Comic Book Artist Special Edition 2 Preview

COMPILING BONUS MATERIAL FROM ALL 3 COLLECTIONS!

E D I T I O N

# 2

Batman TM & ©2013 DC Comics, Inc.

S P E C I A L

KIRBY • WEISS • WRIGHTSON • JONES • ENGLEHART & ROGERS • SIMONSON • GULACY

C O N T E N T S CBA #1-3 COVER GALLERY! Devoid of logos, here’s the exquisite Neal Adams and Gil Kane cover art in glorious full color! ..............................................2 ALAN WEISS INTERVIEW: “THAT KID FROM OUT WEST!” The artist discusses his days at DC and Marvel with tons of incredible artwork! ......................................................................6 “DEDICATED NURSE!” PAGES FROM AN UNPUBLISHED JACK KIRBY ‘SOUL LOVE’ STORY The greatest super-hero comics artist of all time give us the 411 on black romance in this unpubbed story ..........................24 “BEDAZZLED!” PAGES FROM A LOST JEFFREY JONES STORY Pages from an unfinished House of Secrets story, penciled and partially inked by the splendid Jeff Jones! ............................30 BERNIE WRIGHTSON MINI-PORTFOLIO Unpublished Wrightson drawings ............................................................................................................................................36 SPECIAL SECTION! THE STORY BEHIND THE ENGLEHART/ROGERS/AUSTIN/WORKMAN/SCHWARTZ BATMAN! STEVE ENGLEHART INTERVIEW: GETTING BACK TO BASICS The noted scribe discusses his legendary 1970s run and the essence of the Darknight Detective ............................................38 MORE STEVE ENGLEHART: THE ENGLEHART OUTTAKES Excised from his CBA #18 interview, here we feature the writer’s comments on his background and philosophy ..................46 WALTER SIMONSON INTERVIEW: PRELUDE—DR. PHOSPHOROUS A candid recollection of his short Batman stint with collaborators Englehart and Milgrom by the remarkable artist ..............52 ALLEN MILGROM INTERVIEW: BREAKDOWNS AND THE BATMAN The artist/editor on his two-issue inking assignment over Simonson and working with the Rogers/Austin team ....................55 MARSHALL ROGERS INTERVIEW: THE RISE OF MARSHALL ROGERS Remembering his breakthrough on the Batman, the artist also looks back on his career in comics..........................................58 TERRY AUSTIN INTERVIEW: THE ARTISTRY OF TERRY AUSTIN The sublime inker recalls his early days in comics and the bittersweet Batman assignment ....................................................68 JOHN WORKMAN INTERVIEW: SIGN OF THE BAT Memories of retro look on the fondly recalled Detective Comics story arc by the renowned artist/letterer/editor..................76 BONUS! A LOOK AT DC’S CANCELLED COMICS CAVALCADE Courtesy of Bill Alger and Michael Grabois, we take a gander at the legendary, ultra-rare compilation from the 1970s ........79 PAUL GULACY ART GALLERY Courtesy of the artist and Numero Uno Gulacy fan Dave Lemieux ....................................................................................................88 THE MIGHTY MARVEL VALUE STAMP STORY Forget those S&H green stamps and inverted Jennys! Rob Anderson uncovers the real ’70s happenin’ hobby ..................................92 KILLRAVEN OF THE APES! British Marvel’s weird morphing of “War of the Worlds” with Planet of the Apes is examined by Rob Kirby ..................................98 JAY LYNCH & COMIX BOOK The veteran underground cartoonist on why he chose not to work on the Marvel black-&-white comix mag ................................109 MR. MONSTER SCRAPBOOK GHOULISHLY GLORIOUS GALLERY Way cool look at awesome oddities ’n’ delights from Michael T. Gilbert’s vault of eerie esoterica..................................................110 SOLVING THE HOSTESS TWINKIE MYSTERY WITH BOB ROZAKIS Seanbaby conducts a riotous (albeit brief) interview with the writer on those strange snack cake ads ............................................116 COMIC BOOK ARTIST Special Edition Two ©2013 Jon B. Cooke & TwoMorrows Publishing Jon B. Cooke, Editor and Designer • John Morrow, Publisher

