Comic Book Artist #9

THE CHARLTON COMICS STORY

No. 9 August 2000

$6.95

In The U.S.

THE ACTION HERO LINE COMES ALIVE! Watchmen badge, Action-Heroes ©2000 DC Comics. Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt ©2000 Peter A. Morisi. Used with permission.

GIORDANO • MORISI • APARO • GILL • BOYETTE • FRANZ • GLANZMAN

CBA’s Jon Cooke is back in April!

Make ready for COMIC BOOK CREATOR, the new voice of the comics medium!

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

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

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $17.95 (Digital Edition) $6.95 • Ships July 2013

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

Why am I always apologizing about something in these pages? I guess it’s because when I screw up, it’s a boner! Well, I done it again, folks; I made a promise to include about a zillion participants in this here special Charlton issue and there’s just no way to include them all without putting a crack in the TwoMorrows’ financial empire. And I really tried to keep the list of planned interviews under control, but something always happens to shoot it all to hell. Here’s an example how the bestlaid plans can go down in flames: Okay. A focus on Charlton in the mid- to late-’60s’ Action Hero Line plus some emphasis on the Era of E-Man. That means talks with Dick Giordano, George Wildman, and Nick Cuti (why the latter writer/assistant editor/Moon Child artist?

Read the editorial, friend!). Okay. First the ’60s: Ditko’s not talking (though I do ask), so for creators it’s Jim Aparo (a guy I’ve been errant in covering), the great Pete Morisi, Pat Boyette, Joe Gill, and Frank McLaughlin. Okay. Not too big, doable; so let’s throw some ’70s guys in there. Now, John Morrow, my publisher, would say at that point, “Stop! Yes, that’s great, do them and no more!”

But, no, I never listen. I just think, “Maybe I can fit one more in.” Before I blink, I’ve done interviews (or assigned them) with Joe Staton, Tom Sutton, John Byrne, Warren Sattler, Bob Layton, and I’m trying to track down Fred Himes, Wayne Howard, and Sanho Kim. And I’m thinking about Mike Zeck.

Hmmm. But, with Fred Hembeck’s prodding, I think about the ’60s again: “What about Sam Glanzman? Sure, he was covered in CBA #5, but he did draw Hercules and ‘Willy Schultz.’” But that’s it, I think, no more! I talk to Sam and lament I never read a Willy Franz interview (writer of the poignant war—or, more properly—anti-war series “The Lonely War of Willy Schultz,” and who dropped off the radar soon after the series’ abrupt end). “Hell,” Sam says, “You want his number?”

That, kind reader, is how it all goes to hell!

Contacts upon contacts upon contacts. Me, I’ll blame it on Sam Glanzman!

So, sometime around the beginning of 2001, we’ll do The Charlton Story, Part Two, or more

specifically subtitled, “From Horror to Heroes: Charlton in the 1970s,” with all those ’70s folk mentioned plus some other goodies, like Bill Black, more on the CPL/Gang connection, Bill Pearson, a tribute to Don Newton, T.C. Ford, Dan St. John, and more (but not too much more, John!)

I did go nuts this issue: Because Charlton was such a unique company—all-in-one operation, isolated from the New York scene out in Central Connecticut, the industry’s lowest page rates but the implicit freedom offered to artists (through editorial neglect?) attracted extraordinary talent—I networked like crazy and was able to chat with everyone from Mrs. John Santangelo, the founder’s widow; to General Managers Burt Levey (cofounder Ed Levy’s cousin) and Ed Konick; to Ted White and Bhob Stewart; to the Derby Historical Society and even a dude, Mike Carpinello, who ran a dance club in The Charlton Building before it was demolished (and who just happens to play cards with Joe Gill now and again! Wotta small woild, eh?). And I’m getting e-mails to this day; yesterday from a former distribution manager, today from a woman who worked in the separation department, (and she has photos!). Rest assured, we’ll also be filling in some blanks left in this issue and, no doubt, correcting errors.

This issue could not have been done without the contributions and persistence of Christopher Irving, young hotshot journalist (and newlywed— congrats!) from Virginia, who kept on me to do a Charlton issue throughout 1999. (BTW: his work is in CBG, CBM, A/E, and CBA this June/July—no lie!) I just didn’t think I had the material but he kept on me. So, when a hole developed in our schedule (one I had to fill up quick!), I thought, “What the hell!” Chris’ investigations perked my old journalistic instincts (long dormant, suppressed since I lost the innocence of my youthful days as an eager cub reporter for The Jack Kirby Collector—damn you, Morrow!), so I don my visor, turn up the lamp, put my garter on my sleeve, and totally rewrite Irving’s Charlton History piece, expanding it to an ungodly length. I should apologize to him for doing it. But, hell, forget Glanzman; I blame all on Chris Irving!

NEXT ISH: The Gods & Goddesses of Comics!

Get ready for CBA’s flip-book celebration of Women & The Comics (guest-edited by Trina Robbins!) and Walter Simonson: Old Gods & New. Trina’s ish contains interviews with Marie Severin (by Mary Fleener!), Hilda Terry, Tarpe Mills, my interview with Trina, and a Trina/Marie/Ramona Fradon slumber party chat! Plus Hothead Paisan, an essay by Anne Thalheimer, and a spiffy Wonder Woman cover by Anne (Go Girl!) Timmons. And you’ll (groan) flip for our Simonson/John Workman section looking at Thor and the new Orion series, with long interviews, tons of unseen art, and all that cool stuff you’ve come expect from CBA. See you in September, fan folk!

Right: Fred Himes. Robert McLeroy photo. ©2000 San Antonio Express-News.

GET STREETWISE

™

If you dig the TwoMorrows family of magazines—TJKC, CBA, Alter Ego, and the brand-spankin’ new Comicology (you go, Brian! #1 is lookin’ fine, boy!), you will most definitely groove to our autobiographical anthology by comic book professionals, Streetwise.

One last hint: KIRBY! KUBERT! WINDSOR-SMITH! DORKIN! MURPHY ANDERSON! BRENT ANDERSON! JEFF JONES! ARAGONÉS! CARDY! WEISS! GRAY MORROW! AMENDOLA! ALAN KUPPERBERG! SINNOTT! TOTH! SPIEGELMAN! EDDIE CAMPBELL! SHAW! BILL ALGER! C.C. BECK! GLANZMAN! DON SIMPSON! TRIMPE! CHADWICK! GILBERT! ARLEN SCHUMER! JOHN SEVERIN! ROY THOMAS! RICK VEITCH! JOHN WORKMAN! Oh, and some guy named Eisner wrote the forward. Nuf sed.

™

FUR FIGHTS FERRO

©2000 James Kochalka.

E-Man ©2000 Joe Staton.

Oops! I Did It Again!

Monkey vs. Robot is fine book, uses few words. No space for proper review so I use few words, too. James Kochalka write/draw poignant tale of nature against technology. Sad, effective. Good stuff.

Hmmm. Last year, Good-Bye, Chunky Rice. This year, Monkey vs.

Robot. Last Christmas, From Hell collection. Top Shelf = top flight.

Brett & Chris: Keep sending review copies, maybe get longer review.

Fred Himes: R.I.P. While tracking down freelancers who once worked for Charlton, I found Fred Hime’s number and left a message, in the hopes of securing an interview with the fine cartoonist who worked on a number of (mostly obscure) Charlton strips (Aparo’s replacement on “Wander,” Valley of the Dinosaurs, plenty of mystery work, etc.). His son, Fred Himes Jr., returned my call to sadly inform me that Fred had just passed away, ironically within weeks of the death of his former partner and fellow San Antonian, Pat Boyette. Fred Jr. was quite up on his dad’s career, telling me stories of Alex Toth’s visiting, etc., and I received a very informative interview. He also sent me a pile of astonishing material, including the Hime/Boyette production, The Cosmic Book, a home-grown 1986 comic featuring Wally Wood, Toth, Boyette, and the best Fred Himes job I’ve ever seen! We’ll cover Fred’s career in our follow-up ish. Our sympathy to the Himes family.

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C H A R L T O N

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NUMBER 9

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

Editor/Designer JON B. COOKE Publisher

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TWOMORROWS THE FRONT PAGE: LAST MINUTE BITS ON THE COMMUNITY OF COMIC BOOK ARTISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS

JOHN & PAM MORROW

Associate Editors CHRIS KNOWLES DAVID A. ROACH Contributing Editors ROY THOMAS JOHN MORROW

Ye Ed sez he’s sorry (again), Jim Kochalka’s Monkey vs. Robot, and laments on the passing of Fred Himes ........1 EDITOR’S RANT: NICE GUYS CAN FINISH FIRST The Giordano and Nick Cuti influence on making comics better, and the Saga of S.A.G. ....................................4 CBA COMMUNIQUES: LETTERS FROM OUR READERS

Proofreader JOHN MORROW

Kyle on CBA’s abuse of Steranko, Groth on Don Simpson and Buckler, Bruzenak on Steranko’s History V.3 ......6

Cover Art DICK GIORDANO

COMICS COMMENTARY: THE QUESTION OF STEVE DITKO

Cover Color TOM ZIUKO Production JON B. COOKE GREAT SWAMP GRAPHICS

Why there’s so little Ditko in these pages—out of our respect for the artist—and his meaningful work ............10 THE BACK PAGE: GOOD-BYE TO DICK SPRANG AND ALFREDO ALCALA, AND THE BIG APPLE CHARLTON SHOW Plus an East Coast send-off to Cliff and Tim, The Notorious Huja Bros, on their sojourn west ........................108

Transcribers JON B. KNUTSON BRIAN K. MORRIS Logo Designer/ Title Originator ARLEN SCHUMER Mascot WOODY

by J.D. King Issue Theme Song BACK ON THE CHAIN GANG The Pretenders

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

Cover acknowledgement: Charlton Action Heroes ©2000 DC Comics except Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt ©2000 Peter A. Morisi. All characters used with permission. First Printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

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THE CHARLTON COMICS STORY: 1945-1968

Contributors Dick Giordano • Joe Gill Peter A. Morisi • Pat Boyette Frank McLaughlin • Will Franz Sam Glanzman • Jim Aparo Charles Santangelo • Burt Levy Ed Konick • Roy Thomas Dennis O’Neil • Steve Skeates Bob Layton • Bill Black • Jim Amash Alan Moore • Dave Gibbons Keith Giffen • Paul Chadwick Ken Bruzenak • Robert Greenberger Mickey Spillane • Bhob Stewart Bill Pearson • Glen D. Johnson Pat Bastienne • David A. Roach Arlen Schumer • Mike Carpinello Fred Hembeck • Les Daniels Bob Beerbohm • Don Mangus Christopher Irving • Rocco Nigro Fred Himes, Jr. • Mark Pacella Mike Collins • Andrew Steven

FRED HEMBECK’S DATELINE: @!!?* Ye ghads! Has Fred dug up an enormous array of character portraits from Charlton’s Action Hero Line! ..........11 CHARLES SANTANGELO INTERVIEW: THE HALF-DOLLAR MAN Charlton Co-Founder John Santangelo’s eldest son talks about his father and the company’s roots ..................12 HISTORY LESSON: THE CHARLTON EMPIRE Ye ed & Christopher Irving dig deep to find the history behind the Derby, Connecticut comics publisher ........14 JOE GILL INTERVIEW: MR. PROLIFIC Christopher Irving chats with Charlton’s perennial staff writer, perhaps the most prolific writer in history........22 CHARLTON’S ACTION HERO LINE: A PIECE OF THE ACTION Just what the heck is this “Action Hero Line,” anyway? Christopher Irving gets the story ................................25 DICK GIORDANO INTERVIEW: THE ACTION HERO MAN A long conversation with Mr. “Thank You & Good Afternoon” on his legendary Charlton editorship ..............30 STEVE SKEATES INTERVIEW: “WARREN SAVIN” SPEAKS From the Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves to Thane of Bagarth, Steve talks about his Charlton days........................52 DENNIS O’NEIL INTERVIEW: SERGIUS O’SHAUGNESSY, SCRIBE The writer of “Children of Doom” and “Wander”about working for Dick in Derby, Conn. ..............................53 ALTER EGO EXTRA! MAKE MINE CHARLTON!: ROY THOMAS ON SON OF VULCAN Our esteemed fellow editor tells us about his short, brief career writing for the Derby publisher......................54 PETE MORISI INTERVIEW: PAM, MAN OF THUNDERBOLT! The creator of Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt talks to Glen Johnson about his 50+ years in comics ......................60 JIM APARO GALLERY Spotlight on the artist of Nightshade, Wander, Tiffany Sinn and Bikini Luv at Charlton ....................................69 PAT BOYETTE INTERVIEW: THE BRILLIANCE OF BOYETTE Don Mangus in a 1997 interview talks to the artist of Peacemaker and “The Children of Doom” ....................73 FRANK MCLAUGHLIN INTERVIEW: THE MCLAUGHLIN REPORT The artist/writer/creator of Judomaster on his days at Charlton and in Connecticut’s comics art community .. 78 SAM GLANZMAN INTERVIEW: GLANZMAN’S DERBY DAYS Our Man Sam tries to recall his Charlton work, from Hercules to “The Lonely War of Willy Schultz” ..............84

Special Thanks to: The Derby Historical Society DC Comics • Patty Jeres Paul Levitz • Neal Pozner Scott Dunbier • WildStorm America’s Best Comics

WILL FRANZ INTERVIEW: THE LONELY WAR OF WILLY FRANZ War writer Will Franz on “Willy Schultz,” “The Iron Corporal,” and his departure from comics ......................92 ALAN MOORE INTERVIEW: THE CHARLTON/WATCHMEN CONNECTION ABC writer/mogul tell us who he was watching when planning Watchmen: The Charlton Action Heroes ......100

Dedicated to

DEEP BACKGROUND: PROJECT BLOCKBUSTER Insider Robert Greenberger gives us the scoop behind DC’s planned (later aborted) All-Charlton Weekly ......106

Dick Giordano Mister Nice Guy

Background image previous page: Okay, a few aren’t the Charlton versions of the Action Hero Line, put this penciled panel by Mike Collins (from an issue of Justice League Quarterly) features (left to right) Judomaster, Thunderbolt, Nightshade, Captain Atom, and Blue Beetle. Thanks to the artist for sharing this with us. Art ©2000 Mike Collins. Characters ©2000 DC Comics, Inc. Visit CBA on our 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 Phone: (401) 783-1669 • Fax: (401) 783-1287 • E-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com

N E X T August 2000

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Alfredo Alcala Fred Himes Dick Sprang

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Editor’s Rant

Nice Guys Can Finish First The Saga of S.A.G. and the Aquaman/Charlton Connection Like Alan Moore says in this issue’s interview, while Charlton Comics usually bottomed-out the “must-have” list of the comics of the 1960s and ’70s, when the books shined, they could be something really special—in spite of the publisher’s obvious lack of ambition in all things four-color. I first encountered that special something in, of all places, the pages of DC Comics’ Aquaman series in the early 1970s.

Back then, I was a kid, and those comics by Steve Skeates (writer), Jim Aparo (artist), and Dick Giordano (editor)—”S.A.G.” to those of us in the know—were just freakin’ wild books to me!

Skeates had a way of retaining the (then-darling trend) relevant slant on important contemporary issues, like pollution, or the threatening San Andreas fault, and turning them around to have some fun!

What about the “Eliot Harlanson” character, teasing a certain, multiaward-winning science-fiction writer, or “Neal Dennis,” drawn tiny, but looking every bit like a certain hot DC writer? They were a hoot!

And Aparo would join right in, adding the hilarious splash page of “Is California Sinking?” to start things off with the perfect touch of black humor, or he’d add a zillion names of DC alumni in a psychedelic background just for jollies, or throw in dead-on caricatures of Johnny Carson, Alfred Hitchcock, or even himself and Steve to spice it up!

And Dick’s contribution was not only to chose these two fine creators and let them have a ball creating fun comic books, but to bring Neal Adams on board to write, pencil, and ink(!) possibly the best (and oddly never-reprinted) back-up strip ever, the “Deadman” trilogy in Aquaman #50-52, incredibly all interwoven into the lead feature. And, boy-oh-boy, that cat-chick, Tatsinda! Man, I kicked into puberty Big Time with just a glance at Neal’s rendition of that sexy woman!

And the ultimate for me was “The Creature That Devoured Detroit,” Aquaman #56, a comic ignoring so many comic book conventions (not the Seuling kind, idjit—the traditional, often stifling methods of funnybook storytelling to keep readers anesthetized): the wordiest issue ever (one balloon has 77 words!), the book adapts a new story title six times in the course of the tale, a new super-hero is introduced and then dies—13 pages later—by tripping off a rooftop, and the kicker is it’s a cliffhanger ending and the (unannounced) final issue of the title. Supremely wacky stuff that had me waiting a long time for the next, never-to-arrive issue (unless you count the last ish of Sub-Mariner—a Marvel book, no less!—where writer Skeates brazenly brings to a finale his Aquaman opus). It ain’t Hemingway, chum, but it sure makes perfectly fun comics! (And we’ll not even get into the horsesh*t taking place at the DC editorial offices which led Dick to

Neal Adams Calls Off Art Hunt Gentleman and Ladies, It has become apparent to me after a reasonable but incomplete investigation, that my artwork has passed through enough hands that the guilty are now so far from my originals and the innocent have now acquired them honestly. To go through this process any further would be bad for everyone, so I hereby call off my attempts to retrieve my once stolen artwork. If you have any, as far as I am concerned, you may keep it. Thank you. We will return it to you immediately. We are only excepting from this list the work recently stolen from our studio that we first put up and the work currently held at the Museum of Comic Art. We will gladly supply authentication to anyone who would like them. We ask only this. If you will provide a clean copy of the pages for our records. No strings attached and an opportunity to purchase any of my work that becomes available at a reasonable price.

To the original thieves, you did wrong things. To the rest, I cannot find it in my heart to remain angry. I am sure you acted honestly.

—Neal Adams

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quit/get fired—depends on who you talk to—as the company’s most innovative editor to date, the most interesting anecdote about this bizarre story!) I’m telling you: Aquaman #57 was one damn fine Charlton story. Hell, where’d ya think S.A.G. got their chutzpa from?

Coz’, ya see, it’s about freedom. And whether through editorial design or managerial neglect, Charlton’s creators were given a wide berth to freely create their own comics, and because they appreciated his light but guiding hand, freelancers often tried hard to please Dick, not out of fear but confidence that he’d also enjoy the results. Books like Charlton Premiere #2’s “Children of Doom,” by Dennis O’Neil and Pat Boyette certainly didn’t happen because of Charlton’s bottom-ofthe-industry page rates, or the crappy in-house printing, or the lousy paper used (from a Charlton paper mil) or even the spotty distribution (yup, company-owned, too!). Characters like Ditko’s The Question (or Blue Beetle on a cranky day) didn’t happen to spout diatribes about the evils of compromise and liberalism because it met “The Charlton Method” of doing comics. Giordano’s “method” was to elicit good comics from competent creators (or just fill the pages, depending on the deadline!). Young writer and artists were given a chance to fail without punishment, thus honing their chops to get it right the next time. And sometimes they did.

In the grand scheme of things, Charlton’s many thousands of individual issues amount to maybe a hundred notable books, if that.

Most of the company’s output was pure drek. Dick’s probably right: they produced a line of funnybooks to keep the presses running around the clock. And they did it for 40 years! It was a family-run business; so why innovate and mess with the status quo? When Dick left, every Action Hero title was dropped. Charlton executives just didn’t care about the comics; the song books and distribution paid the bills. But enough folks who worked to make the contents of the comics cared enough—in spite of overwhelming apathy by the publisher—to sometimes produce stuff that is, well, fun and just maybe worth talking about 35 year later. Hope you like the issue; it’s proof that nice guys sometimes finish first.

A mention needs to be made about, well, the imperfections in this issue. Because of one incredible workload, ye ed had to produce this issue in one week to (hopefully!) make its debut at the Intern’l Comic Con 2000: San Diego in mid-July. In six weeks or so—if I may plug, brag, and complain all in the same paragraph—I’ve compiled the first three issues of CBA and added 60 new pages (nearly half the size of a regular CBA issue) for the Comic Book Artist Collection Vol. 1 (with a new Alan Weiss interview—Alan’s stories about the industry are priceless!—a section on Neal Adams’ Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, and unseen Kirby, Jeff Jones, and Wrightson artwork); I designed and produced The Amazing World of Carmine Infantino, a 176-page autobiography/art book that’s pretty damn nifty with tons of unpublished art; and I co-edited, designed and produced the 160-page Streetwise, the anthology of autobiographical stories by comic pros, also set to debut at SDCC, featuring a stunning array of contributors. All that left me was a week to finish CBA #9. But I hope you don’t think you’ve been short-changed. It’s my favorite issue yet, anyway. But, due to the sheer logistics, some redundancies and editing weaknesses occur herein. Hope you can look past that and see the good.

So if you catch me snoring up a storm at the TwoMorrows’ booth in San Diego this July, let me sleep, okay? But buy something, will ya!

—Jon B. Cooke

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

™ & ©2000 Jon B. Cooke & Andrew D. Cooke.

CBA Communiques

On Bruzenak, Steranko & CBA Plus Groth corrects, Simpson clarifies, and Gerber complains Bob Beerbohm Report: We swear to you that Bob’s continuing series on the direct market will continue very soon in the pages of CBA. Response to his “Secret Origins of the Direct Market” has been overwhelmingly favorable and we’re anxious to have Bob return to these pages but it’s been a busy year so far for both Bob and CBA. He’s been hitting the convention circuit—taking time out to do significant research for our special Charlton issue, for which he has our undying gratitude—and ye ed has been consumed with a ton of other work… but, promise, his next installment on the Donohue Brothers is coming soon….

SHIPPING IN AUGUST! T

designed magazine whose look and content were superior to that of heavily-financed magazines with millions of dollars of backing and huge editorial staffs. It is no wonder, especially in those pre-computer days, that he could not sustain the effort indefinitely. He was doing something that no one else in publishing had ever done.

Steranko’s basic problem wasn’t talent or money, it was that he was consistently ahead of his time—with “Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD,” with Comixscene, with Prevue, all created before the direct distribution market came into existence.

If he had entered comics after the direct market had been established, my guess is that the fad success at Image would have been small compared to his long-term success. (Years after Steranko had left comics, and while I was running a bookstore, Marvel reprinted his Nick Furys. When customers who were completely unfamiliar with his work discovered them, they sold out almost immediately. ) And if he’d entered the direct market as a publisher, I believe the profitability of the oversized Prevue would have financed the magazine’s successful penetration into general “real world” newsstands and allowed him to expand his staff to a reasonable size.

On the other hand, if he hadn’t come into the field when he did, what would comics have been like? In demonstrating that more adult-oriented comics with artistic integrity and imagination could be written, drawn and published, his “SHIELD” stories helped create the environment that made the direct distribution system feasible. Or the film magazines? At least a dozen used Prevue for a model or an inspiration.

Or what would my own Argosy have been like without Steranko?

Without his cover paintings, and the counsel he gave me on cover design, sales would have been half of what they were.

People have many sides. Fortunately for comics fans and those of us who admire good design, illustration, writing, and editing, Jim is no different from the rest of us in that.

Richard Richard Kyle Kyle Anaheim, California CBA #8: Good layouts and—for the most part—good contents.

For me, the most interesting feature was Roach’s article on Breccia. He was an artist of obvious gifts whose work I’ve never enjoyed. I still don’t like his art, but now I understand the background he drew from. It explains a great deal. As social history as well as biography, it’s a fine piece.

The issue had some other pleasant surprises, too. Jim Shooter’s criticism of Don Simpson’s work, for example. It’s dead on the money.

The interviews (not including Scott McCloud’s, which I haven’t read) are good ones—with one exception: the Ken Bruzenak piece.

During the talk with Bruzenak your interview crosses a very important line. It confuses the personal with the private. An interviewer has an obligation to treat everyone with an even hand. He is responsible for protecting not only his subjects but their subjects, as well. Instead, you not only published extremely personal comments about Steranko that are uncharacteristic of your other interviews, you also seemed to be soliciting them from Bruzenak. You even make a wholly inappropriate reference to Steranko’s stature. Your own height, whatever it is, doesn’t give you that license. Since Howard Chaykin is treated far more objectively on the following pages your motivation seems doubly questionable.

If this were a piece about Steranko, with the aim of presenting a full, rounded picture of him and his life, and other people were also being quoted, the remarks might be appropriate. As it is, they appear very one-sided.

Quite apart from Steranko’s reaction, I wonder what the reaction of other professionals you hope to interview will be? You depend on volunteers, you know—and who volunteers to be cannon fodder?

Further, do you know that Neal Adams owes Bruzenak money?

Did Adams sign a contract, offer a public handshake, give his word before others, tell you he owed Bruzenak? If not, you’ve left yourself and the magazine open to more than criticism.

Former employees—Steranko’s, Adams’, mine, yours—can say anything about their employers, but that doesn’t make what they say true or their speculations valid or their assessment of character necessarily correct. There are events in all of our lives that can be subject to misinterpretation, even by people who seem to know us well.

If you had asked me my view of Steranko, I would have said that in addition to being an outstanding designer and illustrator, he was a good writer, a very gifted editor, and a helpful and thoughtful man.

Aside from his work in comics and illustration, I particularly admire his achievement in editing and publishing the early oversized issues of Prevue. With only a few assistants, he published a wonderfully

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Gary Groth Via the internet A few corrections and comments on the last couple of Comic Book Artists: First, your parenthetical reference in the Howard Chaykin interview to “Harvey Kurtzman (who did the breakdowns on Blackmark)” is false. Kurtzman did not do the breakdowns on Blackmark; they’re very obviously by Gil. Neal Adams helped Gil finish it and Archie Goodwin scripted it over Gil’s plot, but Harvey had nothing to do with it. [continued on pg. 9]

KIRBY’s ’70s MARVEL COMICS!

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

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

1970s Bullpenner WARREN REECE talks about Marvel Comics and working with EVERETT, BURGOS, ROMITA, STAN LEE, MARIE SEVERIN, ADAMS, FRIEDRICH, ROY THOMAS, and others, with rare art!

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

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Then I read the article only to find out that, indeed, much of Volume 3 is out there, Your marathon interview with Don Simpson was replete with all of Don’s anti-pubeven if only in the mind of Ken Bruzenak! lisher sentiment that all we publishers have learned to know and love, which wouldn’t Ken, a plea to you—please don’t let this go to waste! Share it be so bad if they didn’t get in the way of truthfulness. with us all! Even if we are not going to see this information in the Re the Alan Moore-scripted strip Don drew for our benefit comic, he said, “The Alan splendid format that the first two volumes provided, at least let it Moore thing was an eight-page script, but it was so dense I ended up out of your own mind and into ours! You may not have any use expanding it to 13 pages. Since I was doing it for free, for the knowledge anymore, but I certainly do! they couldn’t control what I was doing,” and later, “It was originally called ‘Fictopia,’ and I changed it to Ken Bruzenak responds: The History of Comics ‘Pictopia,’ because it just seemed to me that pictures are is Jim’s project. Any rough preparation I did was over 20 years what comics are about, and again, Fantagraphics learned ago. I have no desire to aggravate Steranko needlessly, nor about it, and they called Alan, and they said, ‘I’m not the right to hijack his admittedly belated project, even if I going to bother fighting you, because you’re doing it for could decipher and reassemble my hand-written notes. It’s a free, so…’ things like that.” subject I enjoyed exploring at the time, but there is an awful “Things like that,” obviously comprising a pattern of lot of crap in there, too, and you have to present it all, not abuse and control on the part of Fantagraphics (and all just the great stuff. I just don’t have the real interest anyother publishers Don’s had the misfortune of working with). more, nor do I feel the comics market is strong enough to Admittedly, the syntax may be mangled, but I can’t imagine support the project. Jim is the one with all the books, covfor the life of me why I’d call Alan Moore and tell him we ers, interviews, contacts, stories, and colorful reputation wouldn’t fight him over Don Simpson changing the title of to capitalize upon. I, too, wait with bated breath, but not his story. Don’s implication earlier, sans mangled syntax, is that much hope, for this 25-year-old baby to be delivered. we would have “controlled” his work when he expanded Moore’s eight-page script to 13 pages if he wasn’t doing it pro bono; in fact, we were thrilled that he expanded it and Don Simpson would’ve been thrilled if it had been a paying gig. Nor have we, via the internet of course, ever tried to “control” an artist’s work. I can see it Thanks again for the great job on the interview now: “Jaime, your Penny Century story is too long. Please cut out with me in CBA #8. Long-winded as I was, I left six pages.” Right, do it all the time, Don. something out. You ran all the photos I supplied, and Working with Don on King Kong was an adventure, though. maybe somebody out there is wondering why I This was a licensed property, of course, and the person I dealt with included a picture of Keith Pollard. Since I tell this at the Merrian C. Cooper estate was a very decent fellow and I story in almost all of my interviews, I just assumed I wanted to do everything I could to treat the work with the respect had in this one. he requested. Which was hard to do with Don at the helm. Don Anyway, to be brief, Keith Pollard was the first enjoyed inserting T&A shots of Ann Darrow (the Fay Wray characcomics pro I ever met. He was kind enough to let me ter) whenever he could, so we had to be vigilant when we got a visit him in the Detroit area several times while in high new batch of art from Don. We had published Wendy school. Keith was enormously encouraging to me and Whitebread by this time and Don’s numerous attempts to helpful in pointing out books to study (Hogarth, et al).

“Wendify” Ann Darrow became a running joke around the Also, indirectly, he influenced the path of my career. office. “Hey, look: He’s done it again,” and we’d pass around You see, up to that point I aimed to be a Marvel penthe pages where he’d drawn Ann Darrow running around with ciler. However, seeing the inking jobs Keith’s own pencils half her clothes off in provocative and physically impossible got (sometimes great, by the likes of Joe Sinnott, someposes. times not, by other, lesser lights), I decided I’d go ahead It’s probably a good thing that Don’s discovered the web and teach myself inking while I was at it. I figured this and doesn’t have to work with anyone any more. would allow me to sleep better at night. Also, since my samRe the Rich Buckler interview in CBA #7: I don’t have it ples were wordless, and Keith was always pointing out I in front of me, but I remember Buckler implying that he should leave more space for lettering, I would put blank word more or less won the lawsuit he filed against The Comics balloons in. Eventually I wrote and lettered some copy to Journal for calling him a plagiarist. This was news to me. make things look more complete.

The facts are: Buckler sued us for $235, 000, the one day Just as importantly, my samples in those days combined he spent in deposition (being questioned by my attorney Marvel characters with my own creations. I asked Keith if he over his reputation as a swipe artist) was so devastating had ever created his own characters, and his response was, that his lawyer called the next day and announced that “Sure, I have a whole closet full. But I’m not going to just give Above: In he wanted to drop the suit. They were so embarrassed them to Marvel.” I was pretty shocked—here was a pro like I response to Comics Journal editor by it that they specifically asked that we agree not to wanted to be, but he was reluctant to create something for Gary Groth’s letter which states that Harvey publish the transcript of the deposition, which in an act Marvel, the greatest company in the world! He then told me Kurtzman did not do breakdowns for Gil Kane on of characteristic generosity to the mentally challenged, about Deathlok, Howard the Duck, Siegel & Shuster, and the conBlackmark, here’s two of the 24 sketches I have we did. cept of copyright, ownership, etc. You mean, you could create a Xeroxes of. I can’t find my copy of the published However if Buckler thinks he won that round, I would character in high school, use it in a Spider-Man story, then watch version to ascertain if these designs were used. hereby like to offer exclusive publishing rights to the as Marvel gave it to someone else to write and draw? The injusTop is labeled pg. 57, bottom pg. 93.

Buckler deposition to Comic Book Artist. It would make a tice of this shook me to the core. (Every creator I’ve ever met was Courtesy of Mark Pacella. Blackmark ©2000 Gil hell of an issue. similarly ‘holding back’, not just Erik Larsen, as Peter David might Kane. Art ©2000 Harvey Kurtzman. have you believe. ) I figured if I’m writing, penciling, inking, and lettering, I may Ray Bottorff Jr. Via the internet as well concentrate on my own characters as well, instead of creating samples some I was reading the first issue of my subscription to CBA only to find myself being know-nothing company can reject as they see fit. And I figured this all out by myself floored but something Ken Bruzenak said in his interview: “...I did the preliminary while in high school. This was the unintended influence meeting Keith, a mainstream research, synopsizing and rough draft writing for about two-thirds of the [Steranko] penciler, had on me!

History of Comics Volume Three in the mid-’70s—all the Street & Smith, MLJ, Fox, Hillman, Powell, Meskin, and Biro material. I just don’t have a real use for that knowlSteve Gerber edge anymore….”

Via the internet Say what?!?!?! I have waited for 20 years to see that material. If he doesn’t see a Betrayed! use, I know there is a whole slew of others who do! Even if he doesn’t write it down I’ll never forgive you or Skeates for this! somewhere, at least have more interviews and pass that knowledge to the rest of us!

Or Marie Severin, who provided the hat and frock and snapped the picture—in the At last year’s San Diego convention, I finally got the chance to meet Jim Steranko.

Marvel offices!

While talking to him, I asked him about when he was going to finish Volumes 3 through For that matter, I’ll never forgive my mother and father for allowing me to be 6 of his History. He gave me a wink (literally) and said, “Well, maybe next year.” I born into this world of pain and humiliation! resigned myself with the thought that we would never see another volume.

(Ahem. ) So. Anyway. Didn’t I tell you Marvel used to be a fun place?

August 2000

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

9

CBA Commentary

The Question of Steve Ditko Ruminating on the Artist and this Charlton Celebration

by Jon B. Cooke It may seem odd to have an issue devoted to Charlton Comics and have to have no major coverage of the contributions of the company’s most profoundly talented and important creator. But Steve Ditko is a man of resolute conviction, firmly refusing to share personal reminiscences of his fifty years experience in the history of American comics.

Though initially very supportive of comics fandom in the early- to mid-’60s, the artist has declined a doubtless daily barrage of requests for interviews from comics fans, journalists, and historians alike, many who have been sincerely touched and inspired by his work of the last halfcentury. He simply doesn’t do interviews and remains an enigma, a true mystery man, to thousands of his fans, many of whom remain endlessly frustrated in their desire to “know” Ditko, a man who prefers his work to speak for him.

Above: Perhaps the most profound character of the Action Hero Line, Steve Ditko’s The Question, made his only solo Charlton appearance in the one-shot Mysterious Suspense #1 (Oct. ’68), after the demise of Giordano’s grand experiment. Ditko’s stringent beliefs come on full force in these unrelenting stories, apparently originally intended as back-ups for the subsequently cancelled Blue Beetle in 1967. ©2000 DC Comics.

10

As a journalist/historian, I share that frustration because of Ditko’s high stature in the field as artist and visionary, and plainly because his work has meant so much to me since childhood. I have myself written plenty of letters to the artist, respectful missives (I hope) always requesting an interview, sometimes with obliqueness but usually overtly. And my requests have never been ignored but they are always—always—declined in his return correspondence. My persistence shouldn’t be interpreted as inconsideration of Ditko’s feelings; I feel an urgent obligation to at least ask if we can converse for the record, again because the artist is just so important in the field.

While steadfastedly refusing to be quoted for print, Ditko has not been silent these past 25 years. His objectivist philosophy is made plain in his political essays for Joe Brancatelli’s Inside Comics in the ’70s and Robin Snyder’s The Comics over the last decade up to the present day. Any glance at the diatribes within his own prose and comics material—Avenging World, Mr. A., and in a number of the recent Robin Snyder-published collections—reveals nothing if not a firm believer in Ayn Rand’s proudly selfish worldview. While, no doubt, Ditko writes his discourses with absolute, firm conviction, the words carry nary a touch of humanity. Needless to say, there are no greys in the artist’s written perspective—only black and white, right and wrong, bad and good. No mercy, no redemption, only justice.

But, oh, the man’s art! Filled with passion, whether idealistic or grotesque, the art is just plain beautiful and once inspired by his linework, you become a Ditko junkie for life. As Alan Moore puts so well in his interview in this issue, you may not agree with the artist’s politics but you’re compelled to love the art; even if you feel the nearly-fundamentalist fervor of his message is abhorrent, you gotta respect the guy for the strength of his conviction.

This long-winded ramble is to announce there will be very little devoted on Ditko’s impact at Charlton Comics in this issue, out of respect for the artist’s desire to have no participation in this publication. Certainly he is discussed in some of the interviews by his friends, co-workers, and acquaintances, and images from his work (those copyrighted works owned by the current Charlton Action Hero Line trademark owners, DC Comics, and pieces in Roger Broughton’s legal ownership) will appear—if more sparingly than I would have hoped—as purely historical examples of his significant contribution to the Derby, Connecticut publisher. No infringement is intended and I hope the readership—and Mr. Ditko—will understand that my desire in compiling a competent history of Charlton is prepared not with any desire to exploit his—or any other creator’s—work, but to enlighten and inform our audience to better understand this fascinating aspect of comics history, the story of Charlton Comics.

In closing, Steve Ditko’s contribution to Charlton is of paramount importance when considering whatever critical success the publisher’s creators achieved. The Question, a quintessential Ditko character, is to this writer a truly brilliant creation—an artifact not only of the artist’s point of view, but of the time from whence the vigilante came: compelling yet repulsive; resonant yet grotesque; fascinating and still harshly brutal. Seek out Mysterious Suspense #1, featuring “The Return of The Question,” kind reader, and find out what Ditko’s work says to you.

P.S.: A newly-arrived and great resource on Ditko’s 1950s Charlton work is the “New First Issue” of The Rocket’s Blast and The Comicollector, edited by James Van Hise, with JVH’s exhaustive 46page(!) article, “Steve Ditko in the 1950s: Terror, Wonder and SixGuns.” Sporting a plethora of full-page reproductions—larger than the original comic pages—all in glorious black-&-white, Van Hise painstakingly covers, it appears, every single Ditko comic story for the Derby publisher, from The Thing! to Unusual Tales. Being crunched under by deadlines, I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but skimming the piece in preparation for this issue, I’m vowing to settle in with this read once I get a breather—and the rest of the ish looks great, too! As an editor, I’m jealous as hell of Van Hise’s piece; as a professional, I’m alert that yet another worthy competitor has entered the retro-scene; and as a fan, I’m delighted to have RBCC back after too long a hiatus. Good show, James!

RBCC #1 available for $9.95 + $3.20 shipping from James Van Hise, 57754 Onaga Trail, Yucca Valley, CA 92284 or available at your better comics shops through Diamond or at Bud Plant Comic Art. Steve Ditko is a frequent essayist in Robin Snyder’s The Comics, subtitled “The Original First-Person History,” the monthly newsletter ($24 U.S./$30 elsewhere for a year’s sub). Robin also serves as Ditko’s publisher—recent releases include the first three volumes of The Ditko Package series. Contact RS at 2284 Yew St. Rd., #B6, Bellingham, WA 98226-8899 or via the web at <rscomics@aol.com> for ordering information.

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

©2000 Fred Hembeck. All characters ©2000 their respective owners. Be sure to check out Fred’s weekly strip in The Comic Buyers’ Guide.

August 2000

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

13

CBA Interview

“The Half-Dollar Man” Charlton Founder’s Son Reveals the Roots of the Company

by Christopher Irving Editor’s note: Charlton Comics was partially named for our first interview subject Charles Santangelo, son of the Charlton Publishing-Press and Capital Distribution co-founder John Santangelo and himself a onetime Charlton General Manager. What follows is a candid and personal talk by Charlie who still resides in Central Connecticut. You want hitherto unknown history? Well, read close!—

Above: Mid-1960s Charlton ad promoting their song lyric books, the backbone of the company, in this ad from Newdealer magazine.

Courtesy of Bob Beerbohm.

Center background: The Capital Distributing Company icon, which graced the covers of the Charlton line in the 1950s and ’60s.

12

JBC Christopher Irving: Is your father still alive?

Charles Santangelo: No, he was born in 1899, but he lived up to 80 and died in 1979.

Chris: What can you tell me about your father? What made him start Charlton?

Charles: He was a bricklayer and masonry contractor working on a big project about 15 to 20 miles from Derby. He had been in the country six or seven years. In the evenings, after work, he went to the Sons of Italy with the other fellahs. My mother was a young high school teenager who lived around the corner. He fell in love with her.

He was living in Yonkers at the time, and working in Connecticut.

When he met her, he asked her if she needed anything from New York. She said, “I’d love the words to the popular songs. I’m trying to write them down in shorthand from the radio, but I’m missing words.

Can you get me a magazine with the words to the songs?”

When he went back to Yonkers, he went to every store he could get to, but none of them had the words to the songs. He bought her sheet music to a couple of the songs, but she didn’t need the music notes. She said, “It’s too bad that nobody’s got it.” My mother typed the words to a dozen songs on one sheet. He knew another Italian friend who had a relative who owned a print shop, and said, “What’s it going to cost me to make 30 to 50 copies?”

The guy said, “It’s gonna cost so much to make 20 to 50 that you might as well make 1, 000.” The idea hit him, and my father said, “What’s it going to cost to make 1, 000?”

It was something like $20, so he had 1, 000 made with “10¢” printed on the front. It was a single sheet folded. The guy came up with 1, 000, and my father got my mother and went to the local cigar store and left 20 or 30 copies. Then they went to another store and left 15 or 20. They were driving up through Connecticut, leaving copies. He’d go to the store and say, “Can you just take these; try to sell them. Don’t give me any money, and I’ll be back in a couple of weeks. Whatever you sell, keep a nickel, and give me the other 5¢.”

The sheets cost him 2¢ each to make. (As a matter of fact, he had a saying many years later, when he’d become wealthy, that “I never made a dollar; I always made a half-dollar.”)

When my father went back to the job in the city, seeing my mother once or twice a week, he went back to the first store, where he had left 20. The owner said that they sold out in two days, and to leave 40. My father then got the same report from every store—they each sold every single copy they had.

He was used to hard labor and, all of a sudden, he’d made a couple hundred bucks, quick. This was around 1934, before I was born in ‘35. When there were new songs, my mother typed out the lyrics, and my dad went to the printer and made 2, 000. The same thing happened a couple weeks later, and things started booming.

That’s how he got started.

The problem was that he was an immigrant and didn’t realize or know anything about copyright laws. Before you know it, ASCAP was after him since he didn’t have the permission of the copyright owners, and didn’t know how to go about getting it. He finally got busted and went to New Haven County Jail. He got a year and a day in New Haven County Jail. While he was there, he met another inmate named Ed Levy, an attorney who was the Corporation Counsel for the City of Waterbury who got involved in a scandal having to do with phony billing. They met and got to like each other; they were the same age.

Levy was exceptionally sharp, a Yale Law School graduate. To make it short, my father said, “If you can get me permission, I’ll get a printer and we can put out this stuff.” They shook hands, and became partners when they came out at the same time. Ed went to the music publishers in New York to arrange for permission and pay the royalties.

They started a magazine called Hit Parader. (Ed and my father were the same age, and Ed’s son and myself were the same age. At that time—when this happened in about 1937—we were about two. ) Chris: They got the printing press right after they got out of jail?

Charles: Not right after. They continued to print in New York for probably five years. At that time, in 1945 I was 10, and remember going across the street from school, where they had a few little machines. They didn’t really get into printing until after World War II, around 1947 or 1948, when they went out to get equipment and print more. Now they had the presses going, and they were hiring and training people, and my father was good at bringing in people. He found out who ran the press before he bought it, talked to the guy and offered him a deal.

I was 16 in 1951, and he got his first real binding equipment: Sheridan’s Automatic Six-Pocket Stitcher. Sheridan sent their best man to set up the equipment. When he got there that Summer, dad told me to go work with this guy Emil Ivan, who’s in his eighties now. He set up all the equipment, and we had some obsolete stitchers which dad needed a good man for, so he hired Emil. He talked to Emil, had him up for dinner and, the next thing you know, Emil quit Sheridan and came to work for us.

My father did the same thing for a fella named Smitty in New York, and got several people that way. It really helped the company grow. Being in the small town of Derby, there were no printers. He was quite a guy who knew how to draft people like a team. He knew the right guys, got them and gave them incentives, and they worked their butt off for him.

So, my dad had been doing this for a few years and had gotten pretty big. He had several people going around in cars and leaving the magazines at places. He was distributing them direct—not through any distributor or wholesaler. He was a friendly guy who would talk, COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

leave them there on consignment, and collect the money.

Anyway, they called it Charlton Publishing, after Ed Levy’s son (who was also named Charles) and myself. They started with Hit Parader and a couple of other magazines. With Ed’s editorial ability, and since they had permission, they hired editors and started publishing articles. Charlton really flourished in the ’40s; I remember Frank Sinatra was on almost every cover. They bought out a competitor, and they added titles like Rhythm & Blues and Country Song Round-Up. Then around the late-’40s or early-’50s, when I was 13 or 14, they wanted to get into other aspects of publishing. By now, my dad, instead of printing in New York, had set up space in Derby, where he had met my mother and they married. He bought some old equipment and had some friends from New York move, and he started to do his own, since he didn’t want to pay the printer in New York. They formed Charlton Press, the printing company. They heard about a comics press that was available in Pennsylvania, bought that, and got the rights to Blue Beetle, Nyoka, and a couple of other titles. Levy and my old man Santangelo were great guys, and brilliant in their own right. They were like Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside. My old man was the inside guy handling the production and the hiring and getting things done, and Ed was the guy outside who went to New York and he had an editor friend to do the editorial work.

Charlton continued with humor magazines, crossword magazines, and comics, getting very big. In the mid-’60s, Ed decided he was going to retire and didn’t want to work every day, like he had been doing. His son wasn’t interested in the business, and I was, so Ed said “John, you want to buy me out?” So they sat down with an accountant, and an attorney was there, Ed was there, and I was there… That was it, my father bought out the other half and made a deal with another handshake. They shook hands before the partnership, and shook hands when they ended it; no contracts or anything. They were just great guys.

I left the business in 1968. I got tired, since I’d been in it since I was a kid. In ’68, my dad was 69 and still going but I thought that he was going downhill. We had 52 titles, doing quarterly, which was a mistake. I wanted to cut down to thirty bi-monthlies. I was overruled, being a young guy. That eventually got me to leave because I decided it was too much and time to leave. We had that disagreement and I left, but he stayed on for another 10 years, and he gave the business to my brother. I got tired of wearing a tie and answering the phone, going to meetings and meetings and meetings. I was almost 34 and wanted to do things. My old man was pretty tough and didn’t want to do them. I said “Arrivederci, I’m going.” I left and opened up a car wash and gas station, and did that until nine or 10 years ago, when I leased the business and retired. I haven’t worked in 10 years, but I’m having a great time, and I have some great memories.

We had a good outfit, but after I left, my father had my younger brother come in to take over. My dad had wanted to keep it in the family, but it was too much for my brother, and things started to go downhill. We were the first national distributors for Larry Flynt’s Hustler magazine. Flynt was quite a character, and he figured out how much commission we were making, decided it was too much, and he broke the contract and went out on his own. We sued him, and he countersued. The judge went down the middle, but we lost to Hustler, a big loss. After that, things went down.

My brother, about seven or eight years ago, started to sell titles like Hit Parader, sold Country Song Round-Up to someone else… sales fell apart on comic books. We got out of the comic business, and eventually started selling magazines, equipment, and the building, which went to a real estate developer. When they put up the building, it was almost on a marsh near the railroad track. Along Rte. 60, they put a highway beside it, and the real estate became very valuable. On the other side of the street from us were shopping centers with major franchises. We didn’t belong there, like the commercial retail. My brother sold it and got millions for it. It was a 150, 000 square foot building.

We all made a lot of money and are doing great. Those were good years for me. Guys like Joe Gill, Pat Masulli, Dick Giordano, and Frank McLaughlin are all in my heart. And there was the fella with big, thick glasses: Steve Ditko. He was great. He and I had some good talks and conversations. I like Steve.

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COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

A Capital Idea!

The One-Stop Publishing Shop is Here!

[The following article appeared in the July, 1958 issue of the trade magazine Newsdealer.

Courtesy of Robert Beerbohm—with much gratitude to Bob for tracking this down. ] Something of a phenomenon in the world of publishing is an extraordinary one-stop shop nestled among the gentle rolling hills of central Connecticut. Here, it is not only possible, but commonplace for an idea to enter through one door and finished publications to leave from another. What’s more, the very trucks speeding copies to various parts of the country are also owned and operated by what may be the most versatile and comprehensive publishing operation anywhere!

The town of Derby is a little old country place that has retained much of its rural charm despite its proximity (11 miles) to the bustling city of New Haven. Derby’s biggest business has always been its big neighbor, but recently a local firm has been occupying more and more space and hiring more and more people.

The Charlton Publishing Company of Derby launched its meteoric career some 14 years ago with a couple of song lyric magazines. Today, Song Hits and Hit Parader are still the best known and largestselling titles in this field, but Charlton has developed into a publishing and distributing empire. Best known to retailers is the familiar CDC which appears on many of the magazines and comics they sell.

The Capital Distributing Company is now the largest of the many branches of the Charlton family tree.

Behind this huge expansion program is the sound, basic thinking of Capital’s owners who are, themselves., just as diversified and comprehensive as their business operation. John Santangelo, founder of the firm is a latter-day Horatio Alger, the self-made immigrant boy who thrives on long hours and hard work. His uncanny “feel” for newsstand periodicals is matched by his unerring ability not only to operate, but also to trouble-shoot every piece of company equipment.

Ed Levy’s broad business background in the fields of banking, law and operating a chain of theaters makes him particularly Before-&-after covers of Charlton’s War Story invaluable as the little compamagazine. ©2000 the respective copyright holder. ny expands into more and more corporations in more and more related fields.

Allan Adams combines the zest and daring of youth with the wisdom of many years of high level experience as Circulation Director of a large national distributor. He has also operated his own wholesale agency in California and knows firsthand the problems of retail dealers.

Capital’s “big three” have together developed the “Capital Idea” or formula which is pointing the way to greater economy and efficiency in the publishing industry. Basically, the Capital Idea consists of two parts: 1. Eliminate the uncertainty and expense of suppliers and middlemen by owning and operating every phase of your business.

2. Secure the most competent men to head up each activity and, wherever possible, arrange to have them share in its ownership.

Today, Charlton is but one of several publishing companies in this growing family, all of whose magazines are printed by Charlton Press and distributed by Capital, both members of the clan. Paper?

Oh yes! The Colonial Paper Company is another CDC subsidiary. So is the engraving company which makes the cuts, the bindery, the trucking operation… in short, the works… from raw paper to delivered copies! And each function is headed up by an expert who, in many instances, owns a part of it.

The idea behind the Capital Idea is to produce better periodicals at lower costs, both very necessary objectives in today’s market conditions. (Retailers will recall the recent demise of several prominent publications that obviously could not meet present-day requirements.)

Capital’s program of better magazines is now in high gear. Many slower-selling titles are being discontinued. The better sellers are being further strengthened with enlarged contents and sparkling new covers. A typical example of the Capital trade-up campaign is War Stories, before-and-after covers of which speak for themselves.

Capital’s plan is loaded with an incredible array of the most modern equipment of all kinds. On the lower level, brand new, high speed, four color presses are producing better magazines, faster. Upstairs, IBM electronic equipment maintains exact sales records of every copy of every issue. In-between, new experimental devices are testing and probing, seeking new and better ways to manufacture new and better periodicals… here, a new high gloss ink, there, a new side-stitching gadget ($135, 000) which was first used to bind CDC’s 15¢ test comics. And in the book section, a new system has just been installed for fast and accurate servicing of reorders.

A tour through Capital’s huge plant in Derby is a preview of the future. Here is one publisher’s huge stake in a better tomorrow, a million-dollar promise of increasing prosperity for retailers and wholesalers of magazines, comics and small books!

13

History Lesson

The Charlton Empire A Brief History of The Derby, Connecticut Publisher

by Jon B. Cooke & Christopher Irving

Above: Cover detail of Al Fago’s Atomic Mouse, from the cover of Atomic Mouse #1. ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

Center inset: 1958 aerial shot of The Charlton Building from the July, ’58 issue of Newsdealer. The caption states, “This huge publishing-printing-distributing organization occupies a modern 7 1/2-acre plant in central Connecticut.

Courtesy of Bob Beerbohm.

14

The Charlton Publishing Empire’s humble beginnings stretch back to the 1930s, when an Italian immigrant named John Santangelo began selling unauthorized printed song lyric sheets in Central Connecticut. Though clearly involved in copyright infringement as the sheets were sold without the consent of the music industry, Santangelo’s business eventually became profitable enough for him to end his regular job as a New York City bricklayer. After a few years, the entrepreneur was pursued by organizations such as ASCAP for copyright infringement, the law eventually caught up, and he was sentenced to a year in the New Haven County Jail.

“My old man was an immigrant and he didn’t know anything about copyright laws,” Santangelo’s eldest son, Charles, said. “It certainly wasn’t terrible or intentional, but he did violate the law.”

Former Charlton head staff writer Joe Gill presented a view of Santangelo that differed from a July, 1958 Newsdealer magazine article that likened the founder to be “latter-day Horatio Alger.” Gill said, “He was wealthy, a very cunning man, and a friend of mine. But a lot of people didn’t like him.”

While serving out his sentence, Santangelo met fellow inmate Edward Levy, a disbarred attorney incarcerated because of his involvement in a Waterbury political scandal. The two became fast friends and, with a handshake deal, started a business partnership to establish a legitimate publishing concern after their release. Levy and Santangelo both had infant sons named Charles, inspiring them to name their newfound business Charlton Publishing.

Making up for lost time, the partners secured licensing rights, and launched their magazine line with the song lyric magazines, evolved versions of Santangelo’s bootleg sheet called Hit Parader and Song Hits—the latter purchased from another company, according to Charlton Business Manager Ed Konick, who started working for the company in 1952. “When Charlton started,” Konick explained, “the song lyric publications didn’t include any features at all. Best Songs and Popular Songs followed, and they started adding features, fillers, and photographs to the magazines in 1945. By 1949, we came out with Country Song Round-Up. We also branched out later into the black entertainment field with Rock & Soul, and we also did a pop standard book, Songs That Will Live Forever.”

After years of sending out the printing to New York shops, in the late ’40s Charlton set up operations in a 150, 000 square-foot building in Derby. The partners’ philosophy, unique in the publishing industry, was that the cheapest and most efficient way to produce periodicals would be to to establish an “all-in-one” operation; that is, have everything under one roof—editorial, printing, distribution— eliminating any middle-man expenses and maximizing profit. The Charlton Building housed three sister companies: Charlton Press, Charlton Publications, and Capitol Distribution, with an off-site auxil-

iary concern, The Colonial Paper Company.

