if he said anything or just shook his head and walked away. I wasn’t the most fun artist for Denny to work with but as he has said, it was a winning combination and we produced good comic books. But I was difficult to work with, I didn’t meet my deadlines and I was not professional. At one point, he suggested that I see a psychiatrist. He seemed to imply I spent all my work time sleeping with all the girls. Everybody thought I did! They gave me such a rep! I was a nice guy and if there was a girl in the office, I would chat with her, we’d go out to lunch and hang out—but I wasn’t sleeping with them! As for the guys who wanted to think that, ahh, let ‘im! CBA: How’d you hear you were off The Shadow? MWK: I was called into Carmine’s office and he said, “Listen, Mikey: you’re missing a deadline on this thing.” I said, “I’m back on my feet and I really feel that I can commit to it.” But he said, “Well, we’re thinking about it a little differently here. Maybe it’s not really your kind of stuff…” At that point, I knew that he hadn’t even looked at The Shadow. I told him that during this time I had been drawing a back-up to Korak and I realized that he hadn’t even known about that either. My God, he had so many other irons in the fire. He couldn’t possibly follow all these little things, as much as he may have wanted to. Carmine was a terrific artist himself, and to be behind the Big Desk being traffic manager, well, it was a waste in too many ways. So, the decision had already been made. But, to his credit, Denny had said we were a winning combination and that he would’ve rather stuck with me, warts and all than go with somebody else. In interviews since then, I have said some dissatisfied comments about Denny and our interactions. But I was younger and I realize now that if I had only been easier to deal with, I would probably have gotten a lot more work done.

Below: Jerry K. Boyd is an unsung hero of CBA, consistently sending in art contributions and sometimes piles of articles with no acknowledgement from us in return. Thanks for everything, Jerry! We love ya! Jerry shared this great Shadow sketch by MWK with us. The Shadow ©1999 Condé Nast.

Artists Amok!

Invasion from the Philippines A Brief Survey of the Great ’70s Filipino Artists at DC by Chris Knowles [Editor’s Preface: What follows is a brief look at the incredible array of talent whose DC work made it to our shores from the Philippines in the 1970s, the opening volley (we hope) in a series of more thorough examinations into the lives and work of the great Filipino artists. CBA is grateful to writer Chris Knowles and art rep Ed Noonchester (who both delivered in record time) and with luck, we’re looking forward to devoting an entire issue to “The Filipino School” in the near future. Now let’s have a look at the invaders who wowed an entire generation of comics readers.—JBC]

Below: A advertising job commissioned by Ed Noonchester, and drawn by Gerry Taloac. Thanks to Ed for his invaluable assistance and generosity with sharing some of his clients’ artwork.

The Talent Dearth It’s nearly impossible to imagine today, when there seem to be as many comic book artists as comic book readers, but there was a critical shortage of new talent available to the major publishers in the early ‘70s. Many old hands who had been in the business since its inception, suffering long hours and lousy pay, were retiring, joining management or leaving the industry for greener pastures. (And by greener pastures, I mean practically anything else outside of the funny-book racket.) The field was nearly the bottom of the barrel for commercial artists at the time, exceeded in poor pay and prestige perhaps only by coloring books and third-string porn rag illustration. Artists were paid next to nothing for the most part ($35 a page was considered extravagant) and some seasoned vets were ashamed to tell their neighbors what they actually did for a living. At the turn of the decade, most young cartoonists who wanted to pursue their craft and still stand a decent chance of getting laid were in the undergrounds. While they may not have paid much, “comix” offered total creative freedom and an aura of fashionable rebellion. And the underground creators used their freedom to indulge in gory tableaus undreamed of by Bill Gaines or his EC cohorts, and in pornographic fantasies unseen since the days of the Tijuana Bibles. Artists like R. Crumb and Rick Griffin had become comix superstars and their services were in demand by the likes of Janis Joplin, the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead. The then-numerous head shops which sold drug paraphernalia and counterculture merchandise also carried underground comix and for a time these adult funnybooks were part and parcel of the Youth Revolution. Contrast that with working for one of the major comics publishers, owned and run by Suits who were swindling artists well before the typical hippie cartoonist was even born. They were publishing material that was seen by most Americans as fodder