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, 919-449-0344 E-Mail: twomorrow@aol.com, Web: www.twomorrows.com Digital Edition published April 2013, compiling the new material from Comic Book Artist Collection, Volumes 1-3 COPYRIGHTS: Abel, Adam Strange, Anthro, Aquaman, Atomic Knights, Bat Lash, Batgirl, Batman, Big Barda, Black Canary, Blackhawk, Blue Beetle, Brother Power the Geek, Cain, Calculator, Captain Fear, Captain Marvel, Challengers of the Unknown, Clayface, Deadman, Deadshot, Deserter, Doom Patrol, Dr. Phosphorus, Enemy Ace, Flash, Funky Flashman, Granny Goodness, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Harley Quinn, Hawkman, Hugo Strange, Inferior Five, Jimmy Olsen, Joker, Jonah Hex, Justice League of America, Kamandi, Kid Flash, Mad Hatter, Manhunter, Metamorpho, Mr. Miracle, Odd Man, OMAC, Penguin, Phantom Stranger, Prez, Robin, Sandman, Sarge Steel, Sgt. Rock, Shade, Shazam, Silver St. Cloud, Stanley and His Monster, Steel, Streaky the Super-Cat, Superboy, Supergirl, Superman, Swamp Thing, Teen Titans, The Creeper, The Legion of Super-Heroes, Tomahawk, Tommy Tomorrow, Vixen, Warlord , Wonder Woman ™&©2013 DC Comics. • Absorbing Man, Ancient One, Angel, Ant-Man, Apeslayer, Avengers, Balder, Baron Mordo, Beast, Black Bolt, Black Knight, Black Panther, Black Widow, Brother Voodoo, Bucky, Bucky Barnes, Byrrah, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Carrion, Clea, Cyclops, Daredevil, Deathlok, Doctor Strange, Dominic Fortune, Dormammu, Dr. Doom, Dr. Octopus, Dragon Man, Electro, Enchantress, Falcon, Fantastic Four, Femizons, Galactus, General Ross, Ghost Rider, Gladiator, Glob, Golem, Goliath, Green Goblin, Grey Gargoyle, Grim Reaper, Gwen Stacey, Hammerhead, Havok, Hawkeye, Hela, Hercules, Howard the Duck, Hulk, Human Torch, Iceman, Invisible Girl, Iron Fist, Iron Man, J. Jonah Jameson, Ka-Zar, Kang, Killraven, Kingpin, Kraven, Leader, Lilith, Living Mummy, Lizard, Loki, Magneto, Man-Thing, Man-Wolf, Mandarin, Mantis, Marvel Girl, Mary Jane Watson, Master of Kung Fu, Medusa, Mephisto, Modok, Mole Man, Molecule Man, Moon Knight, Morbius, Mr. Fantastic, Ms. Marvel, Mysterio, Nick Fury, Nightcrawler, Odin, Omega the Unknown, Owl, Plunderer, Power Man, Professor X, Prowler, Puppet Master, Quicksilver, Rawhide Kid, Red Ghost, Red Guardian, Red Raven, Red Skull, Rhino, Rick Jones, Sandman, Sauron, Sgt. Fury, Shang-Chi, Shanna the She-Devil, SHIELD, Sif, Silver Surfer, Simon Garth, Son of Satan, Spider-Man, Starhawk, Stranger, Sub-Mariner, Super-Skrull, Swordsman, Thing, Thor, Tomb of Dracula, Triton, Vision, Volstagg, Vulture, War of the Worlds, Warlock, Warriors of the Shadow Realm, Wasp, Watcher, Werewolf by Night, Wolverine, X-Men , Zemo, Zombie ™&©2013 Marvel Characters Inc. • American Flagg!, Time2 ©2013 Howard V. Chaykin Inc. • Bizarre Heroes, Border Worlds, Megaton Man, Ms. Megaton Man, Pteranoman ©2013 Don Simpson. • Cap'n Quick and the Foozle, Dalgoda, Demonslayer, Djinn, The Dog and Pup, Elvira, Evangeline, Harold Hedd, Kiss, Kung Fu, Nightingale, Quark, Steve Canyon, Thundercats, Vanity ©2013 the respective copyright holders. • Captain Action ™&©2013 the respective copyright holder. • Conan, Kull, Red Sonja ™&©2013 Conan Properties. • Detectives Inc. ©2013 Donald Francis McGregor. • Donald Duck ©2013 Walt Disney Inc. • Dynamo ©2013 John Carbonaro. • Eerie, Creepy ©2013 Warren Publishing Inc. • Elric ©2013 Michael Moorcock. • Forever Warriors ©2013 Richard Buckler Sr. • Fu Manchu ©2013 the Sax Rohmer Estate. • Goodman Beaver ©2013 Harvey Kurtzman Estate. • Groo ™&©2013 Sergio Aragonés. • Heathcliff ™&©2013 Creators Syndicate. • Hot Wheels ©2013 Mattel. • Indiana Jones, Star Wars ©2013 Lucasfilm. • Inkspots, Kelly, Mary Monster, Mr. Monster, The Reflection, The Wraith ©2013 Michael T. Gilbert. • John Carter ™&©2013 Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. • Johnny Hazard ™&©2013 King Features Syndicate. • Linus ™&©2013 United Features Syndicate. • Mandro the Barbarian ™&©2013 Roy Thomas & Barry Windsor-Smith. • Maus ©2013 Art Spiegelman. • Nero Wolfe ™&©2013 Columbia Features.

• Nevada ©2013 Steve Gerber. • Nexus, Origami ©2013 Mike Baron & Steve Rude. • Pictopia ©2013 Alan Moore & Don Simpson. • Planet of the Apes ™&©2013 20th Century Fox Film Corp. • Rune ™&©2013 Barry Windsor-Smith.