Charlton first published their song lyric magazines starting in 1935, only adding comics to their line-up by the Autumn of 1945 with the release (under the Children Comics Publishing imprint) of the funny animal title Zoo Funnies #101 (the #101 giving an indication of the odd numbering systems Charlton would use up till the mid-’60s with annoying regularity). Between 1945-50, Charlton published few titles (Zoo, Tim McCoy, Merry Comics, Cowboy Western, Pictorial Love Stories), with the work out-sourced to freelance editor and packager Al Fago (brother of Timely/Marvel editor Vince Fago), who jobbed-out the assignments from his Long Island home.

Perhaps realizing the set-up of the comics division contradicted his all-in-one Charlton philosophy, Santangelo created an in-house comics department by early 1951, eliminating the line’s reliance on freelancers, hiring staff artists (among them, future Managing Editor Dick Giordano), and bringing in Fago as on-site managing editor. The company also beefed-up the comics’ output considerably, and (maybe envious of their rivals’ successes) content delved into more earthy fare as Charlton debuted Crime & Justice, Racket Squad in Action, Sunset Carson, Space Western, and perhaps the most notorious Charlton comic ever published, The Thing!—all between ’51-’52.

The Thing!, a series reviled by Dr. Fredric Wertham for its gore and explicit mayhem (The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide notes issue #5 and up contain “excessive violence, severed heads, injury to eyes common,” plus lingerie and extreme torture panels, wrapped in “headlight” covers) also is notable for the appearance of the company’s most important (and longest-staying) artist, Steve Ditko. Though still riding the EC horror coattails with like titles, the publishing outfit also found rack space for Managing Editor Fago’s forté, the funny animal genre, by releasing his Atomic Mouse in 1953, but the following year saw the elimination of the explicit horror books and the

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entire comics industry entered Bad Times. But due to its all-in-one set-up, Charlton apparently thrived regardless of the anti-comics atmosphere of the time. The house continued to churn out titles, and notably Charlton scooped up inventory and titles from a number of folding comics shops. Between 1954-55, the company acquired titles from Superior Comics, Simon & Kirby’s Crestwood/Mainline, St. John, and most significantly, Fawcett Publications, as the house of Captain Marvel threw in the comics towel for good.

Al Fago, reportedly angry at the company, left Charlton in the mid-’50s to set up his own imprint, and the managing editor position was given to Fago’s assistant Pat Masulli, who held the job for 10 years or so. The comics output settled down to pretty standard Comics Code-approved fare of genre material—romance, war, westerns, kiddie, science-fiction, “Unusual Tales,” though super-heroes were represented by a lone entry, the four-issue revival of Blue Beetle in 1955. Churning out the work in often pedestrian fashion were the staff artists reporting to work in Derby on a daily basis, among them Dick Giordano, Steve Ditko, Rocco “Rocke” Mastroserio, Sal Trapani, John D’Agostino, Vincent Alascia, Charles Nicholas (possibly the creator of The Blue Beetle in 1939), and Bill Molno. The primary writer of virtually all the Charlton books was Joe Gill, ever-present at his desk with typewriter, who is arguably the most prolific writer in the history of comics, producing as much as 100 pages in scripts a week, stories often as pedestrian as the artwork.

At approximately 10:00 A. M., Friday, August 18th, 1955, a natural disaster struck that changed everything for the staffers at Charlton, and even threatened to close the company’s doors down permanently. The aftermath of Hurricane Diane cut a swath of destruction through the Carolinas, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and, of course, Connecticut. Eleven inches of rainfall caused massive flooding that claimed the lives of hundreds of victims in the Connecticut Valley area. All 129 acres of the Charlton grounds were submerged in 18 feet of water. $300, 000 worth of paper inventory, mats, comics art work, and plates, among other things, were destroyed by the flood in minutes.

“When the flood came through,” Burton N. Levey, cousin to co-owner Ed Levy and Charlton executive, said, “we had to get on top of the building because the water was rising, and a helicopter landed on the roof and took us off—that’s how I got out of there! I watched my car float down the river.”

“The press was entirely underwater, the building was underwater,” Joe Gill said. “[Artist] Maurice ‘Reese’ Whitman had to be taken off the roof by helicopter. Cars were washed away. When the smoke cleared, Santangelo called a meeting of the artists and myself. He was

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COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

an inspired speaker in his broken English, and said he was going to carry on (though, in the meanwhile, the guy had gotten umpteen dollars in flood relief from the government, for free; this was an enormous boost for him), but he couldn’t continue to pay us the same ‘high rates. ’ He said that we could all continue working at half of what we had been working before. I was dropped to two dollars a page [a quarter of what the major companies were paying at the time].”

According to the Oct. 1955 issue of Newsdealer, the springing-back of Charlton was “a story of employee personal contribution which defies the imagination.” The article says how the employees and community dug Charlton out of the wreckage, ultimately running the presses again in ten days, though staffer Dick Giordano doesn’t recall “it being that quick.” Nor did Burt Levy: “It was a disaster and it took us a long time to get going again.” “No,” Ed Konick said, “it took several months to recover; we were operating but using outside printers.

It took a long time to clean up that mess.”

Despite notice that the company maintained “a full payroll,” there is no mention of either Santangelo’s disaster relief money, or the pay-cut employees suffered.

“If I didn’t write fast, I wouldn’t be able to get along under that price structure,” Gill said. “So, we were working for those rates, and the artists were only getting $13 a page. What could you expect from an artist with a wife and child, and how much time and care could you expect him to put into a page? There was the pride of doing good work, but it was impossible to do our best work consistently over a period of time. I did a lot of garbage, and some good work—not much, but some. Charlton got a helluva lot more than they paid for out of me. People who are critical of Charlton artists and writers have to remember that the price structure of the company was a big factor.” Giordano said the regular rate for art—pencils and inks—was $13 a page. “After the flood, it was halved to $6. 50; later it went up to $10; later still back to $13.”

In 1956, Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel briefly packaged titles for Charlton, bearing the eclectic names Mr. Muscles, Zaza the

Above: Cover to the first issue of Charlton’s notorious horror title, The Thing! Steve Ditko contributed significant work to this explicit title. ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

15

Charlton Keeps Afloat 1955’s Hurricane Diane Socks Derby!

On Thursday, August 18th, the rains came. It was the end of hurricane Diane which ripped through the Carolinas and on up to New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts and neighboring states. It was the end, too, for thousands of families in this region… a very wet end. The dead—drowned, most of them—were counted in hundreds. But it was the end for countless thousands, the end of home, business, food, water, lighting, refrigeration, radio, television, sanitation. It was disaster!…

Not only retailer and wholesaler, but publisher and national distributor, too, were staggered, stunned and stirred to unbelievable strength by the flash floods.

At 10:00 A. M. on August 18, 1955, the 129 acres of building and land housing The Capital Distributing Company and its associate publisher, Charlton Press, were submerged in 18 feet of water. The companies are located in the heart of the area struck by this most disastrous hurricane in Connecticut history. In just one hour’s time the flood washed away $300,000 in paper inventory, plates, mats, original comics artwork, together with all other publishing material, and left an engraving plant and several buildings filled with Linotypes and printing presses under 18 feet of water and accumulated flood debris.

Heroic efforts by many of the company’s 400 employees, to remove and save the more than 200 motors used to drive the presses, were futile. The waters rose too fast. Vital office records were all that could be taken from the buildings and those went aloft with the last handful of employees who were evacuated

by Army and Navy helicopters.

How does a company recover from such a catastrophe in such a perishable business as publishing monthly magazines? How Capital-Charlton did it and put out Song Hits, Hit Parader, Country Song Roundup and others without missing an audible beat is a story of employee personal contribution which defies the imagination. Hand-wielded picks, shovels and wheel barrows started it. Bulldozers, cranes, dump trucks, and graders followed. As soon as an office was cleared, the personnel of that division took over final cleaning, fumigating and getting back into business. When a press was cleared, the crew responsible for it dropped off the pick and shovel gang and began concentrating on their own equipment. Wagers and friendly competition developed between crews, as to which press would be first to get back to normal production.

During all of this the company maintained a full payroll, arranged for employee quarters where necessary and kept the company doctor and nurses on hand for typhoid shots and other necessary medical treatment. It undertook any other expense necessary for a return to normal operation. With more than 50, 000 other workers in the area made idle because of inundated plants, the back-tonormal drive by Capital-Charlton became a community example.

Within one week’s time the first presses were turned cautiously by band. Within 10 days paper supplied by sympathetic houses began to feed into the big equipment. Magazines emerged and were trucked to railroad cars standing on sidings where only 10 days previously roared an 18-foot hurricane flood. A recovery by a member of the publishing and distributing industry as remarkable as any could possibly be, and an outstanding example of what can be accomplished through the incentive supplied by Independent ownership and operation.

Top: The aftermath of Diane. Newdealer caption read: “Charlton Press is completely isolated and the water is still rising. Employees were finally rescued by Navy helicopters.”

Middle: “Plant is wrecked as receding waters leave presses and equipment covered with mud, slime, debris. Paper rolls were total loss.: Bottom: Same view as top of page four days later. “Raging flood that snapped off telegraph poles, caused billion dollar damage is now peaceful stream at base of hill.” Courtesy of Bob Beerbohm.

16

Mystic, and Nature Boy. Ditko’s impressive work appears in Tales of the Mysterious Traveler, based on a Shadow-like radio show.

Dick Giordano accepted a brief position as Masulli’s assistant and, because of Atlas’ collapse in 1957, he was able to give Charlton assignments to an impressive array of freelancers. “Atlas [later Marvel] made the grave mistake of closing up their distribution company, and going with American News which, at the time, was the best distributor in the country. For reasons unknown, American News went belly-up in a short period of time, and Atlas was without distribution. The word had gotten around that I was in the New York office [where Giordano visited once a week to deal with New York City area freelancers], and just about every Atlas artist came up to talk to us in that month, including Sol Brodsky, who acted as the agent for some artists. I even had Joe Maneely do a job for me before he unfortunately died falling off a subway train. A few other people came up, including Sam Glanzman. I was able to get many of the freelance artists that I worked with from the New York office.” Such talents as John Severin and Al Williamson had brief stays freelancing for the Derby publisher, quickly abandoning the low-paying house when more profitable opportunities rose.

In the wake of Atlas’ stumbling, Charlton rivaled DC in output (if not sales), but little effort was made to innovate the comics line, as emphasis was placed in other divisions.

“The publishing of the song magazines was the biggest part of our business,” Burt Levey, who served as Charlton Publishing Business Manager and Treasurer in the ’50s to mid-’60s, said.

Part of Levey’s job was to secure permissions from the various song publishers. “50% of the company was devoted to the song magazines, 25% comics, and 25% for the rest of the magazines—confessions, detective, Real West, and the crossword puzzle books.

Of course, this varied but it’s an accurate ballpark figure of the business breakdown for Charlton.”

Quality in the Charlton books was often lacking; it was quantity the house was after. “We had to keep the presses running around the clock,” Konick explained, “because when you have everything under one roof, idle presses cost you a fortune. You have to keep putting product out, so it was to our benefit to keep operating as much as possible.” And sometimes the company had an odd way of meeting the expenses: Giordano said, “They were indeed in the junk business, and I mean that literally. In my walking through the plant, I realized that I was having difficulty getting from one end of the plant to the other because there were skids of plates blocking the aisles. These were used plates. I went to the boss and said, ‘We’ve got to get some of that stuff out of there. Nobody can get through the plant. Get it out of there. ’ He said, ‘We’re waiting for the price of scrap metal to go up. ’ That’s when I realized what sort of company I was in; we would make the plant less efficient because the price of scrap metal wasn’t high enough to make him move the plates out.”

Charlton did use more conventional revenue-increasing methods: In a curious experiment in 1957, the publisher raised the cover price of books to 15¢ and doubling page-counts to 64 per issue, promising a “whopping big 60% increase” for the COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

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retailer, “the most important news in comic history,” according to a Capital Distributing ad in the Nov. 1957 Newsdealer. A hyperbolic adjoining article optimistically speculates, “if the sale of Charlton comics at 15¢ holds, and if other publishers follow suit, then the roughly 600, 000, 000 comics sold annually will earn an additional $9, 000, 000 for retailers!” Needless to say, the 150% price increase was short-lived, with only one title, Secrets of Love & Marriage, going a three-issue distance before reverting to the 20-year-old 10¢ price industry ceiling (a price tag that would remain unchanged for another three years).

Overall, Burt Levy explained, “Charlton was a very well-run ship. They took care of their employees; they were very good employers.” And, indeed, John Santangelo had a reputation for occasional bouts of generosity. “He had built this huge dance hall, with all-marble floors in the basement of the plant,” Ansonia resident Mike Carpinello said, “and Charlton would have their Christmas parties there. And he threw fabulous parties for all of the workers—it was a grand ballroom with imported marble from Italy. Santangelo used to help everybody out.” The ballroom was also made available to be the setting for employee wedding receptions. The boss was also known to, after his annual vacation to Italy, bring back immigrants to

work in the pressroom, though as one never shy to exploit an opportunity, Santangelo also set the newcomers up in “company homes,” taking the rent out of their salaries.

Former Charlton Art Director Frank McLaughlin described the sprawling 7 1/2-acre plant: “It was a two-minute walk from the front of the building, where our offices were, to the back of the plant, where the presses were located as well as the loading dock. As you passed the bindery where the books were stapled together, you would enter the composing room where the magazines were put together. Likeable Dan Conti was in charge there.

“Next in line was Tops Engraving—where the plates were made, first in metal, and later with magnesium, I think. Joe Andrews, good friend and avid fisherman, ran the engravers. Both Dan and Joe were among the best in their respective businesses, especially working well under the most adverse conditions at times. Charlton was a great place to learn about all the aspects of publishing, since everything was under one roof, including Capital Distributing next door.”

While the song lyric magazines remained the most profitable of Charlton’s line, “as time went on, the interest in them began to wane,” Ed Konick said. “In the early days, people would gather around the piano and sing songs. But something came on the scene

Top tier, left-right: 1958 Newsdealer photos detailing Charlton’s unique all-in-one setup. Captions as follows: “People and ideas go in one door, completed magazines leave from another.

After the editor’s okay, the manuscript is set in type in the Composing Room. Type and engravings are locked into position as page after page is formed.”

Middle tier, left-right: “A fortune in paper is right on hand to feed the modern, high-speed presses.

Two stories high, these miracle machines print four colors simultaneously, fast! Bindery equipment gathers, stitches, glues parts together in one package.”

Courtesy of Bob Beerbohm.

Far left: “Shipments, billings, sales… all records are maintained by latest IBM devices.”

Left: “Finished publications are packed and roll to every city and town.”

Below: “This one-stop shop even operates its own fleet of trucks to speed deliveries.” Courtesy of Bob Beerbohm.

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17

called television, and that was the beginning of the end for the song lyric magazines. So Charlton branched out into other subjects like astrology, wrestling, western Americana (Real West), crossword puzzles, and word searches.

When Charlton was going full-force at its peak, the company had 80 publications—40 magazines and 40 comic titles—all of varying frequencies.”

Two of the talents behind Charlton, usually equated with Charlton, are head writer Joe Gill and artist Steve Ditko.

Joe Gill was actually introduced to the world of comics writing by his brother, Ray Gill, and his good friend, and one of the legendary crime novelists of the 20th century, Mickey Spillane.

“My brother was an editor at Funnies, Inc., an editorial service that packaged comics for publishers,” Gill said. “They put Goodman— who became Marvel later—into comics, and did the first [comics] in my brother’s office.

[Owners] Lloyd and Grace Jacquet were pioneers in comics. Anyway, my brother was an editor there. I met Mickey working as temporary help in a department store and brought him home and he liked it and all of us got along well.

“After I went to service in the following September, Mickey went into Funnies, because that was a door. He would write a two-page filler for 50¢. It was $1 a page for writing, but 50¢ for a filler—You could get a small story in for 50¢ those days!”

After a short stint in the military during World War II as a radio operator, the writer returned to Brooklyn. “Mickey and my brother got together and opened a studio. It had to be painted and cleaned, so I helped them. I was going to go back to the Navy as a chief radio operator, but they said ‘Don’t do that; you’re going to be a writer. ’ I said ‘No!’ Anyway, when they got through putting the place together, there was a position for me—a table, a chair, and a typewriter—so that’s how I got started.”

Joe continued to work on books for a variety of publishers in the late ’40s, including DC and Timely/Marvel (for Stan Lee). When Charlton was expanding in the ’50s, he became the head writer, working for $4 a page, initially.

Gill felt that the low prices for a guaranteed amount of work a week beat freelancing for an undetermined amount of pages at a higher price. “The drawback was that I’d only get $4 a page, and in New York, DC and others were paying more, but I didn’t like pounding the pavement going from publisher to publisher,” Gill admitted. “I didn’t like kissing ass to editors, and I didn’t like the uncertainty of whether or not I’d have assignments.”

Best known for his collaborations with Stan Lee on Amazing Spider-Man for Marvel, artist Steve Ditko returned to Charlton after a creative disagreement with Lee. Ditko’s departure from the relatively high page rates of The House of Ideas for the bottom-of-the-barrel Charlton rates is representative of the artist’s firm philosophical convictions, something that was in its relative infancy when working at Charlton.

“Ditko was all right; we were good 18

friends,” Gill said. “We’re not the same kind of people, but he and I were both living in the same hotel in Derby. Steve has ethics and stern beliefs, and he kept them. He wouldn’t do bad work just because he was getting bad pay. He tried to do just as well for Charlton as he was for Marvel. He is a fine guy, and a good artist. He did everything ‘The Ditko Way,’ but he did a good job, and he made Spider-Man what it was.”

“During the Christmas season one year,” Giordano said, “Steve would go back to New York for the weekend and draw this one page horror Santa Claus story. It was the funniest thing. By the fifth week of Christmas, everybody on Monday morning would be waiting to see it, flocking in. He would put one page up in the small hallway that led to the ladies room, by the time the fourth or fifth page came, we all knew it was coming and we’d be hanging out waiting for Steve to come in. I don’t remember any of the details, but I remember that it was very funny, very well drawn, in color, and that he had the whole office anticipating those pages.”

“Steve and I cemented our friendship,” Giordano continued.

“He was suffering from a lung ailment all his life from, I think, Tuberculosis when he was younger. He was younger then and needed to exercise, so Steve and I used to spend a lot of time playing ping-pong. They had a table in the cafeteria, and we’d work up a sweat—that’s how I learned to play, with Steve—and I had to defend myself when we started. By the time we finished playing, we were fairly equal, I think, but he’d still beat me more often than not.”

“Ditko lived in a local hotel in Derby for a while,” McLaughlin said. “He was a very happy-go-lucky guy with a great sense of humor at that time, and always supplied the [female] color separators with candy and other little gifts.”

In 1960, Pat Masulli and Ditko teamed to produce perhaps the first Charlton home-grown super-hero, Captain Atom, and the artist also joined Joe Gill to create a memorable run of Konga. The following year saw the Gill/Ditko team on Gorgo, a comic film adaptation.

Another fondly recalled Charlton staffer was Bill Molno, staff artist. Frank McLaughlin remembers a character in the truest vein: “Bill Molno was as fast an artist as I was a writer. If you wanted an army marching across the plain, he’d put them in tall grass so that just the rifle muzzles were showing,” Gill said with a laugh. “If he was doing a Fightin’ Navy and I had a destroyer in there, it would look as if he was doing a viking story; the ship would look like a destroyer... all of his ships looked identical. He was making more money than anybody because he was that much faster. He was a very talented watercolorist, but he was doing comics for a living.”

McLaughlin recalls an occurrence with Molno that happened outside of the Charlton offices. “After a few cocktails, you could count on Bill to stagger to his feet and entertain everyone within earshot with his full rendition of German opera. He never knew one word of German, but not only did it sound authentic, it was hilarious.

“Bill taught an evening class of art students in one of the rich, shoreline towns. The class members were made up of rich, upperclass women, usually middle-aged wives of surgeons, psychiatrists, stock brokers, etc. I was an invited guest of Bill’s to their first annual art show. It was to be the fanciest, most opulent social affair of the year. The exhibit took place at the home of a prominent psychiatrist and his art student wife. Part of their estate was a gorgeous indoor Olympic-sized pool, well heated because it was January. Most men appeared in formal attire, escorting their wives dressed in fine, and very expensive, gowns. The artwork was hung around the sides of the pool on walls set back about ten or fifteen feet. Special decorations were everywhere and the caterers were busy serving hors d‘oeuvres and the like when Bill and I showed up decorated, as well as plastered. Five minutes later, I was engrossed in a conversation with the host who was telling me how much money he spent on his wife’s new dress, purchased especially for this gala event. Just at that moment, I happened to glance over his shoulder, just in time to see the aforementioned wife (and dress) sailing airborne into the pool, drink still in hand. ‘You mean that dress?,’ I said.

“Of course, Molno couldn’t pass up this opportunity to raise mayhem and had pushed in others, as well, before the rest of us decided to join in. Within moments, everyone (including the caterers) had either jumped, or been pushed into, the pool. With glass raised aloft, pinky finger extended, Bill very elegantly strode down the steps COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

into the pool, tie afloat, and eyeglasses properly steamed. What a scene! The most elegant social event of the season had suddenly turned into a Marx Brothers movie! I don’t think anybody there had a better time in their life.

There were no more art shows or social invites for us, however.”

With the likes of Bill Molno and Steve Ditko in their office ranks, Charlton has often been referred to as having been a fun place to work by many former staffers, perhaps as a result of placing so many creative people under one roof.

“The atmosphere at Charlton was unusual, to say the least,” McLaughlin said. “Charlton Comics was one step removed from being a cottage industry, and was more like a clubhouse at times than a real business.

Pat [Masulli] was constantly trying to reel in some of these characters, but usually to no avail.

“Lunchtime would often extend into mid-afternoon. There was a large, empty lot next to the office part of the building where we would play softball. Pat would be hanging out the window [yelling] at everyone to get back to work. Steve Ditko and Billy Anderson would duel each other with bent coat hangers—a la Zorro—while card games and ping-pong matches became marathon events in the cafeteria. Visitors were told that these ‘creative people’ needed this break from work to relax. The cards and ping-pong became quite out of hand, and many a deck of cards were torn to shreds and ping-pong paddles became lethal weapons. Joe Gill and John D’Agostino usually were the culprits.”

Due to the variety of publications being put together at Charlton, aside from comic books, the offices presented a variety of guests. Dick Giordano spoke of meeting Fleetwood Mac at Charlton’s New York office one evening, while McLaughlin and Gill seem to remember one more infamous guest.

“Charlton always put out Hit Parader,” McLaughlin said.

“Which was very popular, and they covered a lot of stuff like interviews and so forth, with a lot of big names in the entertainment business.”

“Joe Gill and I worked at adjacent desks while at Charlton,” he added. “We were being introduced to a man who bore a remarkable likeness to the cover of a magazine on Joe’s desk. I mentioned it to Joe, after the guy left. It wasn’t long after that we realized that it was the son of Adolph Eichmann we had been introduced to five minutes before. Eichmann had been captured in Argentina and brought to trial in Israel for crimes committed in World War II. His son had somehow gotten into the country and was trying to sell dear old Dad’s diary. Sam Goldman was an editor at the time and, fortunately for Eichmann, Sam was not at his desk. Eichmann had left before Sam showed up, lucky for Eichmann.

According to Gill, Goldman was angry to the point of wanting to attack Eichmann: “I wrote something that told the story of Eichmann, and what a murderer he was, and it was on the front cover [of the magazine],” Gill said. “Eichmann’s son was up there two weeks later, coincidentally. There was no confrontation, but I don’t know if he knew about the article, or that I did it. I think the president of the distribution company, a guy named Adams, brought him up. It was a prestige thing. [John Santangelo] didn’t necessarily hate Eichmann, but I don’t know what his feelings were. Eichmann was up there as a guest, and one of the Jewish editors had to be restrained.”

In the mid-’60s, General Manager Burt Levey resigned the company and went into real estate, with Pat Masulli being promoted to August 2000

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

sharing general manager duties for the publishing operations with Ed Konick, and Dick Giordano finally got the managing editor position he had been praying for. The Action Hero Line was born. [As you’ve got an entire issue in your hands devoted to that previous sentence, we’ll skip a description here and suggest you start reading the rest of the issue. ] After taking over, Giordano started frequenting a New York office in order to come into contact with freelancers and fresh talent.

“I only went down to the Charlton New York office one day a week,” Giordano said. “The reason for it was that most of the freelancers I was working with lived in or around the New York area. Coming to Connecticut would have been too much for them, especially considering the amount of money they were making working for us. It was before the days of Fed Ex, and I would go down there with scripts, pick up artwork, and set up appointments.

“There was nothing particular about the New York office. I had a room in the offices of Joe Shore (who was an attorney who did some work for Charlton). I don’t recall exactly what he did for the company but it was enough so that he kept two or three offices for visiting dignitaries from Charlton. It was on 529 Fifth Avenue, a pretty expensive and selective part of town, even in those days, but his offices weren’t the most glamorous around.”

Through the New York office and with the help of brief Charlton scribe Roy Thomas, Giordano met with young writers Steve Skeates and Denny O’Neil. “I was very new at the game and was freelancing, but not getting enough work from Marvel to keep me busy,” O’Neil said. “I would imagine that it was Steve Skeates that told me about Dick and how he was in town once a week. I made an appointment and went up to see him, and came away with an assignment or two. He became part of my regular freelance writer market. One

Opposite page: Mid-’50s Charlton ad features their comics line-up, from Newsdealer magazine, a trade journal. Courtesy of Bob Beerbohm.

Left center and below: In 1958, Charlton was ahead of its time (or totally off the mark if that Edsel on the cover of Hot Rods and Racing Cars #35 (June ’58) is any indication), with the investment of $350,000 (according to a Newsdealer article) in a side-staple binding machine to package its’ shortlived double-sized, 15¢ titles.

Below is an ad promoting the experiment from Newsdealer.

Hot Rods & Racing Cars ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

Ad courtesy of Bob Beerbohm.

19

morning a week I went to see Dick and came away with a story or two.”

“Since I got in touch with Dick by phone,” writer Skeates said. “I more or less got hired while Dick was in Derby and I was in New York. Dick told me that Charlton had a New York office, and that I could deliver my work there.

He was only in the New York office one day a week. Thus, on one specific day each week I’d show up and deliver my stuff. I never saw the place in Derby; my only experience Above: If you read this issue’s editorial, you know that—yet again!—CBA put a bit too much on its plate planning for a oneshot, all-inclusive look at “The Charlton Comics Story.” We simply had too much material for one issue, so we’ll be featuring the follow-up sequel to this issue with a look at the George Wildman/ Nick Cuti era of the 1970s, “From Heroes to Horror: The ’70s Charlton Story,” which will actually also feature in-depth looks not only at that Era of E-Man but also Sal Gentile’s short run as editor in the late-’60s/early-’70s, and the post-Cuti period of Wildman and his assistant editors Bill Pearson and John Wren, up to the demise of the line in the ’80s. We’ll have interviews with Joe Staton, Nicola Cuti, George Wildman, Warren Sattler, John Byrne, Tom Sutton, and (if we can track them down) Mike Zeck, Wayne Howard, and Sanho Kim. Plus an essay by Bill Black! Also we’ll interview Bob Layton, who edited Charlton Bullseye and has graciously given us permission to reprint freely from his great fanzines (such as the fine Jim Starlin/Al Milgrom collaboration above from the cover of Charlton Bullseye #1).

Thanks, Bob! ©2000 CPL Gang.

Characters ©2000 DC Comics.

20

was the New York office.”

Giordano soon after took an editorial position at DC, as the Action Hero books were cancelled, something that has been attributed to everything from poor distribution to lack of advertising.

Among the freelancers going with Giordano to DC were Denny O’Neil, Steve Skeates, Pat Boyette, Jim Aparo, and Steve Ditko (who had already started producing work for DC and actually first recommended Giordano for the job). Skeates noted the different editorial approaches: “There were times where Dick couldn’t possible read everything at Charlton, but he had time to read everything at DC. At Charlton, he would more or less trust us to be on our own and do our own thing, which made Charlton a much better place to learn your craft, to learn how to write. For example, if you did something wrong there, wrote something amazingly stupid, it wasn’t like at DC or Marvel where probably some editor would catch your faux pas and change it; instead it’d go right on through and end up out there on the stands where it’d embarrass the hell out of you—which is an excellent way to learn not to make that particular mistake again!”

Over 30 years after Giordano’s leaving as comics editor, many Charlton staffers and freelancers still remember him fondly. “Dick was an excellent illustrator, and a very good artist,” Gill said. “He lives for his art, and he couldn’t live otherwise. He likes to work; all the time that he was the most powerful editor at DC, he would get up at 2:30 A. M. to work at home before going to the office, from his home in Bridgeport, working for three or four hours. That had to be for love.”

“Working with Dick as an editor was a miraculous experience,” O’Neil said. “I’ve only worked with two or three editors in my life who could do what he did. He never gave you very much direction, or told you what to do or what not to do. He just, by the force of personality, elicited good work, and you didn’t want to displease him.

We were working for pathetically bad money, even by the standards of the ’60s: $4 a page! Yet, I don’t think that any of us ever hacked.

You just didn’t think it would be the right thing to disappoint him and not deliver your best effort, and I don’t remember him ever giving me anything resembling a direct order. He was just gently encouraging and elicited—rather than demanded—good work.”

“One rather bizarre thing was that he encouraged me to over-

write,” Skeates admitted. “Dick knew he was like Kirby and Ditko— that he didn’t have an ear for dialogue—and therefore he hated to add dialogue to anybody’s script. He liked the fact that I erred on the other side, and all he had to do was take things out. He never had to add to my scripts, because they were always too verbose.”

According to Skeates, Giordano had a very pleasant way of pointing out his writer’s strong points. “When he gave raises to both Denny and myself back when we were working for Charlton— Denny’s raise was across the board, whereas mine was only for my humor stuff. We had been getting $4 a page; Denny got a raise to $5 a page. Obviously, Dick wanted me to do more humor; I think he thought my humor was superior to my adventure output. I’d like to disagree with him along those lines (mainly because in comics adventure writers seem to get a lot more respect than the humor guys) but actually, when I won my four big-deal Academy of Comic Book Arts writing awards in the early ’70s, they were all for humor writing, not adventure!...In any event, Dick was definitely a pleasure to work with, both at Charlton and DC.” The brief reign of Dick Giordano produced memorable work from a number of talented creators: O’Neil, Skeates, Ditko, Pete Morisi, Pat Boyette, McLaughlin, Glanzman, Jim Aparo, Gill, and others, but with the freelancers raided, flying off to the enticing (and better-paying) New York comics industry, the company entered a creatively dry spell under new Managing Editor Sal Gentile, with perhaps only the mystery books with the ever-present Ditko’s astute rendering showing any sparkle.

In the early 1970s, Charlton began a second memorable period of creativity with the ascendency of cartoonist George Wildman and, fortuitously, the hiring of comics fan and former Wally Wood assistant Nicola Cuti as Wildman’s right hand man. Tom Sutton, Wayne Howard, John Byrne, Joe Staton, Neal Adams, Fred Himes, Warren Sattler, Don Newton, Mike Zeck, Gray Morrow, Sanho Kim, and Pete Morisi would all make fine contributions to the Wildman/Cuti era.

Here we must beg the reader’s forgiveness as we skip over a survey of this time period. We’ll be devoting a sequel entitled “From Horror to Heroes: Charlton in the ’70s” to it in the coming months.

In 1976, Cuti was dismissed by the company and replaced by noted comics historian Bill Pearson as assistant editor under Wildman.

(During this period, a New York concern negotiated with Charlton for reprint rights to many Action Hero Line titles and, for a brief time, Giordano’s line-up reappeared until the Modern Comics imprint, albeit as sets of bagged comics for a Florida department store chain. ) Comics historian Bhob Stewart went to visit his friend and Charlton assistant editor Bill Pearson in the late ’70s and was surprised at what he saw: “They had a skeleton staff, and I went into the editorial production room and I was stunned. Here was this giant room with a sea of drawing boards, and there were only four people working there. There was Bill Pearson, assistant editor; George Wildman, managing editor, who sat at this round desk at the front of the room; a woman colorist, and staff writer Joe Gill. George’s desk was fascinating because people from all sides could put stuff on it; it was obviously created with the idea that tremendous production would be going on, with things going in different directions. I talked with Joe and he said, ‘It looks like things are slowing down here, Bhob, and I think I have to get out of here. I should get connected to do work for other companies. ’” After valiant efforts by Wildman, Cuti, Pearson and company to try to recapture a growing disinterested audience, management ordered the comics line in 1978 to stop accepting new material, and to use—with rare exceptions—only reprints from Charlton’s huge inventory, a situation which lasted until the comic line’s demise a few years later.

In 1983, DC Comics Executive Vice President Paul Levitz purchased the Action Hero characters from Charlton, reportedly as a gift for Dick Giordano, the line’s original guiding light. In time, the characters were integrated into DC continuity, and almost served as the cast for Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s opus, Watchmen.

Again, brave attempts were made, this time by new Managing Editor John Wren and packager/editor Robin Snyder, to breath life in the comics line, but abysmal sales closed the comic department’s doors in 1985. T. C. Ford, former Frank McLaughlin apprentice, attempted a revival of the line in 1986, but the dog was dead and, by COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

1988, the bones were picked dry as Roger Broughton, a Canadian publisher, acquired nearly 5000 pages of original art from 40 different Charlton titles, some it eventually appearing under Broughton’s imprint, ACG Comics.

In 1986, author Ted White wrote a letter to The Comics Journal (#112), stating that “Charlton’s business practices were typical of mob-run companies, and it was common knowledge in the publishing industry that Charlton, Capital, et al., were mob-owned businesses.”

White’s comments were perhaps the first public admission of what many—fans, Charlton freelancers, and casual observers alike—privately whispered about for years: The Derby publisher’s alleged Mafia ties. Perhaps we’ve spoken to the wrong people, but we’ve found no substantive evidence to support the hushed rumors. White cites ruthless tactics Charlton employed in the “killing” of the Monarch paperback book imprint in the early ’60s, though putting on an economic “squeeze” is surely not for the exclusive purview of the Cosa Nostra, “Mafia-like” actions notwithstanding.

“The original strength of the company—being all-in-one—turned out to be the weakness that brought down Charlton,” Ed Konick, Charlton General Manager from 1975-91, assessed.

“We had everything—and I mean everything—under one roof; editorial, art, typesetting, photoengraving, printing, railroad siding, fleet of trucks, our own circulation company (one in the U. S. and another in Canada). In the beginning, that was a great boon and we had great savings. We could operate quickly and efficiently, but printing equipment becomes outmoded after a while.

As time went by, obsolete equipment became more and more the case because people kept coming up with new concepts for printing presses, improving the speed and quality, but we were there stuck with these old presses from Year One. Towards the end we just couldn’t keep the quality or speed up to compete. For the first 35 years, we thrived but in the last 15 we went downhill. At our height, we had 80 publications and employed about 250 people; at the end, we were down to two magazines, Hit Parader and Country Song Round-Up, and eight people.

We officially closed in March, 1991.”

Today there’s a strip mall where the Charlton Building once stood; it was bulldozed down in 1992. Before the demolition, Ansonia resident Mike Carpinello was on the site. “When the wreckers started their work, a guy said, ‘Downstairs there is some old comic books and stuff; go down and help yourself. ’ So we went down there and found all these nudie magazines Charlton had printed called Eros. There was also all of this original art of Archie-type comic stories. But we never took them and they must of been destroyed. I believe they just cemented the whole basement in, covering up a gold mine down there; they just didn’t know what they had.”

Right: Much of Charlton’s output relied heavily on the time-honored genres of westerns, war, and romance. While Marvel and DC were quietly eliminating their romance books in the ’70s, Charlton kept chuggin’ along, as evidenced by this house ad (with curious ad copy). ©2000 the copyright holder.

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CBA Interview

Joe “Mr. Prolific” Gill The Phenomenally Productive Writer Speaks Conducted by Christopher Irving

Below: Cover detail by Dick Giordano for a Fightin’ Five issue.

Joe Gill created and wrote all of the quintet’s adventures! ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

22

Holy smokes! Has Joe Gill produced a lot of comic book stories! The mountain of Gill scripts quite possibly surpasses the output of the late Paul S. Newman as the most prolific comic book writer of all time. A regular Joe with quick typing fingers, the writer remained at Charlton Comics virtually throughout its forty-year existence.

While in his eighties and slowed down a bit since his days hitting the town with best buddy Mickey Spillane, Joe still plays cards now and then, still soaking in the good life in Central Connecticut. CBA hopes to have a longer chat with Joe in our sequel covering the Gentile/Wildman years of 1969-83, due early 2001.

Christopher Irving: When did you work at Charlton?

Joe Gill: I’ll tell you how it started: John Santangelo, the publisher of Charlton, was buying packaged comics from a couple of editorial services in New York, and the main one was Jacquet’s Funnies, Incorporated. I wrote comic books for Charlton, through Jacquet for a couple of years.

Jacquet was a wonderful woman to work

for; she used to call me up in the morning and say, “Can you write a book for me this afternoon?” I’d say yes, go over and use the typewriter in her office, and she’d give me a check for $200 before she went home. That’s the reason why I wrote as many pages as I did: I had no critical editors, and that makes a big difference. Santangelo had his printing press in Derby [Connecticut], and a very good editor named Al Fago (Fago and his wife ran a comic book department).

Santangelo wanted all of the artists and writers, the entire publishing operation, to be under one roof. He brought up a stable of artists like Dick Giordano, John D’Agostino, Pat Masulli, Charlie Nicholas, Don Campbell, Chic Stone, and they hired some outside people, too. I was the principle writer, and I wrote everything.

Chris: Frank McLaughlin told me you wrote up to 100 pages a week at times. How many pages would you say you wrote per week, on average?

Joe: In the beginning, for the first couple years, I’d write as many as I could get to write. I always had the capacity to write 30 or 40 pages a day. In the beginning, Fago needed scripts, and Santangelo didn’t want to pay a lot of money—he was only paying $4 a page; I was getting $10 in New York. The difficulty of being a comic writer in New York, and working for some of the “better” publishers like DC and Marvel, is that you’d have the ego of the editors to pander to.

One editor would call me up and say that he needed a romance comic, and could I come over for a story conference? A romance story doesn’t warrant a conference! I can knock out a seven- or eight-page story in an hour-and-a-half, without any conference!

When you’re working for a New York publisher, you have to go and kiss the editor’s ass. I lived in Brooklyn and had to take a subway over. After seeing that publisher, you might have to go halfway across town and see someone else. It’d be a very tiring and expensive day. When you got through, the editor would feel duty-bound to do a critical job of it and change this and change that. I’ve had an editor at DC call me in Derby to come to New York to change a couple balloons. I had some editors at DC who were good editors, and they bought my stuff and used it as is, with no compulsion to show what brilliant editors they were by changing things.

At Charlton, John was underpaying artists and writers, and practically anything that artists and writers did was acceptable. There was very little criticism. The idea was to get the books out, and nobody at Charlton seemed to give a damn how good they were! When I say I wrote between 100 and 150 pages a week, you’ve got to realize that there was no one I had to please. If I had to work in the usual editorial structure, it’d be a lot less than that.

Chris: You said before that you hated writing super-hero comics.

Joe: That began in 1945 to 1946, when comics were first going in that direction. There was a choice as to what category you could work in. The western category was bigger than the super-heroes, and I wrote Kid Colt, Two-Gun Kid, and a million things for Marvel. I was Stan Lee’s favorite boy for a short while. Comics collapsed with the end of World War II, though it took a while to trickle down. By January or February of ’46, it was getting very difficult to get assignments.

Mickey Spillane was forced out of writing COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

comics. He wrote a book because he couldn’t get any writing assignments. The book, I, The Jury sold seven million copies. As he wrote it and it’d come out of the typewriter, I’d read a page of it and say. “It’ll never sell.” [laughter] Chris: You never know... About the Action Hero books at Charlton, did you enjoy working with any of the artists?

Joe: I enjoyed working with many of the artists, like Pat Boyette, and I enjoyed working with Sam Glanzman—he is a very good war artist who also did a very nice Tarzan [in Jungle Tales of Tarzan]. Sam was a really good artist, and could interpret a story very well. He’d do a World War II story, and he made an old freighter look like an old freighter. His characters weren’t that glamorized: They were dullfaced and real. I enjoyed working with Sam, and we did a great Tarzan together—Charlton did a Tarzan better than any other; we used a block text instead of a lot of balloons, and I tried to keep the flavor of Edgar Rice Burroughs in that, and I did. Even at the speed we worked at, I was quite proud of Tarzan.

Chris: How was working with Steve Ditko?

Joe: He was all right, we were good friends. We’re not the same kind of people, but he and I were both living in Derby, in the same hotel. Steve has ethics and stern beliefs, and he kept them. He wouldn’t do bad work just because he was getting bad pay. He tried to do just as well for Charlton as he was for Marvel. He is a fine guy, and a good artist. I just don’t like his [art] style.

Chris: I think there’s a difference between an artist and a draftsman; he didn’t draw pretty pictures.

Joe: He did everything the Ditko way, but he did a good job; he made Spider-Man. Chris: What was the atmosphere at Charlton?

Joe: We had our own area in the building, and it was easy-going.

When Pat Masulli was first editor, we’d knock off for an early lunch, get sandwiches and a couple beers, and go to a lake or beach and sit around and shoot the sh*t. It was pretty fun, and we got around pretty good. The artists and myself were a little clan. I’m still friends with a lot of them.

Chris: Frank McLaughlin told me how Eichmann’s son popped in to Charlton.

Joe: Yeah. [laughter] I wrote something that told the story of Eichmann, and what a murderer he was, and it was on the front cover [of a magazine]. Eichmann’s son was up there two weeks later, coincidentally. There was no confrontation, but I don’t know if he knew about the article, or that I did it. I think the president of the distribution company, a guy named Adams, brought him up. It was a prestige thing. You’ve got to remember that John Santangelo was Italian, from Italy, and he was a Mussolini Italian. He didn’t necessarily hate Eichmann, but I don’t know what his feelings were. Eichmann was up there as a guest, and one of the Jewish editors had to be restrained.

Chris: How was Pat Masulli to work for as an editor?

Joe: Terrible. Pat’s dead now, but he was a martinet, not a friendly guy that enjoyed amiable relations with the artists. He ruled it, and he and I co-existed.

Chris: What other books did you write?

Joe: Every book that Charlton had. Fago started this when I got there: I’d get a shopping list every Friday, it might be 15 pages of Confessions, two eight-page westerns. In the beginning, they didn’t August 2000

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

know how much I could do. After we got in the swing of things (from the mid-’60s on), the editors would give me a shopping list with one confession magazine, 23 pages, like First Kiss; another love story… we had about eight romance comics, and I’d get two or three of those to do a week, a couple of westerns, a Fightin’ Navy, and it’d be a total of 125 pages. If they needed something suddenly, I might do that.

On Friday, I’d get a list of the things I had to do, and the work would be completed and in by [the next] Friday morning. Friday at noon, you’d get the check for the previous week’s work. The wonder of Charlton was that you’d get paid for your work after a week. Any publisher in New York, you’d practically have to take half of them to court; they may start out with good intentions, but then they’d get caught in a squeeze and can’t pay their printers or writers. Getting the work, getting paid for the work, and the mechanics of going to the office and going home and back was too much of a hassle.

Chris: When you’d write, would you just sit down and start typing?

Joe: That’s all. I’d have the worksheet in front of me and, if it said Kid Colt, I’d say “Where’s Kid Colt?… ‘In a mining town, and the bad guys are going to take away a shipment of gold. ’” If it was a romance, I try to pick an interesting background of interesting characters. The thought process would take as long as it would take to type the first line.

I was proud of a lot of the things I did, especially working that fast in the amount of hours I did. In order to do that amount of pages, I worked in the office and then came home and worked some more. I had a mortgage, a wife and child, as well as some bad habits, so I’d often work when I was uninspired. You’ve seen the books; you’d say that they weren’t always high quality.

I wasn’t crazy about writing Blue Beetle. I only did a couple and then told Pat to give it to somebody else.

Chris: What didn’t you like about it?

Joe: The character was too shallow. There wasn’t anything to him, and I wasn’t taking the time to make anything out of him.

He wasn’t mine, he was somebody else’s.

Chris: Did you ever feel any of the Action Hero characters were yours?

Joe: I liked the comic book I once did called Doomsday +1; it wasn’t a super-hero strip, but it was a fantasy of sorts. I liked Captain Atom to a certain extent, and I enjoyed things like Gorgo, Godzilla, and some characters from movies.

We published some terrible trash. Ed Levy, a partner of the publisher, was in a restaurant, and had his fortune told by a tea-leaf eater named Zsa Zsa, so he decided she’d make a wonderful character for a comic book. Nobody gave a sh*t about somebody named Zsa Zsa, but we ran that for a couple years, it was awful! [laughter] We had Fightin’ Navy, Fightin’ Army, and Fightin’ Marines. We did Medal of Honor, and the partner who decided (it was a minor partner) insisted the stories be authentic, so he got a hold of a Congressional library

Left: Fuzzy picture of Joe Gill with his trusty typewriter, which saw him through thousands of script pages at Charlton. Forget the computer keyboard! The writer still uses this trusty ol’ Royal in writing his correspondence. Courtesy of the writer.

Below: Al Milgrom’s drawing of Captain Atom from Charlton Bullseye #4. Courtesy of Bob Layton and CPL/Gang Publications. Captain Atom ©2000 DC Comics.

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Right inset: Joe Gill & Pat Boyette’s The Peacemaker as rendered by Walter Simonson (subject of our next issue of CBA!).

Courtesy of Bob Layton and CPL/Gang Publications.

Peacemaker ©2000 DC Comics.

Below: Joe Gill in a recent photo.

Courtesy of the writer.

book, published by the government, that was a history of all the Medals of Honor that were awarded. The written citation that accompanied the medal gave the bare details as to what the hero did; whether it was a Marine who threw himself on a hand grenade and gave his life to save his comrades, that was horsesh*t. He insisted that we use their names, and I told him “This is pretty stupid what you’re doing.” I wrote the story and I had no idea, or the time to find out, what the man looked like. Was he Nordic or was he black? Did he have blue eyes or brown eyes? Ultimately it wound up and, believe me, it was completely off the top of my head. I had a faculty for writing a story for comics, so the artists who liked to work with me said. This one character, a Marine, jumped on a grenade and gave his life to help his comrades. So that artist goes and draws this picture of a Barbie-doll kind of guy, and the comic book comes out, and out in Michigan there’s a guy in a basket case who has no arms or legs—he didn’t give his life to save his comrades, he survived! [laughter] I didn’t read the last line, so he sued Charlton. Santangelo wanted me to pay a hefty award, but I backed out on that. It’s so stupid, you’d have realized that you can’t do that.

Chris: Sounded like you had some pretty interesting goings-on.

Joe: Like Ed Levy getting his fortune told by Zsa Zsa and wanting a comic book, one of the executives went to town to buy cigars at a cigar store, and saw a yachting magazine on a rack. This is in March. He came back and said “We need a yachting magazine. Who can we get to write it? Joe Gill can write a yachting magazine!” I had to get charts and maps from the Coast Guard, but it was done to the best of my ability in two weeks. The point is that it wasn’t done until September, [and people] were buying ski magazines! [laughter] Nobody in the god-damned place knew anything about publishing.

Chris: Is that why Charlton went under?

Joe: No, they wouldn’t pay money for a

good press, they got the worst paper and cheap ink.

They paid the artists and writers a disgraceful amount of money. But most of us, who worked there and shared the experience, enjoyed it. I stayed until the bitter end. In those days I was making about $48, 000 a year from Charlton, and that was a helluva lot of money in 1965. Here’s a story that will give you a picture of what it was like to work in Charlton: In August or September of 1955, there was a flood that was an aftermath of a hurricane. The Husitanick River and Nagatuck River converge in Derby, and Charlton was built an eighth of a mile from the Nagatuck. The rivers flooded and the whole valley filled up. Charlton was a two-story building, and the press rooms on the ground floor all flooded. It was on a Friday morning, and I was going to get my check; I was drinking pretty heavily and needed money to pay my bar bill. I got down there and saw the water, I didn’t know about it. I was trying to get through the flood to get my check so I could keep drinking.

After it was over, Santangelo got a huge disaster loan from the government, I think it was interest-free. That really made John, since he had some money to play with. What he did with the artists and writers was called a meeting (we didn’t know if we’d keep publishing) of all of us, and I didn’t have anywhere to go, I was sodden with drink. He said that he was going to stay in business and publish comics again. We were all relieved, since we cut our ties with every other publisher, and work was hard to get. Plus, not all of these artists were the best in the field. We had some excellent artists, but three or four of them were real hacks; I was a real hack. I was not a star, a capable hack, but not a star.

Santangelo said he’d continue publishing. I was originally getting $4 a page, the others were getting $13 a page (that may have been for penciling and inking, or $13 for each). Santangelo cut my rate down to $2, and cut their $13 down to $6. 50. If you want to know why Charlton comics were so sh*tty, that’s one of the reasons why. But then, he says “We’ll boost it up again.” A year later, I got a raise from $2 to $2. 25. When Charlton ceased publishing comics in 1976, I was getting $6. 75 and making $48, 000 a year. All of us accepted it. That’s a pretty god-damned sad story. [chuckles] Also, in addition to the comics (at the same time), I was packaging magazines: Valor, a magazine for men (it was a nice magazine); and the yachting magazine, or True Crime (which was a text magazine done for Capitol Distribution, not Charlton [both owned by Santangelo]).

Mickey Spillane on Joe Gill “Joe Gill? We’ve been friends since before World War II, and we’re still good friends. What can I say? Friendships don’t die,” the gruff voice on the other end of the phone line belonged to one of America’s original tough guys: crime writer Mickey Spillane. Fans of his work know that Spillane is the reason for Mike Hammer, the definitive tough-guy private dick, and the toughest cat of the bunch. Many, however, don’t realize that Spillane started off in comics with Gill, writing characters such as Captain Marvel, Captain America, Blue Bolt, The Sub-Mariner, and Target and the Targeteers, before striking out with the first Hammer novel, I, The Jury. Like the Hammer novels, Spillane and Gill’s friendship still endures.

“Every kid in New York’s first job is to be at Gimbel’s or Macy’s,” Spillane recalled.

“Joe and I were working in Gimbel’s, and were there for the Christmas holidays. We stayed friends when he went to the Coast Guard during the war and I was in the Air Force.”

Mickey and Joe both brought their own interesting experiences back from the war, experiences Mickey still fondly recalls.

24

“Joe was the chief radio man in the Pacific during the War,” Mickey says proudly.

“It was a weather ship, and nobody would sink it, because the Germans and our forces would use their weather reports. The Nazi wolfpacks would circle around his ship. It would be this big circle outside gun range of their ship.”

Upon their return from service, Gill and Spillane got enmeshed in comics, thanks to Joe’s brother Ray Gill.

“Did Joe ever tell you about the time he joined the Air Force?” Spillane also reminisced. “I took him flying until the war came along, and he took the career.”

Through the years, the two have kept in touch, despite Gill living in Connecticut and Spillane in South Carolina. Gill is quietly living out his retirement, while Spillane still writes, citing the reason why he hasn’t retired on his own.

“I have nobody to retire from, and nobody can fire me, either,” Spillane joked.

—Christopher Irving COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

CBA Interview

A Piece of the Action Charlton’s Action Hero Line and the Folks Responsible

by Christopher Irving Although considered a product of the 1960s, the Charlton Action Hero line technically had a root set back in the Golden Age of comics. The Blue Beetle premiered in Fox Comics’ Mystery Men #1, cover dated August of 1939. Over the next decade, The Blue Beetle was to shift from Fox to Holyoke Comics (another Golden Age company), and back to Fox, before his initial retirement with Blue Beetle #60, cover dated August, 1950.

Charlton Comics gained the Blue Beetle property four years later, in Oct. -Nov. 1954’s Space Adventures #13, which featured mainly reprints of Fox material, and was perhaps their hope to cash in on the new super-hero craze influenced by the Adventures of Superman TV show, as well as their chance to use their new comic book press. The Blue Beetle was awarded his own series in February of 1955, picking up the numbering from the cancelled The Thing! with #18, lasting only four issues, ending with #21 in August of the same year. (Notably only the last issue contained new material. ) Super-heroes were once more revitalized by the mid-’60s, thanks in no small part to DC’s revamping of their Golden Age characters, as well as Marvel’s introduction of influential books such as Fantastic Four. Charlton had decided to hop on the bandwagon, by bringing back their earlier attempts at super-heroes, as well as introducing a new stable of characters.

The editorial structure at Charlton was changed after the departure of General Manager Burt Levey, with the comics’ Managing Editor, Pat Masulli, promoted to oversee the entire magazine line and his one-time assistant, artist Dick Giordano, lobbied for the comics editor position. Getting the nod from management, Giordano took up the editorial reins on the entire comic book line in 1965, with the mandate to create a line of super-heroes. Apparently, Masulli was not known to interact with the creative people very often, something that would change when Giordano took over as comic book editor. As a result, opinions of Masulli tend to differ from one extreme to another.

“Terrible,” staff writer Joe Gill answered when asked about Masulli’s job as editor. “Pat’s dead now, but he was a martinet, not a friendly guy that enjoyed amiable relations with the artists. He ruled it, and he and I co-existed.”

“We tolerated each other,” Charlton Art Director Frank McLaughlin explained. “He was my boss and I worked hard so he had no complaints. Because he was not well-liked by others, part of my job was as intermediary between production and the engravers, typesetters, artists, press operators and free-lancers.”

“At work, he was a very stern taskmaster, and absolutely perfect for the other (non-comic) books that he edited,” Giordano said.

“His background was mostly as a colorist, but he was a great businessman. He and someone else started a coloring company in New York City that continued to work for Charlton after Pat moved out.

He was a good business person, and he learned everything about the production process when he was running the comics.

“When I took over the comics, and Pat was in charge of everything else, we had very little contact. We would go out to lunch regularly, he and I and a couple of other executives but, aside from that, we had no further or social contact after business hours.”

As the new comics editor, it was not only up to Giordano to reevaluate the comics side of Charlton, but he also had to pick up the loose threads from Masulli.