for learning-impaired children and were still operating under the censorious eye of the Comics Code Authority, and the crippling returns system of newsstand distribution. Even artist-friendly execs like Carmine Infantino and Stan Lee couldn’t bring working conditions for artists in line with those in legitimate publishing and advertising. What’s more, comics sales had begun their long, slow and irreversible death march, leaving even less incentive for the big wigs to loosen the purse strings. And what few young people there were working in the office were often either unpaid interns or nebbishy yes-men who bought into the bosses’ “screw the artist” ethic. What possible motivation was there for a talented young artist to jump into that meatgrinder? The Young Turks: Blink and you’ll miss ’em: The only answer of course is that these young cartoonists loved the form. A new breed of artist was emerging from the fan press, prefigured by Barry Windsor-Smith in the late ’60s. People like Jim Starlin, Walt Simonson, Howie Chaykin, Bernie Wrightson and Mike Kaluta were picking up jobs here and there, but most were still painfully green. Looking at one of the future Young Turks in action in the early ‘70s was akin to watching a foal learning to walk. In a short time, these men would find their footing and electrify comics fandom, and in short order, most of them would run screaming from the halls of Marvel and DC for the remainder of the decade. Unburdened by the “Company Man” ethic of the ’50s and the scarcity mentality of those who grew up in the Depression and World War II, the Young Turks knew a lousy deal when they saw one. Neal Adams, the Spiritual Godfather of the ‘70s bravura artists, was hammering away at the feudalist piece-work system of the old four-color baronage with his Comic Artists Guild concept and would, along with Dick Giordano, take in much of the bright young talent to help his Continuity Associates make some real money in the lucrative field of Madison Avenue advertising. In a Bind DC was in a particular bind. “National” was once seen as the prestige house of the comics world, but now Marvel was getting all the press and a growing slice of the market, attracting some of the best of the remaining vets in the bargain. Not that DC’s team was anything to sneeze at—their stable boasted Joe Kubert, Russ Heath, Alex Toth and Nick Cardy, among others. But these great craftsmen were older and lacked the hip cache that younger fan artists possessed. And since the newsstand was still the only game in town, genre and anthology titles remained a large chunk of DC’s output and most of their utility artists were needed for the superhero line. Horror was booming and Joe Orlando’s horror anthologies needed fresh hands on deck. The calvary was soon to arrive—from America’s Pacific quasi-colony, the Filipino Islands. The Philippines The Philippines is not so much a country as much as a sprawling conglomeration of distinct islands in the South Pacific. On these countless isles are a diverse population speaking many tongues and immersed in numerous different cultures. The country was first colonized by Spain in the 16th Century, and the Spaniards brought the Catholic Church and a number of Latin customs to blend in with the long-standing Asian traditions. The Philippines fell under the aegis of the U.S. during the Spanish COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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American War at the turn of the century and eventually the Islands absorbed many American cultural traditions, among them comic books. The Philippines former status as an American protectorate meant that a great deal of military personnel spent time on the islands. And the servicemen brought comics with them in the days before World War II. The Filipinos went mad for this new medium and (following the Japanese occupation) the nation saw the growth of a homegrown comics industry. Two of the stars of that Industry were Nestor Redondo and Alfredo Alcala, two artists who would have a significant impact on the American comics scene. The Filipino Industry resembled that of Japan more than the U.S. Most comics were printed in black-&-white anthologies with titles like Filipino Komiks and Tagalog Klassiks (Tagalog being the official language of the country). The format for these periodicals was similar to the Japanese manga “phone books.” Stories were serialized and ran an average of four to six pages per issue with anywhere from 10 to 14 separate stories per issue. Comics were very popular and the most prominent characters would often be translated into film versions for the Philippines cinema. The biggest influences on young artists in the Philippines were Lou Fine and Jack Kirby from the comic book world, and Hal Foster and Alex Raymond from the strips. One of the early superstars in the Philippine comic world was Francisco Coching, whose work was never published Stateside. The Filipino komiks industry was also better organized in relation to the American comic scene at the time and award competitions appeared very early on, with Nestor Redondo and Alfredo Alcala often grabbing top honors. Meanwhile, Back in the States... In the early ‘70s Tony De

Zuniga, a Philippines native came to America and began getting work in the comics. Word spread to the editorial offices of DC Comics that there was a large seasoned pool of English-speaking talent in the Philippines and soon Carmine Infantino and Sol Harrison were on a plane to Manila. They met with Nestor Redondo who at that time had his own publishing company with a group of other prominent Filipino artists known as CRAF Publishing (Castrillo, Redondo, Alcala and Fernandez). The DC executives knew talent when they saw it and negotiations began to import some of this amazing talent over to the States to help the flagging domestic talent pool. Before long, the Filipino invasion had begun. Nestor y Alfredo Legendary artist/editor Joe Orlando made the best use of this new pool of talent. Armed with a gang of artists who could draw anything and were especially gifted at dark and moody storytelling, his “mystery” books soon used the Filipino artists Summer 1999

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almost exclusively. Like the artists of the later British Invasion, the Filipinos were disciplined by working almost exclusively for black-&white publication. The artists had to work that much harder to put across their work tonally and subsequently they became masters of light and shadow. So, in titles like Tales of the Unexpected, House of Mystery and The Witching Hour, there soon was an explosion of elegance and draftsmanship seldom seen in the comics since the glory days of newspaper strip greats like Foster and Raymond, two artists