“The way that Pat Masulli was running the comic department was as an also-ran,” Giordano said. “He didn’t have any choice, and August 2000

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

wasn’t being derelict on his duties, but he had too much to do with the music department, so they hired me to pay attention to the comics.

“No one ever told me ‘Your job is to sell comics better,’ there was no question about it, I understood that. I started on a plan to find new talent and to come up with new books. At that time, we were doing Blue Beetle and Son of Vulcan. Those were the only two super-heroes there when I started, and a revival of Captain Atom, I think, was on the drawing board. It was clear that, if there was anything in the field, there was some activity in super-heroes, so we decided that we had to take that route.”

Above: Among the hundreds of silverlines Dick Giordano shared with me, there was this Blue Beetle cover lineart (from an unidentified issue—never mind their numbering scheme, the biggest pain in the butt collecting Charlton comics was their lack of a number on the cover to begin with!). Blue Beetle ©2000 DC Comics.

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Below: Proposed front cover for Bill Black’s Americomics #1, later replaced by a Pat Broderick piece.

This became the back cover of the same book. Pencils by Rik Levins, inks by Bill Black.

Courtesy of Bill Black.

Blue Beetle ©2000 DC Comics.

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The first of this new line of heroes actually took place under Masulli’s tenure, the revamped version of the Golden Age Blue Beetle. Premiering in Jan. 1964, Blue Beetle #1 may arguably be the first “Action Hero” title, although the all-encompassing term may not have been coined by Giordano at the time. The phrase was first seen in house ads as early as July, 1965 titles. The only Blue Beetle issue not written by Joe Gill was the tenth and final, #54 (the title took over the numbering of another book halfway through its run), which was scribed by future Marvel Editor-in-Chief Roy Thomas.

“The second comic book that I ever wrote was Blue Beetle,” Thomas said, who freelanced his scripts through the mail from his Missouri home. “It was badly drawn, and not that well-written (in my case, as well as others), either. But, it was an assignment, and I liked the concept of the character. I think that with the art and all, it didn’t live up to what it should have been.”

Another heroic title that technically pre-dates the Action Hero line was Son of Vulcan, a poorly-drawn Thor knock-off, with lackluster scripts by Joe Gill. Debuting in Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #46 (Mar. 1965), the mythological character’s adventures lasted two more issues until the book’s name was changed to Son of Vulcan with #49. The following issue—its last—is recalled as the first pro work by writer Roy Thomas.

The Action Hero Line became official as other characters soon followed Blue Beetle: Judomaster by Frank McLaughlin, the returning Captain Atom by Joe Gill or Dave Kaler, and Steve Ditko (the 1960 Space Adventures issues featuring the character were Ditko’s first super-hero work, and Captain Atom predates Marvel’s Fantastic Four as a nuclear hero by a year), Peter Cannon—Thunderbolt by Pete

Morisi, The Peacemaker by Joe Gill and Pat Boyette, and Sarge Steel

by Pat Masulli and Dick Giordano; all helmed by Editor Giordano.

“As editor, I made [all of the decisions] regarding the superhero books: I decided on the titles, I wrote the copy for the advertising,” Giordano told. “I worked with the creative people in creating this entire super-hero line… One of the problems with that position was that there was nobody else to make the decisions. I didn’t have an assistant editor, for example, and we were publishing 34 titles. They were all bi-monthly, so it was 17 books a month. One way or another, I was responsible for those books from creative to shipping. I was not only responsible for editorial, but I was responsible for scheduling the material through the production process. The separators worked directly for me, and the color separations were done in the office where I worked. The printers were in the plant, one floor down from my office.

I would shepherd the material from my office, through the various phases, and out of the building.”

The creative team behind many of the Action Hero books came from varying backgrounds and interests. Some of the artists moonlighted in order to produce their comics.

“Most of these people had day jobs, and the schedule was bi-monthly, so they managed to squeeze this stuff in-between,” Giordano said.

“Bill Montes was a middle-level manager at The New York Times, [and] Pete Morisi had a job in New York City in the police department. Almost all of them had jobs elsewhere, because you couldn’t make enough money… at Charlton. Charlton’s rates were considerably lower than anybody else’s.”

In order to avoid his other bosses from finding out about his comic book work, Morisi signed all of his work PAM. “I worked for ten years in comics before the field started to dry up,” Pete Morisi, cartoonist behind Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt, told Glen Johnson in an interview [featured in this issue]. “I was married with three kids, and looked around for something steady to raise a family on, when someone mentioned the civil service police exam was coming up. I studied, passed the written test, and the physical, and became a cop. During those days the police department had a ‘moonlighting’ rule about holding outside jobs, and that’s when Charlton called me up and asked me to do one job for them, ‘Please. ’ I said ‘Okay,’ and that one job led to twenty years of work… signed PAM.” “Pete had no idea how good he was, and he would suffer real, physical pain with each book that he wrote and drew,” Giordano said. “[He] needed constant reassurance via telephone, most of the time, in order to get him to do the things that he was capable of doing. He just didn’t believe that he was that good.”

Most of the Charlton comics in general, and including the Action Hero titles, were written by Charlton’s head writer Joe Gill, a man known for his ability to churn out several comic books a week.

Gill was the writer behind the early Blue Beetle as well as Captain Atom and Peacemaker.

Having only passed away this past January, Pat Boyette, the artist most well-known for presenting his slick pencils on Peacemaker with writer Joe Gill, laid claim to a career that started off in radio, led to television, then led to making small independent films and, of course, comic books. In an interview with Don Mangus [reprinted in this issue], Boyette had nothing but praise for Gill. “I think Joe Gill is some kind of magician,” Boyette said. “You find it incredible [that] one man could produce this much work. Joe Gill is amazing, I really admire his ability to turn that stuff out in such great volume!”

While many of these titles owed their beginnings to Giordano’s editorial guidance and collaborations with the artists, Judomaster was originally meant as an attempt at a syndicated daily comic strip, and evolved into an ongoing title.

“I had developed the character Judomaster, and was anxious to leave Charlton to work freelance exclusively,” Charlton Art Director COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

Frank McLaughlin said in a mail interview. “Charlie Santangelo was in charge of Charlton at the time [John Santangelo, Sr. went to Italy to look after other business interests]. He and I played judo at the same dojo, so his interest in my character was more than a passing one.

“He agreed to give me a shot and publish Judomaster, and that’s when it hit the fan. Charlton’s policy was that no staff artist or writer was allowed to produce freelance work, and when Pat Masulli heard about it, he hit the ceiling. Apparently he—and others, as well—had projects rejected for that reason. Charlie remained adamant and firmly reminded Pat who the boss was. Pat and I never got along to begin with, so this matter didn’t help things very much... Judomaster became a regular title and I managed to get help from Dick. We also collaborated on his new feature, Sarge Steel, as well as designing and producing most of Charlton’s covers.”

“Frank McLaughlin and I used to go down to the bank on Friday to cash our checks, and that’s where the next issue would be plotted,” Giordano said. “We would talk across the front seat of the car at each other until the story came into focus, and he would go off and write and draw it.”

One unique aspect of the Action Hero books was in the lettering, often credited to “A. Machine.” In reality, the rather constipated lettering was done on a large comic-font typewriter called the Typositer machine.

“Pat Masulli designed a comic typeface for a large typewriter,” McLaughlin said. “The comic pages would fit in the typewriter and the copy would be typed right on the artwork. The results were a complete disaster that caused many more problems than it solved. It was a typical attempt to cut corners, but the finished product suffered greatly.”

The typositer was often operated by artist/letterer John D’Agostino or office assistant D. C. Glanzman. D’Agostino drew some of Charlton’s more cartoon-like books, such as Timmy, The Timid Ghost, as well as working as a colorist on Charlton’s staff. He was to later move to Archie Comics.

One of the more admirable aspects of the Action Hero line is in that fact that many of the artists and writers were given absolute freedom with their stories, partly due to Giordano’s editing hand.

“I found there that no one was making any real money, but everyone was having fun since they were given a free hand,” Giordano said. “One of the things that I learned and used as an editor (and later editor-in-chief) at DC, is that very often, having control over the material is more important than getting paid well. At DC you could get to do both often but, from what I learned, you got your best from people by letting them do what they did best; sometimes it’s just a matter of choosing this person and letting them alone.

What basically sums up my editorial policy is to hire the right person for a romance book, and he’ll do a damned good romance book, or whatever the subject matter.”

“Although Charlton was not known for paying big fees, it gave me an opportunity that the other companies didn’t readily offer and that was the freedom to experiment, to do as I wanted, to make changes, to be happy,” Peacemaker artist Pay Boyette told Don Mangus. “So I did those things I wanted to do and Charlton graciously accepted them and to me it was thoroughly enjoyable.”

D. C. Glanzman, younger brother of Hercules artist Sam Glanzman, served on Giordano’s staff for a few years, often doing corrections and other production work, as well as serving as liaison to the Comics Code association. At Blue Beetle artist Steve Ditko’s request, Glanzman is listed as Blue Beetle writer, even though the book was written by Ditko. “Occasionally books had D. C. Glanzman down as a writer,” Giordano revealed. “That was Steve Ditko really trying hard not to explain that he did everything.”

Writer Steve Skeates, however, thinks that some type of editorial assist was given with the writing.

“I have a feeling that [the dialogue] was extensively rewritten,” Skeates said. “You look at some of the self-published material by Ditko, and the dialogue isn’t as crisp as those “Question” stories.

Ditko always impressed me as being similar to Kirby in that way: He has great ideas and a great sense of movement; great on everything… except dialogue! He just doesn’t have an ear for the way people actually talk. You read those self-published things that Ditko August 2000

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

did, and the dialogue is so atrocious, but the ideas are great. So I think someone up there was rewriting a lot of that Blue Beetle stuff.”

Steve Ditko had come back to Charlton after leaving Marvel due to a creative dispute with Stan Lee over Amazing Spider-Man. Aside from drawing various science-fiction titles earlier in his career, Ditko had drawn the 1960 “Captain Atom,” and returned to not only revive the character in his own title with #78 (again, renumbering at work) and “Blue Beetle” (in Nov. 1966’s Captain Atom #83), but also to draw and co-create The Question. Ditko has become rather elusive in the past 30 years, rarely making any appearances or granting any interviews or pictures. However, Ditko is known for his stern beliefs and is a follower of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, something which Giordano believes started interfering with the writer-artist’s work with “The Question” story in Blue Beetle #4 (Nov. 1967), a story in which Ditko has the character make a shocking decision.

“Ditko’s beliefs did affect his work, and it started showing, I believe, in ‘The Question,’ which he did for me as a back-up strip [in Blue Beetle] at Charlton,” Giordano said. “In fact, that became most obvious, I believe, when The Question—a hero—allows somebody— a villain—to die. He could have saved them. He didn’t kill them, but allowed them to die, saying something along the lines of ‘We’re better off without him. ’” The story under scrutiny was dialogued by writer Steve Skeates,

Above: Splash page to the startling eight-page Alex Toth story in Charlton Bullseye #5, the last issue.

But what a way to go! The Question ©2000 DC Comics.

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acter Mr. A, a masked and trenchcoated crime fighter who, like The Question, was a newsman. Ditko used Mr. A (featured in Wally Wood’s prozine witzend) as a vehicle for his beliefs that people are either good or evil, and that there is no in-between. Where The Question’s leaving two criminals to drown in one story was considered shocking, more than once does Mr. A leave a criminal alone to die.

“Of course, later on, Mr. A took probably the direction that The Question would have taken if The Question had been around that long,” Giordano continued. “Mr. A was an exaggeration of The Question, and created expressly for Steve to express his viewpoints.

He became enamored of Ayn Rand, and that philosophy. I’m neither criticizing or agreeing with the attitude that was there, but I’ve never believed that comic books (and I still don’t) are the proper forum for explicit views of that sort. I don’t want to see anything that reeks of politics in comic books; I don’t think that helps. I think that the chances are, since we’re pretty much split down the middle, if you take a conservative view you’ll offend half of the people that are there. You’ll find that most people are offended with anything that seems to mention a point of view.

“What happens is, when you start dealing with sensitive issues, people who read it start to read what they feel, or that somebody is being negative about their beliefs. That’s the way that people are, so I don’t think it’s a good idea to fool around with it in comic books and get people upset. It’s not our job to upset people, it’s our job to entertain people. If you put in too strong of a personal view, you’re not going to be entertaining to at least half of your audience.”

Above: Another pin-up from the pages of CPL, this one of the good Captain by John Byrne with Duffy Vohland inks, from CPL #6.

Courtesy of Bob Layton and CPL/Gang Productions. Captain Atom ©2000 DC Comics.

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who was slated to take over writing Blue Beetle soon after. Not wanting to write both the feature and the back-up under the same name, Skeates took up the pseudonym “Warren Savin.” “[I was asked to do] a total rewrite job on this one “Question” story, while even getting scripting credit for doing so. I had to make Ditko’s preliminary fairly sketchy dialogue sound more believable, make it come off more like the way people actually speak. Anyway… in that story, I had The Question say to the villain, in response to something that the villain said, ‘Well, my friend, you didn’t impress me that much,’ or something like that. Ditko wrote me a six-page letter about why The Question would never call a villain ‘my friend. ’ “You can see it in the story, too. There’s one balloon with some extra white space at the beginning. ‘Well, my friend’ was cut out.

“I also find it rather fascinating that this lone ‘Question’ story that I worked on—the one where The Question leaves the two bad guys in the sewer to drown—is often cited as Ditko’s most heartlessly conservative script, and then, when the reviewer goes on to quote dialogue from the story, it’s all my dialogue, not Ditko’s! And, politically, I’m about as far from a conservative as one can get! Guess that merely goes to show that one should never judge a man by what his characters say!”

Ditko would later continue the Question concept with his char-

The Charlton Action Hero line, like many smaller lines at the time, was inevitably cancelled after a couple of years. The final Action Hero books, Captain Atom and Judomaster, finished their runs by December of 1967. Around that time, prompted by then-DC contributor Steve Ditko, editor Giordano answered a call to work as an editor at DC Comics, taking talent like writers Denny O’Neil and Steve Skeates, and artist Pat Boyette with him.

“Steve Ditko had started at DC, working on either The Hawk and The Dove, or Beware, the Creeper,” Giordano said. “He came up to tell me that the people at DC had seen the Action Hero books we were doing at Charlton, and were interested in seeing if I would take a position. It was Steve that bird-dogged the job for me, and I have to thank him for that, as well.”

“When the offer came from DC, I jumped at it,” Giordano admitted. “Charlton had a unique set-up, but they really didn’t understand what it meant to them, and they weren’t putting the tiniest effort into pushing it. The books were not promoted in any way, shape, or form. They were just thrown out there, like all of our other titles were thrown out, with no promotion, so nobody knew they were there. There obviously was a cult following, because they’re still around… but they weren’t successful, and I was very disappointed, because I put a lot of effort and time into what was needed to get those books off the ground.”

Giordano believes that, despite the lack of emphasis put on the Action Hero books by the company, they still compared favorably to other super-hero books at the time.

“I enjoyed doing them,” he said of the Action Hero books. “I enjoyed writing the letters pages, and reading the fan-mail we got.

Considering that we didn’t have much money behind us and were flying upside-down by the seat of our pants, I thought the Action Hero books turned out considerably well.”

30 years after leaving his editorial stint at Charlton, Giordano still fondly recalls the lessons that he learned while helming 34 titles.

“What I learned about editing was that you don’t edit a line of super-hero books with one set rules. You edit the line with rules that apply to each creator individually, and you consider your relationship with the creator as being consistent. It taught me that you really have to treat creative people as individuals.”

Despite the failure of the books’ initial launch, the Action Heroes would return in the 1970s, ultimately dying only to be resurrected twice in the 1980s between Bill Black’s AC Comics and DC Comics. The Charlton Action Heroes prove time and again that their cult following warrants a second look.

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

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!

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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!

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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.

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“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.

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CBA Interview

The Action Hero Man The Great Giordano talks candidly about Charlton Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson

Below: Okay, maybe you saw this same shot in the Neal Adams interview featured in CBA #5, but Dick tells us he has very few pix of “Himself.” This was from a modeling session for the fumetti story “The Great American Dream,” in Crazy #1. Courtesy of Dick. ©2000 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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In the history of Charlton, few loom as significant as Dick Giordano, managing editor of the comics group from 1965-68, where he developed the oft-recalled “Action Hero Line,” a memorable run of books noted for their sense of fun and especially the contributions of Steve Ditko, just late of his Marvel heyday. But the artist-editor’s days with the Derby company stretch back to New Year’s Day 1951, when a young Richi Giordano began freelancing for Charlton Comics, and an association persists as recently Dick and Bob Layton “covered” the Action Heroes in the limited series The L.A.W. Charlton ink must run in Mr. G’s blood! This interview took place at Dick’s Connecticut home and a local restaurant on May 6, 2000. Dick copyedited the transcript. Special thanks to Pat Bastienne for her support.

Comic Book Artist: Dick, where were you born?

Dick Giordano: Bellevue Hospital, New York City, which is noted for psychiatric care, but at that time, they also managed to do child care. We lived in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. In those days, it was a decent neighborhood (a lot of it is slums today). When I was still a young boy, we moved to Queens, then to the Bronx, where I lived until I was married.

CBA: Were you an only child?

Dick: Yes. I was born during the Depression. I was also sickly as a child, and that’s how I got into comic books—I had nothing else to do, so I was reading, because I was in bed all the time. I had a great many allergies, and suffered from asthma—which I still do, it’s just not as bad as it was when I was a kid. My family really couldn’t afford another child, so I was pretty much it.

CBA: What did your father do?

Dick: I guess a cab-driver is the easiest way to explain it. My father always owned his own cabs, he didn’t work for a company. I learned a lot from him without his even realizing it. He would take care of his own cars, especially during World War II, when you couldn’t buy another car, and he’d put on 100 miles a day or more on his cab. So, some days it’d be both of us downstairs in the garage, to try to keep the car running for another week. [laughs] He was a very good mechanic. As a matter of fact, he had this very strange Italian first name, which was Graziano, but he was called Jack by his friends. They were referring to “Jack of All Trades.” And my father really was: He could do carpentry work, fix up automobiles, he was a musician, later learned photography (had his own darkroom), and he shot a couple of weddings… he did a little bit

of everything. That’s why I’ve said the common thing would be to call him a cab-driver. Later on, he opened up a garage where he fixed cars, because he thought that was better than driving 100 miles a day! [laughter] CBA: Was he a mechanic before the Depression?

Dick: Before the Depression, he was driving a cab. My mother was born in Italy, and she came here when she was a young girl, about 10 years old. My mother and father went to school together. Then my mother’s mother passed away (her father never came here, he stayed in Italy until he passed away), and then my mother and father got married because she couldn’t live alone. They took in her younger sister as well, so there was three of them for a while. My father did a lot of other things, but he actually earned his living driving a cab.

They got married in ‘31, and went on their honeymoon, and when he came back, was when the Depression hit the cab business. He had to give up their $18 a month apartment and get one for $12. He was making about $6 a week, driving a cab, occasional music gig added a bit to that. It was very, very tight… or so I’m told, I wasn’t aware of it, I just laid in my crib and sucked on my bottle. [laughs] CBA: When did you start becoming interested in comic books?

Dick: My father used to read me the Sunday funnies, and the week between was a long wait for me. He happened to find Famous Funnies on the newsstand one day and brought it home. He read me that whole book for the rest of the week, instead of just on Sundays—it was the Sunday funnies all wrapped together in 64 pages. Yeah, that’s when I got started, and in fact, I started drawing from some of those issues. I think The Little King was one of the features, I don’t know if anybody remembers that. That looked simple enough, so I started copying the art which was the beginning, and as they say, the rest is history. Later, when I moved to The Bronx, I went to an elementary school where I had a great art teacher who impressed me. My mother (who was a very good artist when she was younger) was delighted that I was able to draw. I think my ability was inherited. The teacher encouraged me, and when I was ready to graduate, she suggested I try getting into the School of Industrial Arts, which was a vocational high school in New York City available— free—to anybody who could get in. I took the test, passed, and spent four-and-a-half years there (the extra half-year was because I got sick with the illness that always plagues me, and lost about a half-year).

CBA: What year did you go into SIA? Dick: I got out in January, 1950, so it must’ve been ‘44, ‘45. When I went to my graduation, it was snowing. [laughs] My father was driving me down in the cab. Angelo Torres started with me, and Tony Tallarico graduated with me. There’s a number of people who are still active in the business, one way or another, who were in that school the same time I was. And then, as time went by, a lot of professionals went there… Neal Adams went to that school, and quite a few people went there.

CBA: Any renowned instructors, teachers?

Dick: No. I was influenced greatly by some of the instructors who were quite good at what they did, but I don’t think there were any names there you would recognize. There were a number of celebrities. Tony Bennett went there to study—you know that Tony Bennett was an artist, and he graduated a couple of years before me?

CBA: Did you meet him?

Dick: No, and I wouldn’t have known I was meeting anybody special if I did. At that time, he was Tony DeGrannidetto (or somesuch), and he was one of the kids in school, and he wasn’t a singer—that we knew, anyway. There’s been a few people of some note who’ve COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

graduated from there. Most of the teachers were paid professionals, so they weren’t fooling around. Yesterday, I related a story about one of the instructors by the name of Stanley Rose: He was a little bitty guy, but he worked us hard—incidentally, we had to wear a shirt and tie, and something over the shirt every day.

The feeling was, “You’re studying to be professionals, you’d better start looking it now.” No jeans, regular clothes with a shirt and tie, and either a sweater or a jacket over the top. If you got caught without any of the necessary apparel, you were sent home, unless you kept one… I always kept extras at the school, just in case. [laughs] Anyway, Stanley Rose used to allow you to bring in these weekly assignments, he’d give you an assignment, the one in particular I’m thinking of is “landmarks of New York,” so I decided to do a shot of the Third Avenue “EL” [elevated train]. I spent a whole day working on a drawing of it, but I didn’t finish it. I went to class, and he called out the name of each student, one by one, and each would bring up their assignment, he looked at it, and maybe make a comment, but just piled them on his desk to grade later. When it was my turn, he said, “Giordano?” And I said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Rose, I didn’t finish yet.” He says, “Yes, you did. Look in your portfolio.

You wouldn’t dare come to my class and not be prepared.” This was on a Friday, and he said, “Okay, what you’re going to do is give me two separate assignments by Monday.” I had a weekend coming up, planning to spend time with my friends, but I spent the whole weekend at the drawing board, finishing up the one I didn’t have on Friday, and coming up with a new idea and sitting down and drawing that to get it in for Monday’s class. As luck would have it, his class was the first one of the day, so… [laughs] there was no fooling around. I learned something from that, that if something’s due on Friday, it’s due on Friday. You don’t argue about whether it’s really necessary to get it in on Friday, you just do it. I learned that from him. So that’s how I learned about making deadlines. [laughter] That’s something that stands with me today, I have a reputation for making deadlines, no matter how dumb they are—I make them. Sometimes I get help, but I make deadlines. This situation was the reason why. At SIA, there were a wonderful bunch of instructors, and I learned how to be a professional from them.

CBA: So, what happened after you graduated in 1950?

Dick: Well, that’s a funny story. I wanted to be an illustrator—illustrations and advertising seemed to be the way to go. When we graduated they gave us a list of advertising agencies, and I went around with a fellow classmate, Murray Tinkleman, to try and get a job.

We’d get tired from knocking on doors all day, trying to break in the field. One day, we walked into an office that said on the door, “Art Studio,” or something like that. It turned out the studio had just moved out, and in the middle of this room, there was just a desk, with a man sitting at it working away on a typewriter. He was a comic book writer. I’d always been interested in comic books (although I didn’t take the comic book course at school because they advised us the business wasn’t good, you won’t make any money at it), so I took advertising and illustration courses—instead of comics— but I’ve always been keen on comics. I had some black-&-white stuff in my portfolio, and the writer looked at it and said, “Why don’t you go down and see Jerry Iger? Maybe he can use somebody like you.”

So, we went down, and showed Jerry our portfolios. Initially he said, “Okay, I’ll hire you both, you work two days, and you work three August 2000

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

days.” Then, when it came time to start, he said, “I’ve changed my mind: I only want one of you now.”

So I got the job full-time. They hired Murray eventually and the two of us were there together full-time six months later. Will Eisner had just split up with Iger when I got there, but the outside door still said, “EisnerIger.” I was there about nine months and I learned a lot.

CBA: You worked on Jungle Comics?

Dick: Yeah, Jungle, Wings, Planet, all of the things from Fiction House. Plus work for two or three other smaller companies—Superior Comics, whose standards weren’t particularly high. The interior work for the comics was done on staff, and that’s what Murray and I were doing there. I’d come in the morning, and there’d be a drawing table about this high with pages on it that had to be inked, and we’d pass the pages around… somebody inked the heads, somebody inked the figures—whatever it was—and by the time Murray got them, he’d erase and clean up the pages. I was doing that before he came in. It was quite a learning curve… we learned a lot.

CBA: Just from looking at the art, and…?

Dick: Yeah. Ken Battenfeld was a really great penciler working at Iger at the time. Johnny Thornton was the one who used to pencil a lot for Superior Comics, a Canadian company. Jack Kamen was one of our most accomplished pencilers.

CBA: Were they horror or crime?

Dick: Mostly horror at Superior Comics, if memory serves me. A guy named Bob Webb did something called “The Hawk,” a pirate

Above: Dick Giordano really went to town with his Fightin’ Five covers! Here’s his work on the cover of an unidentified issue. The Fightin’ Five—America’s Super Squad—were a sorta knock-off of Marvel’s Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, but more importantly was an aspect of Dick’s Action Hero approach touching even war titles. The characters are (from left to right) Frenchy the Fox, Hank Hennessy, Irv “The Nerve” Haganah, Granite Gallero, and Tom-Tom. Dick must have liked these palookas, as he used them as a back-up strip in Secret Agent (Sarge Steel) after their title’s cancellation. You can also spot them, real tiny, plus a Sentinel or two, in the background of Dick’s fantabulous cover for us!

Our thanks to the Great Giordano for giving us one more take on his beloved Action Hero Line! ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

31

Above: Young “Richi” Giordano’s splash page from the lead story in Hot Rods and Racing Cars #10.

Right inset: Cover by Lou Morales for the same issue. ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

32

feature, and I think that might’ve been for Fiction House. There was a little bit of everything: We had war comics, some romance, Planet, “Sheena,” “Ka’anga.” We didn’t get to work on too many Wings Comics, which was a shame, because I always liked drawing airplanes—I still do. I enjoy cars, airplanes, mechanical conveniences of one kind or another, it’s something that I enjoy drawing.

You can see it here, that’s the best thing on these covers. [laughter] Anyway, I enjoyed working at Iger. I started out with inking backgrounds, and in nine months, I was inking figures—just the figures—and that’s as far as you could go in nine months. Then, I heard from my father that Charlton was looking for artists. So, my dad and I, on New Year’s Day, went up to fellow cabdriver Harold Phillips’ house, where his brother-in-law Al Fago was visiting. Fago was the Managing Editor at Charlton. He thought I was good enough to work for them and, of course, I grabbed it, and left my staff job at Iger.

To give you an idea of what we’re talking about, even though the rates were terrible, Fago promised me seven pages a week to pencil and ink, at $20 a page… $140! I was making $40 at Iger’s.

You really can’t argue that. [laughs] The $40 a week at Iger’s was not enough so I was also working on weekends in a soda shop as soda jerk, which actually I enjoyed. I delivered newspapers and I loved that, because it was all outside.

CBA: Because you liked dealing with people?

Dick: Yes, I do, absolutely. Anyway, I took the job.

CBA: Did you still read comics?

Dick: No, not a lot, because for a long time there, I was convinced I wasn’t going to be able to do comic books, because I didn’t think I was cut out for it. I thought I could do a newspaper strip.

CBA: Why? Dick: In those days, it was nice to have something you had some more control over, and of course, the money was better and you’re dealing with an adult audience, for the most part, as opposed to comic books, which were strictly kids. I didn’t have any strong comic book influences in my life, as far as art is concerned. I kind of liked Alex Raymond, and I certainly liked Hal Foster, and they influenced me, but they were newspaper strips. And so did Johnny Hazard drawn by Frank Robbins (who later worked for a while at DC). All of a sudden, though, off the newsstand comes these EC comic books, and I chanced on them, and now I had art influences within the comic book industry. I saw that good stuff could be done in comic books if somebody was interested in doing them. I learned from those books. By that, I mean, I didn’t swipe all the good artists from EC, but I certainly was at the newsstand every month, and bought every one I could find.

CBA: All of them?

Dick: All of them. Horror, SuspenStories, s-f, war… and that lasted until the Kefauver Hearings on television, after which EC featured really, really toned-down versions, but they still did a great job. EC

had everything.

CBA: Are you still a comics fan?

Dick: I don’t think in a sense that I’m a real comics fan but I do read comics and love the form.

CBA: Do you read for pleasure?

Dick: Yeah, I read for pleasure. I also love mystery novels. Read all of Sue Grafton’s books, all of Robert D. Parker’s Spencer books, and fell in love with Andrew Vachs, well after the fact… after everybody else decided he was great at what he did, then I found his stuff and read like six in a row. John Sanford is a new favorite with his Prey novels.

CBA: Were you into pulp material?

Dick: Oh, I read all of the pulps when I was a kid, especially the sports pulps—I’m a sports freak—and, yeah, I read all of the pulps that came out at that time. When I went to the corner candy store newsstand, the pulps were 15¢, comics were a dime, but you got a lot more reading out of that 15¢. I also used to buy World’s Finest Comics. Each issue was 15¢, but there was more comics to read. I do a lot of reading, but I rarely read anything people would call “a good book.”

CBA: Genre.

Dick: Right. I’m mostly into genre fiction. I’ve read some good novels, but they’re basically just novels that come and go, it’s not something that’s ever going to be a classic.

CBA: You accepted Fago’s offer?

Dick: Yeah, and I took on the freelance assignment. I really don’t remember what work I was doing for Charlton, but for two or three years I had the world’s best set-up: Al Fago lived in Great Neck and he had a Chrysler, and each week, he would drive to my studio, pick up my assignment from the previous week, and hand me a new one.

I didn’t even have to leave the house! [laughter] CBA: You were living at home?

Dick: Yeah, but I had a studio outside the house. I found somebody who had a studio, and they were looking to rent space. His name was Al Tyler. (The artist who just moved out was Bob Forgione, a name you may not know, but he worked with Jerry Robinson back in those days, as Jerry’s assistant, and then went off on his own. ) Tyler, who lived in The Bronx, was looking for somebody to move in and take Forgione’s place. It was a two-room office over a supermarket. I moved in, and before I knew it, Al Tyler moved out, and I’m stuck there paying full rent! It wasn’t much, so I took on the full rent, and kept the place for myself

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

until I got married. My mother wanted $5 a week, something like that, while I lived at home. The rest I could spend on myself, get a car, do what 20-year-olds do when they finally get some money. And then, at some point in time, the owner of Charlton decided he wanted everybody on staff in Derby, Connecticut, and Al Fago called all of the contractors together to see who would be willing to work there.

Only a handful of the people went up there and took staff positions.

For example, Lou Morales was a friend of Fago who also lived in Great Neck, and he didn’t accept the staff position so he stopped working for Charlton.

CBA: Al Fago was Vince Fago’s brother?

Dick: Right. Al created Atomic Mouse and Atomic Rabbit for Charlton, and his brother drew them. It was Al Fago’s Atomic Mouse on the cover, and Vince Fago actually did the artwork. [laughter] CBA: Why does it say “Al Fago’s Atomic Mouse”? Did his name on the cover carry weight?

Dick: Not really, just had a little bit of ego. He was allowed to sign the work, but Vince was the one who did the artwork, because Al didn’t have the time, not because Al wasn’t capable of doing it. He left Charlton in anger. He was the executive editor or two before me—Pat Masulli took over from him, and I took over from Pat. CBA: So, Al started in 1950?

Dick: Maybe. I started with him in 1951, but I think he was probably working for Charlton for some time.

CBA: They didn’t publish very many titles in the 1940s.

Dick: Primarily, when I was living in New York, and Al was coming by with his car, there might’ve been ten or twelve titles. There was one that Steve Ditko started, something like Strange Suspense Stories, but it might’ve been another title [Tales of the Mysterious Traveler?].

Somewhere in there, we bought Fawcett’s inventory—Nyoka, Rocky Lane, etc. —and as a matter of fact, when the Code came in, we were operating almost exclusively on Fawcett inventory, with no staff at all; Al Fago and his wife, Blanche, ran the office on 42nd Street in New York City, and not by coincidence, a couple of blocks away from the Code. I would fix up material we were publishing for Code approval.

CBA: So you were working in New York?

Dick: Yeah. This was before we moved the operation to Connecticut. When we were in New York, there was little work, and the normal page rate at Charlton was $20 a page, $25 for a cover.

When we moved to Connecticut, the page rate was dropped to $13, pencils and ink, and covers were $20, but the quantity of work increased substantially. In New York we were just trying to get Fawcett reprint material through the Code.

CBA: What was Al Fago like?

Dick: Oh, a very pleasant, easy-going guy. No problem.

CBA: He was in his thirties?

Dick: Oh, no, much older than that. When I met him there was white in his hair, so he had to be older than that. I met Al in my twenties, and it was sort of like a father-son relationship in a lot of ways. As a matter of fact, I found out later Al had two daughters and he kind of had plans for me, when I was still single, to marry me off to one of his daughters. I didn’t know about it until years later when his wife told me.

CBA: So he really liked you.

Dick: Yeah. We got along fine. He never made caustic comments at all about my work. He might say, “Gee, this isn’t as good as your job last week,” that would be as strong as it would come out, you know?

CBA: Okay, so you joined Al Fago in ‘51?

Dick: I started in ‘51.

CBA: And it was picked up at the studio in Queens, bring it out to Derby…

Dick: Right, after it was brought to Fago’s place, he’d do the mechanical work first, and then have it delivered to Derby to be printed.

CBA: And that was two years of doing that?

Dick: I can’t remember, I’d be guessing, I don’t remember how long it was, it might’ve been a year-and-a-half. Might’ve been two years.

CBA: So, about 1953, Al had you over…

Dick: Actually, now that I think of it, no, it had to be even longer August 2000

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

than three years, because 1955 was when the Code came in, and since I was working in New York at that time with Al, it had to at least be that long.

CBA: So you were freelancing for a long time.

Dick: Yeah, absolutely, now that I think about it. I also got married in 1955, and just before I got married to Marie, we went up to Charlton, where the boss made pay cuts across the board.

I remember because we had some stress in our family as a result of the reduced amount of money I was going to be making. We’re planning on getting married—we got married in April, and it must’ve been March we went up there—and the pay-cut created some problems. Marie had a decent job, so we could get by, but we had to live in The Bronx.

It was a bit of a sweat for the first year or two, but she got pregnant within that first year, and then she couldn’t work forever. In those days, they didn’t let one work until the ninth month, like a woman can today. Three months and you’re out! And her employer didn’t hold her job for her, either… the world was young. A year or two after we married, we moved to a place called Charlton. [laughter] Since I was working there and commuting back and forth, carpooling with four others, my wife and I decided, driving 65 miles just to get to work and then back again was ridiculous. This was before Interstate 95 was completed, so the only way to get up there was by the Merritt Parkway. We made our home in Derby in ’57. Our carpool was originally five people: Pat Masulli, John D’Agostino (a letterer then who is now one of the top artists at Archie), Sal Trapani (my brother-in-law), Vince Alascia, and myself— sounds like a carload of Mafioso, doesn’t it? [laughter] CBA: So you were freelancing for three years?

Dick: 1951-‘55, at least.

CBA: Okay, so ‘55, you started going up to a staff position and started commuting to Derby?

Dick: ‘55, we started commuting, right after I got back from my honeymoon. As a matter of fact, thinking back on some of the other events: I went to Florida for my honeymoon, and John Santangelo, the owner of Charlton—who I’d just met at that one meeting in March (Marie and I got married in April)—had somebody call me and say I was welcome to stay at his Florida place for free, a motel on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach, where we were.

So, we spent one week at the place where we’d checked in

Above and below: Dick was obviously inspired by EC Comics when it came to covers. Above is a very Wally Wood-like take on the outer space theme; and below is a Jack Davis-influenced war scene. Dick did hundreds of covers for Charlton in the ’60s. ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

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This spread: Ahh, Giordano’s love covers! Few could match the artist’s ability to draw beautiful women and where better to show off than on Charlton’s romance comics? Below: Romantic Story cover depicting the story, “Not Ready for Marriage.” Center background: Cover detail from a Three Nurses cover. Left to right, they are: Student nurse Lee Barry, Registered Nurse Anne Allen, and Visiting Nurse Nany White.

Opposite page: Nurse Betsy Crane tries to gain the confidence of a patient on the cover of her own title. ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

34

(because Santangelo called after we got there), and then spent another two weeks courtesy of the boss, because it was free. So we stretched out the honeymoon a little bit, and then drove back, and that’s when I started going back and forth to Charlton on a regular basis.

CBA: When you started working for Al Fago, did you hear anything about Charlton Comics—what they were like and the history of the company?

Dick: No, not when I was freelancing in New York. I was working for Al Fago and I didn’t hear too much about it then. At the time, to get into the business, you had to start at one of the farm clubs, so Charlton was the ideal place for me to start, because it was the minor leagues. The company wasn’t going anywhere at the time, but on the other hand, they were allowing me to experiment and learn my craft, by giving me one job after another after another. There wasn’t any slowdown in my income. I was penciling and inking everything I got in those days. So, I had what I wanted out of it. There was no chance of my getting work at DC, because they wouldn’t even let me in the door.

CBA: Because of your facility?

Dick: No, because that was the policy; it was a closed shop. You know, if they thought there was somebody out there they wanted, they would call him… even when I got there as an editor in ‘67, editors were not looking at samples from artists who came up looking for work. Joe Orlando and I changed that. It was a closed-shop then—they felt they were the elite—and they didn’t have to bother with freelancers who came in looking for work.

CBA: Do you know where the name “Charlton” came from?

Dick: There are several explanations: One of them—and I think it’s correct—was that John Santangelo and his partner, Edward Levy, both had sons named Charles. The other one that I heard was that their original business in New York was opened on Charlton Street. I’m not sure which is the right story.

Maybe it’s somewhere between the two.

CBA: Did you know how the company started?

Dick: As I heard it, John and Ed were bootlegging lyrics, selling it off the back of the truck, and getting caught, because he didn’t have the rights to reproduce those lyrics.

CBA: Legend has it the partnership began with a jailhouse meeting between Santangelo and Levy.

Dick: Basically, what they did when they came out of jail—and this was probably Ed’s idea—was they approached the music publishers, one by one, and got exclusive rights to publish lyrics—not the music, which would interfere with the music sheet business, which was already tied up—but just publish the lyrics in Hit Parader and Song Hits. In those days, there were maybe ten song publishers. So the business slowly built up. Well, maybe not all that slow, but for them, it might’ve seemed that way.

CBA: The majority of Charlton’s business was the song books?

Dick: Well, when they started, yeah. I think probably even when I left there in the ’60s, it was still the biggest part of their business in terms of dollar volume.

CBA: Did they do girly magazines?

Dick: For a very short period of time. They bought somebody’s negatives and plates. They did a magazine called Escapade, a really, really poor man’s Playboy. My remembrance is they only published it for a year, but I might be wrong on that.

CBA: Was it in the ’50s?

Dick: Jon, I can’t really be sure. Probably earlier than when I started as executive editor, that would’ve been ‘65. So it was earlier than that. Whether it was in the ’60s, or in the ’50s, I can’t quite remember.

CBA: I’ve heard Charlton was called by locals, “the dirty magazine publisher of the valley.”

Dick: That might’ve been what people saw Charlton as. Escapade was the closest thing to a dirty magazine, but it really wasn’t dirty. At least, not by today’s standards.

CBA: There was something unique about Charlton?

Dick: Well, the unique thing about Charlton and the thing that always bothered me was that they had a tiger by the tail, but didn’t know it. It was the only publishing operation I’ve ever heard of that was contained in one building—from concept to shipping! It took place within the same walls, within perhaps 100 yards of each other.

[Pointing to a photograph] Back at the shipping department, they had trucks to the far right, then over here, this was a garage, two stories high. We were on the second floor, and the first floor was John and all of the executives, and on the second floor was editorial.

Then, you go down into here, and you’re in the plant. This is the bindery, this is engraving and typesetting, and this was where the press room is. And then, back here was shipping. First they used to pack everything up on pallets. Up here in front, beside the garage, there was the distribution department. The trucks backed up, took the stuff out and got it to other trucking companies (because Charlton didn’t distribute nationwide, just maybe the northeast and Canada).

CBA: This article also says Charlton even had its own paper mill.

Dick: Yeah, that’s what I heard, but I never saw where the paper came from.

CBA: Soup to nuts!

Dick: Yeah, Charlton had it all. And that’s exactly what they had that nobody else did, and for example, if they wanted to go head-tohead with DC Comics, quality of the artwork, quality of the stories, quality of the printing and distribution, they probably could’ve done it at two-thirds of the cost that DC was paying. And if they had done that, they really could have turned the comic book publishing business on its ear. But they chose to be junk dealers, they really did. I mean that in a literal sense: They thought they were producing junk, they thought of all of it as junk, they didn’t think it had any commercial value, they didn’t think there was any reason for them to be serious about it… the music magazines were making the money. I don’t even know why they published comics, to tell you the truth.

CBA: Just to keep the presses running?

Dick: Yeah, just to keep the presses running, was probably the biggest reason. And I think they felt good about somebody like me taking over and caring about the comics line, because once I got there—this might’ve been true for Pat, too, but it was much harder for him because he was also with the music business and crossword puzzle books and the humor books and so forth—but once I got there, nobody had anything to do about the comics but me. I scheduled the stuff through the plant, I made up engraver schedules, press schedules. You want to keep the press running, so such-and-such book needs to have 100, 000 copies printed, this one needs 275, 000 COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

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copies, and you would have another one to maybe slip in here.

Maybe two, sometimes we’d print in advance in order to keep all of those slots filled until the 275, 000 was finished. Then, you’d take everything off and start the process all over again.

CBA: Was the schedule written on a chalkboard?

Dick: I jotted it down on a piece of paper at my desk. [laughs] And then I’d send a schedule down to the pressmen. “Pull cover one at 75, 000, insert cover two…”

CBA: Who would tell them the numbers?

Dick: The print runs? Not me. Bert Levey, Ed’s cousin, was the business manager. Bert and I were pretty good friends until I left.

If I needed any proof the independent distributors were crooks right from the beginning, I got it when we were doing some promotional covers at Charlton. To keep down costs, I simply overprinted covers for some regular comics but changed the inside and back covers to feature promo material and we sent those out to help drum up sales. Now, these were just covers with no interior pages. Well, you know, we got a good number of those covers back for returns? They sent us the promo back to try to get the credit! Capital Distributing showed this to me, and I said, “I can’t believe this! They’re so cheap they would go through the trouble of taking this one cover we sent to them—which we can tell is the promotion—and they’re sending it back to us for payment!” There were no staple marks on the sides! [laughter] CBA: But there was nothing you could do.

Dick: No. As a matter of fact, my guess is, Charlton paid the distributors for those “returns.” But then, the distributors were just looking to milk it. The days of Superman selling a million copies a month were gone, and they didn’t really want to bother with comics. The basic formula for shipping comic books was, put Redbook on the truck, put Esquire on the truck, put Better Homes & Gardens on the truck, and whatever room is in the back, put some comics. They didn’t look at what the title was, or the company was. If there’s that much room, they’d put that many comics. So, sometimes we got distributed, sometimes Marvel got distributed. Sometimes DC got distributed. There was no rhyme or reason to it, and they kept no records. Because they didn’t have to! Whatever they didn’t sell, or thought they didn’t sell… they didn’t care! They made up the numbers, they didn’t have to keep any records, they kept it simple.

CBA: Did Capital Distribution have roadmen?

Dick: Five. At the same time DC/Independent News had around 150.

CBA: Five roadmen?

Dick: To sell to the whole United States. [laughter] We worked up to that, it wasn’t that way all along. [laughter] CBA: How can you sell…?

Dick: Alan Adams came in to head distribution, and he was the one that started bringing in roadmen from his past distribution jobs. But he had five, and his competition, DC, had 150.

CBA: How did five roadmen cover the entire country?

Dick: I guess they did whatever they could do, but then weren’t getting any action, they were shafted increasingly.

CBA: [looking through a Hot Rod comic] This is Morales?

Dick: Yeah, Morales did the cover…

CBA: Is this “Richi Giordano” you?

Dick: Yeah, that’s me! Richi Giordano. That was a long time ago.

CBA: It doesn’t look like the Giordano style at all to me.

Dick: Well, I was still developing, I don’t think I really got a Giordano style until the ’70s or ’80s, though I can see a style in some of my romance work.

CBA: Did you do a lot of Hot Rod stuff?

Dick: I did a lot for Charlton. This is one of the earlier ones, I was doing something called “Clint Curtis” (which they got from Fawcett).

In the later one… let’s see what the date is on this: This was ‘53. Part of it, I was doing the hot rod stuff up until Jack Keller took it over in the early- or mid-’60s. Jack Keller became a friend of mine, and I just gave him everything… He was writing and drawing those books.

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Clint Curtis was a teenage hot rodder (which was pretty popular in those days) and he went to a club called the “Draggin’ Wheels.” It was an ensemble cast, and they all had these really cool cars. I enjoyed drawing that a lot, and it was fostered by my appreciation for Bob Powell’s work, but there would be an unevenness of quality between one Powell story and another, and I later learned he had a better penciler on one than he did the other. [laughter] Anyway, I use a lot of his work for swipes because the characters had to look like so and the cars had to look like so, and as long as you’ve got a Powell comic open in front of you, why not use that picture? [laughs] But I enjoyed doing that. I also did a fair number of Cheyenne Kid. “Rocky Lane” was my feature for a while.

CBA: John Severin worked on Charlton’s westerns for a time?

Dick: Yeah. There’s something of a story behind that, too: Marvel (then called Timely or Atlas) went belly-up for a spell there, and I got a lot of their artists to do stuff for me for a very short period of time.

As a result of my working on the Hot Rod comics, I really got into cars. I had a 1953 Dodge, which had the first V-8 engine I ever owned, and we put straight-through pipes on it, turned it into a dual exhaust, which means rbrmm brmm-brmm-brmm… [laughter] instead of ssssssssssshhhh. I took all the chrome off the car, filled in the holes, and we painted it, customized it, and put skirts on the back wheels… it didn’t look like a ‘53 Dodge anymore. You know, you get caught up in it.

I also got caught up on the western stuff, but you can’t use that kind of thing in real life except for western comics. I’d still like to do a western comic—or a romance comic—so if anybody wants to do a western or romance comic now, I’ll do it for one-third my normal rate! I’d

35

Above: Dick Giordano’s trademark character at Charlton, Sarge Steel.

This montage especially for the 1974 Charlton Portfolio. Courtesy of Bob Layton & CPL/Gang Productions. Sarge Steel ©2000 DC Comics.

Background image: Detail of Dick’s cover of Secret Agent (formally Sarge Steel) #10, the final issue.

Sarge Steel ©2000 DC Comics.

36

take it just for the fun of doing something different.

CBA: You were doing westerns, hot rods, romance…

Dick: Mystery, war….

CBA: Funny animals?

Dick: No. I’ve never done funny animals on a regular basis. I did part of one book, Beany & Cecil for Dell, one issue, with the regular person inking it, so whatever mistakes I made wouldn’t show up in the final. It was hard for me to get used to drawing three-head high figures… all the animation stuff was drawn to three-head high proportions, whereas a reallife person is eight heads or more. Seven-and-a-half to eleven heads high (depending on what kind of a figure you’re going for).

Beany was a little bit of a sweat for me. But I did draw an incredible variety of genres and, don’t forget, what we’re talking about here is titles with four-page stories, some of them seven pages…. eight pages was the lead story.

If you check this Hot Rods out, you’ll see four or five stories in there, including a one-page filler. I did a little bit of all those, in all those genres, and that was one of the things I found most interesting about the work from the time I started doing freelancing to the time I left staff at Charlton: I had a different genre to work with on each assignment, some of them would be three days long, some of them would be a week long, but if I did a western this week, next week I would do a mystery.

CBA: It was just a variety of stuff.

Dick: I even did some war stories somewhere, too. I did a lot of war covers… at one point in time, I did every Charlton cover, including not only the artwork, but I wrote whatever copy there was, and speced the type.

CBA: As a freelancer?

Dick: Some of it was as a freelancer, some of it was on staff. When Pat Masulli was in charge, I had a studio in Ansonia (the next small town over from Derby), and Charlton gave me samples of the type fonts they had, logo stats and the finished art for each title and had to comp a layout for a cover, including book and/or story titles, write any copy that was needed, and the I would spec the type and send it in to them. Some were montage covers, paste-up photostat covers. I drew all the original artwork.

CBA: Back in 1955, Hurricane Diane came through Derby, and Charlton Press was under 18 feet of water.

Dick: When I left the company, the waterline was still there in the plant. They later painted up to where the water topped off with white paint. [laughs] You see, the way Charlton was laid out, the plant was actually below street level, and the parking lot goes down.

There’s Route 8, the main road and the cars are below the ground level. See, here’s the ground level, where the windows are. These cars

are below that, and on that day, the water covered the parking lot over. Fortunately, on that day, we parked our cars up here. You see on top, there’s a little bit of a landing there? We parked our cars over here that day, and the five of us decided, “We’re getting out of here now!” So, we went into the parking lot, the water was up to here in the parking lot! We walked up to the top of the parking lot, the water hadn’t gotten up there yet, but it was already going into the plant, and we got in our cars and we drove off.

CBA: You were there at the time?

Dick: Yeah, I was at the plant when the flood waters hit.

CBA: So, you were on-staff when the hurricane happened, but I thought the rationale for cutting the page rates in half…

Dick: Oh, no, they went down more! They went down from $13 to $6. 50 after the flood.

CBA: They’d already gone down beforehand?

Dick: Yeah! From $20 to $13!

CBA: The rates initially dropped because of the industry slump due to Wertham and Charlton’s output dropped?

Dick: Probably. I really have no way of knowing. They weren’t giving me this information.

CBA: Why did the page rate get cut before the flood?

Dick: John Santangelo was a guy who could sell snake oil. And he sold us some snake oil. He got all of the artists up there and said, “Well, yes, I’m cutting your rates, but you now have a guarantee of a certain amount of work every week, you can make as much money as you want. You tell me how much you want, you’ll get that.” That was an obligation that I still faced when I took my editorial position; I had to give Joe Gill a certain amount of work every week, I had to give Charlie Nicholas this amount of work, I had to give Vince Alascia that amount of work. It was a deal John made way back when, but we continued honoring it. I never cut the amount of work to those guys down; I had to find other ways to fit new people in. So, this was the guarantee: You’d get a certain amount of work every week, and get paid every week.

The guarantee of work was a reasonable trade-off for the change in page rate. A drop from $20 to $13 wasn’t the result of any external forces, it was just John trying to get the stuff cheaper, and he used to love to show authority. He built a place for the art department in the plant, and every time he would bring a visitor on a tour of the plant, John would bring him up to our department and say, “These are my artists!” He’d talk in this thick, stereotypical Italian accent. (Sometimes I think he emphasized his accent intentionally, because it made him seem menacing. ) [laughs] It sounded like a TV kind of accent. Whatever. He used to come and do all of that stuff.

Of course, we were still young enough to want a bit of fun in the office. There in Derby, once all of the artists went out and bought a bunch of these plastic derbies, some green, some black. When we heard John coming up the stairs, we’d all put the derbies on, so that when he showed off his artists, we looked like a bunch of idiots! [laughter] Working with a derby on! [laughter] He never said anything about it; I guess he didn’t care.

CBA: So, just before your marriage, was your first meeting with John Santangelo?

Dick: The first meeting was in March, I got married in April and started the daily commute. The flood was in July or August. The next flood wasn’t anywhere near the size of that—there were two floods at Charlton.

CBA: What was John like?

Dick: Shrewd. He would take advantage of whatever situation presented itself that he could take advantage of. It wasn’t the money; it was just a game to him. He used to go to Italy once a year, and come back with people he sponsored and gave jobs to, and of course, he gave them jobs at either absolute minimum wage, or—if he could get away with it—less than minimum wage. The way he’d get away with it is, he’d say, “Here, come here, if you work, I’ll give you $1. 20 an hour,” but he’d rent them the houses they lived in or buy them a car, and take the payment out of their salaries.

CBA: Company houses?

Dick: I’m not sure but he often made Walt Disney look like a saint.

CBA: John had a lot of real estate?

Dick: Yeah, I heard he owned a big portion of Atwater Avenue in Derby, which is where all the big mansions were—including his COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

own—the bigger, more pretentious homes. His was light yellow brick, two stories high, and I’d guess about 15 rooms.

He’d go to buy a Cadillac, and the salesman would say he wanted $5, 500. John would say, “I’ll tell you what,” and he’d take out a roll of bills, “I’ve got $5, 000 here. Take it and I’ll buy the car right now.” So, it was 10% less than the guy wanted, but he took the $5, 000. Then, on occasions—and I saw these things happen—a plumber comes over to collect his money for something he did for John. John says, “Come on, let’s go down so we can play some gin.” [laughter] “If you win, I’ll play you more, if you lose…” And he’d always win! He was a fantastically lucky guy, and I don’t think he cheated, even though some people said so. Joe Gill used to play cards with him all the time. Joe used to get part of his salary taken regularly

by John… and Joe Gill was making more money than anybody! He was paid really well!

CBA: He’d write hundreds of pages of scripts in a week!

Dick: Right. And John might take part of Joe’s salary every week by playing cards with him.

John was not like other big bosses. He was really accessible. I didn’t want to get involved in getting caught up with his game playing, so I didn’t want to go down and play gin with him. He was a gambler, and Joe Gill was a gambler, so they were perfect for each other. Me, I played ping-pong with Steve Ditko. [laughter] We used to have a lot of fun playing ping-pong in the cafeteria after lunch— they would clear away all the tables and set up the ping-pong table.

The cafeteria was a finished basement, and Steve and I would take a break, and play a game. We were all freelance… if we didn’t work, nobody cared. We used to go down and play ping-pong for hours at a time. He would always quit at some point, because he had this respiratory problem—which he still has. I think he had TB when he was younger. He would start to sweat too much, and he’d say, “That’s enough,” and then we’d go up and get back to work.

CBA: I heard a story that Steve Ditko, a couple of weeks before Christmas…?

Dick: Yes! Steve had a pleasant sense of humor, and he was always looking for a way to get a smile. Steve used to go back to New York on weekends when he was on staff at Charlton (and working on his drawing board like mine). One Monday morning, we all came in to work—and in our studio was a men’s room, a long wall, and the ladies’ room at the end. Well, we came in and as I was going to the men’s room, I see a page hanging on the wall. In full color. I don’t remember the specifics of the story, but it was a horror/Santa story, where Santa was a supernatural, horrific being, but you don’t know that on the first page, so there’s a set-up, you know? So I thought it was cute. Then next Monday morning, page two shows up. After that we understood he was going to bring in a page every week. But Steve never said anything, he just pinned them up on the wall! We used to sit around waiting for it to come in on Monday morning! [laughter] Because coming up by train, he used to get there later than the rest of us who were living nearby, and I think it turned out to be eight pages long, in full color, with Santa eating the elves, or something like that at the end, something horrific like that, I don’t remember whether it was. [laughter] It was very well-done, very funny, and it was pure Ditko at that time… before he got involved in “a new social order,” and that.

CBA: But this was morale-boosting, making things more fun.

Dick: Yeah, Steve was a lot more fun in those days. I’ve no comments about his philosophy on social issues. I didn’t agree with social issues being a factor in comic books, whatever it was, whether I agreed with the issues or not, I think comic books were there to entertain. In Steve’s case, it ended up taking over everything that he did. Certainly, Mr. A was total “This is what I believe in.” It started with The Question, but I didn’t notice it at first, and it took a while to realize it. The Question really was the forerunner for Mr. A—they were the same character, except Mr. A was unfunny, whereas the Question had to fit into some sort of rules and regulations that went on.

CBA: I heard a story that a secretary at Charlton said you used to break up the day by having a little fun. One time, you came by the coloring department—a big room with lots of women working—and you took a handful of marbles painted like eyeballs, and rolled them into the room.

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COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

Dick: Yeah. I tried to make some fun. We wanted to have fun while we were doing the work. You couldn’t make any money— nobody could make any money there—whether you were on staff or freelancing, making money was out of the question. So, we used to try to substitute having some fun for making money. Whatever we could do to have some fun, and it was very light and easy with the people on staff, and I’d set the tone.

CBA: All the women did the…

Dick: They did the separations, yes. There were five or six women in the office, I think, who did separations. They were right next to my office, I had a door, they were sitting out in the middle of the floor.

But yeah, and we also went through whatever we could to make the systems work better. We got “A. Machine,” a Royal typewriter with an 18-inch carriage—that’s when we had 12-inch paper, plus the little edges on it—and we used to type on the lettering. We had customized letters made for this Royal electric.

CBA: This was a big machine, right?

Dick: Yes! I mean, if the carriage is that big, the machine has to be pretty big. We used to run the pages right into the machine. Two-ply paper, and type right on the paper. It wasn’t pasted up. [laughter] Royal developed a special ribbon, you could only use it once. When the key hit the paper, it would put a load of ink on the page, and it’d leave a white spot on the tape, and after you took the page out, you basically had to let it dry for a while. That ink might smudge. My wife ended up being the typist. The stories with lettering credited to “A. Machine” are basically my wife. I got Charlton to send the machine up to my house, after we got it working, and I showed her how to do it.

CBA: Where did you have it before moving it home?

Dick: It was in the office at Charlton when I was editor-in-chief.

We also came up with a new Craftint separation system. We worked with the head of the separation department—I can’t remember her name right now—but a very nice woman.

Incidentally, we were on the same floor as the music department, and there were all kinds of weird, strange people there, because they were into rock and roll when it first started. They wore shirts and ties, and produced the magazines Country Music, Song Hits, and Hit Parader. The editors for those music books were all in that one area, on the same floor.

I appropriated my trademark phrase, “Thank You and Good Afternoon” from one of the music editors (Jim something or another), who used it in a card for someone who was leaving the company, and I thought, “Hey, that’s cute.” I talked to him about using that line in my letter columns at Charlton, it became my tag line, and I carried it over to DC and used it there for years.

Below: Detail of Dick’s cover of Sarge Steel #1. Sarge Steel ©2000 DC Comics.

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Above: Cover of Charlton’s unauthorized title, Jungle Tales of Tarzan featuring Joe Gill, writer, and Sam Glanzman, artist. ©2000 the respective copyright holder. Tarzan ©2000Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

Below: Nice Glanzman panel from Jungle Tales of Tarzan #3. The title just preceded the start of Dick’s Action Hero Line. ©2000 the respective copyright holder. Tarzan ©2000Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

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But I got it from Jim. Years later, I met him in New York, and we talked a little bit about my still using that tag line. He didn’t have any use for it, it was a throwaway line, but I thought it was cute. [laughter] CBA: You were on staff with Charlie Nicholas and Vince Alascia?

Dick: Yeah.

CBA: John D’Agostino and you worked on the humorous stuff?

Dick: He did a teen-age book, My Little Margie.

He did some humor stuff, and romance inking, but he also did all of the hand lettering. Anything that you see that’s hand-lettered rather than “A. Machine” is John. John was a great letterer. Still is.

CBA: What was Pat Masulli’s vocation?

Dick: Well, Pat did a little bit of everything, but he was basically a colorist.

Sometimes he did artwork or writing.

CBA: [Pointing out a ’60s romance cover] This is obviously you.

Dick: That’s a little closer to now, but that was only on the romance stuff—thick and thin lines, different line weights. See the weights on the lines there? That’s closer to what I’m doing today. But that came about because the style was in the inking. The drawing came from photographs. For the romance stuff, I took photographs because subtle body poses are hard to make up. You can make up a fight scene or a car chase, but people standing still and talking? It’s hard to make that up (not now, but for me it was then). So I used a Polaroid camera and photographed friends of mine—by that time, I had a larger studio in Connecticut—and used to use up a roll of film a night taking pictures for one cover. As a matter of fact, later on, I got a job doing romance stuff for DC, sort of ghosting for my brother-in-law, Sal Trapani. Sal had earlier moved away from his home in Seymour, and went to California, working on Space Angel with Alex Toth. And, as often happens in animation, that gig disappeared, just went south one day. So he came back to Connecticut, and said he just wanted to ink. I’d do the drawing, and could we make up some

samples together and he’d go around and try to get some work. I wouldn’t have to leave the studio, he would do all the hustling, delivering and picking up and so forth—this was before FedEx, so you had to pretty much show up in person. So, we made up the samples, and I’d get half of the payment. The difference between penciling and inking, ladies and gentlemen, is generally 60% penciler/40% inker, but we made it 50/50, because he was doing the leg work. We got romance work at DC, we got Nukla at Dell, and at ACG we did some of the later books, like Forbidden Worlds. At DC, I also did a Brave and the Bold, with The Flash and the Doom Patrol.

If you look back at the book, you’ll find work in that issue that looks like Giordano and Trapani. It wasn’t signed, I think.

CBA: Trapani broke into DC? Dick: Right, and got a lot of romance stuff. When I got the romance assignment from DC, I took pictures for the whole story, not just for a cover.

CBA: You guys were working with romance editor Larry Nadell?

Dick: Maybe he was working for Nadell, I don’t know, I didn’t go in. Sal would come home with a script and say, “We need to get this done by dawn,” and I’d sit down and pencil it—I was getting much more money than I was getting from Charlton, and that was fine for me. Dell was a good place to work, the only problem was, by that time, they were really hedging their bets, most of their books were quarterly, and they wouldn’t order issue #4 until they got some kind of sales figures on #3, and what that generally meant was, you had a month to write, pencil and ink 32 pages. [laughter] So many hands did the work. For Dell, I drew Beach Blanket Bingo, I inked Doctor Kildare, penciled one issue of Camp Runamuck, a television show adaptation, and I did a couple of issues of Ben Casey. I was doing a lot of licensing stuff. I did a movie version all by myself of The Longest Day, which was really tough, because everybody was wearing Army mufti, because I had to identify characters by drawing their likenesses from the photos supplied so the reader could know who was talking, because they didn’t always call each other by name and they were all wearing the same outfit. [laughter] That’s kind of hard to do when you’re doing big, panoramic shots of war scenes.

CBA: Looking at your early work: Was this Frank Robbins’ influence?

Dick: Part of it, in spotting the blacks, but not on the drawing. I kind of went through that myself, but this kind of stuff came from Robbins, the way he used to spot blacks. All of that came from Robbins, the heavy-duty blacks.

CBA: Charlton had terrible distribution, didn’t it?

Dick: You couldn’t depend on seeing the books on the stands with any regularity.

CBA: Do you think the 150 DC roadmen compared to the Charlton five is a factor?

Dick: Oh, sure. Also the fact that Charlton just wasn’t interested in promoting the books at any level at all. I had to come up with a cheap way to do the promotion by overprinting the cover. The paper was already on the press, the ink was already there, the plates were already there, the artwork even paid for, what we were doing was printing a few extra pieces of paper, as many as there were distributors. Also, distribution then was different than it became in the direct-sales market in that each of the distributors had exclusive territory. The only thing the roadmen could do with so much area to cover was troubleshoot—you know, go to Detroit, iron out the problems, go to Podunk, iron it out there. Wherever the problem was, that was where they would spend their time. But they certainly couldn’t cover the whole nation! To be fair, DC had 150 road men, but they also had more comics and magazines to distribute. DC distributed Playboy, and they used the magazine’s popularity at the stands like a club. They tell a local distributor: “You want to get Playboy? Well, sell these other magazines, too. You’ve got to take the comics, and you’ve got to guarantee me certain level of sales in the comics—you have to do your job.” They used the other profitable magazines as a club, to get action out of the local distributors.

But Charlton didn’t have a club, even though their music books were bestsellers, but sales didn’t command the kind of dollar value the distributors noticed, so they just didn’t care enough to relinquish their rights to do things the way they wanted, in order just to get Song Hits or Hit Parader.

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August 2000

CBA: Why did you want to take on the managing editor position at Charlton?

Dick: Some of it was really personal. Let me get through that first.

I was going through a period in my life where I was having problems working, where I was trying to figure out why am I here, why are we doing these things. I was dealing with my mortality, all those things, and I thought, “This type of staff job—the editorial position—would be better for me than to get by freelancing, I’ve got a family to support.” So, essentially (though not in a physical way), I kept throwing myself at John’s son and then publishing head Charlie Santangelo’s feet until he offered me the job. I had to let him know I was available, and when they decided to moved Pat Masulli out of the comics and into the music business end, I was the only one they considered, and I got the job.

CBA: Because you worked as an assistant for Pat beforehand?

Dick: Not necessarily. Because I made myself available for the job, really. Because I said, “I don’t want to freelance anymore; I want to get a staff job and I want to run this.”

CBA: When you packaged those jobs on staff, was that a dry run for being editor?

Dick: No, not really.

CBA: How did you know you could deal with all the freelancers and do the job?

Dick: I got along with people. I’m sure you know that, Jon. I’m not sure why, it’s not something that I do consciously, but I know that’s the end result, people and I get along, and that I can depend on people to give me a fair degree of whatever skill level they have, just by asking for it. Because I manage things. For example, I mentioned before that Jack Abel was one of the people who penciled for me.

What happened was, he worked for Kanigher on the war books at DC, and Kanigher used to go away for two months every Summer and tell Jack, “Don’t bother me; do what you gotta do.” Jack used to work for me for that two months. I gave him two stories a week and that work lasted me for the whole year. It’s not that he made a lot of money off me—it was either $10 a page from me, or zero— because Kanigher left him with no assignments. Kanigher used to go to Europe or someplace sexy for two months every year, and left everybody hanging! What I did was, I matched what I was offering to Jack to what his needs were—he was just looking for military stuff to draw, because that’s what he did. I said, “Fine. Can you do eight pages a week?” He said, “Easy!” I’d say, “Can you do ten?” He said, “Yeah.” And I said, “Well, we can do this.” I matched up what I needed with him. Same thing with Pete Morisi. I’d talk to people, find out what it is they want, and try to match what they want with what I want. Sometimes, I’d make an adjustment, and sometimes they would, because almost always a compromise needs to be made, but it’s the kind of compromise that I like. I describe it as a situation where two friends are unhappy, and I tried to make a compromise where two buddies are happy—me and and the other guy.

Sometimes, I have to accept something other than what I really asked, and that’s fine, that’s great! But I always made it sound like, “Yes! This is what you want, and it’s exactly what I want.” Instead of just putting them on the defensive by insisting on what I want, I’d make a compromise and act like we wanted the same thing. I don’t have any skills as a psychiatrist, but I know that people like to be patted on the head, that people like to feel as if they’re cared for and part of a team. Instead of insisting they’re working for me, I’d make it more a collaboration. It’s a simple thing to do, and it’s because I feel that way. Ist’s not because I plan it out in advance and think, “I know how I can get this guy to work for me, I’ve got to press his buttons.” I don’t think that way. I feel we can work whatever problems out, and we can do good stuff together.

CBA: Jim Warren, by his own admission, liked to push people’s buttons.

Dick: A real character. But he’s so transparent. He could have fun!

He was a real character, and I liked him a lot. I thought he was creative and he had a lot to offer. Jim knew how to run the business.

His comics, good as they could be, were basically just a paid catalog for his Captain Company.

I worked for Jim when Louise was there. In fact, I inked Carmine Infantino’s stuff. I think of Jim as a very fun-loving guy, a real character, and you weren’t supposed to believe any of this other August 2000

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

stuff people say about him.

Sometimes he would bullsh*t people just to tease them and it was carefully calculated.

Some just took it the wrong way.

I think he was doing what Neal Adams used to do: When somebody came up with samples, if they weren’t up to par, they weren’t sellable yet, Neal would just ream these people out. I said, “Neal, what do you do that for?”

He said, “Because if they’re really serious about what they’re doing, they’re going to try to prove me wrong, and they’ll come in with new samples in another couple of weeks.” You know, he was right a lot. Not all the time, but he was right a lot.

CBA: Sometimes Neal’s criticism could be devastating.

Dick: Sure, because Neal is God to so many artists. Jim didn’t have that prestige; he wasn’t God to anybody, except maybe his wife. [laughter] I met Jim at a New York convention, probably one of Seuling’s, where he essentially went around the room and asked all the shakers in the room—the people who made a real contribution in the comics industry—to join him for dinner. Then, he took us to the most expensive, trendy restaurant.

He didn’t make pitches or anything, he just took us out to dinner, spent a small fortune on it, and then one by one, invite us to apartment—I don’t know if it was a penthouse, but it sure looked like one!—and he had a jukebox there. Anyone would say, “Wow! You have a jukebox!” And he’d say, “Doesn’t everybody?” [laughter] It pleased him to do that. It made him into a character, he was trying to be a character.

CBA: Were you managing editor when Charlton put out Jungle Tales of Tarzan, the unauthorized title the Edgar Rice Burroughs people eventually shut down?

Dick: No, I don’t think so.

CBA: So that was before you took over—May 1965.

Dick: That’s the cover date which is two months after off-sale. I think I started sometime in ’65. My memory for dates is fuzzy.

CBA: It was your understanding that Tarzan was public domain?

Dick: Yes. Joe Gill wrote that, and he took way too many liberties.

I don’t think it was impressed on Joe that to do a public domain book required being true to the original material.

CBA: Did you hear the rumor that Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., eventually took the license from Western Publishing because apparently the Glanzman-drawn Charlton issues were selling better than the Westerns?

Dick: Never heard that rumor but it probably was true.

CBA: What made it a better-seller?

Dick: Maybe Glanzman’s art, maybe because we had more fun with the character.

CBA: Why did you call your books “The Action Hero Line”? Why not “super-heroes”?

Dick: It was just personal preference. I didn’t like super-heroes much.

CBA: “Action Heroes” was your phrase?

Dick: Yes, it gave us an establishing tag line for the new run of books, even though we were still using the old Blue Beetle when we started. Charlton was also publishing Captain Atom when I got there,

Above: Two of Charlton’s pre-Action Hero Line costumed characters, Blue Beetle and Son of Vulcan, both lacklusterly drawn by Charlton staffers and written by Joe Gill. ©The respective copyright holder.

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Above: The Action Hero Line comes abornin’! Here’s Steve Ditko’s fullpager celebrating the new, improved Captain Atom, inside #84, “After the Fall, A New Beginning,” written by Dave Kaler. ©2000 DC Comics.

Center background: Panel detail by Steve Ditko from “The Question” in Mysterious Suspense #1. ©2000 DC Comics.

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too. I just made that phrase up because I thought we should be distinguishable from DC or Marvel. We should publish adventures of heroes that didn’t have super-powers, and with that understanding, I accepted the position. I chose Ditko’s Blue Beetle over the old one, because Steve’s added drama. The character had a stun gun and the “bug,” but no real super-powers. We also cut down on Captain Atom’s powers, but we couldn’t do much but change his costume, then reduce his powers somewhat. Sarge Steel clearly didn’t have any powers, just a steel hand; the Fighting Five were just five fighting soldiers; Thunderbolt had that “I can, I will” attitude and excelled by maximizing his human powers. So, none of the other characters— with the exception of Captain Atom—were imbued with super-powers. I accepted the responsibility for that.

CBA: So they weren’t super, but still costumed characters.

Dick: I called them that for no other reason than they were action heroes, and not super-heroes. That was the reasoning. They didn’t have super-powers.

CBA: The reason you didn’t want to have super-powered characters was so there would be more drama and jeopardy to the stories?

Dick: Well, essentially, yes. One of the things I always said—and still do—is that you’ll read a Superman story to see how he prevails, not if he prevails. But that takes tension and suspense out of the story; you know at the end of that story, Superman will still be there.

(I think that’s why Mike Carlin did that “Death of Superman” thing; to try to prove that you could kill the character—and you really couldn’t, because he still came back, didn’t he?) [laughter] Whereas the Charlton characters weren’t too important, and we showed them as having many more mortal weaknesses, and it was possible they’d get hurt, or they’d get dead! I mean, nothing stopped the Beetle from being shot in the arm, nothing stopped Judo-Master from having a Japanese bayonet go through his arm… and none of those characters could be invulnerable to a weapon wielded by the bad guy. So, I thought it would be a mixed element of suspense and drama. I may have been wrong, but it worked for me, and I have to admit that I haven’t been so much of a marketing expert that I can say, “The kids will love this.” What I do is, I figure, “I’m a comic reader; I like to read comics, and I want to draw and edit comics that I would enjoy, and hope there’s enough people out there who will agree with me.” There’s not much marketing analysis I can use, if that makes any sense. I’m not going to sit around and try to skull-out what an eight-year-old kid likes; I don’t know what he likes! There’s nothing a marketing expert can tell me that will make me know what he likes. The expert is just guessing, the same as I’d be guessing. So I didn’t even bother, I just took my best shot. I don’t know how many other people cared about the Action Hero Line, but they were all made for Dick Giordano. I was the guy, for good or ill, who made the decision, “Yeah, we’re going to publish that,” or “No, we’re not going to publish that.”

CBA: It’s 35 years later, and we’re still talking about them. You must’ve done something right.

Dick: I guess! [laughs] CBA: But did you do the adventure line because Marvel was becoming successful with Spider-Man, and Fantastic Four…?

Dick: Oh, yeah! And moreover, because Marvel was having fun with it, and their readers were having fun. You know, I enjoyed reading their books, I did!

CBA: Did you appreciate Stan Lee’s editorial voice?

Dick: Sure! At the time, it was the best in the business. He’s still willing to talk, still smiling, well into his seventies, and still doing great. He’s a strange guy, but I like him—I mean, he’s strange in that he’s so immune to the brickbats, all he hears and feels is the good stuff. Anything critical, he doesn’t hear it, doesn’t touch it… bounces off.

CBA: But he absorbs all the positive. [laughs] Dick: That’s cool! I wish I could do that!

CBA: Did you appropriate his editorial voice in your books?

Dick: Not directly or intentionally. I think what I was trying to do was create a sense of fun in the letter pages, which I think he was doing, too. I didn’t have the Merry Marvel Marching Society; what I was doing in my approach to the letter pages—which I wrote entirely—was to write a letter to Mom; I tried to be very personal with the guys who were writing. I carried that with me to DC, as well, trying to make it sound like a letter to the guy who wrote the letter I’m responding to, and that he’s either a friend of mine, or I’d like him to be a friend. That was what I was trying to do, I wasn’t the heavyduty promotion approach that Stan was using—which was right for Stan, but it wouldn’t have worked at Charlton. It would’ve only worked moderately well at DC if all of the editors wrote the same way. So, I didn’t think it was a big deal being chummy in the letter columns. I was just doing what I didn’t want to do… write. I’m not a writer, so I’d basically write a letter to Mom. CBA: I’m surprised you mentioned the competition in your responses to letters. You’d mention Marvel, and you allowed letters to mention DC, even at the expense of criticizing Charlton.

Dick: I did what I did to be more candid and more open, which I am always when I’m speaking to members of the fan community.

That’s what I told you: If you ask me a hard question, I’ll give you a candid answer. I don’t hide, and I don’t give you the company line on everything. I’m telling it where it is as far as I’m concerned. I might be wrong, but I’m telling you how I feel about it. And that’s what I was doing with the letter writers. I’d tell so-and-so he was doing a good job in person, so I didn’t see any reason not to mention it in the letters page. Back to DC, the first letters page I did mentioned Marvel, and they made me take it out.

CBA: At Charlton, did they care?

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

Dick: They didn’t care. I was left entirely on my own.

CBA: Nobody looked at the stuff.

Dick: Nobody.

CBA: Wow. Dick: Nobody. I had my secretary proofread a few things.

CBA: Were you allowed to shine in that environment? You were left alone…

Dick: Oh, yeah, right! I loved it, it was no problem for me. I enjoyed it, and I got as much out of it as I could. On the letter page—go to any one at random—you’ll see that, more often than not, whenever there’s a reference to an issue by a letter writer, it’s the previous issue, which no other company could do. I figured I had an edge because of Charlton’s unique capabilities in the industry.

You’ll also notice there’s usually no color on the letter columns, because I composed the columns when the job was actually on press.

I’d be in my office writing the letters page, while they got the color in registration for the rest of the book, and I’d run down, shouting, “Here’s the letters page!” So the columns were printed in black-&white because there was no time to do separations. So, my competition couldn’t do a letter column mentioning the last issue’s story! My competition were two or three issues behind.

CBA: From the time you wrote a letters page to the time it hit the stands, how long was that?

Dick: Two or three weeks approximately. I’d write my responses longhand—I didn’t type then, I don’t type now—and generally, I’d write it right on the actual letter and Janice, my secretary, would be frantically fighting to keep up with me, typing the letter plus my response, so she was doing two things. Often we printed one done on her typewriter.

CBA: Isn’t that IBM Selectra type?

Dick: Yeah. [laughter] This was on her typewriter. [laughter] Most of the time, they were typeset.

CBA: And did you start getting noticed by the fans?

Dick: Not to the degree that the sales were overwhelming, but yeah, we were getting a lot of replies from fans who were reading DC and Marvel, and they liked what we were doing. [Looking at a letter col] This guy says, we’re not number two, but according to him, we’re number one. “I disagree… the reasons why they say you are number two, and…” And another writes, “I used to be the number one fan of Charlton until they mixed up the creative teams and decreased the quality of the artwork,” And this guy didn’t say we were number one, he’s saying we were number three! [laughs] CBA: And you let a critical letter like that go in!

Dick: What they tell me is what got printed. I wasn’t trying to edit the material to make us look like gods, because we already had two companies that were trying to look like gods. We already had companies where Stan would refer to DC as “Brand Ecch,” and DC would refer to Marvel as “Brand X,” or whatever it was. They were all fighting with each other, and I figured, “I’ll take the other road entirely.” The competition used letter pages as marketing tools, promoting their titles and creative people, and knocking the competition.

My letter columns made me a human being, instead of a marketing guy. The readers didn’t want to know about marketing; they wanted to know about the people who do this comic.

CBA: A guy with heart!

Dick: Right! Tell them about the people who do this stuff, and I tried to do that, I tried to be human.

CBA: The early, pre-Ditko Blue Beetles certainly cried out for improving. You edited the early run, correct?

Dick: The latter part of the run. That’s the level of quality Charlton was publishing at that time, and that’s why I think they decided to get somebody different like me to do the comic books. The early ones were edited by Pat Masulli, who thought he had to do comics like this in order to survive. He was pretty much wrong with the early version of Blue Beetle. [laughter] CBA: So then you took over, right?

Dick: By the time I took over, we still did another two or three issues of the old Blue Beetle before Steve Ditko came up with his wondrous new idea.

CBA: Steve was one of the guys you were able to get who really gave a beautiful look to your line of books. He did gorgeous work at Charlton at half the page rate he was getting at Marvel or DC. August 2000

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

Dick: Less than half.

CBA: How did you get Steve Ditko?

Dick: We were friends, because we played ping-pong together, and because he came up with some ideas that I wanted to use.

CBA: But he was over at Marvel.

Dick: He was also living in New York, I only used to see him on Wednesdays. [laughs] CBA: Did he always do work for Charlton? He did Konga, Mysterious Traveler…

Dick: I don’t think so. I think he left Charlton completely when he went to Marvel. I don’t remember the exact mechanics of how we got back together, but I do know he created the new Captain Atom, the new Blue Beetle, The Question, Nightshade… was there anything else? That’s it. So, in New York City, together, he would come up with an idea, and I’d say, “Gee, that sounds like it would work.” I never added anything, I don’t remember any specific suggestions I made, I didn’t do it for that reason. And then, he’d go off and either write it, or tell me who he wanted to write it, or accept the writer, and I’d call him. Gary Friedrich did a few things with him and Steve seemed happy. But then, when he started doing this stuff on his own, he didn’t want to take the credit for his writing for some reason.

CBA: Steve had a falling-out with Marvel?

Above: The Blue Beetle gets a much-improved makeover by Steve Ditko. Here’ a full-page splash by the artist from Blue Beetle #2. ©2000 DC Comics.

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Dick: Oh, yeah, with Spider-Man. When I went to visit Steve at his studio—I don’t remember what the context was, and maybe that’s

Above: Back cover detail of Judomaster by his creator, Frank McLaughlin. From Charlton Bullseye #3, the special Kung Fu special issue. Courtesy of Bob Layton & CPL/Gang Publications.

Judomaster ©2000 DC Comics.

Below: Detail from page one of The Peacemaker #6, words by Gill, art by Boyette. ©2000 DC Comics.

when I was working at Charlton; maybe that’s how we got together, now that I think of it—and he came up, boiling mad. The dispute was, he thought he was writing SpiderMan, but Stan was getting the credit.

As proof, he showed to me a chart he had up on the wall that said when certain things were going to happen for the next six issues… plots, subplots, and how they were going to interact over that six-issue span. Clearly, he wrote that chart. (Of course, that doesn’t mean Stan couldn’t tell him that over the phone, and then Steve wrote it. ) Stan’s general approach, really, was to talk out the stories. He very rarely typed it up.

I’m sure you’ve heard that. And then he’d dialogue it when the pencils came in, so shouldn’t Stan be considered the writer? You can argue the point, Steve argued that it wasn’t. And because of his new philosophy or social order, he felt it was criminal for someone to take credit for something he didn’t do. That’s what led to the break-up with Marvel and Steve Ditko.

CBA: And then he just came to you and said, “I’m ready, I’m available”?

Dick: I think it might have come out of that dispute, because when I went to his office, I’m pretty sure I was working at Charlton at that time, and then he came over and did this. But he was still working at Marvel when he did some of these things.

CBA: Some of the Captain Atoms?

Dick: Then, he quit Marvel altogether and, by the time I left DC in 1971, he didn’t do anything more as far as I recall… or not much more. He might’ve finished a 42

couple of issues of books already in the works.

CBA: Did Steve come to you with the idea to update Blue Beetle?

Dick: Oh, yeah. Even the way they were hooked together, he made a connection between Ted Kord with Dan Garrett, and somewhere in the opening issues, it shows how they met. And the general idea was to eliminate the scarab, which was a source of power. I was trying to eliminate super-powers in the character, and he devised a way to get rid of the scarab, and replace it with something even more interesting: The Bug! (Which is just the scarab, really, but it’s bigger and can carry him around, instead of the Blue Beetle having it on his belt buckle. ) Captain Atom, we just never came up with a way that we were comfortable with to take his powers away and still call him Captain Atom. It’s kind of hard to call a human-powered character Captain Atom, unless he has the powers of the atom, so he remained super-powered. He started out with his yellow costume in the Action Hero Line, and ended up with the blue one.

CBA: Why change his costume?

Dick: Just to call attention to the fact that we were trying to do something different. Or maybe Steve just liked this costume better.

Maybe he got tired of drawing all of that chain mail; it takes a long time to do that.

CBA: You remember Will Franz?

Dick: Yep! A young writer, 14 years old. Yes, I remember Willy Franz. I couldn’t believe that I was talking to this kid, and buying these war stories from him that read like they were written by an adult. If memory serves me, Sam Glanzman drew a lot of Willy’s stories. But I haven’t seen Willy for decades, maybe 30 years.

CBA: He remembers his strip “Willy Schultz” very fondly. It’s a very personal strip for him. Do you remember how “Willy Schultz” was developed?

Dick: No, I think Franz did most of it. He wanted to do a book for me.

CBA: Did you want a continuity in the war books?

Dick: Oh, yes, definitely! Willy established one continuous strip for each of the war books, or they were heading that way when I left, I’m not sure which. “Iron Corporal” and “The Devil’s Brigade,” and “The Lonely War of Willy Schultz.”

CBA: Do you know what happened to Franz? Suddenly he couldn’t get published any more. He wrote a few DC war stories that were published without his credit. He told me, that in 1969 or so, a fan of his work registered as a conscientious objector with the draft board, citing Franz’s “Lonely War of Willy Schultz” as an influence on his decision to resist. Did you ever hear about that?

Dick: No, I didn’t. I don’t know that it had any connection with that.

CBA: Why didn’t you bring him over to DC? Dick: I wasn’t editing any war books and he didn’t fit into what I was doing. But I did get Joe Kubert to look at Willy’s work. That’s also how I helped get Glanzman into DC. CBA: You gave Glanzman entré to Kubert’s books?

Dick: Only in terms of my telling Joe, “Look at this stuff! This guy knows more about the Navy than anybody you know.” Sam lived it.

And Joe bought that story from him, which was very personal and autobiographical about his time on that one ship, the U. S. S. Stevens. I’m not saying that I got Joe to hire Sam, but I introduced Sam to people who might give him work since I didn’t have any other title to consider him for.

When I was in negotiations with DC to come aboard, I said— regardless of what others may have said—“I hope you don’t mind if I bring by some talent with me,” and co-owner Irwin Donenfeld said, “Oh, we’d rather expect that you would.” But Carmine never said, “We want you, Steve Skeates, Denny O’Neil, Jim Aparo, Sam Glanzman, Pat Boyette…” No one at DC ever gave me a shopping list of talent I was instructed to spirit away from Charlton. As a matter of fact, the people I brought in were the people DC didn’t ask me to bring in—they might’ve been interested, I don’t know—but I essentially brought in Boyette for a couple of issues of Blackhawk (though he did very little at DC after that). And Aparo has worked steadily until today. I brought in Denny O’Neil who, later on, bounced back and forth between companies but he’s a group editor at DC today. I brought in Steve Skeates, who was living in upstate New York and enjoying himself. I don’t think there was anybody else.

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Ditko was already at DC when I arrived. I used Joe Gill from time to time at DC, because he had a skill level. I thought he did “Johnny Double” for Showcase pretty well.

CBA: And Joe wrote some issues of Hot Wheels?

Dick: Yes, he wrote all but the last one. Although Alex Toth toyed with the earlier scripts, he essentially did Joe’s story.

CBA: Did you ever try to get Alex over at Charlton?

Dick: No. People that I thought were so good, Charlton hadn’t anything to offer them. Alex was one, Gil Kane was another. I knew and loved their work, but I didn’t think I had the right to even ask them. [laughs] CBA: What was the idea behind doing the mystery titles?

Dick: Ghostly Tales was selling, and we wanted to use the word “ghost” in another title. Pat said, “We’ve got to come up right away with another ghost book, it’s got to have ‘ghost’ the title.” So we started thinking up dozens of titles, and we ended up with “graves,” which basically implies “ghosts.” But somehow “The Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves” doesn’t seem as clever as “Ghostly Tales.”

CBA: Did Steve Ditko create the character Dr. Graves?

Dick: Not that I’m aware of. Whoever did the first story probably created the character. [Looking at the lead in the first issue] If that was the first story, then it was Pat Boyette. Boyette did the cover on number one.

CBA: It was probably Joe Gill’s story. Did Pat Boyette do a lot of comics for you?

Dick: Oh, yeah, he did a lot of everything. He was this distinguished gentlemen who got into comics early on, left when they disappeared, came back for a spell, left when they disappeared again, and in-between he had these other careers he was very successful at.

CBA: Did you use him very much?

Dick: No, not a lot. I thought his stuff was very specialized. He couldn’t do romance, couldn’t do war, but he could do this mystery stuff. I think I gave him basically Ghostly Tales and Many Ghosts.

CBA: What was the idea behind The Peacemaker? Was that Pat’s idea?

Dick: Actually, I think it was Joe Gill.

CBA: Did you say, “Joe, I want you to come up with a character”?

Dick: Peacemaker had the tagline: “He loves peace so much he’s willing to fight for it.” A typical Joe Gill line.

CBA: Being a pacifist as a kid, that’s why I didn’t buy the book! [laughter] Dick: I know Pat contributed to Peacemaker a lot. One of the good things about getting Joe to write some of these stories, is that Joe never bothered with them afterward… he wrote them, turned them in, got paid, and that was the end of it. So, in order to work with a number of people, including Alex Toth on Hot Wheels, I’d try to make some changes to the story to make it work better, and Joe wouldn’t care if you changed his stories. And often I had to make changes. I think the same was true for Pat Boyette working on Joe’s scripts, and over time there was a little bit more Pat Boyette in the stories. What was wrong with Joe’s stories most of the time wasn’t that the stories didn’t hold water, or weren’t interesting, but that he didn’t often find a way to make them graphically interesting. As an artist I made changes… for instance, when his script described just two guys talking to each other, I would change it so that so they were both doing something interesting—maybe fighting—and saying the same words which Joe wrote. I just had to find a way to make it more graphically interesting because Joe didn’t have a real sense of the visual. He got better as he went along, but he never got 100%. I drew hundreds of Joe Gill stories, never had a real problem with them. They weren’t the kind of stories that would win awards, but I never had a problem. When you consider how quickly his stories had to be completed, he did great stuff!

CBA: Did you advise?

Dick: Occasionally. Especially when the opportunity came later, but Joe didn’t mind. I’ve talked to other writers who said, “This is just ballpark, feel free to make changes as you wish.” In which case, I’d do that. When they’d say, “If you want to make changes, give me a call, and we’ll see if we can work something out to accommodate what you’d need.” Sometimes it would be part of one and part of August 2000

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the other: Denny O’Neil didn’t feel particularly qualified to write fight scenes, so he’d set up a locale that he had to get out of for the next sequence, and he said, “Do the fight anyway you want, just get me to the third story window here, because that’s how they’re getting out of this,” and he’d let me choreograph it. We did a lot of that on Wonder Woman, when he was writing it and I was drawing. In a number of other books that we worked on together, Denny allowed me to choreograph, and as long as I ended up where he

wanted the story to be, anything I did in-between was cool. [laughs] So, I felt I was part of the story, though I never complained that I actually wrote that sequence, as opposed to Denny doing it. It was his idea to allow me to get where I had to go, so that’s fine.

CBA: How did you get Denny O’Neil to work for Charlton? Did he come to you?

Dick: Roy Thomas got Denny in. Roy was an English teacher with a comic fan sideline, and I think Denny was interviewing him for a newspaper, and that’s how they first met. Roy worked for me a little bit on Son of Vulcan, and said he was going over to Marvel full-time as an editor (where he was already working as a writer). I said, “Gee, Roy, we’re gonna miss you.” He said, “Well, I’ve got somebody you might be able to use.” Actually, he had two somebodies: Gary Friedrich (who was also a reporter) and Denny O’Neil. Denny was already working at Marvel at that time, too, but he wasn’t getting much to do.

CBA: Legend has it Denny was on the outs at Marvel.

Dick: Well, Stan didn’t like his writers working for other people. He didn’t care about the artists, but he didn’t like his writers working elsewhere, so that’s where the pseudonym Sergius O’Shaunessy came from. Denny was trying to hide the fact that he was Denny O’Neil. He was bringing his stuff into Marvel on Wednesday morning, and then he’d come over to see me after lunch with his stories for me.

CBA: How about Steve Skeates?

Above: Cover detail of Pete Morisi’s delightful Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt. This is from #54. ©2000 Peter A. Morisi.

Below: Detail from page one of the Nightshade story in Captain Atom #89, words by Kaler, art by Aparo. ©2000 DC Comics.

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Above: Photos from a Charlton panel at a mid-’60s comic convention. Top left: Dave Kaler at the podium with unidentified staffers.

Top right: Left to right, it’s Grass Green, Dennis O’Neil, Steve Skeates, and Dick Giordano, Rocke Masteriserio, and Dave Kaler.

Bottom left: O’Neil, Skeates, and Giordano. Bottom right: Giordano, Rocke Masteriserio, and Dave Kaler. Below: Example of Dick’s super-timely letter cols. Captain Atom ©2000 DC Comics.

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Dick: I really don’t remember.

I thought about it before we had this discussion, and I couldn’t remember how Steve came on. Steve had hair down to here, mustache and beard down to here… couldn’t tell he was a kid, because he was covered with hair. The best stuff Steve ever did, nobody will ever see: He wrote great scripts for Abbott and Costello at Charlton!

(Actually, his scripts were storyboards, really. He was using his cartooning skills and visually mapping-out the story. ) You should’ve seen some of this stuff. The scripts just knocked me on my tush! The finished art was okay, but nowhere near as good as the script. Steve had the story road-mapped in the script, but the artist had an ego, and he wanted to do it his own way. Steve’s work was so funny, but nobody will ever know, because the finished stuff wasn’t as good as those scripts were. And as a matter of fact, Steve felt so comfortable

with that breakdown approach to writing that when he wrote for me at DC he continued using the same technique: Using bond paper, he would divide the page into handdrawn panels, and type the description right on top in parentheses, and then the captions and balloons under that.

CBA: Your editorial style was to gently elicit the best from your freelancers, who would often end up doing their best just to please you because you gave them what they wanted: Praise and support. It seems to me that some of the best editors in comics had the same approach: Archie Goodwin, Louise Jones (Simonson)…

Dick: It’s better to say something positive and encourage the artists and writers rather than put them down.

Freelancers feel they can do something good as long as they believed it was their idea. I always felt that if writers could do something they wanted to do, that they would do a better job if I just gently steered them towards what they wanted to achieve. I was trying to have a very light editorial hand; I wanted the people to be as creative as possible. Because that’s my job: To get people to be creative. You don’t get people to be creative with a baseball bat; it just doesn’t work. That’s certainly at the root of my problems with Carmine Infantino when I was working at DC between 1968-70, nothing more or less than that. He thought pushing people was the way to make them perform, and I believed just the opposite, to give them a pat on the head when they make a mistake, and say, “Do better next time.” Then they’d fall all over themselves to try to please me. If you say, “You do this again, and you’re going to get fired,” they’re going to get fired, because they’re going to do it again. It’s human nature to want to bump heads with somebody who threatened you. That’s not the kind of attitude you want to have with freelancers. I don’t care what the industry is like— whether business is good or bad—but that’s not a way to get creative work out of people. You’ve got to use a bit of common sense.

In my case, I thought, “How do I want to get treated when I’m working?” And that’s the way I tried to treat the writers and artists.

CBA: The Golden Rule. Do you think, using the stick and not the carrot was ingrained in the culture at DC? Mort Weisinger had a reputation as a hard-ass editor, for instance.

Dick: Mort Weisinger was mean-spirited, and he did things that were not correct to do. Weisinger used to listen to Writer A give him a plot, and say, “No, I don’t want that,” and then feed that plot to Writer B, who came in right behind him. It was childish!

CBA: When I did the first issue of CBA, you were the first person I interviewed, and a major reason I wanted to do an issue specifically about that time at DC [1967-74] was because you were such a good editor, I think. Your titles were, for those few years you were an editor at DC, just wonderful books. You had a special editorial style that was very friendly, that came over with you from Charlton.

Subsequently, right after interviewing you, I spoke with Archie Goodwin, another editor whom creators wanted to please. Archie patted them on the head, said, “You’re doing good work,” and so they produced good work! Archie Goodwin, Weezie Jones Simonson, another comic editor…

Dick: I’ve worked for both of them, so I agree with you entirely.

CBA: The other kind of editors, those who advocated the stick approach, Mort Weisinger, Jim Shooter, Bob Kanigher… It seems to COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

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me, the Giordano/Goodwin/Simonson side produced memorable work because creative people are very sensitive people, little children who just want to be loved.

Dick: Absolutely, as a matter of fact, I’ve always said, “Love is better than a check.” If you love them more and pay them less, they’ll give you great work, and the check is of secondary important. I’ve had a family to support, so I had to have that check, but I still wanted somebody to tell me I did a great job. And you know, it still works. It’s not calculated; it’s just the way I think. If somebody’s done bad work, you’ve got to tell them, “This is stupid,” and if somebody doesn’t like it, I think that’s fine. If you’re honest all of the time, people will react to you in a positive fashion, and you can get better work from them, and you’ll be friends for life. The reason so many came to work for me when I went back to DC in the 1980s, is I had some history with so many, and they realized they had a better chance of getting to do what they wanted to do with me than with Shooter. I care about the creative things; I care about the feelings of the creative people.

CBA: D. C. Glanzman—Sam’s brother—wrote for you?

Dick: No, he didn’t really write any of that stuff.

CBA: Why was he listed?

Dick: I have no idea why Steve [Ditko] didn’t want to take credit for it, but he didn’t. Dave Glanzman worked in the office, as a board man, making corrections, taking stories to New York for Code approval, things like that. We just asked him for permission to use his name as writer on some of Steve’s stories.

CBA: Did Dave still get paid for the stories?

Dick: No. But Charlton didn’t care about the credit listings.

CBA: How many titles were you publishing at the time?

Dick: I think maybe 34, but I’m not really sure about that. They were all bi-monthly.

CBA: Did you start Go-Go? Dick: Yeah.

CBA: What was your thinking behind that?

Dick: Actually, Pat Masulli suggested it because there was a lot of stuff available from the music department that fit in Go-Go: photos, topical material—sometimes there was a photo of Sonny & Cher in the back or inside cover, for instance. Jim Aparo did his first work for me in Go Go—”The Wild-Life Adventures of Miss Bikini Luv.” He’s a really good humor artist! Jim loved the humor work; he was just dying to do it. He had a syndicated newspaper strip assignment, but Jim wasn’t making any money at it, either. He was an advertising artist, primarily. He liked doing covers for Charlton.

CBA: How did you meet him?

Dick: From a letter I found in the file cabinet I inherited. Most of the new people I got at Charlton were from the mail my predecessor never read but just stuffed into the file drawers. I called Jim up, and he came down from Hartford, we talked for half an hour, and I said, “I’ve got something for you: How about ‘Bikini Luv’? It’s humor.

Sexy girl, closer to the Archie style, really.” He said, “Well, I’ll take a shot at it.”

CBA: Who was Bache?

Dick: Ernie Bache was an inker—he would’ve been great today, because he loved that slick line—but he was so slow! He used to ink the stuff slower than Bill Montes penciled it. I think some of his feathering he did with a ruler. He was a nice guy, never made much money, about the only thing he did was ink over Bill’s pencils who was only moonlighting, because he had a good job, a middle-level management position at The New York Times.

CBA: Did Charlton Comics have a New York office?

Dick: Not full-time.

CBA: Just the ad agency and some magazine editorial were in the city?

Dick: Right. Pretty much.

CBA: But you went down to an office every week to talk to the freelancers?

Dick: Once a week I borrowed an office or a conference room.

The freelancers would come up on Wednesdays. I know it was Wednesday because it was matinee day at the theatres and the traffic was so bad.

CBA: Did you pay the freelancers for their assignments on Wednesdays?

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Dick: Oh, yes.

CBA: So Ditko would come in, for instance?

Dick: Yes. They would put in vouchers when they picked up an assignment and, generally speaking, when they were finished the next week they’d get paid on delivery, CBA: I’ve heard it was a good thing about Charlton in Derby: they paid on Friday mornings for the week’s work.

Dick: Sometimes earlier than Friday mornings. They were informal, really, and they were never late. Charlton always paid.

CBA: Did Tony Tallarico do good roughs?

Dick: Yeah, he designed covers for most of Charlton’s crossword magazines. But he was never very good at realistic drawing. He mostly worked in advertising. The funny thing is, Tony graduated from the School of Industrial Arts the same year as me, but he graduated with a cartooning course background, and I graduated with advertising and illustration. He ended up in the advertising and illustration end, and I ended up in the cartooning end! He’s done a lot of coloring book work, which his style was great for. Totally non-threatening to the kids.

CBA: [laughs] You worked with Rocke Mastroserio on covers a lot?

Dick: If you go through the entire run, you’ll find a lot of my layouts on his covers. I did tight layouts and he finished them.

CBA: What was Rocke like?

Dick: A real sweet guy, easy going, and definitely, he was one of those people who had the gambling bug. He lost his car. He never got married. My wife said he was very cute, but he didn’t believe it.

CBA: What happened to him?

Dick: He died around 1969. He was in his forties when he had a heart attack. They took him to the hospital, and he died in the emer-

Above: Though credited as writer on a number of Ditko strips, Dave Glanzman (Sam’s brother) served on staff as a production assistant.

Here’s Dick’s letter of recommendation for the young Glanzman, when D.C. sought greener pastures. Courtesy of D.C. Glanzman.

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Below: The first appearance of The Question, from his back-up in Blue Beetle #1. Story and art by Ditko. ©2000 DC Comics.

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gency room.

CBA: What was the idea behind “Wander”? Did you say, “Hey, Denny, come up with a science-fiction western strip”?

Dick: Generally, I didn’t do things like that. What I would generally do is, “Here’s a book we’re gonna publish, I want you to just come up with something interesting.”

CBA: Visually interesting or conceptually interesting?

Dick: Both. Basically, writers would come up with something—it would be a paragraph or two—and I’d say, “Okay, that’s something we were looking for, go ahead and do it.” I was looking for good, solid scripts. I can’t remember the specifics, but there were a lot of projects in the works when I left Charlton. There was an obscure Captain Atom story on the shelf when I left. There was a couple of good works in progress, material that was finished and on the shelves.

CBA: What was the idea behind Fightin’ Five?

Dick: Actually, sad to say, that was put together before I got there.

CBA: Oh, was it? Was that a Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos swipe?

Dick: The old Blue Beetle, the old Captain Atom, and Fightin’ Five were books that were in place before I got there. Fightin’ Five was Joe Gill writing Army stuff, except it was a specialized group.

CBA: You did nice covers for Fightin’ Five.

Dick: Yeah, I guess I did.

Actually, I did covers on everything at one point or another.

Tons and tons of them. But I didn’t know I was getting involved in the properties that the covers were done for at Charlton. Some of them were done when I was freelancing, all of them were done as freelance projects, except where I would do a sketch for Rocke or something like that. I’d do the sketch right on the board, and although it wasn’t as detailed as that, it was totally layout and the drawing was there, the proportions were there. So maybe he had to add a few muscles or a few folds, and some blacks and things like that, but essentially, the drawing was there.

CBA: Did Jim Aparo stay with Charlton for a little while after you left? He did both work for you at DC and for Charlton for a period?

Dick: Yeah. You know, you really can’t make a commitment to change companies until you’re sure they’re gonna keep you. Jim was penciling, inking and lettering all of Aquaman for me, but I didn’t require people to be exclusive to me, because that’s not right. At Charlton, I could give freelancers as much work as they think they could handle, but at DC I wasn’t able to do that, because I wasn’t the editor-in-chief at that point. I was simply an editor of half a dozen titles, and I couldn’t

promise anything more than a bi-monthly assignment. As it turns out, he fell a little behind on Aquaman, and that was probably the reason for the Neal Adams “Deadman” back-ups.

CBA: Well, Jim’s father got sick.

Dick: I don’t remember that. Fuzzy memory… Steve Skeates came up with the idea of having Mera disappear, but he couldn’t figure out how to get her back. Neal came up with the Deadman solution and Jim and Steve locked into it.

CBA: What was up with the odd numbering for Charlton comics?

Dick: In order to meet Second Class postal regulations—necessary for subscriptions and for some shipments to clients at a reasonable price—you had to meet certain requirements and could only get a permit for each title. The Postal Service required that to change the name of the magazine but retain the permit, you had to submit material for approval that was much the same as the original (though they didn’t really much care). Charlton did not want to go through the expensive and time-consuming process for getting new secondclass privileges for each new title, so they just cancelled a book, changed the name but retained the numbering to hold onto that valuable second class permit. So, upon cancelling Unusual Tales, for instance, we just changed the name to Blue Beetle. The Post Office said, “Well, that’s close enough,” and they accepted that. (A few titles did start with an actual #1—Ditko’s Blue Beetle, for instance. ) CBA: How did you get Dave Kaler to write Nightshade?

Dick: Steve created the visual. He may have received the assignment before I met him at that ’65 convention. Dave was a very busy guy, and writing for Charlton was only one aspect of his time. I don’t know all of the other things he was doing, but he did some good stuff for Charlton.

CBA: So Dave just wrote a few stories for you, and that was it?

Dick: Yeah. I’m not sure, but it wasn’t his choice, nor mine.

CBA: How did you find Pat Boyette?

Dick: Same way as Aparo. Before me, nobody took time to read the mail! I found his letter in the file, called him up and said, “Oh, I found your letter from about a year ago. Are you still interested in working for Charlton?” And he said, “Yes,” in this magnificent speaking voice. Pat was a radio announcer, and a TV news anchorman in Texas, and he had that midwestern drawl everybody favors, and his voice would come through with such resonance. He was really a pleasure to listen to. [laughter] We used to have weekly conversations at Charlton. I hadn’t never met Pat in person until after I’d left Charlton, and was at DC for a while. I went to a convention in Houston (close enough to where he was in San Antonio), and we had an interesting talk together—part of his reason for being at the con was to look me up, and I had answers for everything he asked.

CBA: In 1968 or so, you were voted Best Editor of the Year by the Alley Awards, beating out Stan the Man! Dick: Oh, yeah. I still have that somewhere. Well, it was fun. I’ve gotten other awards: Inking awards from the Academy of Comic Book Art, a CBG award… I’ve gotten a few awards, but I don’t put too much stock in them. I was at a convention in Kansas City, and was given a lifetime achievement award, and I said in my acceptance comment that the honor was premature because my life isn’t over, I’m still doing stuff. [laughter] CBA: Did you go to conventions in the ’60s when you were still at Charlton?

Dick: I went to the first comics convention ever, run by Dave Kaler, in 1965. I might’ve met Roy Thomas there, but I didn’t know it. It was small, no dealers. Later, the Phil Seuling affairs were the highlight of the year, generally delightful.

CBA: Did you look through portfolios at Charlton?

Dick: I did then at Charlton, I did it at DC, and I do it today. I just went to the Orlando Convention, were I reviewed artists’ work.

CBA: Charlton Premiere was a showcase title for pitching new books?

Dick: Yeah, a showcase.

CBA: Do you know the story behind “Children of Doom”? There was a deadline of a weekend?

Dick: No, no, no, that’s not true… it really wasn’t that fast. There are other things that happened to me that were on short deadlines, that one we had some time. Pat liked to use Zip-A-Tone and a lot of tones, and he asked me, “Can we publish it in black-&-white?” I COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

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said, “Well, the printing has got a certain amount of show-through, but yeah, let’s give it a shot.” If you look at them, you’ll seethrough page one to page two, and you can see-through page three to page four. [laughter] But it got by.

CBA: Did you like the strip?

Dick: “Children of Doom,” is a highly-regarded story.

CBA: Denny O’Neil told me he wrote it over a weekend because there was a hole in the schedule.

Dick: That sounds reasonable, but I’m sure Pat had ample time to do the art.

CBA: He did a nice job.

Dick: We were trying to do some new things, and we were looking for a place where all these hare-brained ideas that hit my desk could get published at Charlton. [Looking at a comic] I can’t remember why we did “Marine War Heroes” for Charlton Premiere #1. That was probably inventory stuff, and we had to get rid of it. I don’t think there was anything special about those stories.

CBA: The cover feature was Willy Franz’s first story.

Dick: I don’t remember that. Maybe that was special.

CBA: Here’s the one-shot, Mysterious Suspense.

Dick: Mysterious Suspense! “The Question returns!” There he is.

Yeah, this was published after I left for DC. Blue Beetle had been cancelled but Steve had finished these back-ups and Sal must have collected them together for this one-shot.

CBA: But did you edit this?

Dick: Oh, no. Not the title. I might have edited some or all the individual stories.

CBA: The Question was Steve’s idea?

Dick: I would think so. I can’t take credit for anything. The freelancer comes up with a basic concept, and then you throw a few ideas at him, but I can’t say that any of the ideas were mine specifically, no. I always thought I should be helping the creative person get to where he wants to go. Anytime I worked with Steve, the idea was to try to get him where he wanted to go, not to try to get him to where I wanted to go. So, with The Question, I probably had nothing to do with that.

When I left, we had one Blue Beetle, one Captain Atom, and a lot of these back-up stories in inventory, and I guess they wanted to use them.

CBA: Sarge Steel.

Dick: [Looking at the cover to Sarge Steel #1] I had Stan Stetzer model for the main pose. He worked for Capital Distributing for a while, he became friendly, and he worked for a lot of distribution companies. He worked at Marvel for a while, too, and somewhere in there he got sick. He’s still alive, I think. I went and borrowed the holster and gun from my brother-in-law, and set Stan up as a model. I’ve still got the photo from that session. The character was created by Pat Masulli and he wrote the first issue. Pat gave me a sketch of a guy with a crewcut and a scar on his nose, and a steel fist, so that’s how Steel was depicted. From then on, I had more to do with the title than Pat did. He was out of it by then. But we started listing the stories with case numbers, the first being #101, and I don’t remember where we were when we stopped.

CBA: You did it for a while.