Above: Imagine how my heart stopped when I opened up the envelope that contained this stunning work by Nestor Redondo! Simply magnificent rendition of the two great swamp creatures. Swamp Thing ©1999 DC Comics. Man-Thing ©1999 Marvel Entertainment. 91

render the natural world only further increased this effect. Redondo’s Swamp Thing is not only a tour de force of draftsmanship, it’s also a masterpiece of artistry. Redondo had a unique vision in his work on the book, a vision I can’t recall ever having seen in comics. The characters drifted in a shifting and painfully beautiful landscape, as if in scenes from your favorite childhood dreams. And because of Nestor’s mastery of drawing, his figures had weight and dimension which further heightened the effect’s credibility. Nestor brought the subconscious logic of Surrealism to a lowly horror comic. And that he did so so modestly and with such ease is a lasting testament to his genius. Sadly, the original art to Nestor’s run on Swamp Thing disappeared long ago, depriving lovers of comic art of possessing these unbridled gems. After Swamp Thing, Nestor worked with Joe Kubert on The Limited Collectors’ Edition of The Bible in 1975, adapting stories from the book of Genesis. This work was somewhat less effective, as Nestor’s and Joe’s styles are nearly diametrically opposite. Nonetheless, this oversize book is recommended.

of tremendous influence on the Filipino comics scene. And the spearheads of the Invasion were the two men who were the Philippines’ brightest stars. Nestor Redondo was the superstar of the Filipino invasion. He came up in the comics as an assistant in the early ’50s and soon rose to prominence in his own right. Many of the strips Nestor drew were written by his brother Virgilio (himself an artist as well). Their first big success was with a super-heroine named Darna. Nestor’s most popular character in the Philippines was Palos (Tagalog for “the Eel”), a James Bond-like spy character that was a master of disguise. Many of Nestor’s strips would appear in the aptly named Redondo Comics. (The Redondos also had a younger brother named Frank who drew Sgt. Rock in the late ‘70s and early ’80s.) Although he did excellent work for a number of DC books such as Rima, his greatest work for DC by far was for Swamp Thing. Taking over from the departing Bernie Wrightson, Redondo immediately changed the very character of the book. Dispensing altogether with Wrightson’s feverish nightmare vision, Nestor replaced it with something radically different, yet in its own way, equally effective. Swamp Thing took on the haunted aura of a dream, and even the monsters were drawn beautifully. Nestor would use astonishingly subtle effects with mist and smoke and every conceivable form of lighting to bathe Swampy’s adventures, and his incredible ability to

Alfredo Alcala was the other Filipino superstar to make his mark Stateside. Astonishingly prolific, Alfredo got his start working for Bituin Komiks in Oct. 1948 and within a month he was working for Ace Publications, the Philippines’ largest publishing outfit. He was turning out an huge body of work in a diverse range of styles. Like most of the other Filipino artists, Alfredo favors the Chinese foxtail brush, an instrument with a cylindrical stem and a curved head. This tool facilitated the ornate and sculpted feathering that is the hallmark of the Filipino old school. Along with his contemporaries, Alfredo worked on a number of Orlando titles churning out a bewildering array of highly detailed pages with a particular affinity for historical costumery and architecture. He also showed a facility for black humor, albeit a densely rendered one. Alfredo stayed busy once he began working for U.S. publishers. In addition to the usual horror-mystery fare, Alfredo got work on mid-‘70s DC books like Kamandi (inking over Dick Ayers) and the short-lived Kong the Untamed. Alfredo also plied his trade for many Marvel black-&-white magazines like Planet of the Apes (notably the comic adaptations of Beneath... and Conquest…) and Savage Sword of Conan. Alfredo immigrated to the U.S. in 1977, left DC for Warren Publishing, and soon after was working for the Ruby-Spears Animation studio along with fellow funny book refugees Steve Gerber and Jack Kirby. Alfredo’s comic output slowed considerably during this time but along with Gerber and Kirby, Alcala would later work together on Destroyer Duck for Eclipse, thought by many Kirby fans to be Jack’s last hurrah. Following the collapse of Ruby-Spears, Alfredo returned to DC where, like Ernie Chan, he would do his most memorable work as a finishing artist. As a penciler Alcala’s work could often be static and airless, but as an inker, especially on horror books, his hairy line and nightmarish lighting was perfectly suited to tales of the macabre. He did outstanding work inking Don Newton on Batman and Detective Comics, and he worked on Rick Veitch’s undervalued run on Swamp Thing. Alex ’n’ Ernie Though Redondo and Alcala were considered the superstars back in their homeland, two younger artists would eclipse their success in America. Alex Niño was the psychedelic stylist of the pack. His prodigious talent was utilized much the same way as a jazz virtuoso. Narrative was secondary to the feverish and energetic explosion of layout and design that Niño favored. Alex was younger than most of the rest and in fact had done a number of strips for Redondo Komiks and Alcala Komiks. Once his work initially appeared in the U.S., he was everywhere. The artist also seemed to be the most ubiquitous with work appearing everywhere from standard four-color comics for Marvel and DC, to a stint on the Tarzan newspaper for United Features, to the Warren and Marvel’s black-&-white titles, and later in Heavy Metal. For DC, Alex drew a number of stories for the COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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Orlando books (including some excellent work in Weird War Tales), as well as doing work for Joe Kubert’s stable of jungle and war books. Although outstanding in every regard, Alex has a special affinity for space opera and fantasy and displays a Kirbyesque facility for imaginary technology. Ernie Chan (a.k.a. Chua, his Filipino pen name) was ethnically Chinese and was probably the most versatile of the Filipino pack. He also was the only one to have a significant body of work in the super-hero lines. He later became one of DC’s primary cover artists and also drew a number of Batman stories in the mid-’70s. When Swamp Thing was remodeled as a super-hero strip in its waning days, it was Ernie who was called in to supply suitably dynamic pencils. He also pulled off a credible approximation of Kirby when Jack was unavailable to do the second and third issues of Sandman. His chameleon-like ability and physical proximity (like many of his countrymen, Ernie emigrated to the States) gave him access to the type of assignments at DC that many other Filipino artists were denied. That being said, Ernie Chan found his real niche inking John Buscema on Conan the Barbarian. As these two hit their stride, fans could be forgiven for believing that the ghost of Hal Foster was roaming the halls of Marvel. Buscema’s classical construction and fluidity was given an air of authenticity and savagery that the strip lacked under more conventional embellishers. And Chan’s beautiful line seemed to coax the grace and sweep that Buscema had been so frugal with as the ‘70s wore on. Ernie’s work was apparently also highly valued by Marvel since he was chosen to draw the Conan the Barbarian newspaper strip written by Roy Thomas in the late ‘70s/early 80’s. We Interrupt this Program Things did not go entirely smoothly for the Filipinos once they began working for DC. There was a well-publicized incident of skimming, where a party or parties were apparently responsible for paying the artists, retaining a considerable chunk of the page rate and handing a small fraction of the total over to the people actually drawing the pages. The money that they received after the kickback was more than the $3-5 dollars a page that they were making at home, but a far cry from the $35 dollars a page that DC was paying at the time. Eventually the situation was resolved but not before many artists jumped ship over to Warren and not before the fear of God was put into many homegrown artisans. The word got out that the Filipinos were doing their elaborately drawn pages for peanuts and urban legends were circulated that Alfredo could work for days on end without sleep, turn in his pages and pick up another assignment without taking more than a catnap in-between. For financially pressed American talent, the Filipinos were a threat. Even following the brokerage controversy, many old vets were terrified. Here was an invading force of prolific master craftsmen who were rumored to work relentlessly for coolie wages. The trend towards florid rendering that Wrightson initiated and the Filipino’s advanced scared the daylights out of the old line as well. (Wrightson was once reportedly castigated by an veteran artist who told the young turk, “You’re killing us! Now all they want is busy linework!”) The Filipinos could provide busy linework in spades, but as the initial panic subsided it became obvious that what fans were responding to in Wrightson was his macabre visual imagination and fannish enthusiasm and not necessarily his knack for painstaking detail. However, the scars of this panic would be manifest many years later. I remember a great old vet who taught at the Joe Kubert School darkly warning us that once we got out of school we would be competing with people who could “work three days straight, drop off their assignments, and then go home and do the same thing again.” It seemed that not only would young artists be drawing super-heroes but competing against them as well. The Others Although Redondo, Alcala, Niño and Chan were the best known of the Filipino Invasion, there were a number of other fine craftsmen who came along along. Here is a brief look at some: Summer 1999

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Tony DeZuniga was the first Filipino to break the American market and did a number of great jobs, most notably for “Black Orchid” in Adventure Comics. An outstanding penciler who was skilled at drawing beautiful women, he also kept busy as an inker for Marvel working with Neal Adams on Savage Sword of Conan and John Buscema on Conan the Barbarian and Thor. I never cared much for his inking over other artists, but his earlier work for DC is excellent. He also did a number of pencil/ink jobs for the Marvel horror magazines that are worth a look.