Dick: Yeah. I hated the series when it was made into a super-secret agent series, because that’s not what a private eye is. Charlton tried to cash in on the Bond thing, and I think that was a mistake. He was a private eye, so let him be a private eye. Don’t try to make him be a secret agent, when he’s just a tough guy with a steel fist.

CBA: Were you looking to get any improvement on the quality of the printing?

Dick: Yeah, the quality of the printing was always a problem with us. The printing plant was open 24 hours a day, so I’d find out what time a job was going on press. Sometimes it was three o’clock in the morning. I’d go to bed, get up at two, get my clothes on, go down to the plant, and the only thing running is the press, everything else was closed. I’d go in there and ask, “Are you ready to run yet?”

They’d tell me, “Got another half-hour of make-ready.” So I’d wait until the job was running. I was there because I wanted to see this job before it went off, correct mistakes if I could. But it didn’t matter.

The stuff still looked pretty rough. [laughter] Nobody cared.

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CBA: It’s a shame your fine linework drops out in the coarse printing.

Dick: Oh, it was a very poor engraving system. Later on, it got worse in the industry with plastic plates. [laughs] The engravers at Charlton were professionals, the only employees in the place who were unionized. And engraving was a separate company, which John owned, because he couldn’t get engravers and pay them less than union scale. Nobody in the place got union scale except the engraving department. They had their own room completely sealed off from everybody else, and they were like the elite, because they were getting scale! The guy who was in charge was Joe Andrews, and they pretty much knew what they were doing, but when you get caught up in a culture like Charlton’s, there wasn’t any incentive to do good work for the company. So, the malaise spreads around after a while, like a cancer, you can’t stop it. Once we printed an entire issue with the wrong cover. “Should we tell anybody?” someone might ask.

“No, don’t bother!” was usually the answer. It was something else! A couple of people wrote and complained about the mixed-up covers, but not a lot. [laughter] CBA: Why was Charlie Santangelo ousted as General Manager in ’68?

Dick: I don’t think he really cared for the business. He wasn’t interested in that.

Above: Perhaps the most wellregarded story in Charlton’s history is Dennis O’Neil and Pat Boyette’s haunting “Children of Doom,” from Charlton Premiere #2. ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

47

Below: After Dick returned to DC staff in the 1980s, Executive Vice President Paul Levitz bought the rights to the Action Heroes Line from Charlton and presented the characters to Dick as a gift. Plans for a weekly tabloid comic titled Blockbuster (final logo design by Ken Bruzenak is in the center background) were set in motion, set to feature all the Action Heroes plus a Superman newspaper strip reprint each issue. While the project was abandoned (see the article, “Project: Blockbuster” by Robert Greenberger in this issue), some artists (such as Keith Giffen and Pete Morisi) produced dozens of pages, all still unpublished.

Here’s Keith’s initial-two page segment, courtesy of Bob Greenberger. Peacemaker ©2000 DC Comics

48

CBA: John Santangelo, Jr., pushed things a bit, right? He gave a little freedom to the comics line under George Wildman.

Dick: Yeah, he did things with George Wildman that might’ve made some sense. I liked John, but to him giving freedom to editorial just meant, “I don’t know enough about it, so I’ll keep hands-off.”

John gave them freedom, but he also put them out of the building.

The entire comics department went into the bowling alley next door.

CBA: Did you have any ambivalence about leaving Charlton?

Dick: No. I had reached the point where I felt there was no future for me because there was no future for Charlton. Not that I was treated bad; I have no complaints about the way I was treated at Charlton. I surely have no complaints with the learning curve, it was really great. When I got to DC—trust me—I was the only editor who knew enough about engraving, color separation, and all of the things that happens with the page after it leaves the editor’s desk to challenge the production department.

CBA: You hit the ground running.

Dick: Yeah, I mean, none of the other editors had a good idea of how that worked. And Sol Harrison and Jack Adler were in charge of the production department, and basically they set things up to make it easy for them and the engravers, and intimidated the other editors into doing it their way. When Joe Orlando wanted to do a two-page spread (if you look back in one of Joe’s romance books, you’ll find it

predates Joe Kubert’s spreads) and he sent it into production, Sol said it couldn’t be done. It wasn’t a two-page spread on pages 16 and 17—the center of the book, which is the natural spread in the book. I told Sol how it could be done. He knew how because he had been in the business since Action Comics #1. “Mark it up, and send it to the engravers; we’ve got the best engravers in the business!” And we did at DC. “You can make that match. Just don’t put any lettering in the middle. If the art is just off a little bit, it won’t matter.” So, he accepted that, and we did two-page spreads from that point on.

CBA: Who was Sal Gentile, who took over your job after you left?

Dick: He was my assistant, and then when I left, he took over as editor for a very short time. He had the kind of personality that wasn’t executive level.

CBA: He was a bit shy?

Dick: Very. Very retiring. Didn’t say anything, unless you had a question, then he’d offer an opinion.

CBA: The books were bland under his editorship.

Dick: Yeah. They had the personality of the editor. Sal did organize some aspects of the business important to Charlton. Sal created a system for warehousing artwork. Previously they had built in the pressroom a small room that was rather high, but it didn’t have a ceiling, just open on top. There was a lock on the door, and when the engravers were finished with the original artwork, somebody would walk out to this room and throw it inside, over the top. [laughter] So the artwork would just pile up. When we unlocked the door—the engravers didn’t bother unlocking the door to put in the art, just throwing it over—we’d find such a mess of original art! Can you imagine the mess of artwork, about six feet high?

CBA: These were the original pages?

Dick: Yeah! They were just thrown over the top! So, the first thing we did was go through it and try to get all of the pages from each book together, then tried to put them into alphabetical order, and then I left. Sal finished the job, got them housed properly in one of John Santangelo’s office buildings in town, and he put all of that stuff on open shelves so it could be referenced.

CBA: He used the whole area for storage?

Dick: Well, it was a satellite office, but yeah, absolutely. I think it was there through George Wildman’s reign (who was the next wildeyed maniac that took over the editor’s position). Sal had the skill levels, but he had a bland personality. He knew what he wanted, was able to communicate to you what he wanted, and got the job done.

CBA: Sometime after you teamed up with Neal to start Continuity, did you get a call from George Wildman about The Six Million Dollar Man magazine?

Dick: That was a long time after we teamed up. George called us about doing Six Million Dollar Man and Emergency! b-&-w magazines. They were licenses purchased from Universal, a pretty big deal for Charlton, because they weren’t in the habit of buying high-priced licensing, and we said, “Well, we can do it in our studio, but we have to get at least $100 a page,” which for Charlton was four times what they were paying. Neal somehow got the higher rate through, and we said, “We’d have to get the artwork back.” We didn’t pay the freelancers $100 a page because we had to make some money on it; we were dealing with younger artists who would welcome a chance to work, but we were checking every thing they’d do—Neal or I went over every page in pencil, every page in ink, trying to make it as close as we could to the house style at Continuity. George found out (I’d say after two months, and two or three issues into the run) that Charlton’s contract with Universal, which he’d just gotten a copy of, prohibited him from giving us back the artwork. He let us know immediately, because he knew that he was reneging on his part of the deal. And we just stopped right there, cancelled the agreement, and sent him back the reference material. Right in the middle of whatever job we were on!

CBA: Were you packaging the whole deal?

Dick: Yeah, I think we were doing the writing, too. We were certainly doing the art and lettering, and the tones, because we knew that was in black-&-white. Most of it was Zip-A-Tone work, but I think one or two stories might’ve been done with halftone. Charlton was never very good with halftones, so we never tried to do too much with halftones.

CBA: What was the Modern Comics imprint which reprinted a lot COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

of your ’60s Action Hero titles in 1976?

Dick: I think they were just packaged for a department store chain down south—three to a package, something like that.

CBA: Did you have any connection with Charlton after you left, besides the Universal work?

Dick: Well, just socially but not in any business capacity. I met regularly with some of the other people there, and on occasions, I went back to visit there, I recall early on. I wasn’t unhappy with my time there, as I said, I enjoyed it. It’s just I felt working there for me wasn’t the right thing to do. That, and my subsequent two or three years at DC made somebody remind me that I’ve changed my situation every two or three years since I got into this business. I wasn’t aware of it, but apparently, I had more of a roving eye in those days. I’d do this, and then do that. I just kept changing! [laughs] The person told me this when I put in 13 years as an editor at DC, from editor to managing editor to executive editor. I left in ‘93, and that was the longest time I spent in one place.

CBA: It’s all the same career.

Dick: Yeah, it’s all the same career, for me. Just did some drawing in the bedroom, some drawing in the living room. [laughter] CBA: You returned to DC in 1980. You were creator-friendly, and there was an environment fostered at DC that was quite a creatorfriendly place. You got Frank Miller and a writer from England, Alan Moore to come over. Now, why did you acquire the Charlton characters?

Dick: Paul Levitz bought me the Action Hero Line characters as a gift. He acquired the rights from Ed Konick at Charlton.

CBA: This was a surprise, or did you know this was going on?

Dick: Well, I mean, Paul told me he was going to do it.

CBA: Did you want him to?

Dick: Yes. He paid $5, 000 a character, and a royalty whenever they were used, but a modest number. We bought the characters for peanuts.

CBA: So DC bought six characters for $30, 000?

Dick: I think we bought titles, not characters, but I don’t remember how many, but yeah, piece of cake. Paul said, “Have a lot of fun!

Do whatever you want with them!” I bought Son of Vulcan for Roy Thomas, the first strip he ever wrote. [laughter] CBA: Did you want them?

Dick: Well, yeah, you know, I had a lot of fun with those characters when I was at Charlton. At DC, things are a little bit more conventional, and I had marching orders and I didn’t have the freedom I had at Charlton. But, I thought, “You know, maybe you can go home again.” [laughter] As it turned out, I never did anything with them to speak of. We parceled them out and somebody decided to make Blue Beetle into a clown with Booster Gold, the Blue and Gold, and then they moved them into Justice League; they turned Sarge Steel into the head of a secret service controlled by the government, which I don’t think Sarge Steel would ever do in his whole life—the character I knew wouldn’t be interested in being a cog in a large machine that’s controlled by the President, or even shadowy operatives of the President. It just wouldn’t happen. But, since I couldn’t do what I wanted with these characters, I didn’t much care. After we’d got them, I was just too busy with other projects.

CBA: What did you want to do?

Dick: I would have wanted to do them just the way they were. If I got them soon enough, I wanted to pick up where they were left off, only this time do production right, do the art a little better wherever we could. I didn’t necessarily feel that I had to do Sarge Steel or Ditko had to do Blue Beetle, but maybe if we could do it that way, it might be good, it’d still work. But I just never was able to find the time. It takes a massive amount of time to start a new line and turn it into something salable. I didn’t think I could do it piecemeal. Then we started dealing with Alan Moore and, as a matter of fact, The Watchmen was originally intended to be the Charlton characters. So, I wanted to do something with them, and I kept holding them aside, and you had mentioned something about one of the weeklies, which eventually turned out to be Action Comics Weekly.

CBA: First there was the Blockbuster Weekly proposal.

Dick: Well, I recall Comics Cavalcade Weekly, a regular comics-size book. I designed a mock-up to include all the Charlton characters on their own two-page spreads, like the Sunday funnies. Marketing said, August 2000

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“No, no, no! We could never do that, we can’t sell weeklies. These people don’t know how to order monthlies, how are we going to convince them they can add on a weekly and make money at it?”

We were going to put Superman in the middle of the book, because DC wouldn’t hear of taking six unknown heroes in there without a recognizable, commercial character like Superman. They wanted Superman to carry the whole thing. But that died aborning, too. And then, somehow, sometime later, it became Action Comics Weekly, and we were doing a weekly comic book.

CBA: With no Charlton characters!

Dick: With none of the Charlton characters, and none of the things I wanted to do. Neal Pozner had a lot to do with the original proposal. He was gung-ho about the project. I enjoyed Neal because he agreed with me. [laughter] He was a very creative guy, doing book covers, album covers for some rock groups, just doing some great stuff, and he gave it up to work for DC. He loved the Charlton characters as a fanboy, you know, and he was behind that project 110%. I think he was just as upset as I was when the thing turned into nothing.

CBA: Did you hope to have the Charlton characters not be integrated into the DC universe?

Dick: I think I would rather not have had them integrated so that we had to reconcile their past adventures with what happened in the

49

Above: Dave Gibbon promotional piece, hawking Alan Moore & Gibbon’s Watchmen limited series.

Alan originally intended the series to feature the Charlton Action Hero Line-up of characters, an idea nixed by Dic Giordano. See later in this issue for an interview with Alan on the Charlton/Watchmen connection. ©2000 DC Comics.

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DC universe at that time. I didn’t mind, necessarily, them getting brought into the DC universe, because I believed we’d get more people to read it in the DC line. I didn’t have any strong feelings one way or the other on that point. What I really wanted to do originally was not The L.A.W., but do the Charlton characters the way they were. As a matter of fact, when I made the original presentation to DC that ultimately turned out to be The L.A.W., I wanted to start off with a shadowy person going through a secret government vault somewhere and finding dusty folders, and in one would be the file on Judomaster in World War II. Start out with Judomaster in World War II, and then what I wanted to do is bring the story of Judomaster up to date, how he got from World War II in the storyline to being in the DC universe, and then starting him out as the

Judomaster in the DC universe, with a #1, and then that shadowy character would find the Sarge Steel folder and then we’d do the same thing with that character. What I envisioned was a series that would take us from the last Charlton issue to the newest DC issue, and what they were doing in-between, and getting all them there.

Everybody felt I took leave of my senses! The idea was rejected. Bob Layton then submitted the proposal that eventually became The L.A.W. The original title was The Charlton Project. We thought that would tell everybody what we’re doing, and Charlton isn’t a word you can copyright. Paul said, “We can’t do that; we don’t have the rights to the word Charlton.” I said, “You don’t need to have the rights to the word Charlton! I’ll tell you what, we’ll call it The Charleston Project.” Well, I wanted to get close. [laughter] I’m trying to tell them, “How can you copyright… they’re out of business!” We knew all of this at that time. And they’re worried about us calling it The Charlton Project?

CBA: Let’s talk Watchmen!

Dick: Alan Moore never does anything in one page, and he used Thunderbolt and all of the other characters by name; he said, “I want two things: First of all, in the very first issue, we’re killing off one of the super-heroes DC just bought for $5, 000.”

CBA: Who was the intended victim?

Dick: Thunderbolt, I think. So I said to Alan, “You can make this the best, the most fantastic story in the world, and you’re not going to own it. What you’ve got to do is change the names of these people, and retain the same concept.” The concept, in a nutshell, was, “What would the world be like if there really were super-heroes?”

And they’d be renegades, probably, outlaws, hunted by the police, because nobody wants a super-hero. Police don’t want a super-hero to do their job for them. It was a realistic approach to it, and I said, “Why don’t you just create new characters, and I’ll do everything I can to promote and help it along, and do what needs to be done.”

So, he agreed… I think he might’ve reluctantly agreed. Frankly, right now, I’m not sure I was right… I think it might’ve been a good idea to let him play with the Charlton characters, and they’d still be alive and well, instead of dead and buried! [laughs] CBA: Did Alan just send the proposal to you blind, or did you say, “Alan, I’d like you to do something…”

Dick: Sent it blind. My contribution was on the phone after suggesting we retain his concept but without killing off any Charlton characters. By this time, we had creator royalties, see. As only the writer, Alan gets two percent of whatever the cover price is, times the amount of copies sold over, I think, 100, 000 copies at that point.

“But as the creator, you’d receive one percent of the cover price from copy one.” He and Gibbons were the creators, ultimately they’d receive first-copy royalties as creators, and then the writing and drawing royalties as the people who did the work. It was better for them and, I think, better for the project.

CBA: Yeah, it’s still in print!

Dick: Still in print. It probably will always be in print.

CBA: I distinctly recall that you wrote an editorial that on one commuter train ride back home, you had in your lap the proposal for The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen. Is that true?

Dick: Yeah! They both came up about the same time. Might not have been the same day, though.

CBA: 1986 was a helluva year!

Dick: Yeah, it really was. I got too much credit in a lot of ways.

I’ve got to say, first of all, in terms of decision-making in things like this, Paul and Jenette at least share the credit with me. Jenette was gung-ho for Frank’s book. Unlike others, she loved his Ronin. She thought it was the greatest piece of work that was ever published in a comic book to that time. So, she didn’t need much convincing when Dark Knight Returns came up. But Frank really worked his butt off on that. Alan Moore sat down and started writing almost the day I gave him the go-ahead. He would write long, lengthy scripts—I mean, a 22-page book from Alan Moore would look something like this [holds finger and thumb two inches apart]. It was full of references—where he got this from, where he got that from, what he hopes this will mean in #10… I mean, there’s all kinds of sidebars, and he’s talking to whoever’s reading it, whether it’s the editor, the artist, and so forth, as well as writing the script! A 22-page story COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

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would be a 66-page manuscript. [laughter] And he just wrote stream of consciousness, everything he could think of that applied to the story.

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons came up with a schedule, which they couldn’t keep and maintain the integrity of the project. The last issue was six months late, something like that, but it wasn’t through any lack of effort; they just kept thinking and finding new, better ways to finish it. So, they kept refining and changing it.

CBA: You’ve obviously just done The L.A.W. with the Charlton heroes. Do you think there’s still potential in the characters?

Dick: Even though I worked my butt off on The L. A. W., and Bob Layton did too, I don’t think it came out the way we wanted. So, we’re a little reluctant to go up to DC and argue for doing more. I think they’re viable characters, and I think we did most of what we set out to do. I don’t think either one of us realized that we had such a small number of pages to rewrite that many characters in a single storyline. There was only one story for each, and we changed the characters a little bit, okay, but you’re trying to follow the lives of, what, six people? Seven, actually, even though we only did six issues. I know, because we had to leave Sarge Steel off the covers. If we were only doing six covers, you can only do six heroes. I loved the idea of the villain being Tiger. [laughter] A forgotten sidekick for 25 years, and he was the villain of The L.A.W. But we had to rush it, it was clear, and we didn’t do some of the things we could do. But if you read the script, it’s all there. The script was written like a movie, but you can’t draw like a movie.

CBA: Why does Pete Morisi have the trademark to Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt?

Dick: Well, the short story is, he bought it back from Charlton.

CBA: He bought it back before the sale?

Dick: Yeah, and maybe they just gave it to him, because they didn’t care. So, he had the trademarks and the copyright on Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt, and held on to it… I wasn’t even aware of it until we bought the characters, and it turned out we couldn’t purchase Peter Cannon. That’s when I called up Pete originally, and said, “Can we license the character from you?” He didn’t want to do it. Later he came on board to do a Thunderbolt Secret Origins story, but people at DC said, “No, we won’t publish this.” They did that on very few occasions, but they did it at that time. I never told Pete that. I never told Pete someone else made the decision. I took the blame—I thought the buck stops here. Then, I had to sell him on what the new Thunderbolt was going to be, again, part of my job in my estimation. Actually, I liked the new proposal but it died in execution. Maybe I should’ve let Pete illustrate it. But he probably wouldn’t have done that anyway, so we were between a rock and a hard place on that one.

CBA: To sum up: You’ve said before in previous interviews that Charlton had unrealized potential?

Dick: Absolutely, they had the potential to be the top company in the business, because they had an advantage that no other publisher had, being a self-contained operation. Everything from concept to shipping took place in the same building, could be controlled by as many or as few people as they wanted, and therefore, if they decided to go for the top end of the quality, they could’ve produced quality equal to the best in the business at about two-thirds the cost, or less. I’m being conservative, actually, because just the time and the shipping wasted going from editorial offices, you ship it to the engraver, and he does the separation, makes the plates, ships the flat plates to the printer, and the printer makes the stereos for the press, then he sends the printed books to the people who ship it; just the time lost in that loop is money! Time is money, nobody questions that. Charlton had the whole thing, not only in the same building, but it all got done in the same day! You could print a book in the morning, print the cover at the same time, send it to the bindery by noontime, have all of the books bound by four or five o’clock in the afternoon, and they start making out labels, and it ships the next morning. Nobody else could do that. They didn’t think it was anything special, because they didn’t think, “This is our advantage,” like August 2000

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I did with the letter pages, putting the letter pages in at the last minute, making the work as current as possible. That was an advantage, and I had to use it! But Charlton didn’t think we had this advantage, and instead, they just didn’t bother. Hit Parade and Song Hits were done in the same place, different presses, but the same bindery, and there really wasn’t anybody to convince them that, “If you put your mind to it, you could be the best in the business.”

CBA: Did you talk to Charlie Santangelo [General Manager during Dick’s editorship] about taking advantage of Charlton’s unique stature in the industry?

Dick: Oh, yeah. That’s how I was able to get a budget system that allowed me to pay freelance talent better. Charlie kind of understood where I was coming from, but he definitely would not have been the one to authorize a revamped Charlton. The kind of money it would take to start up a new Charlton, would’ve been millions of dollars.

You’ve got to set up more than five road men; go out and buy artwork at much higher page rates from talented freelancers that Charlton wasn’t currently buying from. You’ve got to spread

Above: Dick recently returned to draw the Action Hero Line in the mini-series The L.A.W., written and inked by Bob Layton.

Courtesy of Roy Thomas. ©2000 DC Comics.

continued on pg. 105 51

CBA Interview

“Warren Savin” Speaks Writer Steve Skeates on the Freedom of Writing for Charlton Compiled from an interview conducted by Jon B. Cooke

Below: Jim Aparo’s drawing of Thane from Hercules #1, a nice series written by Steve Skeates.

Inset right: Pat Boyette’s cover to the first issue of The Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves, a title which gave Steve a lot of work. ©2000 the respective copyright holders.

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While Steve Skeates may have technically gotten his start scripting comics during a brief stint at Marvel and Tower in the mid-’60s, it’s for his Charlton work that fans began to recognize his name. The young writer wrote many back-ups for the Derby company, including “Sarge Steel,” “Thane of Baggarth,” in addition to westerns, humor, and mystery. Using the pseudonym “Warren Savin,” Skeates also dialogued an episode of Steve Ditko’s “The Question.” This interview was cobbled from my December 9, 1997 interview with the writer.

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….

The rumors had started, but I stayed with 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. [I met] Dick Giordano… on that panel and so, [later when] I had heard that Tower was folding, I called Dick and said, “Remember me?” So that’s how I got work at Charlton.

I never went to Derby. Dick would be in the city one day a week in some office they rented. I would go in and take in everything I had written. The great thing about Charlton is they just gave me mounds and mounds of work. They paid less than half of what anybody else paid but you had the volume. I did every issue of The Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves for a long time and that was at least a 25-pages of material. They were full scripts.

I’m not sure if it was at the Charlton New York 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 standoffish. 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 is a pseudo-archaic lan-

guage with really nice artwork.

“Tyro Team” was my version or attempt at doing a super-hero book. I did it for Charlton Premiere #1 and from what I understand that issue never sold at all — none of them did. It was the story in that issue people liked the most and there was a plan to give “Tyro Team” its own book, but then Charlton dropped their whole socalled Action Hero Line. It was about three college kids who could mentally communicate with each other and that was their only power. They could warn each other of things, discuss things in the middle of a fight and that’s about it! They somehow developed that power but it was never explained in that 10-page story.

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 that 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.

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 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.

Dick got in touch with us — the only one I’ve ever discussed this with was Denny — and he 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… The idea of working for them… bothered me but since Dick I thought, “Why not?”

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.

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CBA Interview

Sergius O’Shaugnessy, Scribe Dennis O’Neil on Working for Dick in the Days of Derby Compiled from an interview conducted by Jon B. Cooke Dennis O’Neil was another young writer who (most notably scripting as “Sergius O’Shaugnessy”) began to make an impression with readers during his short stay at Charlton.

Perhaps his most fondly-recalled work is “Children of Doom” drawn by Pat Boyette for Charlton Premiere #2. The following was edited from my interview with the writer on February 16 and March 26, 1998.

CBA: How did you hook up with Dick Giordano?

Dennis O’Neil: 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 became one of my regular freelance rounds on Thursday morning at 11:00.

CBA: Did you know Steve Skeates?

Did he tell you?

Dennis: Maybe I met Steve very early on— think at a party. He had been my immediate predecessor at Marvel—here had been a fairly rapid turnover. We were followed

by Ron White, a remarkable man who was the bravest person I have ever known. He became a playwright, received a doctorate from Yale Drama School, became an ordained minister. He worked at Marvel for about three months. He was the most courageous person I have ever known and nature had shortchanged him badly but they didn’t get in the way of his living a very full, active and joyous life. He had the bleakest, blackest sense of humor of anyone I have ever met but the point is that he had a sense of humor.

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 August 2000

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

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: Did you work with Jim Aparo?

Dennis: I didn’t meet him until years later but one of the things that Dick gave me to do was to write back-ups for one of the westerns—Cheyenne Kid—and he said that he didn’t care what I did as long as it was eight pages. I did a strip called “Wander.” Again, I didn’t realize how lucky I was with the artist—he hit exactly the right place between cartoon and illustration that was exactly right for a strip that was basically tongue-in-cheek.

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-hippy like me but Dick got us in and now the rest is history.

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 prudent to become someone else when I was working for Dick Giordano.

Inset left: Dennis O’Neil & Pat Boyette’s “Children of Doom,” featured in Charlton Premiere #2.

Below: Jim Aparo drew the Wander back-up featured in The Cheyenne Kid, written by Dennis. ©2000 the respective copyright holders.

53

Charlton Chat

Make Mine Charlton!

(At Least for a Little While!)—Roy Thomas’ Anecdotes

by Roy Thomas

Below: Maybe the first cover acknowledgement by a comics publisher of the existence of fanzines, this issue of Son of Vulcan (the last) featured Roy’s first professional sale. ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

54

Call me crazy, but I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart (and maybe my head) for Charlton comics group—and not just because they (it?) bought the first two comic book stories I ever sold.

At least, I think they (it) did.

What happened, roughly, was this: In early 1965, Pat Masulli, Charlton’s executive editor, sent out an open letter to various comics fanzines which he hoped they would print and publicize. I believe copies of that same letter may have been sent out to a few prominent individual fans, as well, but you’d have to ask Tom Fagan and others about that. In the letter readers were invited to try their hands at writing 20-page scripts for the super-hero comics Charlton then published: Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, and Son of Vulcan.

As then editor/publisher of the first volume of Alter Ego, I (along with a number of other fan-eds, as that amateur breed were often called) had a natural advantage, in that I had the opportunity to see the letter before the bulk of comics fans did. Matter of fact, since A/E was coming out only two or three times a year despite its optimistic “quarterly” schedule, I used very little “dated” material in it, and I never did get around to publishing Masulli’s missive.

What I did instead was to sit down almost at once and write a story for the most obscure of the three heroes: Son of Vulcan.

But why Son of Vulcan?

After all, Captain Atom was a character I had liked (as I had Steve Ditko’s artwork) since 1960; and Charlton’s first 1950s Blue Beetle was just an updated version of a hero I had read on occasion in the 1940s and ’50s, albeit now he had a far better backstory and origin (if even worse artwork).

I suspect the primary reason I dashed off a Son of Vulcan tale was that I figured others receiving Masulli’s letter would be more likely to go for C. A. and/or B. B., so I might have a better chance of success if I wrote a story for a hero who wouldn’t be the first choice of many others. Also, despite the decidedly primitive artwork by Fraccio and Tallarico (working, as I’d soon learn, for wages far lower than most other companies paid), I liked Son of Vulcan because he smacked not only of his most obvious source, Marvel’s Thor in Journey into Mystery, but also of Captain Marvel, once the World’s Mightiest Mortal and a childhood

favorite. Maybe reporter Johnny Mann saying “Let me become the Son of Vulcan!” was a few steps down from Billy Batson saying “Shazam!” or Don Blake slamming his wooden cane on the ground, but Son of Vulcan had possibilities, and I wanted to see if I could dream up anything to do with him.

By then there had been about a half dozen SOV stories; the feature had begun in Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds, then graduated to its own title, and I had purchased them all, as I then collected most of the relatively few super-hero comics published (though not much Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman). Perusing the back issues quickly for ideas, I immediately decided to do one which exploited the mythological origins of this hero who was basically the adopted heir of the Roman god Vulcan (who of course was the Latinized form of the Greek blacksmith god Hephaestus).

And, since one of my favorite works of literature is The Iliad, it was but the work of a moment to come up with the notion of a “Second Trojan War,” as I titled my story. A movie studio would be filming a screen adaptation of Homer’s epic, and Johnny Man/Son of Vulcan would get involved to save them from the villain.

I suspect I chose Dr. Kong, who I believe had already been called “the meanest man alive” in a previous issue (written by Tom Gill?), because he reminded me of Captain Marvel’s old nemesis Dr. Thaddeus Bodog Sivana nearly as much as Son of Vulcan himself reminded me of Fawcett’s Big Red Cheese.

As an homage to my frequent correspondent Otto Binder, who had scripted many of the original Captain Marvel’s greatest adventures, I gave Dr. Kong a servant: “a robot with perhaps too many tubes, wires, and transistors crowded into one human-sized metallic shell.” The robot’s name was Adam Klink, and of course his/its inspiration was Adam Link, the wonderful robot hero Otto had created a quarter of a century earlier for Amazing Stories science-fiction pulp magazine (and whom I had first encountered in EC’s comics adaptations in Weird Science-Fantasy). Homage or no homage, Adam Klink is, I suppose, the first super-normal character I ever “created” for comics. I guess I peaked too early.

As I look over Son of Vulcan Vol. 2, No. 50 (Jan. 1966), I’m struck by a few other things, as well: First, Pat Masulli really meant to get some mileage out of the fact that a comics fan, as opposed to one of Charlton’s regular writers, had scripted the story. On the cover, a big yellow burst trumpets: “ATTENTION, FANZINE READERS!!! Charlton’s challenge had been answered... The story in this issue was written by one of YOU!!!

DON’T MISS IT!” (It is highly unlikely—but I hope someone will correct me if I’m wrong—if the word “fanzine” had ever before appeared on the cover of a comic book. I’m even a bit curious as to whether that word, coined in the early 1940s by science-fiction fans, had ever even appeared on the cover of an s-f mag. ) Secondly, despite my preceding point, the credit for the script was merely “written by R. Thomas.” After all that fanfare on the cover, Charlton couldn’t be bothered to print my whole name—an entire nine letters! Perhaps it had sometime to do with the fact that the pencils were credited only to “R. Fraccio” and the inks to “T. Tallarico,” but that’s begging the question. Well, at least the names were written in small open letters, and colored in red... that’s something, anyway.

Third, I see that, less to be true to my background as a Missouri high school teacher for the past four years than to my sincere philosophy that comic books should educate as well as entertain whenever COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

possible, I made certain to work in as much of the original legend of the Troy as I could. Whatever its literary merits or lack of same, my five-panel summary of the Trojan War was reasonably thorough, given its length. Already in 1965 I wasn’t sure I was telling the truth when I said that “every schoolboy knows” the story of the Trojan horse, and nowadays, sadly, that statement is even less true. In the next panel I had the movie’s director further enlighten both reporter Johnny Mann and the reader, saying “So we came to Asia Minor to film our movie near Hissarlik, site of the historical Troy.” Even the River Scamander gets mentioned later, in a scene which basically repeats an incident in The Iliad. (Well, at least I resisted the temptation to relate the “real-life” story of Heinrich Schliemann, famed “discoverer” of Troy’s ruins. I’m especially glad of that nowadays, since Schliemann has in recent years been pretty much unmasked as a fraud who mostly stole the glory from Troy’s true discoverer, one Frank Calvert. ) Fourth, I decided to take from Captain Marvel the idea that Sivana knew that Billy Batson “was” the captain. When Johnny Mann, facing Dr. Kong, says he’s got to escape “and, uh, find Son of Vulcan,” Kong responds, “Give me credit for some sense, at least! I am well aware that you, in another identity, are Son of Vulcan.” Like Sivana, Kong intends to keep Johnny’s secret, simply because he revels in being the only other person to know it.

Fifth, even my first comics story ever couldn’t make it into print without a major typo. On page 13 I had Son of Vulcan swear “By the Twelve Immortals!” This got machine-lettered as “By the Twelve Mortals!” Not quite the same thing.

Son of Vulcan’s climactic battle is with a version of the Trojan wooden horse which has been designed by Dr. Kong to replenish its own body (like a living tree, only far more quickly) when SOV knocks off a splinter or two. But our hero eventually destroys the rampaging monster by firing a flaming arrow into its wooden throat, burning it up from within.

I’m certainly not going to make any great claims for my Son of Vulcan script. Still, Pat Masulli liked it well enough that, only about a week after I mailed it to Derby, Connecticut, I received back a letter from him saying Charlton was accepting it and would pay me $4 a page for it, a total of $80.

I’ll admit, I was more than mildly surprised to learn how little Charlton paid for writing, even to first-timers. I’d been thinking of something more in the range of $10 a page—which, as it turned out, was the rate at which I would start at DC and then Marvel a few months later. However, since I was then making only about $100 a week as a teacher in the St. Louis area (though that sum went a lot further in 1965 than it does today, of course), getting $80 for something that I not only enjoyed doing but which had taken me only a weekend to write was definitely a step in the right direction. It nearly doubled my income for the week!

In that same letter, Masulli asked me to try my hand at writing an issue of Blue Beetle. So I did, happily writing the story the very next weekend at the home of a high school friend and fellow teacher, Albert Tindall. (“Bud,” as he was called in the days before he became an attorney in Potosi, Missouri, even took a couple of photos of me soon afterward, including one for Alter Ego V1#9 with two Aurora “Phantom” models I had customized into Son of Vulcan and Blue Beetle; I still have the Beetle one, as a matter of fact. ) For this second script I again went to legends—this time, to the Egyptian mythology which formed the backdrop of that Blue Beetle series, since archaeologist Dan Garrett had gained his super-powers from a magical Egyptian scarab icon. Once again I utilized a character from an earlier story (in this case, Luri Hoshid, a fellow archaeologist who knew Garrett was “the invincible Blue Beetle”); also once again, I related a myth in a brief flashback. This time it was the story of the giant Eye of the god Horus, that “once ravaged the countryside until a trick put it to sleep.”

In the climax of the story I took the reader on a trip through August 2000

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

Amentet, “the land of the dead,” which I located “within the mind of man himself.” (A sort of early head trip—and no, I wasn’t doing any of those 1960s drugs at the time!) In that subterranean realm “the great blue serpent Apep... battles the sun-god Ra each night, and which Ra must defeat in order to rise in the morning!” Hey, I even threw in the Bennu bird (“the Egyptian version of the famous Phoenix”) and Amenit, the Devourer, who was a hybrid composed of crocodile, lion, and (if I recall correctly) hyena, or was it a jackal?

Here I was following my own muse, as well as the Egyptian backstory inherent in that Blue Beetle series. Only half a year or so earlier, after studying Egyptian hieroglyphics on my own for several months with a retired professor after attending a lecture at Washington University in St. Louis, I had been accepted (with my “tutor’s” recommendation) to study Egyptology at the University of Chicago’s famous Oriental Institute, but I had had to give that a pass because I couldn’t afford to become a full-time student.

Messrs. Fraccio and Tallarico again did the artistic honors for this story, and did a rather creditable job on the Eye of Horus itself. A bit trickier were the people whom the Eye turned into his hawk-headed slaves. The scene of a hawk-headed Luri hitting Dan Garrett over the

Above: A 1967 (or so) photo of Roy with a Blue Beetle custom model on the table before him.

From Alter Ego #9. Courtesy of and ©2000 Roy Thomas.

Left: Perhaps the most overtly Marvel-like Charlton strip was “The Sentinels,” created by Gary Friedrich and Sam Grainger (who would later both work for the House of Ideas. Here’s a panel detail from their debut in Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt #54. ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

55

Right: Nice Dick Giordano cover image from Blue Beetle #3. ©2000 DC Comics.

head from behind with a trumpet is unintentionally hilarious. But then maybe no one could have drawn it much less so.

Again the story was immediately accepted (and, like the first, would eventually be printed with virtually no editing, except to shorten a few over-long balloons or captions). Masulli’s response also asked me to do more scripts, on a regular basis, though I don’t recall that I was guaranteed being the sole writer of any particular strip.

Around then, however (and I think I completed one or both my scripts for Charlton before this happened), I had received a letter from DC editor Mort Weisinger, with whom I had exchanged maybe one or at most two letters previously, offering me a job as assistant editor on the seven Superman-related comics he oversaw.

“Bud” Tindall, my roommate in the

St. Louis area at the time, had only recently helped me wangle a fairly sizable fellowship in “foreign relations” to George Washington University in our nation’s capital, and he was understandably appalled when, upon receiving Weisinger’s offer, I paced around our apartment for maybe a half hour, then dashed off a letter accepting it. (I wasn’t quite as hasty as I seemed. I would have several weeks at least at DC before I would have to inform the Scottish Rite Loge in St. Louis that I had changed my mind about their generous fellowship. I kept it, figuratively speaking, in my hip pocket when I journeyed to New York City late that June. ) My original intention was to work for DC and Weisinger and, since I wasn’t guaranteed any scripting there, to write some scripts for Charlton and Masulli, as well. However, I was quickly disabused of that notion.

Weisinger informed me disdainfully that no one on staff at DC could also write for another comics company, let alone a pipsqueak outfit like Charlton. I understood his and DC’s position, but I relinquished my nebulous Charlton agreement reluctantly.

Fortunately, two weeks after moving to New York, I met Dave Kaler, who was then in the final stages of organizing the first big comics convention, and who 5

had ambitions to be a comics scripter, and I pushed him to Masulli, promising the Charlton editor that I would “oversee” his scripts informally. Dave, however, turned out to need little help from me (and was willing to accept even less), and went on to do some very good work for the company for the next year or so. (So did Tom Fagan of Vermont, who had contacted Masulli soon after I did, responding to the same letter. ) One of my regrets about those early days in New York— whether we’d have hit it off or not—is that I never got to meet Pat Masulli and thank him for purchasing those two scripts and for offering me more, thus not only giving me a bit of extra cash but also burnishing my confidence at a time when I definitely needed same.

As it happened, around the time I arrived in Manhattan he turned his comics-editing chores over to artist Dick Giordano, whom I soon met and to whom I would soon recommend a few other writers, in particular Steve Skeates, Denny O’Neil, and Gary Friedrich.

(I kept up informal, even secret contacts with Charlton and Dick, though. Not long afterward, I would anonymously conceive, plot, and design for Charlton a one-shot character called The Shape, which my fan-friend Richard “Grass” Green would end up drawing and even dialoguing... I helped my old Missouri buddy Gary, recently ensconced at Charlton, make up a super-hero group called “The Sentinels” as a backup feature in Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt, despite that term’s recent use for villainous robots in The X-Men… I let Gary and Grass use my concepts of “Badman and Robber” and “Bestest League of America” in their parody “Stuporman” feature in Go-Go Comics… and, with fandom artists Biljo White and Sam Grainger, I even made a half-hearted stab at revamping and reviving Son of Vulcan, albeit using Gary’s name as my pseudonym to avoid Stan’s wrath. I just couldn’t help myself. Charlton, first under Masulli, then even more so under Dick, was just a place where you felt you could let off a little steam, even if you were never going to get rich!)

Those first two stories of mine had an even longer reach. In the mid-1980s, when I wrote an issue of the round-robin comic DC Challenge, I was able to write what became, I believe, the only couple of DC pages featuring Son of Vulcan—and besides once putting Marvel’s thunder god into the Trojan War in a Thor Annual (in a story that had more basis in joint Teutonic/Greek myth than probably any reader knew!), I revived the Eye of Horus in a mid-’80s issue of Infinity, Inc., in a tale which even harkened back in a flashback panel to Blue Beetle, Vol. 3, #54.

As it turned out in 1965, however, not only did my twin salvos on Son of Vulcan and Blue Beetle turn out to be the final issues of both series (by sheer coincidence, I’m thankful to say), but they weren’t even the first comics stories of mine that saw print.

Because of Marvel’s far shorter lead time, after I jumped ship from DC to Marvel after two weeks to work for Stan Lee, at least one issue of Modeling with Millie I dialogued from Stan Lee/Stan Goldberg plot and art, and possibly even a Millie the Model issue or two on which I started from scratch, came out before either of my Charlton opuses.

When I bought Son of Vulcan, Vol. 2, No. 50, off the newsstands in Autumn of 1965, I mentioned it to Stan, who had known about my sale to Charlton when I’d first met him. Stan evinced an interest in seeing the comic, so I handed it to him, and he disappeared into his spacious office.

A little while later Stan emerged, tossed it down on the corrugated table I used as a desk, and said with only the slightest hint that he might be kidding: “You’re lucky we came along and saved you.” Or words very much to that effect.

What the hell. He was probably right, as usual.

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

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#3: ADAMS AT MARVEL #4: WARREN PUBLISHING

#5: MORE DC 1967-74

#1: DC COMICS 1967-74

#2: MARVEL 1970-77

Era of “Artist as Editor” at National: New NEAL ADAMS cover, interviews, art, and articles with JOE KUBERT, JACK KIRBY, CARMINE INFANTINO, DICK GIORDANO, JOE ORLANDO, MIKE SEKOWSKY, ALEX TOTH, JULIE SCHWARTZ, and many more!

Plus ADAMS thumbnails for a forgotten Batman story, unseen NICK CARDY pages from a controversial Teen Titans story, unpublished TOTH covers, and more!

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

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

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

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

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

BERNIE WRIGHTSON cover!

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

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

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

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

#13: MARVEL HORROR

#14: TOWER COMICS & WALLY WOOD

#15: 1980s VANGUARD & DAVE STEVENS

#16: ATLAS/SEABOARD COMICS

#17: ARTHUR ADAMS

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

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

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

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

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

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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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#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!

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DIGITAL

NS DRAW! (edited by MIKE MANLEY) is the professional EDITIO BLE A “HOW-TO” magazine on comics, cartooning, and IL AVA NLY animation. Each issue features in-depth INTERVIEWS FOR O 5 and DEMOS from top pros on all aspects of graphic $2.9 storytelling, as well as such DRAW! #4 skills as layout, penciling, inking, Interview with ERIK LARSEN, KEVIN lettering, coloring, Photoshop techNOWLAN on drawing and inking niques, plus web guides, tips, tricks, techniques, DAVE COOPER’s coloring techniques in Photoshop, BRET and a handy reference source—this BLEVINS tutorial on Figure magazine has it all!

Composition, PAUL RIVOCHE on the Design Process, reviews of NOTE: Some issues contain nudity for comics drawing papers, and more! purposes of figure drawing.

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DRAW! #8

DRAW! #9

DRAW! #10

DRAW! #5

DRAW! #6

DRAW! #7

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

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

Interview/demo by DAN BRERETON, ZACH TRENHOLM on caricaturing, “Drawing In Adobe Illustrator” demo

by ALBERTO RUIZ, “The Power of Sketching” by BRET BLEVINS, “Designing with light and shadow”

by PAUL RIVOCHE, reviews of art supplies, links, and more!

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DRAW! #11

DRAW! #12

DRAW! #13

Interview & demo by MATT HALEY, TOM BANCROFT & ROB CORLEY on character design, “Drawing In Adobe Illustrator” by ALBERTO RUIZ, “Draping The Human Figure”

by BRET BLEVINS, a new COMICS SECTION, International Spotlight on JOSÉ LOUIS AGREDA, and more!

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

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

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

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

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

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DRAW! #14

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DRAW! #18

DRAW! #19

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

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

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

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

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

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

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DRAW! #20

DRAW! #21

DRAW! #22

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

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

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

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CBA Interview

Pete Morisi, Man of Thunderbolt Talking with PAM about his long brilliant career in comics Conducted and transcribed

by Glen D. Johnson Pete Morisi is one of the most prolific artists of our time. To the best of my knowledge, he worked for all the major comics publishing outfits. I have corresponded with Pete since 1964, when Ronn Foss first made me aware of his work. At this time I was editor of the fanzine The Comic Reader, having taken over from Jerry Bails. Ronn showed me a sample of art from an issue of the Fawcett Lash LaRue comic and asked if I could identify the artist. It required only a quick glance to confirm that the artist was Golden Age great George Tuska. “Wrong!” Ronn said, and he proceeded to show me the initials “PM” on the splash page. Ronn told me the artist was Pete Morisi. During our interview, Pete proved both very knowledgeable about the field of comic art, and helpful when asked about his own background. —GDJ Glen D. Johnson: Pete, today it is very common to have comics fans break into the profession of comic book writer or artist.

Weren’t you a fan before you became a pro?

Pete Morisi: I don’t think there were any comic book fans when I was growing up. I was the only one on my block who saved some of those early titles. I loved comic books and newspaper strips. So I guess the answer is, “Yes, I was a fan before I became a pro.”

Glen: I’ve noticed that you have a few nice pages of original comic book artwork. One is a Silver Streak cover by Jack Cole, and another is a Simon & Kirby cover featuring The Guardian from StarSpangled Comics. How do you happen to have such rare pages of Golden Age artwork?

Pete: You got that wrong, kiddo. The Jack Cole original is a Claw vs. Daredevil splash page, done in colored inks, and it is a beauty.

Probably done for Silver Streak Comics. I was working part time as a delivery boy in Manhattan, when one of those deliveries was next door to Lev Gleason Publications. After my delivery I knocked on Lev Gleason’s door and told him I was an art student, and did he have any old originals he could give me. He said, “Sure, son,” and gave me the Cole original and a costumed hero strip called “13.” I think that was drawn by Jerry Robinson. As for the Simon & Kirby Guardian cover, I traded a fellow student for it, but don’t remember any details. All three of those originals are gems.

Glen: As a youngster, did you like to draw?

Pete: I can’t remember not having a pencil or piece of chalk in my hand. I’d draw on paper bags, the cement ground of alleyways, and sometimes make up my own strips in my school copybooks.

Glen: Who were your early influences?

Pete: Caniff, Sickles, Robbins (although I didn’t know Sickles was doing some of Terry and the Pirates). My family couldn’t afford to buy the higher-priced Journal-American newspaper, so I never got to see Prince Valiant or Flash Gordon.

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COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

Glen: When did you decide you wanted to be an artist?

Pete: Somehow, I guess I always knew it, but the thing that pushed me over the edge was Superman. I was ten years old in 1938 [when Action Comics #1 hit the stands], and the thought that a man could fly, leap over tall buildings, and have bullets bounce off his chest fascinated me. I wanted to be a part of a business that could capture my imagination like that. I had to be part of it.

Glen: As a young fan interested in comics, who impressed you the most?

Pete: In one word: Kirby! I liked Blue Bolt, but not the Simon version. It was the Kirby art that drew my attention to the strip. I knew, even then, that I was seeing something special. I’ve been a fan ever since, although I don’t always agree with some of the stuff he did. To me, Captain America will always be Kirby’s most interesting art.

Lou Fine could draw a superb figure, Reed Crandall could draw it with power, Will Eisner could tell a fantastic story with art that was his style… but only Jack Kirby could draw action. Raw, wild, boisterous action that would splash across the panel borders and make you say, “Wow!” When I look back at those Captain America stories, I see a lot of bad art, a lot of faking and bluffing; but the action, the mood, and the comradeship were there. A new concept in comics had been born. Simon and Kirby went on top of the world. I also enjoyed The Guardian [in “The Newsboy Legion”], “Sandman,” “Manhunter,” Stuntman, and Fighting American… but not as much. Also, The Boy Commandos and The Boy Explorers.

I spoke to Simon once and asked him who inked Kirby years ago. He said that he was involved in everything… which means I wasn’t going to get a straight answer.

And I didn’t.

Glen: When you say you didn’t agree with some of the stuff Kirby did, what didn’t you agree with?

Pete: I liked the lean, mean, and sleek look that Kirby created for his costumed heroes. That look was meant for action, and Kirby delivered

Above: Often the only clue as to the identity of a Morisi-drawn story was the initials “PAM,” leaving many admirers wondering just who the heck the artist was!

Opposite page: Great T-bolt commission piece by the master! ©2000 Peter A. Morisi.

Left inset: Couple of issues of Pete’s memorable Charlton series, Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt, a character the artist owns the rights to. ©2000 Peter A. Morisi.

Below: The Staten Island resident still finds time now and then in his retirement to knock out some of his handsome artwork. Courtesy of Pete Morisi.

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Right inset: The artist started off his career on such jobs as drawing backgrounds for “The Heap” in Airboy Comics, Vol 5, #9. ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

Below: Not only did Pete work on backgrounds in certain issues of Daredevil, but he was also inspired by the character’s costume, using a similar design on his T-bolt. ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

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plenty of it—until, for some unexplained reason, everything turned to blubber. Sleek bodies became balloons, and arms and legs became sausages. The well-constructed anatomy turned to circles, and everything was round, round, round. Kirby will always be a hero of mine, but I’d like to forget some of his later work.

Glen: Tell me about your training to become an artist. Who were some of the other artists you went to school with?

Pete: I went to the School of Industrial Arts [SIA] in Manhattan, and after a year-and-a-half, packed it in and went into the Army. School was never my thing, but maybe I should have paid attention, because Alex Toth, a genius (even then), was a classmate of mine. Sy Barry and Joe Giella were also in my same grade (but not in my class). Toth is probably the best all-around artist in comics today.

After the Army I took advantage of the G. I. Bill and went to Hogarth’s School of Visual Aids in Manhattan for about a year-and-a-half. There, I mixed in with Wally Wood, Ross Andru, Roy Krenkel, Rocke Mastroserio, and others—all learning the business, before drifting into the comics field.

Glen: Most artists didn’t start off on their own but assisted more experienced artists. Was this your case, and if so with whom did you work?

Pete: I did a short stint with Coulton Waugh (the Dickie Dare artist) until he moved out of state. Then I worked (backgrounds and some inking) for Mike Roy and John Belfi, who did “The Heap” for Hillman and “Crimebuster” for Charlie Biro. I also worked on The Saint newspaper strip by Mike Roy. Glen: Tell me about how you came to assist Dan Barry on the daily Flash Gordon. I understand Dan could be, shall we say, a bit temperamental. Was this a problem with you?

Pete: No, no problem. I simply told him that I didn’t think I was ready to ink his stuff.

He saw me inking some of my Johnny Dynamite pages and said he could work with me and “touch up bits and pieces” of the Flash Gordon strip after I inked them. I said, “Okay, but remember, no yelling and no screaming, no taking fits if I screw up. Deal?” He said, “Deal!” and didn’t say “Boo” during my two or three months on the strip.

Glen: Did you ever share a studio with other artists, and if so, do you have any anecdotes to share?

Pete: I shared studios with Lee J. Ames, an excellent book illustrator, Don Perlin, Bill Siegel, George Tuska, Sy Barry, and others. Sorry, no tidbits to share.

Glen: For whom was your first paying work?

Pete: Coulton Waugh on Dickie Dare, then Victor Fox, then inking The Sub-Mariner for Timely.

Glen: What was it like working for Victor Fox? Pete: I don’t want to go into too much detail here (because I don’t want to get sued). However, after Victor Fox sent me two checks that bounced, I went straight to his office, past his secretary, into his conference room, and leaped across that long table and grabbed him by the collar and said, “You owe me money!” He yelled and screamed, “Call the police!” But none of the other people in that conference room made a move. They didn’t want any part of me. Finally, Fox said, “This was all a mistake,” and called his secretary, who made out two new checks on the spot.

Glen: Besides Fox, who else did you work for, and do you recall any interesting stories about editors and/or publishers?

Pete: Again, there are some stories I could tell, but some of the people involved are still alive, and it wouldn’t be fair to them, so I’ll pass.

Glen: I read recently that you offered to pay George Tuska a fee because you were copying his style. Is this true? If not, why is your style so similar to his?

Pete: I grew up enjoying Tuska’s art. So, when the time came for me to step into comics, I thought it was only fair to ask his permission to work in his style. I asked, and he said, “Okay.” That was it. There was never any payment or fees. Where do stories like that come from?

Later on, when my wife delivered some of my artwork to a Charlton office in Manhattan, another artist who was delivering his work peeked at the unwrapped pages my wife laid on the table and said, “Hello, Mrs. Tuska. My name is John Severin, and I’m a big fan of your husband’s work.” So I guess I made the grade. Thanks again, George.

Glen: I recall an interesting anecdote. Shortly after what we now refer to as the Silver Age of Comics began, and because The Fantastic Four had become such a huge success, in about 1964 you tried to buy various super-heroes from the 1940s. This was before you created Thunderbolt. Who were the various super-heroes you tried to buy?

Pete: The strips I tried to buy were Captain Marvel, Plastic Man, Daredevil (the original), The Flame, and Stuntman. Those strips weren’t being published at the time, and I wanted to own the rights to them in case the comics field “came back.”

Captain Marvel: Fawcett Publications said the strip was tied up in an ongoing feud with DC and not for sale.

Plastic Man: I couldn’t get hold of Quality Comics publisher “Busy” Arnold, and when I did, he told me the title was sold to DC Comics.

Daredevil: I knew Lev Gleason and Charlie Biro, Daredevil’s publisher and editor. I went to see Gleason in his home (upstate New York, I think), and he said, “Sure, you can have the title,” and the various boards of directors had told me the same thing. Only Biro remained, and he said, “You know, I put a lot of time and work into the creation of Daredevil, my baby, and the only way I could part with it was if I retained an interest in the strip. I would want a percentage of any money you made, if I let you have the strip.” Now, I COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

knew that Biro didn’t create Daredevil, but I didn’t want to get into a hassle with him, so I simply said, “No, thank you,” and walked away.

The Flame: Fox Features sold a lot of their comics titles to Charlton Publications. The Flame was one of them. I called Charlton and was told that the above sale of titles was part of a legal settlement and that several parties claimed ownership to that and other titles, so I gave up.

Stuntman: I called Harvey Publications and was told that none of their titles were for sale.

Glen: It would seem that, had it not been for Biro, instead of your Thunderbolt creation in the mid-1960s, fandom might have witnessed the return of the original Daredevil. Would he have been basically the same character that Lev Gleason published? What about the Wise Guys?

Pete: I don’t know. My thinking never went that far. As for the Little Wise Guys—I think they were created by Biro, so I wouldn’t think of touching them.

Glen: Do you have any other anecdotes about Biro you might share with us?

Pete: I remember getting a script from Biro with the last few pages missing. He told me to “bluff through the ending”—that he’d fix it up when I returned it. Well, I wrote the last few pages of the script and brought the criminal to justice, and illustrated the story. Old Charlie didn’t change a word of the script, printed it as is, and didn’t pay me for the writing, to boot. Such is the comic book business! I guess I could have yelled and screamed over the above, but by the time I saw the published book, it was months later, at a time when Biro’s books were failing, and I didn’t want to add to his problems.