Gerry Taloac, one of the many “B” artists to come over, did the rounds in the Orlando books and then replaced Jim Aparo on The Phantom Stranger, immediately changing the tone of the book from a more or less conventional cape and mask potboiler to a dark and wiggly creepfest. Along with the expected graphic brilliance, the book pulsated with a nervous energy that was far removed from Aparo’s square-jawed traditionalism. And predictably, many fans howled in protest in the letters column. After the Phantom faded, Gerry moved onto the “Unknown Soldier” strip in Star Spangled War Stories and toned down the histrionics in favor of a more conservative DC war style, soon becoming the definitive artist on the series. He stayed on the book as an inker when old warhorse Dick Ayers hopped aboard to grind the graphite. After trying to get work as a cover painter, Gerry moved into the Filipino animation industry where

Above: A supreme storyteller, Alex Niño is at his best on the Robert Kanigher-scribed series, “Captain Fear,” that appeared in Adventure Comics (this one from #433). Sigh. Here’s hoping for a Niño issue of CBA soon enough! ©1974 DC Comics.

he still works today. Ruben Yandoc was another Orlando reliable. He drew countless mystery stories for the anthology titles, but never crossed over to the mainstream titles like Taloac and others. But nevertheless, Ruben managed to turn in some absolutely stunning jobs. His work boasted a stronger line and more fluid storytelling than many of his contemporaries. His specialty was often drawing tales of medieval cruelty. E.R. Cruz had the most Asian style of the Filipino bunch. His art demonstrated a strong Chinese influence (as opposed to artists like Redondo whose work reflected a more American approach). Cruz’s style was very dark and nebulous and was subsequently often difficult to parse. One of his most prominent assignments for DC was the final issues of The Shadow, where he took over for Frank Robbins (who had taken over for MIke Kaluta). The art style was suitably noir for the title, but lacked Kaluta’s elegance and Robbins’ energy. He continued to draw a large number of stories in DC anthology titles. Rico Rival was another Orlando find. Another artist in the DeZuniga mold, he would hop over to Marvel to draw a number of stories for the black-&-whites. A personal favorite is the work he did for Planet of the Apes entitled “A KIngdom on an Island of the Apes“ (#9-10). Rudy Nebres was a fine craftsmen who soon specialized in inking. His rendering was flowing and elegant, but often feminized the drawing of the pencilers he worked over. His earlier work in the Orlando books was much more effective. Like DeZuniga, his rendering had a much different quality over his own pencils. Like DeZuniga, Rudy also did a fair amount of inking for Marvel in the latter part of the decade. He later found a home at Warren and did a number of covers for late-period titles like The Goblin. One of the lesser known artists here was Jesse Santos, who did an enormous amount of work for Gold Key’s sadly underappreciated mystery and barbarian titles in the early- to mid-‘70s. Jesse was one of the top artists in his homeland and was extremely prolific here doing interiors and painted covers for books like The Occult Files of Doctor Spektor and Dagar the Invincible that are awfully easy on the eyes and highly recommended. His work resembles a more refined and elegant version of DeZuniga’s early DC pieces. As Time Goes By As the decade progressed, it became apparent that what editors wanted most out of the Filipino artists was their services as finishing artists. Artists like Chan and Nebres were increasingly paired with veteran American artists, to an extent that it became difficult to find examples of their penciling once the Orlando anthologies faded. The last of the “Old School” Filipinos was the much-younger Danny Bulanadi who made his mark as an inker for Marvel in the early 1980’s inking titles like Conan (over Gil Kane) and Daredevil (over David Mazzuchelli and others). Danny was Tony De Zuniga’s assistant and his style was very similar to Rudy Nebres’ feather-heavy approach. With the growth of the direct market and the profligation of new companies, the Filipino artists found new markets for their ser-

vices, even though many of them had already begun working in the animation field. The short-lived Red Circle/Archie Adventure line used talents like Nebres (penciling and inking over artists like Carmine Infantino on titles such as Steel Sterling) and Alex Niño (who would also draw the last few issues of DC’s direct-only Thriller). Nebres would remain in the comics field well into the ’90s, inking for Topps and Tekno among others. But most of the old school found that animation was a much more hospitable environment to pursue their craft. As tastes and editorial personnel changed in the comic world, the Filipinos who emigrated to this country found themselves lured by the siren call of Hollywood. As feature animation became big business again in the mid ’80s, there was a mad rush to find the best talent and most of the artists covered in this article found themselves in California working for companies like Disney. Unlike comics, the film and animation world cares little about the empty flash that dominated the so-called “super-hero boom” of the early ’90s. Producers and directors value the bullet-proof chops that artists like Alex Niño and Alfredo Alcala wield. The Legacy Many fans confuse the Filipinos and the Spanish school that came to prominence in the Warren books. The contrast is actually quite startling. The difference can be summed-up in one word: Sex. Artists like Esteban Moroto and José Gonzalez were outrageous sensualists whose work was clearly influenced by European fashion illustration and advertising and by all appearances, flaming continental libidos. The Filipinos by and large were much more modest and conservative. Their homeland remains a devoutly Catholic country and one can imagine that egregious displays of sexuality would not survive the censor’s knife. To fans of great drawing, the work of the Filipinos, particularly the early American work, is breathtaking. Looking at Nestor’s work on Swamp Thing, reviewing some of the early Nestor jobs, it’s hard to believe that such a level of mastery and craft was available to kids willing to plunk down their two bits. But the tragedy of it all is today their efforts go largely unappreciated. It could be argued that there was an Filipino influence on the early ’90s super-hero artists, but unfortunately not a benign one. One does not see echoes of the rock solid draftsmanship and storytelling of the Filipinos in ’90s artists, but a grotesque adaptation of the highly-detailed rendering. The baroque blend of Latin Catholic decor and Asian elegance was vastly at odds with the previous 40 years of comics history. American comics had been dominated by Kirby’s bold and explosive cartooning the decade before, and by the time the Filipinos arrived, Neal Adam’s “comm-art” social realism had the fans in its thrall. Decades of lousy printing had conditioned American cartoonists to favor a bold and simple binary approach for the most part. The Young Turks of The Studio were reintroducing American kids to the delicate linework of the EC era and it’s progenitors, but bold and graphic was still what the majors were peddling. This brings us back to the start of the Funny-Book Death March beginning in the early- to mid-1970s. As comics sales plummeted, the remaining audience was largely super-hero fan devotees, not a general-interest audience. And tastes had become more accustomed to much more stylized and fannish art. The main reason there’s so little interest today in the Filipino school as well as the Spanish school is that their work was almost diametrically opposed to the prevailing trends in fandom. The Filipinos were concerned with draftsmanship and traditional illustration techniques, and seemed oblivious to the shifting winds of fannish taste. But among serious lovers of traditional illustration in the four-color fan world, the legacy of these great craftsmen burns bright. Simply by their presence, the Filipinos raised the bar. Here was a group of immensely talented and hard-working draftsmen who could draw absolutely anything and draw it well. They set a standard that the younger artists would have to live up to and that the older ones would have to compete with. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

Summer 1999

Len Wein continued from page 81

book.” Those were his favorite books. A couple of weeks later I pitched the “Human Target” idea to Julie, because he wanted something for the back of Action Comics that wasn’t a super-hero. I pitched the “Target” idea to him, standing across his desk, and Julie said, “Wait here! I’ll be right back.” He went to Carmine’s office and five minutes later he came back and said, “First script is due Friday!” We were looking for an artist and I remembered my conversation with Carmine, so I went to his office and said, “Hey, how would you like to draw this?” He said, “Aww, c’mon, Lenny! I don’t draw anymore!” I said, “You have nothing to lose and it’s something that you really want to do.” So he designed the character and penciled the first story. CBA: What other work were you doing at the time? Len: Justice League, Superman, Batman. One of the early books I did at Marvel was, weirdly enough, the second “Man-Thing” story in Savage Tales that Neal Adams drew [actually appearing in Astonishing Tales #12]. I came up with the phrase, “Whosoever knows fear, burns at the Man-Thing’s touch.” Back in the first story, anything that he touched burned and when I got to the character I said that no one will be able to relate to the character if anything he touches bursts into flame! So I came up with the idea that you had to be afraid of him. CBA: Swamp Thing #1 was an instant collectible the moment it came out. You received some notoriety and fame from the book…. Len: It was always a bestseller and it was incredibly popular. It was one of the ways I became acquainted with Harlan Ellison, now one of my oldest and dearest friends— based on the work I did on Swamp Thing. We had a great time. CBA: Did you ever have any aspirations to be an editor? Len: The funny thing is that Joe Orlando, during my heyday on Swamp Thing and Justice League, kept trying to convince Carmine to hire me as an editor and Carmine kept saying, “No, no, he’s a kid and he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He needs more

Marv Wolfman

years in the business before he’s ready.” Six months later I was editor-in-chief at Marvel, running the competition and Joe went back to Carmine and said, “You were saying…?” CBA: You did some writing for Joe Kubert? Len: I wrote some “Carson of Venus” stories for the Burroughs’ books which Mike Kaluta drew. Joe was noted for the brevity of copy in his stories—Joe didn’t like a lot of copy and he felt that the art should carry the story. One of the nicest compliments that I ever got was after I wrote a “Carson” that was as close to Burroughs as I could capture and Joe came in and said, “I tried editing it but found that if I messed with the copy, it doesn’t work anymore. It’s so carefully crafted, I can’t touch it.” I said, “Thanks very much!” CBA: How was Joe Orlando as an editor? Len: He was terrific on teaching me how to tell a story emotionally. I learned how to go for the gut with Joe. Instinctively, he was a terrific editor. CBA: What was your singular favorite strip at DC? Len: Probably a toss-up between The Phantom Stranger and Batman. CBA: What do you think of Carmine’s tenure as editorial director? Len: He made a lot of terrific decisions. A lot of the books like Bat Lash, The Hawk and The Dove, Beware the Creeper, and all kinds of cool books he tried early on were great but one of his biggest problems was not sticking with something to see how they held out. Instead of saying, “Geez, these books should be doing better than this, so let’s try something else,” he should have been saying “Let’s see if this book gets better and if sales pick up.” CBA: How would you characterize your time at DC? Len: I loved it. DC was always home, even when I was at Marvel. In my heart, DC was home to me. I would come by at least once a week to have lunch with Julie Schwartz—even though I was running the other company, here I was picking up Julie for lunch! It’s where I started. Home is the place that, when you go there, they have to take you in.