Glen: It’s my opinion that the top five best-designed costumes are The Batman, Captain America, Daredevil (Lev Gleason), The Black Terror, and Spider-Man. What are your feelings regarding this list?

Pete: I think I answered that before. I like Superman, Batman, Captain America, The Phantom, and for my number five choice I’d pick… either Captain Marvel, Stuntman, or Fighting American.

Glen: I assume that the original Daredevil’s costume had a lot to do with Thunderbolt’s costume. Would you have copied it even more had you not worried about getting sued? I had always felt that Thunderbolt should have had Daredevil’s original costume except for the red and yellow belt you designed, along with the short white boots with the yellow and red strip on top.

Pete: Sure. I was tempted to use Daredevil’s spiked belt, too, but didn’t have the nerve.

Glen: Do you still have all the older comics you collected as a kid?

Today they must be worth big bucks.

Pete: I still have some of them, but I should have more. I was sharing a studio with other artists, and one of their assistants got into the habit of taking a few of my comics to read on the train when he went home at night. When he reached his destination he simply tossed my Captain America, Batman, Superman, Captain Marvel, and copies of my own printed work into the wastebasket. To that assistant they were only 10-cent books. To me they were gems that couldn’t be (and haven’t been) replaced. Damn!

Glen: What was the first job you penciled and inked?

Pete: My earliest complete art (I think) was “Lionis, the Cruel,” a pirate story for Fox Features, and I don’t remember anything good about it at all. Man, talk about junk!

Glen: Tell me about working for Mike Roy and John Belfi. Didn’t you and Al Williamson assist them together? What did you two do?

Pete: I was going to Hogarth’s school (along with Al Williamson) when we both saw an “assistant wanted” card on the school’s bulletin board. We both responded, and we were both hired. We inked backgrounds on “The Heap” for Hillman Publications, and some “Crimebuster” stories for Lev Gleason (Biro) Publications. Sometimes we penciled and inked those backgrounds. We did whatever was needed. Later, Al dropped out of the picture, and I continued with Roy and Belfi when they took on The Saint newspaper strip.

Glen: Are you and Al Williamson still close friends?

Pete: No, I’m afraid not. We were tight for a while, but things change. I haven’t seen Al in many years.

Glen: Early in your career, you did three books for Superior Comics. You’ve mentioned these were rush jobs, and you were not proud of the art. How fast was the art done on these books?

August 2000

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

Pete: Hey, I’m not a fast artist, but I pushed myself during that period and turned out three complete pencil-&-ink pages per day for about a month. Every now and then I read about how Jack Kirby turned out five to ten penciled quality pages a day and I turn green with envy.

Glen: I seem to recall that, while you were doing T-Bolt, Joe Simon offered you a lot more money to work for him. Do you recall this, and do you know what you would have done for him?

Pete: Sorry, but I don’t remember that at all.

Glen: What was it like when you worked for Stan Lee? Did you get along with him?

Pete: Stan was a total nut. At times when I delivered work to his office I’d find him sitting on top of a filing cabinet, and we’d talk, as if there was nothing unusual about that. Stan and I got along 90% of the time. He fired me once, and I quit once—so we’re even.

Stan is an excellent writer, a trendsetter whose writing style has been imitated for years. (I loved illustrating his westerns. ) He put the comics business back on its feet when there was almost no business at all. Give credit where credit is due. Stan is a true “comics

Above: Pete’s film noirish character, Johnny Dynamite was a brutal private eye (much of the Mickey Spillane school) who was brilliantly depicted by PAM at the height of his abilities. Below: Pete takes a wink at Don Heck’s “Duke Douglas” strip in this panel from Dynamite. ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

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Above: Johnny Dynamite was visually based on Hollywood tough guy John Garfield. ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

Below: Pete drew a number of strips for Lash Larue Western at Charlton. Here’s his John Waynesque take on Lash from issue #80. ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

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man.” He knows comics, loves comics, and after all is said and done… I think I like the guy.

Glen: Two of the characters you are best remembered for are Thunderbolt and Johnny Dynamite. Both these features were written by you. I notice you are an excellent writer, and I wonder if it comes easy for you.

Pete: Nope, it’s like pulling teeth. I “suffer” when I write. I write, and re-write, and re-write, and re-write, until every word, every caption, every sentence is the way I want it—but I love to write, and the torture comes with the territory. So, every now and then I break loose and write, and write, until I burn myself out. Go figure.

Glen: If you lost money by writing the Thunderbolt stories, why didn’t you pass your ideas on to a writer and just do the artwork?

Pete: Because I’m concerned enough to think that I’m the only one who could do justice to Dynamite and T-Bolt. I know that’s not true, of course, but that’s how I feel.

Glen: I’ve noticed that there was a good string of strong stories written for [Charlton’s] Kid Montana between issues #32-39. Instead of typical outlaws, bullies, and gunfighters, the antagonists were abominable snowmen, dinosaurs, and apes. I’ve a strong hunch that you and not Joe Gill wrote all these stories. Am I correct, and how did it happen that you were the writer?

Pete: Yes, I did write those stories. Every now and then I’d get a burning desire to write, and Dick Giordano (my Charlton editor) was smart enough to let me get it out of my system. He’d let me write four or five stories, until I burned myself out—and then I’d go back to drawing pictures.

Glen: Who were writers that you really enjoyed working with?

Pete: Stan Lee, Joe Gill, Ernie Hart, Ken Fitch. And I would have enjoyed doing scripts written by Len Wein, Mike W. Barr, Bob Haney, Roy Thomas, and Jack Kirby.

Glen: A number of times you were offered the job of editor at Charlton. Why did you turn down the offer, and do you regret doing so?

Pete: No, no regrets. I had other things that I was doing, things that I was committed to. Comics were (and are) my first love, and I’m happy the way things turned out. I was able to honor my other commitments and still be involved in a labor of love.

Glen: After Charlton dropped superheroes, did you automatically have the rights to Thunderbolt returned to you?

Pete: No. Some rights stayed with Charlton, and some of them went to a company in Australia.

Charlton, on my request, turned over their rights to me. The Australian company did the same, after a few years of my begging and pleading. So, finally, T-Bolt was all mine.

Glen: After you obtained ownership of your creation Thunderbolt, didn’t DC

use the character without your permission in Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985?

Pete: At that point I don’t think I had a signed contract with DC. It was assumed that we would make a deal, and that T-Bolt would be a DC property. They used T-bolt a few times (Crisis and Who’s Who) without permission. I didn’t argue with them, because I assumed that T-bolt would soon be DC property.

Glen: After DC used Thunderbolt without your permission, didn’t you meet with a DC official who informed you that DC was going to publish a Thunderbolt series with or without your cooperation, and that if you didn’t go along with this, they’d take you to court and you’d have to fight a big-time law firm?

Pete: I had started to draw a T-bolt “origin” for DC (still no contract) and kind of balked at the idea of sharing T-bolt with anyone.

DC claimed they had an interest in the strip (because of that origin story) and said if I tried to publish T-bolt on my own, or through another company, they’d stop me in the courts. They knew they had me in a bind, and they had the muscle to back it up.

Glen: Finally, were you happy with the deal you worked out with DC? Did you sell T-bolt outright, or just loan them the use of T-bolt?

Pete: I sold T-bolt to DC with the understanding that we’d split 5050 on the profits after a certain sales figure had been reached. I also had it written into the contract that if DC’s T-bolt strip failed and the character was dropped from their lineup, all rights to T-bolt would revert to me. That’s what happened, and now, once again, T-bolt is all mine.

Glen: Peter Cannon… Thunderbolt debuted from DC in 1992.

The one change I liked was that they covered his legs; his costume was improved, but the character was not Thunderbolt.

What are your views of DC’s version of your character and why it didn’t go over with the fans?

Pete: I don’t think it’s fair to comment on the artist/writer who replaced me on the T-bolt strip. We’re two different people, with different ideas, thoughts, and ways of doing things. I think we both gave T-bolt our best shot. I suggested to the DC editors that T-bolt’s legs be covered… and I also suggested white boots or sandals. As to why T-bolt didn’t go over with the fans… beats me.

Glen: I’ve always felt that DC’s version of Thunderbolt would have been a big hit had you written the series and developed the characterization.

What do you think about this?

Pete: Of course, I agree with you, if you allow conceit and ego to be part of my answer. I’ve worked on a lot of strips: Johnny Dynamite, Kid Montana, and Tbolt, to name a few, and whenever deadlines allowed I was pleased with the result. Of course, there were some rush jobs in that mix that we won’t talk about here.

Glen: DC was later going to introduce a weekly large-size comic. Did they approach you about doing T-bolt for this book, and what was the outcome?

Pete: Yeah, DC was going to publish a weekly “continued” book, made up of six or eight pages of T-bolt, Blue Beetle, and other old Charlton characters. Halfway through that venture, they found out that the comics shops couldn’t handle the quick turnover. They needed more shelf time to sell their books. So the idea was dropped.

(I’ve got 18 pages of paid-for “T-bolts” lying on a shelf. ) Glen: After the failure of DC’s COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

Thunderbolt, did the character revert back to your ownership?

Pete: I think I mentioned before that DC honored my request to return all the rights to T-bolt when they were through with it. Of course, there was a four-year “waiting period,” but it was worth it.

Glen: Since you now have full ownership of Thunderbolt, if Marvel, DC, Image, or Dark Horse, etc., wanted to do a series with T-bolt, I would hope that you would insist that you must have a strong hand in the development. What’s your view regarding this?

Pete: Not a strong hand… a total hand.

Glen: I know this will never happen, but my dream wish would be to have you write a T-bolt series and to have Jerry Ordway draw it.

How would you feel about such an arrangement?

Pete: I have a great regard for Jerry’s work, but I would have to do both story and art on the first A recent T-bolt few issues, to set the pace, drawing by Pete. direction, and supply the ©2000 Peter A. Morisi. overall feel for T-bolt.

Glen: Had fortunes been better and Thunderbolt had continued longer than it did at Charlton, you told me about a few surprises in future issues. Can you share these with the readers of CBA? Pete: There’s always the possibility that Tbolt might be published again someday, so I’d rather not give away any secrets.

Sorry.

Glen: Skipping back a number of years, you once had an opportunity to work on something with Bill Finger. Tell me about this.

Pete: There was a TV show called Foreign Intrigue that I enjoyed watching. I thought it would make a great comic strip, so I wrote to Sheldon Reynolds, the owner/producer, and he sent me to the William Morris Agency in Manhattan to meet with his people.

Once there, I met someone called Bill Finger, who had also written to Sheldon Reynolds, and who had been directed to the same agency. It seems that we both had the same idea at the same time.

The agency teamed us to do samples. Bill would write, I would draw.

We agreed.

Only, Bill never produced a script. One week of phone calls and excuses led to two more. I was fuming, the William Morris Agency was livid, and only more lies and excuses were forthcoming. I called Bill again… and he cursed me out… for bugging him! Not a very nice guy. One of the few in this business that I disliked. So I quit. I found out much later that Bill Finger was the co-creator of The Batman… one of my favorite characters!

P. S. : I put another artist in touch with Bill Finger when I quit— but I never saw Foreign Intrigue published.

Glen: During the early 1970s you had a chance meeting with Sol Harrison at a comics convention in New York City that resulted in a meeting with him, Joe Orlando, and Carmine Infantino at DC. Tell me about the meeting, your first art assignment at DC, and why you didn’t continue when they wanted more art from you, since they paid a lot more money than Charlton.

Pete: I finally called Sol Harrison [production manager and vice president at DC at this time] and arranged for an interview to show August 2000

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him my work. I went into his office with a Haunted story I’d done, plus a Kid Montana and a T-bolt book. He took the Haunted and Kid Montana into Carmine Infantino’s office. Carmine said okay, and told Sol to put me in Joe Orlando’s hand.

Joe was pleased, and offered me two inking jobs (Mike Sekowsky’s pencils and another unknown penciler) right away. I said no (in a nice way) and told him that I wanted to do pencils and inks. He said okay, and that he’d have a script for me in a few days.

So a few days later he called and said to come in and pick up the script.

Then the roof fell in. He wanted pencils on the job, with penciled-in lettering— “Leave enough room for the letterer— the heads you draw are great, but let’s have more long shots—follow the story—don’t use photo swipes—I liked your old Tuska stuff a lot—how about doing it again—feel the story—get in the mood,” etc., etc., etc., etc. !

To which I said, “Okay!”

Now, don’t get me wrong— some of the things he asked for were reasonable, but others weren’t.

Still, I said okay and took the stuff home and went to work. At that point my mind drew a blank. The instructions were just too much. I tried for the old Tuska style again—it didn’t work (at least I didn’t like it). I re-penciled the first page at least six times, but still no go.

Finally I called Joe and told him to take the script back—that I couldn’t do it with all the instructions he gave me. He said, “No, try it again—you can do it.”

So I got the pencils done somehow and delivered them. Joe looked, made two panel corrections, and said, “It looks good; I’ll have it lettered in five days.”

So, eight days later I picked it up, made the pencil corrections, inked it, returned it.

Joe said, “Fine,” and took it into Carmine’s office.

Carmine said, “Okay, but tell him more long shots in the future.”

Joe said, “Call me in a week or so for another script,” to which I said, “Make that about three weeks; I’m jammed with Charlton stuff.”

He called me about a week later to “check my story number,” but included an “Are you ready for a script?” sentence to which I said, “Not yet—I’ll call you in a few weeks.”

So that’s it. All in all—with the time loss—I lost money on the deal. For your info, the story named “Bum Wrap” appeared in Sinister House.

Glen: When you were working forty hours a week elsewhere while you were doing Thunderbolt, it must have been very hard to find time to write and draw. Tell me about your work schedule.

Above: Writing as well as drawing, Pete came up with some fantastic stories in his run on Kid Montana.

Dinosaurs, rampaging gorillas— you name it, Montana’s had to deal with ’em! ©2000 the respective copyright holder. Below: A piece for the Street Enterprises Benefit portfolio. All characters ©2000 the respective copyright holders.

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Above: Pete’s contribution to the Charlton Portfolio, a pin-up on his Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt. Courtesy of Bob Layton & CPL/Productions.

Thunderbolt ©2000 Peter A. Morisi.

Below: The Face, a character Pete is developing. Interested parties should contact PAM through CBA. ©2000 Peter A. Morisi.

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Pete: T-bolt was done bits in pieces. Remember, I had other work that, sorry to say, came first. Sometimes I pencil one page a day and sometimes it’s one panel. Same goes with writing… sometimes a story takes weeks. I usually throw out about ten good plots before one “feels” right.

I haven’t been able to come up with a “set formula” like Marvel—and I think that the answer to T-bolt’s success is, There is no formula. When I think it “feels right,” I do it. Until then, suffer— yell at your wife, scold the kids, and pull out your hair. This past week has been like that, plus a paint job to boot! I’m lucky to have an understanding family who go around saying, “Oh, no, he’s writing again!”

Glen: I notice special care or attention was given to your work on Johnny Dynamite. Your art seems more intense. You used zip-a-tone and gave special care to this series. Did you spend more time on it than on your other assignments?

Pete: Uh-huh. Dynamite, Thunderbolt, some Kid Montana, Lash LaRue, Wyatt Earp, and others. Whenever the deadlines allowed (or if I got a really well-written script), I’d put in the extra time… gladly.

Glen: A few years ago another publisher revived Johnny Dynamite. Did you receive any compensation for the reprinting of your artwork?

Pete: Nope, not a dime.

Glen: In the 1970s you completely changed your style as an artist.

Gone was the familiar Tuska style you’d done for years, and a new and different style of working from photos emerged. Can you recall what prompted this change?

Pete: I think I just wanted a change of pace, and the “photo look” seemed interesting. I tried it for a while, but the “stiffness” of it annoyed me. So I finally gave it up. It just wasn’t my thing.

Glen: Tell me about your long friendship with Alex Toth.

Pete: I went to the High School of Industrial Arts in Manhattan, as did Alex Toth, Sy Barry, Joe Giella, and others. I quit high school after a year or so, but remember that Toth was a budding genius, even then. We’d go to his (nearby) house at lunchtime and talk—Caniff, Sickles, Robbins, Christman, Kirby, Captain America, Captain Marvel, etc., etc., etc. We’ve kept in touch on and (mostly) off during the years.

Glen: Being the outspoken person Alex is, what did he think of your new art style when you started working from photos?

Pete: Alex blew his cork at my change of style. Here are some excepts of his letter: “I see you falling into the trap too many other artists have fallen into via their use of photographs. And that is… that you wind up with the bloody photographs using you. I think you are being used…. I am bored to death by the best guys in the business who use and abuse photos in producing their strips. I cannot take their work seriously, nor can I even be sure about their native abilities as artists, because whatever abilities they may possess are hiding behind their misuse of photos and their slavish copies of them…. Now you had, and still have, an eye for the simple, strong storytelling graphics and design, when you were less dependent upon photographic aids.

What I see in the two books you sent me now is your abdication of your own eyeball judgment, trading it for that of the too-rich detail of whatever photographs you have been using, and their sterile images. What you wind up with is a very slick, near perfect rendition of those photographs.”

Alex was right. He made some mighty strong points in favor of his argument. I had to really think about which direction I wanted to go!

Glen: Oh boy, I guess you don’t ask Alex what he thinks unless you want the truth. I know Alex is one of your favorite artists, but who are your top ten all-time favorites?

Pete: No, no, no… I won’t fall into that trap. Some artists can do a great western, but bomb out when it comes to a romance story.

Others can do great horror stuff, but can’t do a war story. It’s a matter of taste, of checks and balances. I picked Toth as a favorite of mine because he can do it all—and do it with style. I couldn’t possibly name only ten favorite artists; the list would have to be fifty or more, just to scratch the surface of the people I admire.

Glen: During the middle 1960s, at the time you created Thunderbolt, Charlton was giving full credit on their “action heroes” COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

for both writer and artist. However, only T-bolt carried “written and drawn by PAM.” Many fans familiar with “PAM” wrote the editors at Charlton revealing your identity, but the editors always protected you and eliminated any mention of your name in the letters pages.

Why did you go to such lengths to hide your true identity? Were you a super-hero or what?

Pete: No, it’s been a while since I was a super-hero. Actually, I worked for ten years in comics before the field started to dry up. (No work. ) I was married with three kids, and looked around for something steady to raise a family on, when someone mentioned that the civil service police exam was coming up. I studied, passed the written test and the physical, and became a cop. During those days the police department had a “moonlighting” rule about holding outside jobs, and that’s when Charlton called me up and asked me to do one job for them: “Please.” I said, “Okay,” and that one job led to twenty years of work… signed by PAM. Glen: Were there ever any slip-ups or close calls, where your secret almost got out?

Pete: I’m sure there were some, but I can’t remember them right now.

Glen: Marvel Comics tried to lure you away from Charlton. Was there any particular assignment you might have accepted at Marvel?

You said in a letter that you would have liked to ink Tuska, but that Marvel said Tuska was for “new inkers.”

Pete: I seem to recall something like that, but I can’t fine-tune the event. As for Tuska’s pencils, they were tight and were usually given to artists breaking into the business; all they had to do was follow his lines. As a result, a lot of his good work went to bad inkers, who couldn’t add to his pencils.

Glen: You and Tuska would have been an interesting combination.

It would have been like Tuska inking himself. In all your time working in the comic field, did you ever work or share office space with George Tuska, and did he ever make comments about your style?

Pete: Yeah, we shared studio space with other artists… but Tuska was Gary Cooper. Whenever he looked over my shoulder, he’d say, “Ummmmm,” and walk away. No comments, no nothing. That’s one good way to drive a guy crazy.

Glen: Is it true that at a gathering of comic book artists, you called out to George Tuska, “Hey, Tuska, are you still stealing my stuff?”

It’s a very funny story, and I hope it’s true.

Pete: Yeah, it’s true—but it was all done in fun. Tuska got a kick out of it, and so did the other artists who knew the closeness of our work.

Glen: After Charlton dropped their line of action heroes, they picked up and published King Features’ lineup of characters. You turned down an offer to write a script for Flash Gordon that was to be drawn by Reed Crandall. I know Crandall was one of your favorite artists and wonder why you turned down an opportunity like that.

Pete: Charlton never asked me to write a Flash Gordon story for Reed Crandall. It was during a conversation I had with Al Williamson

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that he asked me if I’d be interested. I don’t remember what my answer was. Evidently it never came to pass.

Glen: You did a one-page Phantom story. The art was very good.

Would you have liked to have done more Phantom art?

Pete: Dick Giordano once said that my work at Charlton was “going so well” that he didn’t even consider me for The Phantom.

He also said that I would have been ideal for it. I would have loved doing it. But, them’s the breaks.

Glen: In the early 1980s you tried unsuccessfully to develop a concept for DC. What can you tell me about this?

Pete: My tentative deal was with Dick Giordano. I wanted to update the old Sandman strip (with the gas mask) and develop it like the old TV Avengers. You know—far-out stories, plots with twist endings. Dick said, “Sounds good,” and we had several meetings about it. I even drew up a sample page for Dick to show his fellow editors, but to no avail. At one point, Dick said, “In order for DC to sign Roy Thomas to a long-term contract, we had to agree to give Roy first crack at some of our old characters.” Naturally The Sandman was one of them. I was crushed—devastated.

Glen: A few years later, that Sandman was revived in a title called Sandman Mystery Theater and developed somewhat along the lines you suggested to DC. However, these stories were set in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Did you ever follow this series, and do you

Above: Unpublished T-bolt splash page intended for the unpublished Blockbuster/Comics Cavalcade Weekly. There’s also an entire 20page unpubbed tale in existence, originally intended for Secret Origins. ©2000 Peter A. Morisi.

Inset left: Panels from “Don’t Get Involved,” written & drawn by Pam, for Haunted #7. This is a prime example of Pete’s photographic approach began to use extensively. PAM says simply, “Interesting, but stiff.” ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

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ly liked, but then Dick is a terrific inker. Once Fawcett Publications asked me to ink a Lash LaRue book, and that was a good experience.

I remember getting involved in a job that “had to be done in a few days,” and everyone in the small studio I worked in did something. One guy roughed-in the pages, another did the heads, a third did the bodies, a fourth did backgrounds, etc., etc., etc. The editors were pleased, and we all got paid our money—but the end result was that we turned out a bunch of garbage, and all of us (except the editors) knew it.

Glen: Who were the artists you were sharing a studio with at this time?

Pete: I’ve shared several studios with lots of guys, but I can’t remember the people involved in that one.

Glen: Didn’t you and Don Heck share a studio together for a short time?

Pete: No, although I did do the pencils for some of his scripts, when he was backed up. He was a nice, talented guy, but we never shared a studio.

Glen: You also worked on a few of his projects. Didn’t one of his characters have an eye-patch added to the art and become a Johnny Dynamite story?

Pete: Comic Media (Alan Hardy) had a spy-type character in one of their books called “Duke Douglas.” When Charlton bought that title (along with my Johnny Dynamite character), they needed a fill-in story for the Dynamite book, so they added an eye-patch onto Duke

Above: A recent concept of Pete’s—Boomerang is “an idea in the works that may one day see print,” the artist explains.

Boomerang ™&©2000 Peter A. Morisi.

Inset right: “Staten Island Stats” is an occasional comic panel Pete writes and draws for a local newspaper. ©2000 Peter A. Morisi.

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think your suggestions had anything to do with The Sandman getting his own book?

Pete: No, I didn’t follow the series after the first few issues; and no, I don’t think my suggestions meant anything to DC, except to alert them to the fact that The Sandman could be a valuable property.

Glen: After the Sandman deal fell through, you were offered a chance at getting steady work from DC. Was this after Charlton stopped publishing comics? Why did you turn this offer down?

Pete: I don’t remember if Charlton was still in business. Anyway, Dick Giordano told me that cover layouts were thought up by several editors, then a pencil layout is made by a layout man. My job, if I took it, would have been to finish the art and add my own style to the covers. I said “No” to the offer and wound up doing nothing for DC, after my T-bolt origin was finished. As a rule, I work best alone. I never wanted anyone doing layouts or inking for me. If you don’t like the results of what I do, then, by all means, get someone else.

Glen: Yes, but a few times, you’ve worked with other artists. Did all of these turn out as bad experiences?

Pete: Not all of them. After Dan Barry promised not to yell at me if he didn’t like my inking on the Flash Gordon dailies thing, it turned out pretty good. Dick Giordano inked a war story of mine that I real-

Douglas and called him Johnny Dynamite.

Glen: What was “Staten Island Stats,” and how did it come to be?

Pete: After my NYPD and comics days were done, I went to the local newspaper on Staten Island and produced a weekly feature for them (about the Borough) for about three years.

Glen: Looking back at your career that spans nearly fifty years, what are your fondest memories?

Pete: Meeting the artists, writers, editors, and fans that contribute to the business, and working at something that I loved to do. I thank you all for that privilege.

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August 2000

CBA Spotlight

The Jim Aparo Gallery

Right: Another unabashed pilfer from the Charlton Portfolio, a fullpage 1974 pin-up of Jim & Dennis O’Neil’s fondly recalled back-up, “Wander.” ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

Right: From his debut strip in Cheyenne Kid #66, here’s Wander checking out the situation. By Dennis O’Neil & Jim Aparo. ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

Opposite page: Boy, thanks, Bob! We’re using a LOT of material in this issue from CPL/Gang’s superb 1974 Charlton Portfolio with Bob Layton’s permission—we just hope we haven’t overdone it but there’s great stuff! Here’s a 1974 Aparo homage to his 1960s Charlton assignment, Nightshade. ©2000 DC Comics.

Following page: Just for kicks, here a page from The Brave and the Bold #124’s “Small War of the Super Rifles” written by Bob Haney, featuring artist Jim Aparo as story participant. Who can forget the cover line, “Finish the cover, Aparo! Rock kills Batman— or I kill you!” ©2000 DC Comics.

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August 2000

CBA Interview

The Boyette Brilliance A 1997 Interview with the Late Pat Boyette, Texas Star Artist Compiled & conducted

by Don Mangus What follows is part-essay/part-interview with one of the more under-appreciated comic book artists of our time, the late Pat Boyette, who passed away earlier this year. A renaissance man involved in numerous different mediums (film director/screenwriter/producer, radio announcer, TV anchorman are just a few accomplishments), Pat was also a participant—by mail from his base in San Antonio—in Charlton Comics’ Action Hero Line with The Peacemaker, Spookman, The Phantom, and, significantly, “The Children of Doom” in Charlton Premiere #1. A comprehensive interview with the artist (conducted by Kenneth Smith) appeared in a recent Comics Journal, but no survey of ’60s Charlton would be proper without Pat’s presence, so many thanks to Don Mangus for pulling out his CAPA-APA article from 1997 and allowing us the opportunity to give Don’s talk a wider audience. —JBC

Below: Courtesy of J. David Spurlock, here’s a self-portrait by Pat done in 1998.

August 2000

Pat Boyette: I think I am very fortunate. In my lifetime, I have had the opportunity to do most everything I wanted to do. That isn’t to say I was successful at all of it, but I thoroughly enjoyed doing the things I was able to. I was born in San Antonio, Texas, but my awareness of things that would eventually control my interests began in the years that I spent in a little town called Junction.

My father had a business that was located right next to the weekly newspaper, which was just down the main street from the movie theater. I was fascinated by that weekly newspaper and the metals and the typesetting and the general feel of that little newspaper. It excited me more than anything you could imagine, until one night, because air conditioning was hard to come by in those days, I was walking down the main street with my family and I looked up over at the theater and I could see in the window where the projectionist was laboring behind these very hot arc lamps. He had a fan going and sweat was pouring off him, rivers of it off this man, and the atmosphere and the attitude of what was happening, this guy projecting motion pictures, was a big thrill to me. I remember trying very hard to build a projection booth in my garage. I built this box and cut holes in it for the projector to shine through.

Motion pictures held me in total fascination. So I had a thing for printing, and for motion pictures and they’re more closely aligned than you might think.

My closest friend in Junction, at the time, was also a kid that wanted to be an artist—no, a cartoonist not an artist—a cartoonist. We would spend hours drawing these cartoons which were

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terrible things technically, but God, we loved them. And somewhere in the grade school days almost like a revelation, it dawned on me that words could be put together to convey the thoughts that were in my mind. I became aware that what really fascinated me was motion pictures, comics, and newspapers, and all these things were the basis for telling stories. So my primary interest really was not in art, nor in motion pictures, but in telling a story in some way or fashion and that guided me in all the things I did in the following years, because when I went into radio and into television, this was still telling a story. That was the key to my life and cartooning came only after my desire to write. It was merely a matter of being able to say, ”Gosh! Wouldn’t it be great if l could find graphically a way in which to express these words that I’m putting down?“ Then I learned to draw, to illustrate the words.

My grammar school years were taken up with drawing pictures, historical stories, on a long roll of canvas, which simulated a motion picture screen and it was a scroll that unrolled, you turned it and this drawing would pass in front of a little stage that I had built. There were two or three guys along with me, working on it, and for two years we worked on that bloody thing. Which is fine, except such important subjects as math and English suffered as a result of it!

Though I could draw pictures, being able to sign my name was a problem, but again it goes back to storytelling and that’s what it was about. At that time, l started thinking, “Well, if I’m going to be an artist, or a storyteller, or a writer, I should have some education in that direction.” At that point, there was an opening for a child actor on a radio program that was sponsored by Gebhardt’s Chili. I got the job, playing the part of a little kid on the commercials. The station itself started doing dramatic documentaries which required the story to be told through the eyes or experiences of a youngster and so I got that job. Well, let me assure you, that once I saw the microphone and all the lights buzzing on the control panels, and all of these wonderful things, drawing and writing and everything else went out the window, and I was determined what I was going to be was a broadcaster.

Looming up ahead was the coming of World War II. We all knew it, and we also knew that we were going to be the high school class that fought it. With the sudden drafting of many of the younger guys who were announcers and newscasters, openings started appearing all over the country. WOAI, which was an old home base for me, was a clear channel station, 50, 000 watts that was heard in 36 states and 11 foreign countries. It was a powerful station and was susceptible to my suggestion that I be given a spot on the news desk.

I became a news editor and very quickly after that, decided I wanted to read the news, not just write it. That opportunity presented itself at another station and so I went there. It was a disaster really, but it gave me a foot in the door. I returned to WOAI within a matter of just a few months, and I went back as a news editor, in charge of their 10 O’Clock News.

I was still not doing as much announcing as I wanted to do, living off a deferment, because radio was a vital industry, but I was getting antsy about it. I didn’t like the idea of not being in the service because everybody I knew was gone and I finally couldn’t stand it anymore. I took my displeasure at the condition I was in, plus the opportunity to go back to broadcasting the news as a sign to move to another station. I was living off WOAI’s deferment and knew when that deferment was up that Spring, in six months I would be gone, so that was my way of volunteering. WOAI asked if they should reapply for my deferment, and I said no. Sure enough, I went 73

Above: Note the strip’s tagline on this (albeit ’70s Modern reprint edition) cover of The Peacemaker #1, one of Pat’s remembered contributions to Charlton’s Action Hero Line. ©2000 DC Comics.

Background image: This dove means business!

The emblem employed by Peacemaker: The bird of peace carrying lightning bolts of war. ©2000 DC Comics.

Below: Panel from Pat’s work on Peacemaker. ©2000 DC Comics.

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into the service and served in the Pacific in the Signal Corps. I sent a lot of messages. Radioman sounds a little too comfortable, because a lot of the men were stuck in little grass huts, way out in the depths of the jungle and that’s the way it was for me. I was in the Philippines. We were transmitting and relaying messages, and these were done by radio teletype and a few other methods. I remember the Battle of Manila. They were still fighting in the old French Quarters— the old walled city—of Manila.

Down in a little basement that was blown half away was this group of Filipino artists and they were drawing the most amazing, wonderful pictures I ever saw. I thought, “If those artists ever come to America, we’re going to be in trouble.” And, sure enough, they later did. They were drawing comics and pictures of GeneraI MacArthur— beautiful oil paintings of him— and I thought they were fantastically talented artists, and they are.

When I came back to San Antonio, my old job had been secured so I went back into broadcasting the news, left that station, went to another one and in those years, I guess I did everything: Hillbilly emcee, nightclub announcer, you name it, I did it all until one day… the world changed. It was just sunset. I was walking down St. Mary’s Street, going to the station, and I passed this little bar and there was an odd, flickering blue light coming from the bar. That was the first time I saw a television set, and I thought, ”God, this is what I’ve been looking for! This I’ve got to have!” Within a couple of days, one of the salesmen came in and said, “Look Pat. I’ve just signed up with this new television station. Do you want you come with me?” I said, “I sure do,” and he said,” Okay. Come on over and take an audition,” which I did. And then I went into television and it was a wonderful thing. It was wonderful, because it was new and exciting. You were given total freedom because nobody had any answers to anything. They all had to be discovered. I went into television and it was so new, the people were just crazy about TV and they treated you as a celebrity. I remember a night after I had been on the air for a week maybe, and I got on this bus and rode to town and everybody kept looking at me. I couldn’t figure out; what were these people looking at? What did I do? What was wrong? Then it dawned on me, they were looking at me because they had seen me on The Box. It was a good feeling. It was a good feeling because it was new and it would never happen again the way it did. It would change, it would come under the disciplines that always stifle creativity in my opinion. I enjoyed it

while it was fresh and new and young. I couldn’t imagine that all those people were actually watching me, because I was doing the same thing that I had done for years and years and years and that is to sit in a little room. There were three or four other guys in there with me—that was all—and the camera, but as far as having a feeling of people watching me, there was no such thing. I was just in this little room.

Later on (which is my apparently just desserts in life) the people who perform on television found out they could ask big money for what they were doing. It didn’t occur to me to do it at the time. The glory was enough. There’s a lot to be said for being worshiped. And so it went. It got tiresome after I had done everything I wanted to do. Eventually I had said everything I wanted to say. I found I didn’t have any message for the world, and I looked over at the monitor and all of a sudden, my hair got a little thinner, my mustache got a little droopier, and I thought, ”My God, I’m going to sit here and watch myself grow old on this damn television screen.” I was home one afternoon, and this friend of mine, who was in newspaper sales came over and he was a guy who dabbled in art and was very good at it, so I said,” Do you want to draw comic books?” He said, ”Yeah.” I said, “Show me a comic book,” and he handed me a Charlton comic book. I got on the telephone and I asked them if they bought from freelance artists and they said they did. I said, “All right, I’ll send you some samples.” I sent the samples and got a letter back in a few days, saying they could use me, and that a script would be along shortly. Well, the script never showed up. Finally, I got a letter from them saying they were reorganizing their operation and there would be a delay of about a year, but they would certainly keep me in mind. I thought, “A year! That’s an eternity to me,” so I forgot about it. I didn’t think about it. Almost to the day, a year later, I got this letter from Dick Giordano saying he had taken over as editor, and was I still interested in working for them? I called him back and said yes. He said, “Okay, I’ll send a script.” And he did. He sent me this script and I remember written across the front of it was, “I don’t understand this either; do whatever you want to it.” Well to me, that was the perfect license from then on out to do whatever I wanted to any scripts they sent me. Some of my decisions were probably good and some were probably bad, and the writers probably hated all of them, but those were the conditions under which I worked, as did others. Although Charlton was not known for paying big fees, it gave me an opportunity that the other companies didn’t readily offer and that was the freedom to experiment, to do as I wanted, to make changes, to be happy. After growing unhappy in television because of the long tiresome wearisome haul, I decided, “Man, I’m not going to go into comics to be unhappy. If I go into comics, I’m going to be happy, or I ain’t gonna be there.” So I did those things I wanted to do and Charlton graciously accepted them, and, to me, it was thoroughly enjoyable. I hear a lot of people downgrade Charlton for this and that, but I’m not one of them. There are a few other guys who can register complaints—as can I—against the end result of things, such as having our originals destroyed, or not getting them back, or not receiving increased page rates. All of these things we could complain about that, but overall, one thing I’ll say for Charlton until their last days, they were never late with the paychecks. They were right on time and I could depend on them, and that was very important to me. That they printed what I did, made me happy as well.

Eventually Dick was offered at job at DC and a number of the Charlton staff were invited to go along with him, and I was one of them. If I could put a bottom line to it, the working conditions at DC at the time demanded a regimentation that I wasn’t readily eager to adhere to. I guess I had been spoiled by the freedom at Charlton and at the moment, at least, the increased advantages of going to work for another company over Charlton were not that great. When shove came to push, I elected to keep working at Charlton.

I’ve forgotten the exact chronology, but at some point Rocke Mastroserio (who was a delightful fellow, and it was one of my great disappointments that I never got to meet Rocke in person) and I started having many conversations over the phone. Rocke seemed to enjoy talking to me. One day he called with the news that he had a job from Warren that he would not be able to finish or get out on deadline, and could I help him. Of course, l jumped at the opportunity, because in my circle, Warren magazines were considered prestige COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

magazines. So I did the job with Rocke. We did a couple of more, I believe, but on the third one, Rocke unfortunately died from a heart attack. I had this partially-completed job for Warren on my drawing board, so I called Jim Warren, and told him who I was, that I had the job, and asked if I should finish it. He said yes, so I did, and he liked it. From then on I started working for Warren and again the conditions were such that I could write my own material. He promised to print it, which delighted me to no end. At the same time, I was still working for Charlton and I also freelanced for companies such as Atlas-Seaboard, Red Circle and others. I still worked for Charlton even while I was freelancing to those companies. The Warren experience was quite a different thing subject-wise. They were dark horror stories, but more than horror; to me they were stories of irony. That’s what I tried for in each of those accounts. It was also an opportunity to work in a different medium, wash as opposed to straight pen-&ink. I guess I got more reaction from the stuff I did at Warren than I did from anything else. People seemed to enjoy them. God knows I enjoyed doing them.

When the opportunity came along to make a couple of bad movies, I again was able to exercise the things that I enjoyed most.

They were on the dark side but they were also funny and ironic. At that particular time, Roger Corman was kind of a hero of mine, in the way that he was operating out of Hollywood. His stories, while they dealt with dark subjects, always had a humorous touch to them to my mind, and I really enjoyed his work. I had only one meeting with Corman when I was trying to get him to release a picture that I wanted to make and he was very candid with me about it. He decided he couldn’t get the kind of money he needed out of it. Since he couldn’t get a profit, there was really no reason for him to make the picture.

Questions & Answers Don Mangus: What were some of your influences prior to August 2000

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drawing comic books? You penciled, inked, and lettered your first story fully developed with absolutely no learning curve. How was this possible?

Pat Boyette: The story “Spacious Room for Rent” was the first comic book story I drew. I had previously done a western comic newspaper strip, Captain Flame, which was syndicated to weekly newspapers. My influences were like most kids of my age: We lived and breathed the Sunday comics, even more than comic books, certainly. The artists that influenced me were the top headliners of the day. There was Caniff, there was Roy Crane, there was Jack Kent (King Aroo), there was Charlie Plumb (Ella Cinders), there was V. T. Hamlin (Alley Oop), and, of course, Harold Foster and Alex Raymond. But I think the guy that really brought it all into a comic book-type focus for me was Alex Toth. The first time I saw Toth’s work, I said, “This is it! This is a perfect marriage between the attitudes of Caniff and the attitudes of Roy Crane.” This satisfied both my likings. Let me hurry to say, that although he influenced me, I never attempted to copy Alex Toth—or anybody else— because I felt that was death to an artist. In those earlier years, individual styles and individual attitudes were more important than they seem today. They were central to the characters themselves, and that is because the cartoon characters were usually an extension of the artist’s personality, and when you removed that personality, you removed it from the comic strip as well. Toth was really impressive to my eye. I remember going into the station one day and they had just received an audition for a new animated cartoon called Space Angel and it was drawn and done by Alex Toth. At my urging, they bought the thing and it was a good show. Low-budget but great, as I find all of Toth’s stuff: Great.

Don: Let’s discuss some of the people you worked with.

Above: Thanks again to Roy Thomas’ bound volume, here a spread from Pat’s “The Spookman,” a one-shot from Charlton Premiere #1. Below: It’s Dr. M. T. Graves, host of his own comic, often drawn by Pat. ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

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Above: As mentioned on page one, here’s the centerspread from Pat and Fred Himes’ wonderful The Cosmic Book (inset is cover repro also painted by Pat) from 1986. Yow! How’d I miss this book the first go-around? ©2000 Wandering Star Press.

Opposite page: Unfinished Peacemaker #1 cover re-creation painting by the late Pat Boyette.

The actual piece is in color.

Thanks very much to interviewer Don Mangus for his valiant efforts getting this image in time for publication. Peacemaker ©2000 DC Comics.

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Who were some of the writers that did scripts you enjoyed working on?

Pat: Well, I think Joe Gill is some kind of magician. You came in today, Don, and brought me this huge stack of comic books. That’s just the ones that I’ve done. Can you imagine how many comic books were actually produced, and when you stop and think how many of those were written by Joe Gill? You find it incredible that one man could produce this much work. Joe Gill is amazing. I really admire his ability to turn that stuff out in such great volume! His scripts are easy to work on.

Don: How about Steve Skeates?

Pat: Well, the first Steve Skeates script that I did, I did for the editor Sal Gentile at Charlton, and when I looked at that script and read it, Steve operated in a format different than anybody else, because he actually drew panels on the typewritten page, and all of the action and dialogue was typed into those panels. When I read that stuff, I said, ”God, if you had a few sound effect records, and background music, you could read these scripts and have a terrific radio show.” I thought it was that good, every one! Yeah, he was good.

Don: Gray Morrow edited some of the Red Circle books you worked on. Was that difficult, working for another artist ?

Pat: No, it wasn’t in Gray’s case. Gray had started this Red Circle book, which was a mystery/horror-type book, Sorcery, and I liked it. I wanted to do something for it so I told Gray, ”Look, if you like it, you can buy it; if you don’t, no hard feelings, and I’ll write something for you.” So I did and he liked it, and I went on to do a couple of more stories for him. Then Red Circle folded, but through the years Gray Morrow and I have always seemed to end up in many of the same magazines! It was very pleasant to work for him and we ended up friends. I wish he were still editing today.

Don: Many people have fond memories of the story you did for Charlton, “Children of Doom.” The writer—although listed as “Sergius O’Shaunessy”—was Denny O’Neil.

Do you have any recollections of working on that story or with Denny?

Pat: “The Children of Doom,” like many Charlton strips, was on a real tight deadline; so tight, in fact, that I would do two or three pages, then mail them in. Since this was before the widespread availability of photocopying, I had a devil of a time remembering what I had drawn previously. This also happened to me on Flash Gordon and Peacemaker. Looking back on these comics, it seems I did fairly well with my visual memory.

Don: What are some of your favorite scripts?

Pat: I liked “The Geek” very much.

Don: You did two versions of “The Geek,” as I recall.

Pat: I did, because I didn’t think enough people read it the first time. So, I did it a second time! [laughs] Don: Where did you get your fascination with the Medieval aristocracy that populates so many of your fantasy stories?

Pat: I have a medieval soul. In another life, in another time, I think I must have been very important. [snickers] Somewhere, let me assure you, probably standing in ruins and smoldering are the remains of my castle and my gargoyles.

Don: Were you pleased with your Warren covers?

Pat: I thought the one was printed a little small [Creepy #33]. “The Man in the Gold Mask.” I was disappointed in that, but I guess there was a reason for that. What that reason could have been eludes me, however. Can you think of a reason?

Don: [long pause] No, I can’t.

Pat: There is the quandary we’re in, you see.

Don: Tell me something about “The Man in the Gold Mask,” please.

Pat: Well, again: Irony. To me it was very ironic that he spread the disease that killed all of these people. Remember? That was the irony that appealed to me.

Don: There seemed to be a great deal of disease in your fantasies.

Pat: Well, you have to search for a basis for horror, if you’re doing a horror book, and there is something pretty horrifying about the diseases that beset us.

Don: Remember the one where a creature injects a spaceship into his veins, where the crew’s existence is that of the disease itself?

Pat: Yeah, I didn’t write that story, but it sounds great. [laughs] Don: Isn’t that how it went?

Pat: Ha, no! I don’t think so. What story are you talking about? “The Last Train To Orion” [Eerie #28]?

Don: Aw, forget it.

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CBA Interview

The McLaughlin Report Frank McLaughlin on Judomaster and Life at Charlton Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson

Inset right: Cover of the first issue of Judomaster, #93, featuring our hero and his sidekick, Tiger. ©2000 DC Comics.

Below: Judomaster utilizing his martial artistry on this cover detail from Charlton Bullseye #3, the “Special Kung Fu Issue.” Art by Frank McLaughlin. Courtesy of Bob Layton & CPL/Gang Productions. Judomaster ©2000 DC Comics.

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Frank McLaughlin inked two million issues of The Flash, a billion-and-a-half Justice Leagues of Americas, and has embellished Green Arrow since the Jurassic Age. Seriously, Frank has been in the industry for forty years but is still probably best renowned for starting the first martial arts comic, Judomaster, half a decade before the Kung Fu fad hit the States. A master of Judo himself, these days Frank continues to work in the industry. This telephone interview was conducted on March 15, 2000, and the artist copyedited the final transcript.

Comic Book Artist: Did you have an early interest in comics?

Frank McLaughlin: Sure. I read whatever was available when I was a kid. That’s going back… early ’40s, you know?

CBA: Any particular artists that inspired you?

Frank: Actually, I was inspired mostly by the magazine illustrators of that time: Colby Whitmore, Joe Bowler, Howard Terpning, Joe De Mers, and many more. The earlier illustrators from the art noveau period, as well—Gustav Klimt, Alfons Mucha, and others. Later on, strip artists such as Alex Raymond and Milton Caniff.

CBA: Did you go to art school?

Frank: Yeah, I did. I went to University of Bridgeport, New Haven State Teachers’ College—we used to call that Strange Creatures College. [laughs] Most of what I learned about comics came from working with other artists, Maurice Whitman, Dick Giordano, and of course Stan Drake.

CBA: Were you assisting Stan Drake?

Frank: Yes. Tex Blaisdell was assisting Stan and left to take on the Little Orphan Annie strip.

Dick Giordano suggested I do some samples and so I did. When I met Stan (for the first time), I felt somewhat intimidated as one might

expect. He hired me on the spot after a quick glance at the samples. I was completely shocked and didn’t know what to say! We wound up hitting golf balls the rest of the afternoon at a local driving range. At that time, he was a “scratch” golfer and had won a few tournaments. We hit it off immediately.

CBA: I heard some stories about how tough it would be for him to make the syndicate deadlines.

Frank: Well, Stan worked very hard on the strip, it wasn’t like Peanuts; everything was researched, and he took pictures for a lot of stuff, and used a lot of reference. He took great pride in what he did. Sure, it took time to do a set of dailies and a Sunday. He was amazing, he could sit down and say, “I’ll be out of here in an hour,” and he would count up how many heads he had to do, how many hands and so forth, and he’d say, “20 minutes for this, 20 minutes for that,” and so forth, and son of a gun! Almost precisely, to the minute, he’d be done! I don’t know how he did that!

CBA: Were you doing backgrounds?

Frank: I would pencil and ink just about everything that wasn’t a main figure. Quite often we took Polaroid shots of each other. Stan felt a natural pose that was photographed always worked better than one that was “just made up.” We would turn a posed photo of Stan into an old woman, for example, and laugh and kid about it later.

There was a time when he was behind deadlines for months and months and months, and finally he got caught up, and we decided to celebrate. We finished in the morning, and we were officially caught up to deadline, so we decided to play a joke and we did an Xrated Friday strip, and then we did the regular one, and pasted the fake one over it, you know? So, we sent it in to the syndicate, and Stan said, “I’ll bet they don’t get the joke.” I said, “We’ll see.” Sure enough, the phone rings, and it’s the editor at King Features, and he says, “Stan, are you going to be home?” And Stan says, “Sure, I’m going to be home. Why?” He said, “We’re going to be in the neighborhood”—from 60 miles away—”and we thought we’d stop by and see you.” [laughs] They thought he’d flipped his wig! [laughter] Stan finally suggested that he peel the top layer back and he would find the “real” strip underneath. There was a long pause as he did so and then he responded, “Uh… okay! Thanks, Stan.” Click. We roared!

CBA: No sense of humor.

Frank: I’d love to have that strip back, though. It was hysterical.

The syndicate guy didn’t get it. So, that was a waste of time, I guess, but we had fun.

CBA: Stan was in Westport?

Frank: Yeah. It’s about a 20-minute drive from here.

CBA: Did you see John Prentice a lot?

Frank: Oh, sure! We used to occasionally have lunch together...

John, Stan, Bill Yates, Gill Fox, Curt Swan....

CBA: “The Westport Mafia,” right?

Frank: “The Westport Mafia,” right. [laughter] Occasionally, COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

somebody else would stop by, other artists who were in the area. It was a common thing to get together every Saturday, and of course, Gil Fox meets every Wednesday with some of the gag cartoonists toward the Danbury area there, Jerry Marcus and Orlando Busino, and a couple of other guys.

CBA: Connecticut’s a hotbed of artists.

Frank: Well, it’s close to New York. Every week, we’d all meet at the train station (where there was a bar/restaurant, Mario’s) and we would give a waiting courier our assignments to bring into the city, and then we go into Mario’s, get lunch or plowed for the rest of the afternoon. Oh God, the stuff going on there was hysterical! [laughter] Bill Yates was a very funny guy… Yates, Jack Tippett, and some of the gag artists would be there as well and we’d all make a day of it. The gag artists got a lot of their material from these get-togethers, I’m sure.

CBA: Did you start a family in Connecticut?

Frank: I have two great kids and a terrific granddaughter. My daughter, Erin, is Communications Director for hospice, and son Terry is an athletic trainer at Hofstra University on Long Island. He did his undergrad work at Temple where he worked with the basketball team. Since both teams were in the NCAA tourney this year, he was in a unique situation. I’m really proud of both of them.

Granddaughter Kate has all the earmarks of becoming an artist. I can hardly see the front of my refrigerator.

CBA: Were your first professional experiences as an assistant?

Frank: I didn’t get into comics until after I got out of college.

Before that, I picked up freelance work, illustration work, wherever I could while still in school, drawing pictures for catalogs, and stuff like that. I had my first job drawing belt buckles for a Bridgeport manufacturer’s catalog, believe it or not. And my boss, so to speak, was the secretary of the President of the company, and she didn’t know anything about art. That was my first job, drawing belt buckles. [laughs] I’ll never do that again!

CBA: How old were you?

Frank: I was about 17.

CBA: So you had decided at a young age you wanted to be a cartoonist?

Frank: Like a lot of cartoonists I know, I really wanted to be a magazine illustrator. I still miss seeing all those great Norman Rockwell covers.

CBA: So, after art school, what jobs did you have?

Frank: I wasn’t good enough to interest any baseball scouts but I got a job at Raybestos where their fast-pitch softball team were world champions. I played one year there on their farm team, but was invited by my uncle Sammy to join his team. I learned early on not to be a standout in the Army. After doing a great job of remaining anonymous, I rejoined civilian life as a technical illustrator for Sikorsky Aircraft. A college pal, Larry Conti, had worked Summers at Charlton and he suggested I see Pat Masulli. Pat hired me as his assistant after a short interview.

CBA: What was Pat like?

Frank: You don’t want to know. [laughter] CBA: Did you meet Dick up there?

Frank: Yes, in fact, we had a company softball team, and that’s where I met Dick. He was a freelancer at the time, and then he hired me to work with him after I got through working at Charlton 9 to 5, and I’d go over to his studio, and then later on, we kind of swapped jobs, because there was a change at Charlton, and I think Pat was moving up, and they offered me his job. I opted to stay freelance and suggested Dick for the job. He became editor and I took over the studio. We both worked together after-hours and about that time artist John D’Agostino and writer Joe Gill joined the studio. Others like Maurice Whitman and Rocke Mastroserio spent a lot of time there as well. It was more clubhouse than art studio. Sometimes work got in the way of the gin rummy games.

CBA: When you were working for Pat, what were your job responsibilities on staff?

Frank: Usually whatever needed to be done. There were no art directors or assistant editors or any other job titles. It was me and Pat and, since he was the boss, it was usually me. Everything from proofreading to art corrections, lettering titles for Ernie Hart’s books, traffic managing, liaison with the Comics Code, and anything else—includAugust 2000

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ing cleaning the storeroom.

CBA: So, with your traffic responsibilities, were you on the phone to freelancers all the time?

Frank: Occasionally. Pat handled most of that because, believe it or not, very little work was done outside the building. Most of the outside freelancers were personal pals of Pat: Vince Colletta, Tony Tallarico, John D’Agostino, and a few others were in that loop to the exclusion of almost all others. The very few exceptions were Steve Ditko, Bill Montes, Ernie Bache, Pat Boyette, Maurice Whitman, Alex Toth, and maybe one or two others.

CBA: Who did the coloring for the books?

Frank: We had about half a dozen women there that would separate them by hand on Craftint boards.

The color schemes were done by Hubie Paley, Paley Color Services. He was a personal friend of Pat’s from years before, and he did all the coloring... most of it, anyway.

Above: Ken contributed this pinup of Judomaster in action to the Charlton Portfolio. Courtesy of Bob Layton & CPL/Gang Productions. Judomaster ©2000 DC Comics. Below: The master of Judomaster—Frank McLaughlin in a recent photo. Photo by Rob Francis, courtesy of the artist.

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Above: Here’s the Judomaster initial two-page episode originally intended for the first issue of the stillborn Blockbuster Weekly. Story and art by Frank McLaughlin.

Courtesy of Robert Greenberger. ©2000 DC Comics.

Below: It’s Kate and her grandpa Frank sharing time together at the drawing board. The proud grandfather tells me she’s showing strong artistic tendencies, and just might be hiring Frank as an assistant soon enough!

Courtesy of the artist.

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CBA: When you were on staff, you didn’t have any art assignments yourself?

Frank: No, not officially. [laughs] I used to ink stuff once in a while, on occasion, if I saw a book was late. I inked a couple of Ditko’s books.

CBA: Did you get a chance to meet Ditko?

Frank: Oh, sure.

CBA: What was he like?

Frank: Steve was a great guy. He reminded me of Steve Allen, with that laugh, and he looked a little bit like him, too, The best stuff he ever did—in my opinion—is the stuff he did for Charlton, Gorgo and Konga. Terrific stuff! I don’t even have a copy of that, but I’d love to have that. I’m not a collector, either. Steve, in my opinion, he’s right up there, because his stuff is unique, and you don’t see that anymore. [laughs] CBA: Oh, yeah!