Irwin Donenfeld

continued from page 78

continued from page 22

the desert. Page one would be the Cavemen fighting over the pool, page two the soldiers. Page three would go back to the cavemen, and so forth. Unfortunately, years later, when they reprinted the story in a hardcover, they printed the pages out of order so all the cavemen pages were together as were all the soldier pages. That the story progressed from page to page despite the time period changes obviously escaped whoever put the collection together. CBA: You also mentioned in CBP that you recall opening up the package that contained that extraordinary story written and drawn by Russ Heath, “Easy’s First Tiger.” Marv: I opened up the story as Joe’s assistant when the package was dropped on my desk and my jaw dropped when I saw it. I called in everybody and ran around that office like a five-year-old fan. Everyone was absolutely stunned. No matter how good it looks in print, think of it at twice the size in a double-page spread with his perfect ink line. CBA: Did the war books feel special at that time? Marv: I loved the war books and was a big fan even as I was against war and such. They had some of the best writing. Robert Kanigher was certainly one of the best writers that DC ever had and they definitely had the best art between Joe Kubert, Russ Heath, Mort Drucker, Andru and Esposito, Irv Novick, and all of the people were just wonderful artists who told great stories. I was too young to ever read the Harvey Kurtzman war stories so these were the brilliant war stories for me. CBA: Do you think the hiring of artists as editors by Carmine Infantino was successful? Marv: I think that the people that he picked were for the most part successful. I have seen artists hired as editors who were good and some who were very bad. Carmine picked story-oriented people. Dick was already working as an editor at Charlton and the only surprise in the mix was Joe Orlando because Joe had never written. Remember that Kubert had already written Tor and a lot of other material earlier on. Joe Orlando had only been an artist at Mad so that was an intuitive thing on Carmine’s part. I think that Carmine picked very well with those three. CBA: Do you think that Jack Kirby went through a particularly special period? Marv: I don’t think that Jack had ever not gone through a special period. He was always the best at what he did from the ‘40s to the ‘80s. I still think that the best of Kirby came out in the middle period of the Fantastic Four and Thor but you have to understand that I was still just a fan then. By the time Jack’s DC work came out I had been a professional for several years so I cannot see that stuff in the same way that someone who was maybe 14 or 15 saw the New Gods material. It’s an unfair comparison to come from one person. I preferred Stan’s writing to Jack’s.

competing with each other for rack space and every other damned thing. And we’d meet and play golf together! That’s how close everybody was. As far as myself with the distributors, my Dad knew all the owners of all of the companies—almost every one of them from all over the country—and when I came in, I got to be friendly with all of their sons. So we were the second generation in the industry and I knew all the sons in every one of these towns. So whenever we had a convention, the dads all did their thing (I don’t know what they were doing) but the young guys would gather with me and we would gamble, get laid, and do all these crazy things together... I mean crazy. [sighs] Also, up until 1968, I bought more art in dollars and in pages than anybody else in the history of the world. That’s not bad. CBA: You guys had Playboy, right? Irwin: That’s another one of Jack Liebowitz’s coups. Playboy was distributed by another company that had a contract. But the magazine was going nowhere until Jack brought the contract. With our prestige we built that magazine up on the newsstand like you just can’t believe. Their subscriptions were great to begin with, but we made them a newsstand power. As we did with Family Circle. They had Playboy Clubs around the country and they had one in Manhattan. They would give you a literal key to get into the club. If your key was under #800, you had to be a big-wig. My key was #13. [laughs] When I’d go into a club, they couldn’t believe it! I had to be related to Hefner! [laughs] CBA: Lucky 13. Irwin: Jack Leibowitz was #12 and my father was #11. They lost their keys because they never went to the club—but I went. It was a different world back then. CBA: Did you leave DC rather quickly? Irwin: Yeah, pretty quick. We moved to another building, and just before that I said that I was out of there. Jack begged me not to go, but I said I had to go. My father was dead by then so there was just Jack and I. CBA: So it was problems with Kinney National? Irwin: My problem was with Kinney. Jack eventually had a problem, too. He wasn’t happy either. But, until that time came, at just about quarter to 5:00 every day, my phone would ring and it was Jack. He’d say [gruffly], “Come into the office!” And I’d come in and there would be Howard Chamberlin and Ben Goldberg (both from Independent News) and Jack. We’d play gin rummy for half an hour. Every day. CBA: What does the acronym “DC” really stand for? Irwin: Donenfeld Comics. That was my father’s idea. But he couldn’t really call it that so they settled on “Detective Comics.”