Frank: It doesn’t look like Jim Lee or all that kind of stuff. I’m not putting Jim Lee down! He’s a trendsetter, but now you’ve got 1000 kids who are mindlessly copying his stuff, and boy, it’s all showing up in comic books.

CBA: How did you guys view the company? Did you view it as the low end of the totem pole when it came to comics publishing?

Frank: Marvel was at the top, and DC was not far behind, and then we felt we were behind them. The policy at Charlton was

to knock off a popular book and do our version of it. Timmy, The Timid Ghost was a knock-off of Casper, The Friendly Ghost, and we were doing a lot of that. There was some creative stuff going on there, the old Blue Beetle, and you know, Kid Montana was relatively popular. In those days, cowboy books were pretty popular.

CBA: When Dick came on as editor, was that an exciting time?

Frank: Oh, sure! Dick came on and we developed a line of superheroes—and of course, we didn’t want to call them super-heroes, so we called them Action Heroes. Dick started to do Sarge Steel, I was doing Judomaster and Charlie Nicholas was doing Blue Beetle... oh, God, there was a lot of others I forget.

CBA: There was Pat Boyette’s Peacemaker.

Frank: Oh, wasn’t that great? Pat, there’s another guy that... I put him in a category with Maurice Whitman, of guys who were great, absolutely great, but very few people know or ever heard of them.

Pat was so versatile. I’ve never met him, though I’ve spoken to him on the phone. Of course, he was down in Texas. He and Joe Gill became friendly over the phone, and Pat was a real pro, and his stuff was... there was something else he did, something about the “Children of Doom”?

CBA: Dennis O’Neil wrote that.

Frank: Joe may have written some of that, too. Joe wrote everything, and in order for anybody to get a freelance job out of Charlton, they had to go through Joe, because he was also an editor, and I guess that was Denny’s first break in comics. Later on, I think it kind of hurt Joe, because as talented as he was and is, a lot of these guys who are editors now, guys who were once trying to get work out of Charlton, don’t give him work. Joe was doing it all at four bucks a page! But I’ll tell you what, that son-of-a-gun, he made more money than anybody there! He was doing 100 pages a week! I saw him do 50 pages a day! [laughter] One day, 50 pages! [laughs] CBA: Joe told me that back when Hurricane Diane came through, COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

Charlton cut his page rate in half, so he worked twice as fast!

Frank: He would work twice as hard, and twice as long. We’re good friends, I see Joe... in fact, we’re getting together for Paddy’s Day and having dinner with Gill Fox. It’s become an annual event even though the three of us socialize often. Joe and I are big Jai Alai fans so we attend the local fronton every other week or so.

CBA: What was your thinking behind Judomaster?

Frank: Well, I was a judo player, and I thought it would be neat to have an action hero who didn’t have super powers to rely on all the time. Both Santangelo brothers played Judo as well, so both Charlie and John Jr. thought it might be a good idea.

CBA: How long did the book last?

Frank: Eight or nine issues, I think. Other titles in the line weren’t selling as well so that’s when the line of Action Heroes was dropped. I was both amazed and angered when Judomaster later appeared under the Merit (I think) label. DC Comics picked up the title along with others soon thereafter. Creators got no compensation and DC apparently can do whatever they please with Judomaster without making any compensation. It’s no wonder creators hesitate to come up with new and exciting characters.

CBA: You didn’t move over to DC with Dick?

Frank: No, I stayed in the studio in Ansonia, and Dick was going in to New York everyday. I had two young children at the time so I opted to stay at home and work. When Continuity was first started, I actually moved my stuff into New York and shared space with Dick and Neal Adams. That lasted about a month as it got too expensive. Three hours a day spent on the train didn’t help, either.

CBA: What was your entreé into DC? Frank: Dick. He actually started out inking over Dick Dillin on Justice League, and Julie offered it to me when Dick got too busy with other work. Julie kept me busy for quite a while, and I’m forever grateful to him for that. I was not one to hang around the office and suck up to editors like some others did. Often times there would be a dozen or so “groupies” just sitting around waiting to be tossed the occasional bone. These were the young guys trying to break in.

Just an aside about Julie Schwartz: No better editor ever worked in comics. He’s truly a living legend.

CBA: So you weren’t commuting?

Frank: No, I lived in Derby at the time. I’d gotten married when I was 30, so that was ’65, and from that time on, I lived in Derby and worked in the studio in Ansonia, which is the next town over, and then I moved back to Stratford, where I was from.

CBA: So you were mailing your work in, or going in once a week?

Frank: A courier would leave the engravers (who were located in Bridgeport) for DC Comics every day at 8:00 a. m. and return late afternoon. Most local artists took advantage of this.

CBA: What was it like working for Charlton? They had a unique set up, being an all-in-one operation.

Frank: You learned everything about comic production. I sat next to Joe, and he’d type a script, give it to Rocke or somebody to pencil, and then they’d turn around and give it to somebody to ink, and it would get colored and color separated right before your eyes, all in the same, small area. Then the job would go to the engravers downstairs, Joe Andrews, and Tops Engraving was in the same building. In order to get there, you walked by the presses and the bindery, and the composing room... everything was there.

CBA: How would you characterize the operation?

Frank: Very loose. [laughs] We had a lot of fun there at times, a August 2000

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

lot of fun. There were a lot of goofy characters working there, but we had a lot of production to get out!

CBA: Do you recall any particular memorable incidents?

Frank: One guy who couldn’t get in to work on time. This guy just couldn’t make it in! You had to punch a clock at Charlton, like you do in a factory. We used to call this guy “Paste-Up,” because he used to work for the magazine department doing paste-ups. So, Paste-Up would come in late every day, and so the boss called him in, and said, “Listen, if you’re not here on time tomorrow, I’m going to have to fire you.” He said, “Look, can I come in an hour late and work an hour late?” He said, “Well, okay, we’ll let you do that.” So, guess what? Next day, he shows up late! An hour plus late, you know? So the boss calls him in again, and says, “If you’re not here tomorrow on time, you are fired.” He said, “I promise I’ll be here.” The next day, there he is, at five of, standing in line, waiting to punch the clock with his pajamas on. [laughter] The boss calls him in and says, “Pack

Above: Page one of the ill-fated Judomaster story intended for Secret Origins in the 1980s. Frank has a dozen or more pages from the unfinished story. Story and art

by McLaughlin. Courtesy of the artist. Art ©2000 Frank McLaughlin. Judomaster ©2000 DC Comics.

81

Above: Another penciled page from the unfinished Judomaster origin revamp intended for Secret Origins. Courtesy of the writer/artist, Frank McLaughlin.

Art ©2000 Frank McLaughlin.

Judomaster ©2000 DC Comics.

82

your stuff and get the hell out of here, you screwball!” [laughs] The guy actually showed up in his pajamas! [laughter] Adolf Eichmann’s son was there one time. Eichmann Sr. was a WWII war criminal, second only to Hitler himself. Junior had somehow been smuggled into the country in order to sell his father’s diary.

The Eichmann family had been living in South America someplace, still being hunted down by Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. As Junior was being introduced around as a native South American (with a Spanish name), Joe Gill and I looked at each other. Two minutes earlier, Joe and I were discussing a Time magazine article. The issue was sitting on his desk with Eichmann Sr. ’s photo on the cover. This guy was speaking English with a German accent! Before we were convinced of our suspicions, he was whisked away. A moment or two later, Sammy Goldman entered the office and we told him what he had just missed. Sam was an editor with the song books and when the name Eichmann came up, Sam blew his stack. Sam was an outstanding high school athlete a few years earlier and was not the kind

of guy to mess with. Eichmann never knew that he barely escaped from Derby with his life.

CBA: Santangelo had a strict policy about people who worked on staff not freelancing?

Frank: Yes, very strict. Of course, it was going on, and when he found out about it, that’s when he started calling everybody in. That’s when everybody started calling their relatives to get ready, “Hey, here’s the story, your name is so-and-so, Joe Brown....” [laughter] CBA: People were using pseudonyms?

Frank: Oh yeah, all over the place!

CBA: What happened when Joe Gill was called?

Frank: When Joe was called on the carpet he knocked on Santangelo’s office door, and John said, “Come on in, fellas.” [laughter] He wasn’t going to fire Joe. Christ, if he fired Joe, the whole place would have to close up, because Joe was writing everything! Not just comics! He’d write 100 pages of comics a week, and then he’d write a book on boating, and then another book, a war magazine, you name it.

CBA: You still stay in touch with your old cohorts at Charlton, eh?

Frank: The only ones I stay in touch with are Dick Giordano and Joe Gill… most of the others are dead. Bill Molno and I, we had some crazy times together, but I don’t know what happened to him. He was a lot of fun.

Trapani’s dead, Pat Masulli I think is dead, Ernie Hart is dead.

CBA: What did Ernie do?

Frank: Ernie was the editor of Real West, and he used to do Black Fury comics. He’s gone. Charlie Nicholas and Vinnie Alacia are dead… Rocke’s dead… they’re all gone. The freelancers were in their own room, there was Charlie Nicholas, Vinnie Alacia, Bill Molno, Rocke, and Sal Trapani.

CBA: What about Tony Tallarico?

Frank: He was a friend of Pat’s, from New York. I never saw him very often. He would do Son of Vulcan or something, him and Bill Fraccio… Bill used to pencil it, I think Tony did the inks.

CBA: Did you see Jim Aparo?

Frank: Yes. He’d come in once in a while, but he worked at home. Very good artist, huh? Oh, boy.

CBA: Were you around during the George Wildman era?

Frank: No, he came in after Dick left. Wildman was not a favorite of anybody’s, either. They were doing some comics for a while, but that was at the tail end of things, you know? I think they were doing some King Features characters for a while.

CBA: So, are you staying busy?

Frank: Yeah, I’m very busy. I just finished work on a series of books for Highlights for Children—you know, those puzzle books you saw in the dentist’s office as a kid. I teach art courses at Paier College of Art in Hamden, Connecticut. Since I missed doing comics, Mike Gold and I collaborated to write an instructional book called How To Draw Those Bodacious Bad Babes of Comics. Work for web sites keeps me busy as well.

CBA: Did you enjoy writing when you wrote Judomaster?

Frank: Yeah, sure!

CBA: How accomplished a judo artist are you?

Frank: Well, I’ve been playing since I was 18, and I quit when I was 50. I first studied Judo at Joe Costa’s Academy of Judo. His own expertise lay in knife defense. That was at a time when the emphasis was on self-defense rather than as a sport or art. It took a lot longer to make Shodan rank as well. 10 or 12 years was not an unusual length of time.

CBA: Did you instruct?

Frank: Yes. I had classes at the Y in Westport, and I worked at a private judo school here. This goes back to the ’50s.

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

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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!

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CBA Interview

Glanzman’s Derby Days Our Man Sam discusses his Charlton work in the ’60s Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson

Right inset: Cover to Joe Gill & Sam Glanzman’s Hercules book for Charlton. ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

Below: The artist in repose.

Sam takes a break from all of his DC war work in this shot from 1976. Courtesy of the artist.

84

Sam J. Glanzman has been in the trenches of the comics industry for about 60 years now, starting with Funnies, Inc., where he worked alongside his brother, Louis (later a renowned painter), as an artist. His most memorable work include Kona for Dell; Hercules and “The Lonely War of Willy Schultz” for Charlton; “U.S.S. Stevens” and “The Haunted Tank” for DC; a stint on the “It Happened to Me” for Outdoor Life magazine; and inker for various Jonah Hex mini-series over Tim Truman’s pencils for Vertigo. Sam might also be characterized as the father of mainstream autobiographical comics with his use of the form to express his World War II Naval experiences in the “U.S.S. Stevens” back-up stories, culminating with his Marvel Graphic Novel, A Sailor’s Life. The artist was interviewed by phone on March 17, 2000, and he copyedited the transcript.

Comic Book Artist: After you got out of the Navy in ’46, did you try to get back to work in the comics?

Sam Glanzman: Not at first, no.

CBA: Why was that?

Sam: Well, because my first comic strip, “The Fly Man,” I did before the war, I was getting $7. 50 a page for the whole damn thing, pencils, inks, story, and coloring. So, when I got out of the service, I figured, “Hell, that’s not much money.”

So I started working in cabinet shops, lumber mills, and boat yards. I kinda bummed around.

CBA: Pretty physical labor.

Sam: Yeah. Then I got married.

CBA: You were installing machine guns?

Sam: Yeah, that was in the mid-’50s, I think. I got married, and I started work at Republic Aircraft installing .50 caliber guns in their Sabre jets.

CBA: Where were you living when you got married?

Sam: I was living in Rockaway, later Valley Stream, then we got a home in Masapequa Park where I started at Republic. Sometime later my wife saw an ad in The New York Times looking for comic artists, so I scooted into New York with a portfolio. Somewhere along the line, I was also doing some illustrations for hardcover books, because that was paying $750 a book, instead of $7. 50 a page. And I only had to draw six or eight illustrations in the book, but I wasn’t getting enough books to work on.

CBA: What kind of books were they, do you recall?

Sam: Children’s books. One of them was a pocket book, a thing on scouting, and I did some stuff for Grosset & Dunlap. I did some ghosting for my brother, too.

CBA: Louis Glanzman?

Sam: Yeah. Let’s see... something that’s got my name on it... Jet Cadet, I think. It was a series of hardcover books.

CBA: For kids?

Sam: Yeah, for kids. I think I got a byline on that. Anyway, like I said, I wasn’t getting enough jobs, so then I went to Republic Aircraft and worked steady, because I was married, and children would come later. And then, I finally went into comics. My wife saw the ad, and I took my samples over to Pat Masulli [Charlton’s executive editor] in New York.

CBA: Oh, they had a New York office that you recall?

Sam: Yeah, that’s where I went. There were a bunch of guys outside with portfolios, and they’d go in and come out with sad looks on their faces, something like that, I couldn’t figure it out. Anyway, I went in, I found out it was because they were paying very low, but I said, “I don’t care, as long as you give me a lot of work.” I figured I’d learn comics. I didn’t know comics then; still don’t. So Pat gave me a lot of work, and that was that.

CBA: So you were doing war material—Fightin’ Army, Fightin’ Navy, etc. ?

Sam: Yeah, all war stuff. Then I got started doing Hercules, and I had a lot of fun on that.

CBA: Who were you working with on that?

Sam: Joe Gill was the writer.

CBA: Did you get to talk to Joe at all?

Sam: Oh, yeah. We played cards a couple of times. I played cards with Pat Masulli... I don’t know if Dick was there or not. Pat used to carry a pistol in his belt, you know. [laughter] He didn’t have a holster, but carried it tucked in back, beneath his jacket.

CBA: [laughs] So, did you deliver your work once a week?

Sam: I can’t remember whether I mailed it in, or messengered it, or what.

CBA: Do you think you visited Charlton a lot?

Sam: Their office in Connecticut? I don’t believe I went there very often. Three times, probably, at the most.

CBA: Hercules was a fun strip, and you obviously were having a ball.

Sam: Oh, yeah, and I had a free hand in it. Boy, you guys call it experimenting, I didn’t call it that, I was just having fun with it. I was squeezing in thought words, emotional words, around figures. Stuff like that... if you pick up some particular Hercules, you’ll find it. I was doing that, and I was having a lot of fun with the splash pages, layouts.

CBA: So at the same time, you also began to freelance with Dell for Kona and Classics Illustrated?

Sam: I think it was pretty near the same time I was working both outfits. My Charlton art was real crummy crap. When I see it now, I could die. Except for Hercules, which looked fairly decent. I did a Tarzan, that wasn’t so hot, either. But everybody seems to like it somewhat.

CBA: Did you ever hear the story that the Edgar Rice Burroughs’ people noticed the sales on your unauthorized book, Jungle Tales of Tarzan, were better than the authorized version, and that somehow led to the title going over to DC? Sam: No, I don’t know anything about that, Jon. I lived in a cave then, and I live in a cave now. Murray Boltinoff used to say I lived in an ivory tower. [laughter] I don’t even know how the damn books are printed or sent out! All I know is I would do the work and give it to the editor, and I don’t know who he answers to, or what he does, COMIC BOOK ARTIST August 2000

or what happens.

CBA: Do you recall how many pages you could do in a day?

Sam: Oh... I don’t know, I don’t know. I was doing full books, covers and everything.

CBA: Oh, yeah, you were producing a great deal of work.

Sam: But dammit, I wasn’t making anything! I was doing a lot of work, but I wasn’t making nothing!

CBA: Working hand to mouth?

Sam: Yeah, that’s the way it was: Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

CBA: Do you remember dealing with Dick Giordano at all?

Sam: Yeah, he was the editor, I think. [laughs] When he went over to DC, he didn’t bring me over like the other guys. Joe Kubert picked up on me.

CBA: How did the transition go between primarily working for Charlton, and then going over to DC? You must’ve visited Joe Kubert.

Sam: Joe Kubert was the editor at DC, but before DC I was with Dell. Len Cole was the editor over at Dell, I remember that. My memory is so god-damned bad! Anyway, I can draw! I can still draw!

CBA: You sure got it! [laughs] Sam: And I’ve still got my reference, so I can do anything.

CBA: You did a fine strip, “The Lonely War of Willy Schultz.”

Sam: Willy Franz wrote that.

CBA: Do you remember what the story was with Willy? Was he a really young writer?

Sam: Yeah. Well, first of all, he was a fan, and he wrote to me. He liked my stuff, and he sent me some of his sketches. Geez, the sketches were great, I’ve still got some of them! I wrote back to Willy because I wanted to get ahold of him and find out where he was getting his reference from, and he wrote back to me that he was getting his reference from me! [laughter] Anyway, that started it up with August 2000

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

us, and I don’t know how he got hooked up with Charlton. I may have helped. I can’t remember. He’ll remember.

CBA: I don’t know if he continued with comics.

Sam: No, no, no, that was it: I think he also penciled maybe two stories that I inked. One was “Hertegen Forest,” or something like that, and I can’t remember the other one. He’ll remember it, he’s still young, he’s still got his brains.

CBA: What was the general concept behind “The Lonely War of Willy Schultz”?

Sam: I don’t remember if he was a Private or a commissioned officer, but Schultz was accused of shooting a General’s son, and he escaped, they were going to do something with him, I forget. He escaped, and got into the German lines somehow or another, and acted like a German, and hid that way.

CBA: Ah, so he worked against the Germans undercover?

Sam: Oh, yeah, eventually he does. He was working with them. I can remember one deal where he was the driver of a German tank, and they were supposed to run over an American soldier, and he did something to avoid what he didn’t like. He would avoid killing or trapping or anything of that towards the American soldiers when he was in the German uniform.

CBA: And that lasted for a while?

Sam: Yeah, that lasted for quite a while. I did the compete job, except the script, of course.

CBA: Were you particularly happy doing war strips? Did you enjoy doing war strips over, say, Hercules?

Sam: No, I enjoyed Hercules more than the war stuff, as far as enjoying it.... I was just doing a job, Jon. That was my problem: I should’ve looked at it as a career or a profession, something like that, maybe I would’ve learned something. But I didn’t. Maybe I’d be somewhere now.

Above: Courtesy of CBA contributor Don Mangus, here’s a glorious 1991 commission piece by Sam depicting the trials and tribulations of godling of Hercules. Art ©2000 Sam Glanzman.

DON’T FORGET: Sam Glanzman is a contributor to the TwoMorrows’ autobiographical anthology, STREETWISE with a 10-page story, “Cook’s Tour.” Ye ed immodestly asked the artist if the story’s title was an acknowledgement of a certain Streetwise co-editor. Our Man Sam just winked. Check out Sam’s tale!

85

Above: No tales of Glory here in the pages of Fightin’ Army in the late-’60s and early-’70s. The artist, with writer Will Franz, produced the edgy and provocative serial, “The Lonely War of Captain Willy Schultz” for numerous episodes. Here’s Sam’s cover art to #91.

Courtesy of Andrew Steven. ©2000 Roger Broughton/ ACG Comics.

Center inset: Here’s a panel from the fifth (unpublished) Sam’s creator-owned Attu book, showing that the Old Master has the touch better than ever.

Now if only some courageous publisher would only give Sam’s great unpubbed work an audience! Courtesy of the artist. ©2000 Sam J. Glanzman.

86

CBA: Would you feel like you’re getting recognition now? That people are appreciating your work?

Sam: Oh, yes. Yes, of course, but not from guys who were the editors.

CBA: Who got the money?

Sam: Yeah, yeah. Those guys. Those guys were all super-hero stuff, and I never got a chance to do a super-hero job.

CBA: Now, your brother Louis is a renowned illustrator, right?

Sam: Yeah.

CBA: He’s done covers for True magazine, and paintings in National Geographic.

Sam: He’s got stuff in the Ford Museum, and stuff in Philadelphia in Independence Hall, the signing of the Constitution... I can’t keep track of what he does! [laughter] He’s got stuff in Okinawa, and... he’s got stuff all over.

CBA: He got started in comics, too, right?

Sam: Yeah. He was doing “Amazing-Man” and “The Shark,” his own creation. Then he went into the Air Corps, and when he came out he became an illustrator. He hasn’t done comics in 50 or 60 years, whatever it was.

CBA: And you have another brother in comics?

Sam: Well, he really wasn’t drawing comics, but he was working for Charlton.

CBA: D. C. ?

Sam: David Charles is his name, yeah, and he was actually in Connecticut with Joe Gill.

CBA: So he was on staff?

Sam: Frankly, I don’t know. Was it during the time I was divorced?

I forget!

CBA: He’s credited with writing a lot of Steve Ditko’s material.

Sam: I think he was also a color coordinator or some damn thing, I really can’t remember. But he eventually did good and moved to Florida to continue his work.

CBA: You did good stuff at Charlton, but it was just a job to you?

Sam: Oh, I hate that Charlton stuff. At the time, I enjoyed it and did my best. But looking at it now, cripes! It’s crummy.

CBA: All of it?

Sam: I hate it now, really crappy crap!

CBA: Is it the printing, or your work?

Sam: My work!

CBA: What is the single work that you are most happy with?

Sam: My most recent, I guess. I’ll look back on that later, and I’ll hate that too, I guess.

CBA: The Red Range?

Sam: Yeah, that’s the best so far. The best stuff I liked was the damn Robin Hood I did but the son-of-a-gun ain’t printing it! I think Roger’s waiting until I die, then he’ll print it. I don’t know. We had some good times together. He’s my friend, I think….

CBA: In the late ’60s, you also got a regular freelance job with Outdoor Life.

Sam: Oh, yeah, that was beautiful, and I did some damn good stuff.

CBA: Oh yeah, you did, superb!

Sam: That paid like ten times as much as the comic page paid. It was the same thing as a comic, except I had to put an overlay on it, but no big deal.

CBA: And you were the regular artist for what, five or six years?

Sam: For Outdoor Life? Oh yeah, straight, all the way through. It lasted quite a while.

CBA: Do you remember who the writers were on that?

Sam: They’d be by the people who would write in letters telling of their adventures.

CBA: Would you get the actual letter itself?

Sam: Yes, I would get the letter, then I would make some layouts and submit them for corrections or whatever, and then the editor would lay in the captions after I delivered the finished art.

CBA: And that was a monthly magazine?

Sam: Yep. CBA: And how come you stopped doing the strip?

Sam: After my divorce, I moved upstate. They’re still running the strip, you know. Not my stuff, but by somebody else.

CBA: Actually, they came out with a “Best of” compilation.

Sam: A whole book, yeah. One of my fans sent me a copy. That’s

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

why I say I live in a cave: I don’t know from nothin’; all I know is what my fans tells me! When my Charlton stuff is reprinted, I don’t know about it until one of my fans tells me.

CBA: How come “It happened to me” ended for you?

Sam: I had to go back and forth with the layouts and stuff like that. It was a hassle and I was in a bad head. So I dropped it. On good terms; they were happy, I was happy, and there was no problem.

CBA: And then you got the regular series, “The Haunted Tank” in G. I. Combat, right?

Sam: No, I believe I was doing “The Haunted Tank” at the same time but I was doing that by mail, when I moved upstate. I may have been in town a few times, I really don’t remember. But I do remember going into town for Marvel—yeah, this is funny—with “A Sailor’s Story,” the first graphic novel?

CBA: Right, to Larry Hama?

Sam: Yes. I was on the train going to New York with this script, with the story and artwork, and the conductor came along, and damn if he wasn’t a shipmate of mine on the U. S. S. Stevens! He was a pharmacist’s mate, and he told me the story about cutting the cigarette papers. That didn’t happen to me, I just put it in as if it did.

So he’s the guy who told me the story about that. He’s dead now.

CBA: Do you have more stories about the U. S. S. Stevens?

Sam: I think somebody else asked me that before. There’s always stories, Jon. CBA: That was an important time of your life, when you were in the Navy?

Sam: Yeah, what do you mean, important?

CBA: That it really helped to form you as a person, that it was important that you were a young man, you went into war...

Sam: Who the hell knows? I don’t know, Jon. CBA: [laughs] Good answer!

Sam: I went through grade school, and that was it, I never went to high school. I’m lacking in this intellectual stuff. I’ll tell ya something, I’d read some of these... you guys sent me Comic Book Artist and that other magazine, and I read some of these interviews you did, okay? And some of these guys, they talk and they talk and they talk, and they’re using high-school learning, with their intellectual knowledge, masquerading as experience! [laughter] I’ll tell you, they dazzle you with words, and once you understand what the hell they’re talking about, all the words add up to nothin’ anyway!

CBA: [laughter] That’s why you’re very refreshing, Sam: You’re a very straight talker, you know? You don’t baffle us with bullsh*t!

Sam: That’s probably why I ain’t workin’, the damn editors are taken in by the bullsh*t. But I got along great with my editors, ask Joe Kubert, ask Dick, ask any of ‘em! I got along great with every one of them! Oh, hell, even up at Outdoor Life, where Bob Blinn was the editor. He was the big editor up there at that time. That’s a higher-class crew, from comics to the magazine, you follow me?

CBA: The slicks, right!

Sam: Yeah, yeah! They came in with shirts and ties, you know? Oh, we got along great.

CBA: Would you like to see a collection of your “U. S. S. Stevens” stories published?

Sam: Oh, man, I’d flip to see that happen! I’ve been asked that many a time, of course I’d like to see that.

CBA: We need to see that happen.

Sam: Somebody do it! I don’t know how it can be done, but goddamn somebody do it—preferably DC because I’d get the reprint bucks! Hey, God bless you all.

August 2000

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

Above: Sam considers his work on the four-issue mini-series Robin Hood to be his finest yet.

And who are we to argue?— just look at that wonderful linework! Sadly, only the first issue was ever published. ©2000 Sam J. Glanzman.

87

Right: Though we’re missing a wee bit of the center part, ain’t this Glanzman spread just beautiful. Sam considers the Robin Hood mini-series (of which only one was published) his finest work and we have to agree!

Sorry we’re printing it this small but were running out of room!

Courtesy of the artist. ©2000 Sam J. Glanzman.

Courtesy of Sam, here’s some photos from the past. Top: Sam, his wife, and son in 1963. Left: Sam can’t remember the date, “But I look kinda young!.”

88

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

C o l l e c t o r

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

DIGITAL

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

KIRBY COLLECTOR #34

KIRBY COLLECTOR #35

KIRBY COLLECTOR #31

KIRBY COLLECTOR #32

KIRBY COLLECTOR #33

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

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

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

KIRBY/LARSEN and KIRBY/TIMM covers!

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #36

KIRBY COLLECTOR #37

KIRBY COLLECTOR #38

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

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

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

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

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

Two UNPUBLISHED KIRBY COVERS!

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

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

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

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #39

KIRBY COLLECTOR #40

KIRBY COLLECTOR #41

KIRBY COLLECTOR #42

KIRBY COLLECTOR #43

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #44

KIRBY COLLECTOR #45

KIRBY COLLECTOR #46

KIRBY COLLECTOR #47

KIRBY COLLECTOR #48

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

Kirby cover inked by MATT WAGNER!

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

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

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

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

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(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

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

(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

(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

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

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

(104-page magazine with COLOR) $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

CBA Interview

The Lonely War of Will Franz The Writer on “Willy Schultz” and Charlton Comics Conducted by Jon B. Cooke

Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson

Right inset: Cover of the first issue of Fightin’ Army—# 76—to feature Will Franz’s memorable war series, “The Lonely War of Captain Willy Schultz.” ©2000 Roger Broughton/ACG Comics.

Will Franz was a teenager when he first starting writing for Charlton Comics in 1967. By the few who “know,” Will’s Fightin’ Army series, “The Lonely War of Captain Willy Schultz,” about a German-speaking American officer masquerading as a German soldier behind enemy lines, is recalled as one of the finest war serials in comics, putting the reader in the shoes of the “enemy,” a rare occurrence in America’s usual gung-ho war comics. Working solely as a writer of war stories—mostly for Charlton but some for Joe Kubert’s “Make War No More” titles at DC—Will left the field by 1973. CBA thanks Will’s often artist-partner, Sam Glanzman, for getting us in touch with the writer. Thanks also to Fred Hembeck. This interview, conducted by phone on March 19, 2000 , was copyedited by Will.

Below: The writer Will Franz dressed up in his role as Captain(!) of the Newcastle Infantrie, the 16th century military reenactment unit, “Companie of the Shot.”

Phew! For a second we though this get-up was all the rage amongst New York civil workers!

Courtesy of the writer. Photo by Cynthia Farnell.

Comic Book Artist: Where are you from?

Will Franz: I’m from Brooklyn, New York. I met Sam Glanzman...

I think I wrote to him sometime in 1965 or ‘66. I used to collect the Combat series that he did for Dell, and I always wanted to be an artist myself, and I did my own drawings. I sent samples of my work to Sam care of Dell, and he sent me a letter back and critiqued my drawings, and wanted to meet me. So I went and met him, and one of the first things he wanted to know was, where were my swipe files, meaning my reference material. He was quite surprised to find most of my reference material was from his own work!

CBA: [laughs] That’s exactly the story he just gave me! [laughter] Will: He’s a character, you know? [laughs] You heard of balls of brass? He had iron balls! [laughter] I used to make up my own stories, and he was impressed with some of what he saw, and he said Dick Giordano at Charlton was looking to start up some

92

series, and for me to write.

Sam showed me how he preferred a script executed—the format—and he said, “Get these together and send ’em out to Dick Giordano.”

I sent them off to Dick and he didn’t like them, and sent them back. He explained why, and that he’d like to see more.

CBA: What were the strips?

Will: They were short stories, like four pages each. I have them buried somewhere. Believe me, they were nothing to speak of. They were war stories. I specialized in warfare, and I put together some other thing, a horrendous little Vietnam thing called “The Sniper.” I wasn’t proud of it, but hey, I put it together, Dick loved it, and he made it the cover story on some magazine called Charlton Premiere, and that was it! From then on, he asked me to work up some series ideas, and I came up with “The Lonely War of Willy Schultz,” “The Iron Corporal,” and then a thankfully short-lived series called “The Devil’s Brigade,” about two rogue tanks in North Africa. Working with Dick Giordano was fun.

CBA: Oh, so were you living in Brooklyn at the time?

Will: Yeah, I was living in Brooklyn. I was 15 or 16.

CBA: You were born in 1950?

Will: Right. I developed Type 1 Diabetes just before my 14th birthday, and couldn’t attend regular school. I was really sick, still serious but under control now.

I guess I was coping with some of the problems of diabetes by writing and drawing.

CBA: What attracted you to war material?

Will: I really don’t know. There are no soldiers in my family.

A diabetic counselor said years ago that in a way, dealing with warfare, I was dealing with my own medical problems. I went on and became a fencing master years later, and I was very aggressive and meticulous, and again, they were saying, “This is your way of coping with the cruelties of your disease,” so to speak.

CBA: Were you into other comic books, too, or was it primarily war?

Will: No, I wanted to be an illustrator. To me, my skill—with the diabetes—there’d be times when I couldn’t control a pencil or pen properly. My reliability, I felt, wasn’t up to a professional level, and I didn’t COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

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want to risk messing anybody else up because I couldn’t function.

One thing I learned—I learned a number of things from Sam—and he may not credit himself with it, but Sam taught me the importance of meeting a deadline, of “you’re working for somebody, you do your best product, but you have to give them what they want, and what’s marketable for them.” Again, all the time, deadline, deadline, deadline—you must meet the deadline. He taught me a lot about design. I was doing a lot of cartooning up until recently, when my vision started to go, and I know a number of illustrators who are much better than I am as technicians, but they always liked the way I designed things. I got my ability to design from Sam, some basic lessons he gave me on panel design, page design, and so on.

CBA: When you met Sam in person, where did you meet him?

Will: He was living in Comack at the time, in Long Island, just over the Nassau County border into Suffolk County, down towards central Long Island, about halfway between the north shore and the south shore, I think. Comack is where Rosie O’Donnell comes from.

CBA: So, did you stay in pretty much continual contact with Sam? Will: Yeah, for a few years, on the phone and we’d meet—Charlton Comics had an office on 44th Street, between 5th and 4th Avenues, in Manhattan, and that was where there was a lot of pick-up. I’d drop off a script, I’d meet Sam there a lot, and he’d drop off his artwork. Again, at that time, he was just up in Suffolk County, not where he is now, way up in wherever the hell he is upstate. We’d meet for coffee or lunch, sometimes I’d visit him up at his house or in his studio. He had a studio in Huntington for a while.

CBA: Did Sam treat you as an equal? He was a bit older than you, right?

Will: Yeah, he’s about 25 years older than I. I met him when he was about 40, I seem to recall there was a sign up at the house, “Life begins at 40, Happy Birthday, Dad” kind of thing. He was a respectful mentor, a little rough at items with his criticism, but always constructive. I love the man dearly to this day, I’m really glad we stayed friends. We worked really well together. We listened to each other, and respected each other. We did joke around and kid with each other, but we’d never go too far.

CBA: He’s a character.

Will: He is! If you ever saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, there’s the scene down in Bolivia, and you’ve got Strother Martin as the owner of the mine saying, “I’m colorful! That’s what you are after spending ten years in Bolivia, colorful!” and he’d keep spitting tobacco, and whenever Strother hit what he wanted, he said, “Bingo!” and whenever he missed, it was “Damn!” So Sam is just like that: Colorful. [laughter] A little cantankerous and colorful, you know? I love him dearly.

CBA: And he couldn’t make much money from Charlton, with the notoriously low rates, right?

Will: Nobody made any money. It was four dollars a page for a writer, it was unbelievable. I made a photo copy of the first check I ever got from Charlton, on the back it says, “Payment in full.” I mean, you signed everything over!

CBA: What was the check for? $28?

Will: Yeah, it was really abominable! I was making the same amount of money writing as my friends were working at the corner grocery store, packing shelves.

CBA: Nonetheless, it was money for creative work at a very young age.

Will: It was very satisfying because, in a way, I was almost a celebrity, and who else at 15, 16, 17 is getting published? And my books were going to Germany, and this country and that. Dick Giordano was great to work with, and I have very fond memories of him. Kind of quiet, very business-like, but friendly. To me, he was always approachable, and that was important. I think we worked together for about a year, and another editor took over when Dick went to DC. One of the advantages in Charlton was that we did have a lot of freedom, they just wanted to make sure—from what I could gather— that I wasn’t violating the Comics Code. My stories got a little rough, and they were not conventional war stories.

CBA: What made them different?

Will: The grimness. I didn’t have the good guys winning in the end, smiling, winking, saying “The United States Marines are the best fighting men in the world!” The enemy was war itself, rather than August 2000

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some Japanese wearing Coke-bottle glasses, or a German wearing a swastika on his arm and a scar on his face. I did a lot of research on the German Army, and wanted to do a series from the German point of view. In fact, I was working up a whole series on the Panzerjaegers, the tank hunters. They were the specialty troops, tank hunters, tank destroyer infantry. But back at that period, it wasn’t the thing to do, the Germans were still all considered Nazis, and they were not to be treated with any degree of sympathy. Shortly after that, DC launched their “War from the enemy point of view,” and all they were doing is reprinting their old 1940s propaganda-type stories that glorified battle, the enemy was always unbelievably evil, and they would remove the end and put a circle on it, saying “Make War No More.” When all the story did was glorify the battle action!

CBA: Where did your ambivalence of war come from? Was it the emerging conflict in Vietnam?

Will: Possibly. But war sucks! It creates widows and orphans! With the diabetes, I was, in fact, one of the last 4-Fs issued during that period. Not that my number was high, but I was within that last grouping, I was told that shortly after my birthdate and lottery number, they stopped issuing 4-Fs. It was kind of a helpless feeling, because I was an outsider. While I feared for guys I knew, and feared for the state of things in general, I could never be part of it, and in a

Above: Sam Glanzman’s cover art to Fightin’ Army #88. “Willy Schultz” was a continuing parable about being cast an outsider. Courtesy of Andrew Steven. ©2000 Roger Broughton/ACG Comics.

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Below: Perhaps sketched while working a day job, here’s the artistic side of Will showing up in this sketch detailing the proper German uniform for Capt. Willy Schultz. Courtesy of the writer/artist. ©2000 Will Franz.

Below: Panel from the fourth Willy Schultz episode, “Snowball in Hell,” from Fightin’ Army #79, drawn by Sam Glanzman. ©2000 Roger Broughton/ACG Comics.

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way, we go back again to my illness: I was an outsider and different even from my own family.

CBA: Did you have kids in the neighborhood go to Vietnam?

Will: Yes, we had guys who went and one or two didn’t come back. We had guys who went in, and when they came home on furlough, they said going to Vietnam was the worst thing they ever did, “What the hell did I ever go into the Marine Corps for?” Years later, when we saw Full Metal Jacket, guys were saying, “That was the Marines in 1968, ‘69, that whole period.”

So my feeling towards war, I really don’t know where it came from other than it’s a tremendous study in human nature.

CBA: In the extreme.

Will: I remember reading, in my early days of high school, All Quiet on the Western Front. I was raised on John Wayne war movies, which were unbelievable and unrealistic, and being one of the few kids in the neighborhood with a German name, when everyone else was Italian or Irish, and—this was the late ’50s—I’m getting called “Nazi. Oh, go eat your sauerkraut.” “What do you mean? I’m fourth-generation American!” But I’d read and see all of this stuff with the Nazis, the enemy, even the Japanese. I’d say, “Wait, wait, wait, wait... nobody could be this bad, not as a nation.” Then I read All Quiet on the Western Front, and I said, “How can they change in one generation?” Then I started reading. It was difficult to get information from the German point of view; if you want to study, really study a war, read it from the losing side. Read it from the people who took a beating. I’m not saying you’re going to get the truth from that, I’m just saying you’re going to get another point of view. So few people realize the German Army belt buckle in World War II had “Gott Mit Uns” on it—“God is with us.” I’m not defending the German Army, what I’m saying is that warfare, which is such a terrible aspect of our humanity, there’s got to be more to it than just good and evil. Why are good men fighting for such a horrible cause? Well, let’s find out why. In our own country here, we have the Confederacy, people wave the stars and bars, and, “Yeah, I’m a Son of the South.” Yet,

they fought for a society which upheld slavery of a race of men to support their agricultural economy! But we condemn the Nazis because of their attitudes towards the Gypsies, the Jews, the Russians, the Poles. It’s all racism, and it depends on...

CBA: Who wins?

Will: Where the facilities are. Regardless of the country or time period, racism is racism, mindless hated is mindless hatred! Church, patriotism and politics are religions unto themselves! “The Flag, the Cross, the Crusade! Heretic, Heathen, Infidel… Vivé la France, My Country, Right or Wrong, Deutschland Uber Alles, America: Love It or Leave It, I was Only Following Orders… Heathen, Heretic, Infidel… The Only Good Injun is a Dead Injun… Acceptable Losses, Body Count, Kill Ratio, Extermination Quota, The Final Solution...” The excuses may vary but the reasons remain the same... just different pages from the same “How to” manual on death and destruction. Whip, rope, bullet or gas? Was it God’s Will that the Devil made you do it or was it really just a cop-out for your own lack of courage and responsibility? Remember: History is always written by the victor. That’s why I wanted to at least get the point of view of the defeated. I’m not saying I’m going to agree with them, but I at least want to hear what they have to say.

Getting back to Sam: He had immense detail in his work, even showing the webbing on the American belts, so I was interested in how he knew that, and where did he find out? That’s what attracted him to my drawings. We both believed heavily in research, he showed me his swipe files, research things, how they were organized.

These are things that attracted me to Sam, and again, I’m fascinated by history. Not by dates, not by the event, but by the people who lived it. When I go to a museum and see a mummy that’s 5, 000 years old, I feel like weeping with emotion. If I see a vase that was created by some Assyrian, I’d really love to know what this man or woman was like.

CBA: Your first story was “The Sniper.” Was that a serial?

Will: It was a one-shot, I think it was seven pages long.

CBA: Do you remember what the premise was of that story?

Will: Two GIs in Vietnam get attacked by a sniper, one guy is killed, the other guy wounded. The guy who’s wounded fakes death and finds out that the Vietnamese sniper is collecting souvenirs, and in the end, winds up killing the Vietnamese sniper with a knife that he’d taken from a dead GI, and the thing was... leave the knife in the guy as a monument and a warning. It was very unlike the kind of stuff I would go on to write. Again, it was sort of like, “How do you like this?” They said, “Yeah, we’ll take it.” I’m now mortified by it, I’m embarrassed by that story, and yet, they liked it and it got my foot in the door.

CBA: Do you remember who illustrated it?

Will: Charles Nicholas and Vince Alascia. They were the top artists at Charlton. Then came “The Lonely War of Willy Schultz.”

CBA: What was the premise of that?

Will: The premise was an American officer in North Africa of German extraction who is falsely accused of a battlefield murder.

He supposedly killed his commanding officer in battle for screwing everything up. The officer was actually killed by a German soldier. Through jealousy and personal venom, he gets railroaded into a court-martial, and is convicted of murder, and is sentenced to hang. He escapes, and the only place to go is the desert, and to survive, he dons the uniform of a dead German soldier and seeks refuge in the Afrika Korps, where he learns about the German Army, and the nature of the men he’s fighting.

CBA: Was an element of the series he was accused because he was American-German?

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August 2000

Will: That would’ve come out eventually, yeah. Back around 1990, I got a call from a Canadian publisher who had bought up all the copyrights to Charlton. He wanted me to complete “Willy Schultz,” and thought it was “The grittiest war series ever done, blah, blah, blah, please finish it, would you like to do it? Gee, I thought you had been a German officer and you’d be 80 years old by now or dead!

Do you mean you were 16 when you... blah, blah, blah.” So, I did it, I completed “Willy Schultz,” and it never got drawn and published, because he lost some distribution rights. He owns all the copyrights.

This publisher has the completion of the story which wound the series up, which I’m very proud of. But it’s nowhere, I don’t own it. This was a problem with the comic books back then, you didn’t own your characters. You created them, but you didn’t own them.

CBA: Was this a very personal series?

Will: I didn’t realize it at the time, but Willy Schultz was really an extension of my feelings. I had a fan who would send me reviews of each story, and he’d say, “Gee, it’s interesting, sometimes Willy Schultz is weeping for the world at war, and a world in turmoil, and in the next episode, it’s kill or be killed, and he’ll do anything to survive.” I look back on when these stories were written, and yeah, that’s the way I was feeling at the time, depending on what was going on in the news on Vietnam, what was going on with my personal health, personal relationships. There would be times I’d want to blow the world up, so to speak, and there are other times I want to bandage everyone I can find who’s hurt. So “Willy Schultz” took on a very personal meaning for me, unlike the other characters I was working on. The other characters were sort of, “Yeah, I’m on the outside looking in.” “Willy Schultz” was a little different, a little more personal.

“The Iron Corporal” became more of an ensemble series towards the end, it was an American volunteer in the Australian Army in New Guinea, and I enjoyed writing that. It could get a little personal at times, always vicious, there’s nothing glorious about war here. But it never reached the personal level for me as “Willy Schultz.”

CBA: How many “Willy Schultz” stories did you do?

Will: I think 16.

CBA: Sam illustrated all of them?

Will: He illustrated all the “Willy Schultz.” And all but one of “The Iron Corporal” stories, that went to Nicholas and Alascia. I don’t know how that happened, that was with the editor who followed Dick Giordano. One of the things I said earlier about working with Charlton, we had a lot of freedom, but there was only one real editor to do all the books, and sometimes howling errors and misprints slipped by. “Willy Schultz” was really screwed twice by either changes in the script or just being sloppy on the part of the letterer or whoever’s reading the book for the last time before it goes to print.

CBA: Do you remember specifically what the instances were?

Will: Yeah, there was one story where Schultz escaped a POW compound, a prison train in Italy, and he’s picked up by Italian partisans, and it becomes sort of a Dirty Dozen routine, the partisans are led by an OSS Major, and he says, “Well, if you want to earn a pardon, you work with me, I’ll get you a pardon. But you’ve got to work with me in leading these Italians.” And the Italians were a mixed bunch of patriots and bandits and murderers and whatever, and they storm a German garrison in the end, and among the Italians is a Spanish mercenary, and he starts executing German prisoners, just putting a bullet in their heads, and Schultz tries to stop him, and the American officer says, “No, you can’t, that’s the way it’s done here. You’d better learn to adapt if you expect to survive.” Well, I knew this might be a little controversial, and I spoke to the editor before I submitted it, I told him what I wanted to do, and he said, “Oh, that sounds good.” I said, “Listen, I’m getting it in plenty early, if you need a change, let me know and I’ll rewrite it.” “Okay, no problem.” I send it in, I call him back, he says, “Oh, no, I read it, it was great, it was great.”

Months later, I get an advance copy in the mail, and the drawings were as they should be, but the dialogue had been rewritten by Joe Gill, who was the standard writer they had there, and it was nothing but Nazi bullsh*t propaganda. He had a “Nazi” with a hidden Luger trying to make a break. And here, there’s a picture of the Spaniard putting the gun in the back of the German’s head! How can the German prisoner be making a break when he’s on his knees? And the August 2000

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American Major Daurio is saying, “Now we are avenged, the Nazis will no longer be prowling the hills with their knives and clubs.” I’m like, “What the #@&*!?” At least, Joe Gill’s name was on it, but this was a pivotal point of the series, and it totally screwed me up. This is why when that Canadian publisher went and bought all the copyrights, I’m saying, “Wow, we can make the story as it should’ve been!” “Oh, yeah, we’ll make the correction, and that typo can... yeah, yeah!” And it all went to hell. He published two or three episodes of “Willy Schultz” in one black-&-white comic book, without any revisions, without any changes. He, for his own whim, messed up a few panels, and took them out of sequence. I say, “This makes no sense, it’s wrong.” He said, “Yeah, but I like it that way.”

So again, you create, but you don’t have the power to keep it as it should be.

CBA: The integrity is compromised.

Will: Yes, that’s a good word. I’m supposed to be the writer.

CBA: Was part of the premise of “Willy Schultz,” was he was an infiltrator?

Will: No, he was only a survivor.

CBA: But when he had a chance, would he try to save Americans?

Will: Yeah, he’d try to save life, whether they be German, American or Italian. He would try to make a man surrender rather than kill them.

Above: Our copy looks slightly askew, but Will’s effective drawing shows through in this rare example of his Charlton artwork. Inks by Sam Glanzman. From Army War Heroes #30. ©2000 Roger Broughton/ACG Comics.

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CBA: How did you, in general terms, see the story resolved? How did you Above & opposite page: Example of script page and final work, this from Fightin’ Army #84. Will to ye ed that when the writer showed “Kewpie Dolls” to Joe Kubert during a visit to DC’s office, the editor/artist was disturbed by the dark tale. Above ©2000 Roger Broughton/ACG Comics, opposite courtesy of and ©2000 Will Franz.

Center inset: Whatever hope Willy Schultz held out for resolution in his dilemma was inevitably dashed by the chapter’s finale. Here’s a nice Glanzman-drawn panel from Fightin’ Army #92. ©2000 Roger Broughton/ACG Comics.

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see his situation?

Will: Originally, Willy Schultz would die on the last day of the war.

But how the series was resolved, Schultz, after the Italian partisan unit is annihilated, is in German uniform, and again, to survive, he makes out that he was a prisoner of the partisans, and he’s shipped off to the Russian front to fight and survive the rest of the war, fighting the Soviets, and he loses his identity, really becomes a German officer, and at the end of the war, he’s seeing his men, the survivors of his own unit, they can surrender to the Americans, but he can’t. He has borne arms for an enemy nation, he’s a traitor, no matter how you look at it, he can’t go home. When he’s been disarmed, he sees a crossroads and a big American Sergeant is there, reminding him of a German friend he had, and the Sergeant’s sympathetic, saying, “Look, it’s time to rebuild. The war’s over. Go home.” Schultz winds up seeing the very man who accused him of the murder, and he calls out to him, saying, “I didn’t kill him.” Only he doesn’t know whether he said it in English or in German, he doesn’t know anymore. And there’s a woman, the daughter of a German general who Schultz saved and fell in love with, and she’s with him now, and she’s saying, “Just come home with me.” The man who accused him of the murder doesn’t even recognize him. I think the last caption was, “With Ilse’s love, you can start a new life, where Lassiter Wilkes, with his hate, would be forever trapped in his.” (And he’s still nothing more than a General’s lackey. ) Where Schultz, although he can never go back to the way it used to be, he has at least a chance at life now and love.

In the end of the movie The Wild Bunch there’s a great line that

Edmund O’Brien gives, “Well, it ain’t like it used to be, but it’ll do.” I think that’s a big thing in life. I’ve been through a lot of health problems as well as personal problems, I am now legally blind, I don’t have a left eye anymore, I have about a 10 or 15 degree field of vision in my remaining eye. My right foot is almost crippled from charcot foot. I’ve gone through a divorce, I’ve gone through this, gone through that, but I really don’t feel like giving up. I can’t be crying about what used to be, and what might have been, and how come I don’t have what the other guy has. I can feel that all I want— and I frequently do—but doting on that isn’t going to get me by, so I have to continue to make the best of what I have. I think that’s maybe what I was feeling with Schultz, that, “Hey, life sucks, but there’s so many hands dealt in one deck of cards, and I’m gonna do my best to make the best of that without screwing anybody else up.”

CBA: What was the premise behind “The Devil’s Brigade”?

Will: I had to put something together, and it was an American tank crew joining up with a British tank crew, and they were roaming the North African desert. (I didn’t even realize it at the time, I was using an advanced tank called The Centurion, which didn’t come out until 1947, but I was younger and stupider then. ) They were similar to the LRDG, the Long Range Desert Groups, which in reality, fought in trucks. But the series was just a shallow kind of series, just action-adventure.

I never got anywhere strong with it, and I was kind of relieved when I got a call saying, “We’re dropping the War Heroes title, so we don’t need ‘The Devil’s Brigade’ anymore.” Initially, they doubled-up “The Devil’s Brigade” in Fightin’ Army with “Willy Schultz.”

CBA: Who drew that?

Will: That was Sam. Sam drew all the series I did. Most of the one-shot stories, the six-to-eight-pagers, were done by different artists... Sanho Kim was a Korean and he did the one story I did on the Korean War, called “The Trek of the Third Platoon,” and I get this call from this man one day, and he’s a friend of an illustrator who got one of my stories, and really wanted to speak to me, but his English wasn’t that good.

And it turned out that Mr. Kim is saying, “Your stories are full of centimeter,” and I’m like, “What’s he talking about? I don’t want to embarrass him here.” It turned out my stories were full of sentiment, and feeling, and it was nice meeting him, he had an interesting way of drawing. I wasn’t particularly a fan of that style, but he was giving a new aspect on some very tired types of illustrations, bringing a new kind of life into a story, a lot more stylized angles and a sense of design to something that’s pretty tired. I only met him once or twice, we went out to dinner, and spoke. His English improved. He was a very pleasant man, a very hard-working guy from what I could see.

Others were done by some South American artists, I didn’t know

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their names.

CBA: When you first came on, did Dick Giordano have a specific direction he wanted to bring the war books in?

Will: Nope, not that he discussed with me.

CBA: Were these some of the first continuing features that were appearing?

Will: I believe they were. That was the thing with Sam. CBA: So it was implicit that there was something new that was taking place.

Will: Yeah, they were going to continue on, these were to be ongoing serials. The only time I did a full-length book for them was D-Day, I forget what number it was, but it was a 27-page story, and it was pretty grueling. It was a division story of the American characters and German characters, and everybody dies. [laughter] Everybody dies!

CBA: Mr. Cheerful! [laughs] Will: I mean, oh, man, the German Sergeant gets blown up by a Bangalore Torpedo, the American Captain gets machinegunned, the American Lieutenant gets killed by the German captain, the German Captain gets shot by the German lieutenant, and then the German Lieutenant, who’s been crippled and pinned under debris inside the bunker, gets burned to death by an American flame thrower. Then, in end of the story, the French girl who loved the German Lieutenant is weeping at the side of the burned-out bunker, wearing the dress that he loved her wearing. It was one of these boohoo, holy gee... it really got scary for me at times, I’d say, “Look, where is all this coming from?” You know, really!

Where is this all coming from?

CBA: [laughs] Maybe you shouldn’t look into the abyss too deeply.

Will: Yeah! [laughter] You know, right now I’m working on a horror-fantasy novel. A publisher looked at the beginning of it a while back, he loved it, but there’s no market for it right now, and I’m looking at some of this stuff I’m writing, and saying, “Where the hell is this coming from?!? I don’t want to know!”

I’ve been doing a lot of military and historical re-enactment, and we’d do public fairs. The medieval organization’s corporate treasurer said, “Will, you’d be a great executioner, you know? We want to have an executioner.” So, I’d walk around with a hood and an axe, and I said, “Hell, if we’re doing that, why don’t we do the Inquisition?” And we built a rack and other instruments, and I started doing research, and we did it like an Improv comedy torture chamber. [laughter] I’ve got to tell ya, I know where some of my stuff came from! I was raised in Catholic school in the ’50s and ’60s! The Dominicans! [laughter] You know, they taught me fear! They taught me, “God will hurt you!” So I would turn this stuff around, and play to the audience, and scare the hell out of some of these people, con-

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vinced girls in the audience that we can put them on the rack. [laughter] CBA: That’s entertainment!

Will: That was entertainment, and I’ve got to tell you, the audience scared the tar out of me sometimes! [laughter] But again, we’re talking about where is this coming from, and I’m observing the crowd, bloodthirsty and fascinated, and they want me to go further, and I won’t go! I never hurt anyone, I wouldn’t hurt anyone there, but yet, I’m thinking of the knitting women in A Tale of Two Cities, watching the blade descend!

CBA: Ah, Madame Lafarge.

Will: Yeah, and it’s very easy, doing research, you read about public executions, breaking on the wheel... if you saw Braveheart, that was hanging, drawing and quartering—which is disemboweling—I mean, all this stuff... and the crowd ate it up with a spoon.

CBA: Bread & circuses, man, bread & circuses.

Will: Yep, and here, I’m looking at this crowd, thinking back again in history and human nature, for us to judge history by our own sensitivities now, very difficult. This, again, we go back to what I said earlier in researching warfare and the German Army, the Japanese, the this, the that... there’ve got to be good men in every society, just as there are bad men in every society, and what I wanted to do... maybe I can’t really do anything about the characterization of everything, but I just didn’t want to be part of it, I wanted to write, and I wanted to write the way I felt things were, and let you be the judge. I wanted to raise questions, rather than answer them. I felt that, especially at the time I was writing was Vietnam, and I didn’t want to be contributing to the John Wayne mentality. I didn’t want us to be cowards, either, or run out on people we owed something to, but I didn’t want people thinking that war is grand, and glorious, and wonderful.

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Above: Though uncredited, Will wrote the poignant Russ Heathdrawn story, “Slave!” in Weird War Tales #5, one of the writer’s final jobs in comics. ©2000 DC Comics.

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It’s never been, only for the people who stay home and wave the flags. But for the men, whether he’s in a rice paddy, a trench, or in a charge going up against Napoleonic cannon, it’s not glorious, it’s a nightmare, and I just didn’t want to be contributing to that hypocrisy.

CBA: By the time the Pentagon Papers were released, did you become anti-war? Did you take a political stand, personally?

Will: Politically, I didn’t think we belonged there. I mean, personally, I just never did. I never participated in any demonstrations—again, part of me was that “I’m an outsider.” One time, a guy I went to grammar school with was talking to some friends on a street corner.

He said, “My brother’s over in Vietnam, he says we’re burning babies! Bobby Kennedy will get us out!” I said, “Well, what about our soldiers? Our men are dying.” And he turned to me with some comment like, “Well, you don’t got to worry about going there anyway, friend, so what have you got to say about it?” It was that kind of... “You’re 4-F and not in any danger, so what the hell do you care?” That comment just really devastated me. I was feeling alienated enough with the diabetes—I mean, diabetes back then, the treatment was far different from what it is now, and it’s still far from perfect, but back then... diabetics could only stay alive since 1921, when they discovered the use of insulin. Before 1921, being diagnosed with diabetes was a death sentence, so it’s an extremely serious disease, and not only affects you physically, but affects you mentally... the ris-

ing and lowering blood sugar. People go, “Oh, I’ve got a sugar rush, I’m going wild, I’m going crazy.” Well, in diabetes, you have the high blood sugar, the low blood sugar, and it affects your thought process, affects your mood swings. So, here, when I’m just trying to get by, to fit in, I get told suddenly, “You can’t go anyway. What does it matter to you?” You get that whack from your peers, and you remember it, obviously, you remember it.

CBA: Did you ever go up to Derby?

Will: No. I had the offer a few times, but again, it was one editor and his assistant, or a few assistants, doing... God, I forget how many books. They were doing Westerns, horror, romance, war, humor, the whole bit, and I really wasn’t interested in doing anything other than the war stuff. I worked on a Western, briefly, that I’d hoped to submit to DC, to Dick Giordano in fact, but never really got moving, mostly due to financial things in my own life. I couldn’t get published anymore. I’m not sure what really happened. In 1969, a fan of mine (who was the son of someone famous) registered for the draft, and he registered as a conscientious objector. He put my name down as an influencing factor.

CBA: In Nixon’s America and J. Edgar Hoover was alive.

Will: Yeah, so shortly after that, I got a call from the editor’s secretary, saying they were dropping the titles, and that I should send in whatever I had done on the series, and they’d pay me. I didn’t think much of it, so I went to see Joe Kubert at DC, who liked some of my work, and my work was either too good or not good enough.

Nobody seemed to be interested in buying anything from me. I found out later on that Fightin’ Army and Army War Heroes continued. I was also told there was a big backlog of stuff, and they couldn’t buy anything new. I found out years later that was untrue. I think the last time I sold anything to Charlton, George Wildman was the editor, and he took about six one-shot stories from me. I couldn’t get my name on them. Even when I incorporated my name into the title, one of the stories was called, “The Organist and the SS: A Story by Willi Franz,” my name was knocked out of it, and it was in the copy column and everything in that column should be printed, and yet it wasn’t. So, I don’t know if it’s my ego thinking this, maybe it was just clumsiness on their part.

I’d like to find out if there’s an FBI file on me, through the Freedom of Information Act. I had a fencing student who was an FBI supervisor, and years later, in the late ’70s, I joked with him about this, and I said, “All right, I bet that Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. has a folder on me.” He said, “1969? Nixon Administration? He probably does. ”So again, I don’t know, maybe my stories just weren’t selling, you know, and that’s it, I don’t know.

CBA: But “Willy Schultz” had an impact, and people remember it very fondly to this day.

Will: In 1990, I was up at a comic convention around Albany, when A-Plus Comics was going to do the Willy Schultz graphic novel—the whole thing—and I’m sitting at the table, and this dejected-looking man comes in, about my age, carrying a whole stack of my books.

He asked me if I’d autograph them. I had no problem doing it, and Sam was there, I said Sam would autograph them, too, and he just said to me, “Willy Schultz meant a lot to me when I was in the ‘Nam, man.” And I almost started crying. You never know what you do, how it’s going to affect somebody, somewhere, and just… the cynic in me almost said, “What? Are you sh*tting me? It’s only a comic book!” But yet, the look in his eyes, and there was a slight tremor in his voice. Here he apologized, because he had had a flood in his basement, and it destroyed two of the books. I wrote down the numbers, and I sent the missing issues to him. It really rattled me.

CBA: So, pretty much after your not getting work, was that the end of comics?

Will: That was it, yeah, the end of my comic career. I worked in Equitable Life as a technician, then I went to City College, decided to get myself an English degree, but ran into some serious health problems, which really knocked down my ability to study. I had a very disastrous eye operation that put me into intensive care, the defibrillation, and the oxygen, pump out your stomach, and they had to pound my chest and jolt me back to life... I took up fencing to keep my body going. Couldn’t understand anything I was doing mentally, but mechanically, I could do it, and I was very lucky in studying under a very fine coach and a very fine fencing master. Now 30 years later, COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

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Above: Will teaching sword and buckler combat. Courtesy of the writer. Photo by Bryant Carmona.

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I’m still friends with the coach. The fencing master, unfortunately, passed away a few years ago. But it’s the swordplay, the study of it, that’s kept me going, the discipline I learned from it, and went there, and again, the health... I worked for the city for a few years, in the Parks Department, in their real estate office, and just living a socalled ordinary life, I guess. I now work part-time as a special assistant at an independent living center, an advocacy organization for people with disabilities. It’s very rewarding and satisfying work.

CBA: [laughs] How would you characterize your time writing for Charlton?

Will: I enjoyed it. I miss the days of freedom with them, of the ability to just tell the editor, “I want to do a story where he gets captured.” “Okay, fine,” and they’d let me do it. Working at DC, I only did one story, it was called “Slave,” it was about slaves in an ancient Roman quarry, and one slave refused to remain a slave, and he cared for a wounded hawk, and a sadistic guard wouldn’t let him keep the hawk, and tried to kill him, and the hawk rips up the guard’s face, and the guard tries to kill the hawk, and the slave crushes the guard’s head with a sledgehammer, and the last scene is the slave is crucified.

The hawk circles and rests on the cross before flying away. The slave has found his only freedom in his own death and the flight of the hawk he had saved.

CBA: Who illustrated that? Was it Russ Heath?

Will: Yeah, Russ Heath.

CBA: Oh, yeah, I do remember that story! [Weird War Tales #5] Will: And again, my name wasn’t put on it, even though Joe Kubert assured me, “Oh, your name, you want it on there? Fine.” “Where’s the byline?” What bothered me with some of DC’s attitudes was that every story sounded the same, just like with Marvel, every story has the same pitch, the same types of villains, the same types of girlfriends, the same cute phrases... “Oh, how’re you doing, pretty girl?”

It’s all cliched, and it seemed to be very much under the control of just a few people who... “You will do this formula!” Where that is one thing I didn’t get from Dick Giordano. Dick Giordano, again, he took a risk... I was a kid! I hadn’t been published, the man took a tremendous chance with me, and I’m grateful to him for it. He allowed a whole new world to be opened up to me. Same with Sam! I have nothing but good thoughts for both of them, really.

CBA Interview

Toasting Absent Heroes Alan Moore discusses the Charlton-Watchmen Connection Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson To admit I felt decidedly out of place calling one of comics’ best writers to discuss—ugh! of all topics!—comic book characters is a drastic understatement, but the sheer coolness of having a chat with Mr. Alan Moore eased the prospect considerably. The self-professed anarchist is plainly a nice guy and we spent more time talking about a real-life character—Steve Ditko—than, say, the relationship between Judomaster and Tiger. Alan currently rules the marketplace with his critically-successful and popular America’s Best Comics line, his and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell collection is flying off bookstore shelves, and life seems pretty good for the British writer. And, yes, good reader, there really is a connection with the wildly-popular scribe and Charlton Comics. This interview took place via phone on June 16, 2000. (Special thanks to JBK for the speedy transcription. )

Below: T-Shirt design by Dave Gibbons adapted from DC’s Who’s Who #5 featuring the cast of Watchmen. ©2000 DC Comics.

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Comic Book Artist: Did you read Charlton comics as a kid?

Alan Moore: Yes, I did. It was kind of pecking order situation, with the distribution of all American comics being very spotty in England. I believe they were originally brought over as ballast on ships, which meant there’d be sometimes a whole month of a particular comic, or even a whole lot of comics that I just missed. So, consequently, I’d buy my favorites early in the month, and then a little later, I’d probably buy my second favorites [laughter]... and by the end of the month, I’d be down to Casper, the Friendly Ghost just to keep my comic habit fulfilled. Somewhere along the way there, I’d see the Archie/MLJ/Mighty super-hero comics, the Tower comics that were around at the time....

CBA: Was Charlton at the bottom of the list for you?

Alan: They’d vary, it would depend. Charlton would be at some points low on the list, but then, there was a wonderful period which I later realized was when Dick Giordano was having a great deal of creative say in the Charlton books, when they became very high on the list. There’s still one of the books, Charlton Premiere— sort of a Showcase title—and I remember in the second or third issue of that, there was this wonderful thing called “Children of Doom” by Pat Boyette, who died recently. It was an incredibly sort of progressive piece of storytelling. He was obviously, I’d imagine, looking at artists like Steranko that were coming up and messing around with the form and sort of experimenting. Pat decided to pitch his own hat into the ring, apparently.

Prior to that golden period when Dick was editor, I very much enjoyed the Steve Ditko stuff—Captain Atom and the Charlton monster books—so the main rea-

son that I liked Charlton would’ve been probably Steve Ditko, originally. Not to say that there weren’t other great artists and writers, but the ace of it all was, Ditko was the only one that I really noticed, until that period when Dick took over.

I remember there was a very short-lived strip that I think was probably based on Harlan Ellison’s “Repent, Harlequin! Said the TickTock Man” that was about a kind of futuristic jester character drawn

by Jim Aparo. He might’ve even been called the Harlequin or something like that, but I remember it was drawn by Jim Aparo, it lasted for a couple of episodes, probably written by Steve Skeates or somebody.

There were some very good little strips, and then of course, there was that big Charlton revamp where we got the new Blue Beetle, the new Captain Atom, and so forth, which was a shot in the arm. All of these things contributed in pushing Charlton higher up my league title of which comics to buy first. They never quite ousted Marvel or DC, but during that golden period, Charlton was up there with the best of them.

CBA: Do you recall The Question?

Alan: Yes, I do. That was another very interesting character, and it was almost a pure Steve Ditko character, in that it was odd-looking.

“The Question” didn’t look like any other super-hero on the market, and it also seemed to be a kind of mainstream comics version of Steve Ditko’s far more radical “Mr. A,” from witzend. I remember at the time—this would’ve been when I was just starting to get involved in British comics fandom—there was a British fanzine that was published over here by a gentleman called Stan Nichols (who has since gone to write a number of fantasy books). In Stan’s fanzine, Stardock, there was an article called “Propaganda, or Why the Blue Beetle Voted for George Wallace.” [laughter] This was the late-’60s, and British comics fandom had quite a strong hippie element. Despite the fact that Steve Ditko was obviously a hero to the hippies with his psychedelic “Dr. Strange” work and for the teen angst of SpiderMan, Ditko’s politics were obviously very different from those fans.

His views were apparent through his portrayals of Mr. A and the protesters or beatniks that occasionally surfaced in his other work. I think this article was the first to actually point out that, yes, Steve Ditko did have a very right-wing agenda (which of course, he’s completely entitled to), but at the time, it was quite interesting, and that probably led to me portraying [Watchmen character] Rorschach as an extremely right-wing character.

CBA: When you read some of Ditko’s diatribes in “The Question” and in some issues of Blue Beetle, did you read it with bemusement or disgust?

Alan: Well...

CBA: A mix of both?

Alan: Well, no. I can look at Salvador Dali’s work and marvel at it, despite the fact that I believe that Dali was probably a completely disgusting human being [laughter] and borderline fascist, but that doesn’t detract from the genius of his artwork. With Steve Ditko, I at least felt that though Steve Ditko’s political agenda was very different to mine, Steve Ditko had a political agenda, and that in some ways set him above most of his contemporaries. During the ’60s, I learned pretty quickly about the sources of Steve Ditko’s ideas, and I realized very early on that he was very fond of the writing of Ayn Rand.

CBA: Did you explore her philosophy?

Alan: I had to look at The Fountainhead. I have to say I found Ayn Rand’s philosophy laughable. It was a “white supremacist dreams of the master race,” burnt in an early-20th century form. Her ideas didCOMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

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n’t really appeal to me, but they seemed to be the kind of ideas that people would espouse, people who might secretly believe themselves to be part of the elite, and not part of the excluded majority. I would basically disagree with all of Ditko’s ideas, but he has to be given credit for expressing these political ideas. I believe some feminists regard Dave Sim in much the same light; they might disagree with everything he says, but at least there is some sort of sexual-political debate going on there. So I’ve got respect for Ditko.

A few years ago, I was in a local rock band called “The Emperors of Ice Cream, ”and one of our numbers that always went down very well live, was a thing called, “Mr. A.” The beat and the tune of it were completely stolen from “Sister Ray” by the Velvet Underground, but the lyrics were all about Steve Ditko.

CBA: “Right/wrong, black/white”? [laughter] Alan: One of the verses was, “He takes a card and shades one-half of it in dark, so he can demonstrate to you just what he means/He says, ‘There’s wrong and there’s right, there’s black and there’s white, and there is nothing, nothing in-between.’ That’s what Mr. A says.” [laughter] And then we’d go into the chorus. Yeah, it was a Velvet Underground thrash, but with lyrics about Steve Ditko, which were very sympathetic, because at that time, I’d heard that Steve Ditko was pretty much harmless, living at the YMCA or something like that.

This was, I think, during Spider-Man’s anniversary year, and I thought that was criminal.

Steve Ditko is completely at the other end of the political spectrum from me. I wouldn’t say that I was far left in terms of Communism, but I am an anarchist, which is 180° away from Steve Ditko’s position. But I have a great deal of respect for the man, and certainly respect for his artwork, and the fact that there’s something about his uncompromising attitude that I have a great deal of sympathy with. It’s just that the things I wouldn’t compromise about or that he wouldn’t compromise about are probably very different.

Even if they have morals you don’t agree with, a person with strong moral code is a person who has a big advantage in today’s world.

CBA: You wrote in the introduction to the Watchmen Graphitti special edition that you reached a point doing Watchmen, when you were able to purge yourself of the nostalgia for super-hero characters, in general, and your interest in real human beings came to fore.

Do you think that Steve Ditko’s work retains substance compared to most anything else that was produced at the time with Charlton?

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Alan: I wouldn’t want to claim there was any sort of deep or great worthy philosophy in those Charlton strips; it was just that I always have a fondness for Ditko because of his line—irrespective of what he was drawing—and Steve Ditko didn’t always draw super-heroes. My favorite Steve Ditko work was the stuff he did for Warren, “Collector’s Edition.” He was using wash and grey tones, and that was marvelous. But yeah, Steve Ditko, whatever he was drawing, if it was a Gorgo monster strip, or some sort of Atlas super-hero, it was all terrific stuff.

CBA: I always had a suspicion there was an element of the MLJ characters—The Hangman, The Shield, etc. —within Watchmen, and upon recently reading your intro to the Graffitti Watchmen special edition, I read that my inkling was indeed true. You were exposed to the MLJ characters, such as The Mighty Crusaders, and so on?

Alan: Right. That was the initial idea of Watchmen—and this is nothing like what Watchmen turned out to be—was it was very simple: Wouldn’t it be nice if I had an entire line, a universe, a continuity, a world full of super-heroes—preferably from some line that has been discontinued and no longer publishing—whom I could then just treat in a different way. You have to remember this was very soon after I’d done some similar stuff, if you like, with Marvelman, where I’d used a pre-existing character, and applied a grimmer, perhaps more realistic kind of world view to that character and the milieu he existed in. So I’d just started thinking about using the MLJ characters—the Archie super-heroes—just because they weren’t being published at that time, and for all I knew, they might’ve been up for grabs. The initial concept would’ve had the 1960s-‘70s rather lame version of the Shield being found dead in the harbor, and then you’d probably have various other characters, including Jack Kirby’s Private Strong, being drafted back in, and a murder mystery unfolding. I suppose I was just thinking, “That’d be a good way to start a comic book: have a famous super-hero found dead.” As the mystery unraveled, we would be lead deeper and deeper into the real heart of this superhero’s world, and show a reality that was very different to the general public image of the super-hero. So, that was the idea.

When Dick Giordano had acquired the Charlton line, Dave Gibbons and I were talking about doing something together. We had worked together on a couple of stories for 2000 A. D., which we had a great deal of fun with, and we wanted to work on something for DC. (We were amongst that first wave of British expatriates, after Brian Bolland, Kevin O’Neil, and I was the first writer, and we wanted

Above: Final group shot by Dave Gibbons, from the signature plate for the French limited edition portfolio. Courtesy of the artist. ©2000 DC Comics.

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Above: Cover image—an elaboration of the cover from Watchmen #1— from the Watchmen portfolio. Art by Dave Gibbons, ©2000 DC Comics.

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to work together. ) One of the first ideas was that perhaps we should do a Challengers of the Unknown mini-series, and somewhere I’ve got a rough penciled cover for a Martian Manhunter mini-series, but I think it was the usual thing: Other people were developing projects regarding those characters, so DC didn’t want us to use them. So, at this point, I came up with this idea regarding the MLJ/Archie characters, and it was the sort of idea that could be applied to any pre-existing group of super-heroes. If it had been the Tower characters—the T. H. U. N. D. E. R. Agents—I could’ve done the same thing. The story was about super-heroes, and it didn’t matter which super-heroes it was about, as long as the characters had some kind of emotional resonance, that people would recognize them, so it would have the shock and surprise value when you saw what the reality of these characters was.

So, Dick had purchased the Charlton characters for DC, and he was looking for some way to use them, and Dave and I put forth this proposal which originally was designed around a number of the Charlton characters. I forget how much of the idea was in place then, but I think that it would start with a murder, and I pretty well knew who would be guilty of the murder, and I’ve got an idea of the motive, and the basic bare-bones of the plot—all of which actually ended up being about the least important thing about Watchmen. The most powerful elements in the the final book was more the storytelling and all the stuff in-between, bits of the plot. When we were just planning to do an extreme and unusual super-hero book, we thought the Charlton characters would provide us with a great line-up that had a lot of emotional nostalgia, with associations and resonance for the readership. So, that was why we put forward this proposal for doing this new take on the Charlton characters.

CBA: So you mailed this proposal in to Dick?

Alan: Something like that, and I forget the details—it was such a long time ago—but I remember that at some point, we heard from Dick that yes, he liked the proposal, but he didn’t really want to use the Charlton characters, because the proposal would’ve left a lot of them in bad shape, and DC couldn’t have really used them again after what we were going to do to them without detracting from the power of what it was that we were planning.

If we had used the Charlton characters in Watchmen, after #12, even though the Captain Atom character would’ve still been alive, DC couldn’t really have done a comic book about that character without taking away from what became Watchmen. So, at first, I didn’t think we could do the book with simply characters that were made-up, because I thought that would lose all of the emotional resonance those characters had for the reader, which I thought was an important part of the book. Eventually, I realized that if I wrote the substitute characters well enough, so that they seemed familiar in certain ways, certain aspects of them brought back a kind of generic super-hero resonance or familiarity to the reader, then it might work.

So, we started to reshape the concept—using the Charlton characters as the jumping-off point, because those were the ones we submitted to Dick—and that’s what the plot involved. We started to mutate the characters, and I began to realize the changes allowed me so much more freedom. The only idea of Captain Atom as a nuclear super-hero—that had the shadow of the atom bomb hung around him—had been part of the original proposal, but with Dr. Manhattan, by making him kind of a quantum super-hero, it took it into a whole new dimension, it wasn’t just the shadow of the nuclear threat around him. The things that we could do with Dr. Manhattan’s consciousness and the way he saw time wouldn’t have been appropriate for Captain Atom. So, it was the best decision, though it just took me a while to realize that.

CBA: As you were writing the series itself, suddenly by #4, you realized you had more freedom?

Alan: Oh, before #1, once I started actually writing it, I thought, “Actually, this is sort of cool!” By the time I was writing the first issue, I was sold on the idea. It was in preparation when I had my doubts. But once we decided on that course of action, and once there’d been some feedback between me and Dave, and I was starting to see Dave’s sketches and ideas, yeah, by the time I started writing #1, I’d already gotten the characters and they seemed solid and strong in my head. I was able to sort of work that into the script, and it was with the very first page of #3 when I’d realized we’d actually gotten more than we bargained for. I suddenly thought, “Hey, I can do something here where I’ve got this radiation sign being screwed on the wall on the other side of the street, which will underline the kind of nuclear threat; and I can have this newspaper guy just ranting, the way that people on street corners with a lot of spare time sometimes do; and I can have the narrative from this pirate comic that the kid’s reading; and I can have them all bouncing off each other; and I can get this really weird thing going where things that are mentioned in the pirate story seem to relate to images in the panel, or to what the newsman is saying...” And that’s when Watchmen took off; that’s when I realized that there was something more important going on than just a darker take on the super-hero, which after all, I’d done before with Marvelman.

CBA: Was one element in the genesis of Watchmen the appearance of the Justice League in Swamp Thing, where the reader never saw the super-heroes’ faces, they never called each other by names, with that very ominous, sinister feeling?

Alan: Like I said, Marvelman—later Miracleman—had been my first attempt to restructure the superhero, and to do something that was very adult and quite strong in places. Although they admired Marvelman, and it was obvious I could do a good super-hero-type story, when DC first brought me over, I think the reason they gave me Swamp Thing was probably because they might have been a little reticent to actually turn me loose upon one of their traditional characters, [laughter] for fear it might end up like Marvelman, with strong language and childbirth all over the place. [laughter] CBA: The horror! [laughs] Alan: DC felt that, with Swamp Thing, I would work out fine, because it was a horror strip anyway with a more adult aura around it. When I was doing Swamp Thing, it occurred to me that, “Well, actually Swamp Thing exists in the same universe with all these other DC characters, so I can let that be a limitation, or something I always steered clear of, or I could just tackle it full-on, and see if I can stick a big, colorful super-hero group like the Justice League into Swamp Thing, and make it work without disturbing the COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

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Gibbons (sorta) Comments Ye ed contacted Dave Gibbons back in March to see if I could get some observations from him about the Charlton/Watchmen connection. I was also wondering if the artist had any preliminary sketches drawn before use of the Charlton characters was axed by the publisher. As a matter of fact, Dave tells me, the very day he receives Alan’s initial proposal in the post casting the Action Heroes, he also gets a phone call from the writer telling Dave that DC has nixed using Blue Beetle, Peacemaker, etc., and Moore & Gibbons will create entirely new characters. The rest is, well, you know….

But, Dave tells me, he did pencil and ink a cover featuring the original Charlton characters (plus Superman) for the planned (later aborted) Comics Cavalcade Weekly comic. Yow! Immediately, Dave kindly downloads the image to me (shown at right). Thanks, mate!

At the last minute before presstime, I e-mail Dave and ask if he has any comments on the Action Hero Line, because as he is the co-creator of Watchmen, I would love to have his recollections complement Alan’s interview. Here’s what Dave had to say: “Alan and I answered some questions just this week for a promo video for [the upcoming 15th anniversary of] Watchmen and I really had nothing to contribute regarding the Charlton characters since I never even visualised them in the story. I was aware of them as a kid but, apart from Ditko’s Captain Atom, was never much interested.

“All I did observe was that, since the Charlton heroes were essentially archetypes, they pointed out the categories of archetypes we could focus on.

“I don’t remember even looking at the Charlton characters when designing Watchmen.

“I’d have been hard-pressed to say anything of interest on the Charlton connection and would rather not be in on it just for the sake of being in on it.

“As I said, this area is really Alan’s to comment on.”

Thanks, Dave, for your gracious help!

—JBC atmosphere of the title.” So, right, we don’t show their faces very much because I wanted the readers to think, “I know who that is!” [laughter] We weren’t letting them use their names, just stripping all the familiar trappings away, and our intention was to get the readers to look at super-heroes in a different way. I was quite pleased with how that went, and it showed me, yeah, I could take established super-heroes and write them in a way that would not violate their essential character, and yet which would give them a kind of freshness. But, in terms of Watchmen, where the characters are entirely self-created, it owed more to Marvelman than to that specific issue of Swamp Thing.

CBA: Just to map this out: The prototype for Rorshach was The Question, right?

Alan: The Question was Rorschach, yep. Dr. Manhattan and Captain Atom were obviously equivalent. Nite-Owl and the new Blue Beetle—well, the Ted Kord Blue Beetle—were equivalent. Because there was a pre-existing, original Blue Beetle in the Charlton cosmology, I thought it might be nice to have an original Nite-Owl. I can’t really say that Nightshade was a big inspiration. I never thought she was a particularly strong or interesting female character. The Silk Spectre was just a female character because I needed to have a heroine in there. Since we weren’t doing the Charlton characters anymore, there was no reason why I should stick with Nightshade, I could take a different sort of super-heroine, something a bit like the Phantom Lady, the Black Canary, generally my favorite sort of costume heroines anyway. The Silk Spectre, in that she’s the girl of the group, sort of was the equivalent of Nightshade, but really, there’s August 2000

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

not much connection beyond that. The Comedian was The Peacemaker, we had a greater degree of freedom, and we decided to make him slightly right-wing, patriotic, and we mixed in a little bit of Nick Fury into The Peacemaker make-up, and probably a bit of the standard Captain America patriotic hero-type. So, yeah, these characters started out like that, to fill gaps in the story that had been left by the Charlton heroes, but we didn’t have to strictly stick to that Charlton formula. In some places, we stuck to it more closely, and in some places, we didn’t.

Adrian Veidt was Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt; I always quite liked Pete Morisi’s Thunderbolt strip… there was something about the art style, almost bordering on kind of Alex Toth style, though it was never as good as Toth, but it sometimes had a pleasing sensibility and a nice design sense about it that I was quite taken by. And I quite like the idea of this character using the full 100% of his brain and sort of having complete physical and mental control. Adrian Veidt did grow directly out of the Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt character.

CBA: When I was a kid, I grew up in a rather left-wing environment, and I remember seeing The Peacemaker with the tag-line “He loves peace so much he’s willing to fight for it.” I thought, “Ugh. Too reactionary for me,” and I passed it by.

Above: Dave Gibbon’s cover art for the unrealized DC comic, Comics Cavalcade Weekly, featuring the British artist’s take on Charlton’s Action Hero Line (plus Superman!). Courtesy of the artist. ©2000 DC Comics.

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Above: Chilling page from Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell’s From Hell, currently available in collected trade paperback form from Top Shelf. ©2000 Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell.

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Alan: When I first read that, I thought, “Well, that’s stupid!” [laughter] I was only about 10 or so, and I hadn’t really grown up in a left-wing family—my family voted labor, and that was back when Labor was a socialist party—but it was a working-class family, probably not a very well-educated one, and so their political opinions didn’t run very deep, but even so, yeah, the idea that “He loves peace so much he’s willing to fight for it,” [laughter] I could see the holes in that one straightaway.

CBA: Keith Giffen modified the tag line to read “He loves peace so much he’s willing to kill for it.” [laughs] Alan: Bomb, murder, assassinate! Because we’re not doing The Peacemaker or The Question, we could be much more extreme with all these characters. We probably couldn’t have had The Question living in a completely filthy slum room and being mentally disturbed, who had a personal odor problem, and be a little guy who was ugly—you would’ve had to have had Vic Sage, successful TV commentator.

I noticed, when I was a teenager, that Ditko had got some fixation about the letter K, probably because it occurs in his own name.

It’s sort of “Kafka,” and “Ditko,” and there seemed to be a lot of Ditko characters with prominent Ks... Ted Kord… Ditko seemed very fond of that sort of sound, so in some half-assed way, that observation influenced me in giving Rorschach the name Walter Kovacs.

With our Peacemaker character, Dave and I were saying, “This is a guy who’s a comedian,” and I believe I took the name from Graham Greene’s book, The Comedians. At that point, I’d done quite a bit of research upon various kind of CIA and intelligence community dirty tricks, so Dave and I saw him as a kind of Gordon Liddy character, only a much bigger, tougher guy. [laughter] CBA: [laughs] Gordon Liddy as a “bigger, tougher guy”? [laughter] Alan: Sure, Gordon Liddy is a tough guy, but he’s not that huge and imposing physically. But if Liddy had comic book muscles… and with Liddy espousing all that Nietchze philosophy, and the bullocks of holding his hand in a candle flame and not feeling the pain, even though it’s searing. So yeah, bits of Liddy worked into The Comedian’s make-up, those sort of barking-mad, right-wing adventurists.

CBA: Are you ever going to deal with other people’s characters again?

Alan: I don’t really want to, to tell the truth. Mind you, I might change me mind, you know.

CBA: You’re writing super-hero comics again.

Alan: My super-hero comics are very different, I think. After I finished doing Watchmen, I said that I had gotten a bit tired of superheroes, and I didn’t have the same nostalgic interest in them, and that’s still very true to a certain degree. Even if I was actually writing for DC Comics again (and I often read Superman), I haven’t got any interest in Superman now. I’d gotten interested in the character when I wrote it, but it wouldn’t work for me now—the characters are different, the whole world is different. [laughs] CBA: But you were able to purge yourself pretty quick, right? You didn’t write that many, maybe four or five Superman stories?

Alan: And that was enough. Those were ones I wanted to write, but since then, most characters have changed so much that they no longer feel to me like the characters I knew. So, I wouldn’t have that kind of nostalgic interest in those sort of characters anymore. At the time, I was also saying I didn’t feel that if there was some strong political message I wanted to get over, probably super-hero comics were not the best place to do it. If I wanted to do stuff about the environment, that there didn’t need to be a swamp monster there, for instance. When I did Brought to Light, about the CIA activities in World War II, that story would not have been greatly enhanced by a guy with his underwear outside his trousers, you know. And also, there did seem to be a rash of quite heavy, frankly depressing and overtly pretentious super-hero comics that came out in the wake of Watchmen, and I felt to some degree responsible for bringing in a fairly morbid Dark Age. Perhaps I over-burdened the super-hero, made it carry a lot more meaning than the form was ever designed for. So, for a while, I went off to do stuff that was very non-superhero, and going into other areas I was interested in.

The super-heroes I’m doing now are not carrying strong political messages, and that’s intentional. They’re entertainment, and I think there are very few genres actually as entertaining as the super-hero genre. And entertainment can be emotionally affecting and intelligent, but I don’t really want to lecture in the same away I did when I was younger. I’m not trying to break or transcend the boundaries of mainstream comics, because mainstream comics is in pieces, you know?

CBA: Well, you’re about the only one left standing, I would think. [laughs] Alan: There’s no point in trying to transcend the boundaries of something that’s already shattered, you know? [laughter] The thing to try and do is to surely try and come up with a strong form of mainstream comics, with some occasionally transcendent elements, but not, “Let’s smash the envelope!” Perhaps I have more of a constructive approach than deconstructive.

CBA: Is your current work on America’s Best Comics, in the wake of that “morbid Dark Age” you mentioned, a reaction to Watchmen?

Alan: It’s not so much of a reaction to Watchmen because I’ve got the greatest respect for that book—it was a great piece of work—and Dave and I did a good job there, and I’m proud of it.

CBA: It’s still in print, right?

Alan: Oh, yeah, and there’s going to be a great big 15th anniversary edition coming out next year. [laughter] I don’t know why 15th.

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In terms of marriages, I mean, that’s like your paper-maché anniversary or something.

There is going to be sort of a big souvenir edition, and I’ve got Mr. Gibbons coming up here to little old Northampton early next week, and we’re going to do some sort of video, because they can’t get me to leave Northampton to appear at conventions, and they’re gonna see if I actually do show up on film. [laughter] We will try and film Dave and I together.

Watchmen is a work that I’ve still got a great deal of fondness for, and it was quite ground-breaking, there was a range of techniques that Dave and I developed specifically for the book, but by the time I finished Watchmen, they already felt like a cliché to me. You know what I mean? I didn’t want my next work to have those same storytelling techniques, so that’s why Big Numbers, Lost Girls, and From Hell, have no captions, and no contrived, clever scene-changes. It’s just hard cuts, which felt to me like a more natural way of doing it. I mean, I love the convolution of Watchmen—it is a lovely Swiss watch piece, a mechanism, you know?

CBA: Wasn’t it exhausting to write?

Alan: Yes, absolutely exhausting. To do something with that level of complexity—and where the complexity’s on the surface—I thought, “Well, I never want to do this again.” I have done things that are as complex; From Hell, in its own way, is as complex as Watchmen, but the complexities of From Hell are more in the narrative. It’s not as flashy, and I didn’t want to ever have to do anything as flashy as Watchmen again. I think that the other project I did during the same time, The Killing Joke, suffered. Brian’s artwork is beautiful, but it’s probably one of my least favorite works in terms of my writing. It was too close to the storytelling techniques of Watchmen, and if I’d done it two years earlier or later—when I wasn’t so much under the spell of what we were doing in Watchmen—it would’ve probably been a different and, perhaps, a better book, at least in the writing.

The ABC stuff at the moment is not a denial of Watchmen, it’s just a recognition that, hey, Watchmen was 1986, that was almost 15 years ago, and today’s a completely different time. With ABC, I want to do stories with a sense of exhilaration about them, a kind of freshness and effervescence, a feeling that the people doing them are loving it.

CBA: Fun! Alan: Exactly, and I think that shows. I’m not sure how it shows, but enthusiasm always makes the difference. The reason why Watchmen was good was because Dave

and I were loving it, doing stuff we’d never done before, and it was really exciting. We were talking to each other, and were charged up, and it’s the same for most of these ABC strips. In that sense, they’re very similar to Watchmen, even though they look different and read different. They’re very similar in that the level of commitment given to them and the amount of fun we’re having with them.

CBA: You’re saying the ABC comics are primarily entertainment for the sake of entertainment. Can you see returning to doing work of more substance?

Alan: Oh, yeah! The thing is, comics is not all I do. I wrote a novel a couple of years ago, and when I’ve got the time, I’m going to do another one. I’ve got two or three CDs out now of spoken-word performances, which are full of substance, with no superheroes. In terms of comic work, at the moment we’re finishing up Lost Girls, which I believe is a work of substance—it’s a pornography, [laughter] but it’s my kind and Melinda’s kind of pornography, and I think it has meaning, social weight, and political value.

CBA: So you can have your cake and eat it, too!

Alan: Oh, absolutely! [laughter] Yeah, and with that still going on, another CD, I’ve just been in the studio doing the final mix on a CD that I think Dave Severin will be bringing out later in the year, the guy who used to be in Siouxie and the Banshees.

CBA: Y’know, readers don’t call your books “superhero books”; they call them “The Alan Moore books.” [laughs] That’s pretty cool.

Alan: The Alan Moore books, yes, I’m happy with that. You know, I’m hoping in the future we’re going to be able to do the stranger stuff. I’d like to do westerns and all these old genres they used have in comics and we suddenly decided to get rid of for some reason. I remember fondly when there used to be war comics and western comics and teenage comics and friendly ghost comics and things like that. Or Herbie—Herbie was one of my alltime passions when I was growing up, and you couldn’t have a character like that in comics these days. He’s too eccentric, it’s too original! So, that part of Jack B. Quick is kind of trying to fill the hole that Herbie has left in the comics industry.

I suppose ABC comics is sort of an attempt to build an ark, where all of my favorite concepts, things that I think should be included in comics, you know, can maybe survive the deluge.

Dick Giordano

tive, a better quality of metal for high-definition reproduction, instead of lead plates. It basically amounted to an overall cultural change to improve things at Charlton, and you have to tell everybody to do it right, or they won’t get paid. In the case of the engravers, a separate company, you could reject inferior work and tell them to eat the cost and do it right. We could’ve done this—said “No, ”—because we gave them an amount of money for the work they did each week, and they paid their own salaries.

So, that was possible to do, but nobody thought it was important enough to do.

Charlton was one of the last companies that I know of that was using hot type—they made the type out of hot metal. Later, other people assembled it by hand, backwards and upside down! [laughter] No wonder there were mistakes made!

CBA: I talked to Ed Konick (Charlton business manager in the mid-’50s to the end in 1992), and he said that in the beginning, the strength of Charlton was the all-in-one shop, and in the end, that was the thing that brought it down, because they didn’t innovate their technology, and keep up with the industry.

Dick: True! But it didn’t have to be that way. They didn’t feel they had to win. They just didn’t have the desire.

CBA: They just withered on the vine.

Dick: John Santangelo, Jr. took over Charlton at one point, and he probably thought, “This is a nice business. I’m already a millionaire,” and the status quo was maintained. But if he had a passion for what he was doing—which was certainly true of his father. If they had made the commitment early on, when they were halfway there, Charlton would probably still be in the publishing industry today.

continued from pg. 51

the word around enough to attract talented writers so that there’s a possibility of every story being high quality, not the one in five which was superior by accident. So, they never realized that potential, and really, that was my reason for wanting to get out of there. I really enjoyed what I did for the time I was there, I really enjoyed not having any oversight, and having people leaving me alone. The trade-off was that nobody was paying attention to the stuff after it left my office. No matter how much time and effort I devoted to the material, it was treated like ten pounds of salami… which was the case in all areas of Charlton’s business. So much was treated like ten pounds of salami.

The only reason they had an edge at Charlton was that they were producing the lyric magazines on green paper with black ink, or something like that, the whole middle section of the lyrics would be on some sort of cheap colored paper, basically the color was there to prevent show-through, because if it was white paper, you’d be able to see through it! [laughter] But they never did say to themselves, “We’re publishers, hadn’t we ought to look like publishers?” They weren’t doing that. The culture of these people was to do the work, but only as much as they were asked to do, and no more. Limited effort, and we’ll muddle through somehow. [laughter] CBA: Did you have any dreams? Would you have liked to helm a superior line?

Dick: For Charlton? Oh, yeah. The trade-off for the indifferent culture was that I had a free hand, and if they said, “We’re making a commitment, we want to publish good comic books; come up with a proposal on what we could do, and how much it would cost, as far as you can figure,” part of my thinking would be, give the engravers incenAugust 2000

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Left: Kevin Nowlan (sigh) exquisitely renders The Cooke Family’s very favorite ABC strip, “Jack B. Quick,” in Tomorrow Stories.

More, Moore—more!!! ©2000 Alan Moore & Kevin Nowlan.

Left: Pat Bastienne sent me the most recent photo of Dick she could find—off his B.J.’s Warehouse ID! Thanks, Pat! But couldja send Mr. G’s AmeEx card next time, hmmm?

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Deep Background

Project: Blockbuster Bob Greenberger reveals DC’s Charlton Weekly Project

by Robert Greenberger Editor’s note: Courtesy of a tip shared by Chris Irving, I first discover evidence that DC once planned a weekly tabloid featuring the Charlton Action Hero characters when my talk with Frank McLaughlin reveals he drew a Judomaster story for the company around 1985. It was slated for use in something called Blockbuster, a proposed weekly that evidently was abandoned. That same day, I receive Ken Bruzenak’s sketchbooks (to illustrate his interview in CBA #8) and, lo! I find logo designs by Ken for the same aborted book. The mystery widens as Dave Gibbons then e-mails me a cover to the unrealized (and hitherto unknown) Comics Cavalcade Weekly featuring the Charlton characters and Superman—and just what the hell is Comics Cavalcade Weekly?! I’m losing sleep pondering this conundrum, and I hear that Pete Morisi possesses a T-bolt story still unpubbed. In desperation, I call Mike Gold (former DC staffer who contributes a sidebar here on the name “Blockbuster”) but he knows little and suggests I call Joey Cavalieri at DC. “Nope, can’t help ya, ”Joey sez, “try Robert Greenberger.” Thank heavens, Robert is an electronic correspondent and, jackpot! Robert solves for us the mystery of Project: Blockbuster. —JBC

Background image: Promotional painting for DC Comics, heralding the acquisition of Charlton’s Action Hero Line. ©2000 DC Comics.

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Paul Levitz made a gift of the Charlton heroes to then-Executive Editor Dick Giordano in 1983. Dick was told they included Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, The Question, Sarge Steel, Peacemaker, Peter Cannon—Thunderbolt, and Nightshade. None of the other features such as the Fightin’ Five or the one-off characters such as Denny O’Neil’s Wander were included. That December, when I interviewed to join staff, Dick spoke with delight of how he was developing the heroes into something special: America’s first weekly comic book.

Little did I realize that with some time on my hands, as both Crisis on Infinite Earths and Who’s Who slowly geared up, that Dick would be asking for my help. Truth be told, the original project files are long gone and we’re dealing with fuzzy memories at best so this recreation is the best I can do.

Dick needed my assistance in keeping this and some of his other editorial projects (such as The Dark Knight Returns and DC Challenge) moving along. He outlined plans to feature all the Charlton heroes in two- to four-page stories plus some sort of Superman tale to identify the book as clearly set at DC. It would be a 32-page newsstand comic and hopefully help change people’s reading habits.

Along the way, Marv Wolfman asked Dick how the Charlton heroes should be handled in Crisis and it was agreed that they’d be on their own world and wind up on the one remaining DC-Earth when all was over. The heroes would be immediately integrated into the continuity, included in the Who’s Who, etc. Any writer who hoped to guest star them in their own titles were told they were not to be seen until Crisis.

Dick had already made numerous assignments as he started to get a feel for what he wanted the book to be like. Blue Beetle, the light-hearted crime fighter, was given to Steve Englehart, David Ross, and (oddly) Alex Niño. One of the most interesting elements Steve introduced was having the Beetle married, his wife supportive of Ted Kord’s career. (Imagine an updated Elongated Man/Sue Dibny relationship. ) Peacemaker went to Keith Giffen and Gary Martin. Keith would write for the first time, and pencil the serial. It was Keith who decided that Christopher Smith heard a voice from the helmet,

adding a psychological twist to the proceedings. Later on, Paul Kupperberg played off the notion as the spirit of his father speaking to him in the Tod Smith-drawn mini-series.

Dick’s old pals Pete Morisi and Frank McLaughlin were invited back and asked to start new serials with their creations, Peter Cannon and Judomaster respectively. Both would do everything: Write, pencil, and ink.

I was left to find talent for Captain Atom, The Question, and Sarge Steel. Fortunately, we had a number of freelancers with fond memories of the heroes so picking people was none too difficult. Of course, I was still meeting people and developing my own editorial tastes, so I was open to everything and everyone.

Such a novice approach may have helped doom the project.

After all, Dick had some notion what he wanted the book to be but I don’t recall getting an in-depth look at that notion. I was pretty much left to my own devices, with Dick acting as cheerleader/consultant. In retrospect, launching something as new and different as a weekly comic should have been given to an experienced editor—neither me nor Dick, to be honest—one who could have devoted a lot more time to it, much as Karen Berger’s schedule was such that she could focus on New Talent Showcase and developing people for DC’s use.

Mike Barr volunteered to write “The Question,” which got assigned to New Talent Showcase alumnus Stan Woch to pencil and Rick Magyar to ink. Andy Helfer, still a Special Projects editor at the time, had been talking with Dick about working together on something so they cobbled together the idea of producing Sarge Steel.

Dick didn’t have the time to pencil his old feature but knew he could fit in inking. Trevor VonEeden, just walking off Thriller, got tabbed for that gig.

“Captain Atom” was a little tougher to figure out. He was a super-hero, similar to Firestorm but in need of an experienced hand. I turned to Paul Kupperberg, who clearly knew how to write superheroes and could try something different. I finally settled on a newcomer named Paul Chadwick to pencil. If I have the chronology right, he had just done some Dazzler work at Marvel.

The “Superman” feature, it was decided, would be reprints of the then-current newspaper strip which featured Superman and other heroes, as produced by Marty Pasko, George Tuska, and Vince Colletta. It had not been previously collected except as a single volume from Tor Books, so would be fresh, in color, and hopefully a must-have for comics fans. We formatted it so you would get a week, complete with Sunday strip, in two pages.

Dick gave everything the green light and we got started. Some, such as Giffen and Morisi, produced in very steady batches so their chapters started filling the cabinets. Others were tougher to get into the groove of producing weekly storytelling. We got a few chapters done for “Captain Atom” but Paul Chadwick was not fast. In fact, Denys Cowan came in and started penciling the feature before we got too far. Thankfully, Chadwick still talks to me these days.

Dick kept calling it Blockbuster, a named bandied about for some time but never used for a comic. Looking further back into DC’s history, I chose to revive Comics Cavalcade (All-American’s answer to DC’s World’s Finest) so logo designs from Ken Bruzenak evolved from Blockbuster to the unwieldy Comics Cavalcade Weekly. Had some saner head spoken up, such as Paul or Bruce Bristow, it would have had a stronger name. Another tyro error.

I asked Dave Gibbons for the favor of his producing the first cover but we never really thought beyond that on how the covers should be handled after that—spotlighting one feature or all of them.

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Above: Paul Chadwick’s unpublished Captain Atom double-page spread intended for Blockbuster. Courtesy of the artist. ©2000 DC Comics.

A dummy first issue was assembled and even colored by Tom Ziuko for presentation purposes. Dick took it up to Paul and Jenette Kahn for review and ultimately, no one liked it enough to schedule. A weekly, they thought, needed something stronger and maybe we had too many features for 32-pages or the wrong caliber of talent.

Ultimately, it was decided to shelve the project. By then, Giffen completed his first storyline, which ran some 20-22 chapters, as did Pete Morisi. It was more than a little sad returning these stacks of pages to the talent, knowing their hard work and enthusiasm would never see the light of day. On more than one occasion we debated packaging “The Peacemaker” serial into some sort of special but no one could agree on its commercial merits.

By then, it was 1985, Crisis was rewriting the rules for comics and we were preparing to launch Frank Miller’s Dark Knight and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen. It was clear the creative bar was being raised and the Charlton features just didn’t measure up.

Instead, Dick desperately wanted these heroes active in the post-Crisis DCU. To that end, he asked Denny O’Neil to develop Captain Atom, clearly the most commercial of the characters. Within a year, Giffen chose Blue Beetle to use in his revamped Justice League and I had grown fond of Nightshade and stumped for her inclusion in my developing Suicide Squad title. Roy Thomas, of course, worked Judomaster and Tiger into the all-inclusive All-Star Squadron but neither got a chance to shine.

Before the ’80s had ended, just about all the Charlton heroes had been featured in one way or another. The most creatively satisfying of the bunch was clearly Denny and Denys Cowan’s Question series. The one I wanted to see and was disappointed to see fade away was Max Allan Collins and Dick’s Sarge Steel project.

Interestingly, DC obtained the rights to Peter Cannon from Pete Morisi for a revival feature in the 1990s. Mike Collins did a respectful job that failed to catch on with the fans. After the book ended, the rights reverted to Pete so Thunderbolt remains a footnote to the DCU, remembered but not seen again.

When Mike Gold got to DC Comics around January 1986, one of the things he started discussing was a weekly comic. He was brimming with ideas and managed to convince Jenette, Paul, and Dick that the time and marketplace was ripe for the concept. It would feature none of the Charlton heroes, but would have Superman as a cornerstone. It was decided to convert Action Comics into this weekly, and its story and disappointing 42-week existence is the stuff of another tale.

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Below: Courtesy of Ken Bruzenak, here’s some of his logo designs for Blockbuster. ©2000 the letterer.

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Shameless Self-Promotion, Swarmy Sucking-up and Plugs Galore!

Farewell, Dick Sprang Richard W. Sprang, the greatest Batman artist of all time, passed away this Spring, and we at CBA will miss him terribly. After we published an article on Bob Koppany’s lovely tribute book on Dick’s life and art, the artist went out of his way to repeatedly call my office, to profusely thank me for simply printing Joe Roberts’ piece. We chatted for some time and I told him how much I adored his work—especially that grand Catwoman story with Batman and Robin swinging through the jungle in loin cloths!—and I said I hoped to interview him some time. “I’d love that,” he said. We never got around to it. You are missed, Mr. Sprang.

Rest in Peace, Alfredo Alcala Another wonderful comic book artist passed away this Spring. Alfredo Alcala, the inker with the lushest inking line ever, is gone.

I saw him at San Diego last year, looking a bit exhausted, as he sat down to rest near the food court. I was rushing to catch a panel and made a mental note to come back to that spot, introduce myself, and tell him of “The Filipino Invasion” issue Mañuel Auad and I were planning, and how much I wanted him to participate. But, after setting up a tape recorder, I ran back and he had left. Mr. Alcala: I do CBA because of artists such as you just to try and give thanks. I wish I had just stopped running.

Big Apple Charlton Creators Shindig!

[Here’s a message from my pal Allan Rosenberg on a New York event bound to tickle your fancy.—JBC] Lovers of Charlton Comics (and if you’re reading this issue of Comic Book Artist, we assume you are a fan of that great unsung comics company) will get the chance of a lifetime this September 8th to meet the greatest collection of Charlton creators ever assembled as Big Apple Comic Conventions pays tribute to the funnybooks of Derby, Connecticut!

Over the years, Charlton published many of the greatest talents in the field yet received little in the way of recognition for being not only a training ground for unformed new talent, but a place where seasoned veterans were given the freedom to experiment. We at Big Apple plan to rectify this, and we have assembled greats from Charlton’s war, super-hero, western, horror, and comedy comics.

Joining us for the show will be: • JOE GILL, quite possibly the most prolific comic book writer in history, known to burn up many a Charlton typewriter producing up to 100 script pages a week!

• SAM GLANZMAN, artist of the renowned Hercules and the highly-regarded “Lonely War of Willy Schultz,” and still at it after 60 years in the comics biz!

• WARREN SATTLER, comic book artist of many Charlton strips, most memorably Yang and Billy the Kid. (Also a National Lampoon regular for many years.)

• GEORGE WILDMAN, managing editor of Charlton Comics for its’ memorable ’70s run, and a cartoonist in his own right, remembered for his Popeye work.

• JOE STATON, fan favorite artist and co-creator of E-Man, with many Charlton credits, including the “Detective

Mauser” stories!

• WILL FRANZ, writer of the poignant (anti-) war Charlton series, “The Lonely War of Willy Schultz,” and other war series.

• DAN REED, artist who came on the tail-end of Charlton’s history though producing memorable “Blue Beetle” stories.

And tentatively scheduled to appear, the man who made this entire issue of CBA possible (and probably the reason we still remember Charlton today) is the legendary editor and artist DICK GIORDANO! We are in discussion with other Charlton creators and hope to confirm them as we get closer to the show.

The creators will be there to meet with their fans, sign autographs, and some artists will have original artwork to display and sell. Planned are two Charlton themed panels with KEN GALE of 99.5 WBAI’s comic book radio show “Nuff Said” along with Big Apple's Allan Rosenberg (hi, mom!). They’ll be interviewing some Charlton guests for future broadcasts. We will be taking questions from the audience so come prepared with your curiosity.

Also planning to appear at the show will be our own JON B. COOKE representing Comic Book Artist. [I’ll be there, Allan! With my ragged Charltons at the ready to be signed!]

Big Apple Conventions has held New York’s most successful comic conventions for nearly the past four years.

The show will be held on Saturday, September 8, 2000, in the basement auditorium of St. Paul’s Church at 59th Street and 9th Avenue in New York City from 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. For further information contact Big Apple Conventions at (718) 3262713 or check our website at <BA2K.net>.

—Allan Rosenberg

The Huja Bros. Report As a public service in an effort to warn decent, God-fearing folk of the localities to avoid lest they feel threatened by purple-haired and mohawked cartoonists, CBA is compelled to inform readers that Cliff Galbraith and Tim Bird, creators of the Rat Bastard comic book (and almost animated series—it still could happen!) have a move to Studio City, California impending. As they prepare their move from Jersey to conquer Hollyweird Big Time, the Huja Bros. find themselves drifting away from comics to traditional and Web animation. They’ll be working with Kevin Altiari (animator of the great Pearl Jam video by Todd McFarlane, and of the legendary, if unreleased, Gen 13 series). While their big break with a Rat Bastard cartoon show hasn’t worked out yet, Cliff tells me, he’s got a cool-rockin’-daddy three-minute vid that’s the “Blade Runner of animation.” Give ‘em hell in L.A., mi hermanos, and show them tofu-chompin’ Left Coasters what bad boys from Jersey can do!

I love these guys and will miss them as they skip Comic Con International 2000: San Diego this year, to focus on their relocation. I met them at some airport lay-over a few years back, and whatever shows we mutually attended, we found time to hang together. They’re wild ones, they are. Tim (on the far left) is the “good” one, artist of the duo; Cliff is the “bad” one, the scowling writer on the right. Hat’s off to the boys in all their ventures. The pic is from last year’s N.Y. Madison Square Garden show, rough-housing with ye ed’s middle son, Joshua Thomas, now 7.

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