Summer 1999

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

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CBA Communiques continued from page 7 Infantino’s way had Kirby’s initial efforts drawn sales which had gone through the roof; think of the opportunities success would have brought both of them. “I had to answer, good or bad, to someone above me,” wrote Infantino. The matter of “you-cancelled-Kirby-and-had-his-Superman-faces-redrawn” does, however, seem to prick the heart of what prompts Infantino’s surly attitude—that and two other barbs. Jack Kirby is an industry touchstone—one of the field’s earliest creative geniuses and an artistic influence that drives the drawn language of comics. He helped attract me to Marvel comics; I was hurt when he left; I followed him to DC—but, the Fourth World series, while exploding with inventive, energetic ideas, deserved to be cancelled. Yes, I said it. Go back and read it again, write me nasty letters, whatever. I had stopped buying long before the books disappeared. In 1971, when New Gods appeared, I knew enough to know that the Kirby at DC was not the Kirby of Marvel. He lacked something. The ideas were there, but they were thrown out scattershot; dialogue was idiosyncratic at best; and plots were all over the place. Even the art, while characteristically dynamic, had taken a turn I didn’t much care for—too boxy and representational, almost hurried looking. And the Forever People? An old guy’s idea of what young people were like. I found them insulting. What Kirby needed, although I couldn’t articulate it at the time, was a Simon or Lee. He had neither. No one I knew at the time was buying the stuff. Perhaps the only ones purchasing Kirby’s books later grew up to be writers or fanzine producers. I don’t know. I do know that Infantino has been increasingly vilified over the years for doing what, in the context of the sales figures and distribution methods of the day, I don’t doubt had to be done, even at a cost to himself, the man who brought Kirby on board and promoted his works heavily. Infantino doesn’t deserve vituperation. Of the two other reasons I see for his surliness, I can’t tell how much blame he himself deserves. I have no direct knowledge as to why Infantino was replaced in the mid-’70s as publisher, but I do know that on his watch Marvel eclipsed DC in total sales. The little company that thought it could, finally did. I suspect that DC operated much like any other company or organization does when things don’t go well—the guy in charge takes the fall. That’s the bottom line. And that’s the line which rankles Infantino: he lost to Marvel and Stan Lee. 96

Superficially, Lee and Infantino have much in common. They certainly have parallel careers. Both comic creators began their vocation during the Golden Age and toiled in the vineyards throughout the height of the Silver Age; both were exceptional at their respective tasks, writing and drawing. Both held similar positions at the two major comic producing companies during a time of high creativity and popularity. But, Carmine Infantino is no Stan Lee. Despite the advantage of working for the comic company of Superman, no DC book today bears the pronouncement, “Carmine Infantino presents….” If Bob Kane became the comic book equivalent of Bud Fisher, the creator of Mutt and Jeff who was so successful he hired the work ghosted while he collected the checks, then Stan Lee became the comic book version of Walt Disney, an idea man who produced an empire exploding with creative people all working under his stamp. Infantino did not possess Lee’s skills as an impresario. Nor is he a writer. This lack as a writer keeps coloring our perceptions of him. His prose is pedestrian and often ungrammatical. Like Kirby, he needs an editor to curb his worst excesses. Two examples should suffice. He began his rebuttal saying, “Here are the true facts—.” Are there “false” facts? Yet, he loved that tautology so much, he used it twice more: “[Nick Cardy] will back me up on the true facts,” and “self-serving writers and artists who fabricate lies and use specious memories that have no regard for the true facts.” Such phrases are generally stricken from good writing—not used three times. Am I being too arcane? Okay. Witness this misconstruction: “That evening, after I removed Dick as editor, I called in two editors to assume his books, one of whom still exists.” Uh, what still exists here? Should the reader assume that one of Giordano’s books, under the new editor, is still on the market today or that only one of the two editors is still alive today? Does it make a difference? Of course it does. “Inept writing is bad writing,” as Infantino wrote. Stan Lee’s writing was ebullient, effervescent, and conversational. Every fan felt Stan was one of them. Though his prose was often driven to excesses—and Stan never met an alliteration he avoided—he was capable of parodying his own devices. Plus, his tone was always genial. Compare that quality to Infantino’s meanspirited tenor as displayed throughout his rebuttal. Infantino engenders little respect among fans; he is no Stan Lee; and DC was eclipsed by Marvel—all bred the bitterness of Carmine. He should get over it. I hope someday he does take his “copies of memos, notes, and sales figures” and writes a book about his own version of DC’s second Golden Age. I also hope he enlists the aid of a good editor. If he does, I’ll buy it. However, I would prefer that he deal only with facts, not “true facts,” and that he take a bit of advice from a fan: Lighten up, Carmine. It’s only comics. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 5

Summer 1999

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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

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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

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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!