• Sable ©2013 Mike Grell. • Space Ghost ©2013 Hanna-Barbera Inc. • Tales of the Green Beret ©2013 Tribune Media Services. • Tarzan ©2013 Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. • The Fly ©2013 Archie Publications Inc. • The Prisoner ™&©2013 ITV. • The Rook ©2013 William DuBay. • The Shadow ™&©2013 Condé Nast. • The Spirit ©2013 Will Eisner Estate. • Too Much Coffee Man ©2013 Shannon Wheeler. • Understanding Comics, Zot! ©2013 Scott McCloud.

• Vampirella ©2013 Harris Publications Inc.

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CBA Collection Extra!

“That Kid from Out West!”

Alan Weiss talks about his rootin’, tootin’ times in ’70s comics Right inset: From a tribute to Jack Abel, here’s a Weiss panel featuring young Alan and his brother Howard reading comics. The onepage strip will be featured in TwoMorrow’s autobiographical anthology, Streetwise. Courtesy of the artist. ©2000 Alan Weiss.

Below: Courtesy of the artist, here’s Alan Weiss ready to saddle-up in a recent photo.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson We’re including an interview with Alan Weiss because, for one thing, he’s one of those few artists from the ’70s who was perfectly at home drawing for the Big Two, DC Comics and Marvel—or at Warren, National Lampoon, Esquire, and Atlas/Seaboard, for that matter!—and for another, we think his artwork is simply superb. As enthusiastic today about comics as when he first entered the field in 1970 or so, Alan proves to be a highly entertaining interview, giving insight to some legendary stories of the past and enriching us with ones previously unheard. The artist was interviewed via phone on March 9, 2000, and he copyedited the final transcript.

Comic Book Artist: There’s very little on you written in the historical record.

Alan Weiss: I’m that mysterious, “Who the hell is he?” guy.

CBA: I think you first appeared rather early in Silver Age fandom, in the letter column of Fantastic Four #3.

Alan: I was there. I didn’t know who the artist of FF was at the time, and I think that’s what the letter was about. Remember, they didn’t credit the jobs quite yet, and I was commenting on the very first issue. “I think your book will be very successful.” Stan wrote something like, “What do you think we are now, chopped liver?” [laughs] They’d just come out of being Atlas Comics. I thought it was pretty brash for them to be calling FF “The World’s Greatest Comics Magazine.” [laughs] “Yeah, prove it, sucker—where’s your cape?” [laughter] CBA: You were born in Las Vegas?

Alan: No, Chicago, but from age seven on, I lived in Las Vegas.

CBA: Remember your first comics?

Alan: Soon after I got to Vegas. There are some earlier, vague memories of looking at a Lone Ranger comic book, or perhaps Superman, because I used to watch him on TV, and I must have started drawing even that early.

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CBA: Your brother Howard is older or younger?

Alan: Younger.

CBA: Did you both draw together?

Alan: Yeah, we did. I have another brother, Curtis, who’s younger than Howard, but it was mostly Howard and I that drew together.

My dad, while never a professional, was a hell of an artist and a fine painter, and he knew a lot. He directed us in terms of the fundamentals, the basics. One time, he drove us out to the local newspaper, and we got the end of a giant roll of newsprint, right off the machines, because when they got to the end, they couldn’t use them anymore, but it was enough paper for us for three years. I’d made the decision relatively early that I wanted to have my own style, and the way to do that was to learn real anatomy rather than just drawing versions of other people’s drawings, so that’s what we did.

Fortunately, this was before I discovered girls, or else I never would’ve put in the work, I’ll tell you that right now.

CBA: [laughs] So, did you seek out the Bridgeman and Burne Hogarth anatomy books?

Alan: You bet. Bridgeman, Loomis, Hogarth, and just about everyone else. We learned the Latin names for the muscles really early on, long before I took any courses in anatomy, and certainly before I did any life drawing.

CBA: Was your ultimate goal to do super-hero comics, per se?

Alan: Yeah, sure! Well, certainly comics. Super-heroes were my favorite thing, but I liked all different kinds of genres. Give me sword-&-sorcery or the Hercules comics being done at the time.

I was following the movies, and even then, I always liked cowboy movies and Western stuff.

CBA: You were introduced to fandom through the letter pages?

Alan: Yeah, I saw the letter from Roy Thomas in Justice League of America that mentioned Alter-Ego, and they printed the address, so I sent for it. That was the beginning in finding this whole other weird world by mail. I did a lot of fanzine work in those days, and that’s how I discovered the old characters, as I’d never seen any of the ’40s comics at all. It was a real delight that at the exact same time, some of the old heroes were coming back into the Marvel books. I was learning about their previous history in the ’40s, like my favorite, Sub-Mariner, and Captain America, of course. My uncle used to tell me about reading those books when he was a kid.

CBA: What was it about Sub-Mariner?

Alan: I missed the fourth issue of FF with Namor’s revival, and I was frantic to get hold of it. So, I wrote to Marvel—because I was just a little kid, and I didn’t know what they did and didn’t do—and asked, “Do you guys have any extra books, because I sure want one, and I’d be glad to pay for it.” Well, the very day I bought the fifth

issue, FF #4 arrived in the mail from Flo Steinberg, with a little note that said, “Here you go—we happened to have an extra, but don’t worry about it.” So, I got to read them back-to-back, “The SubMariner Returns” plus Subby’s team-up with Dr. Doom, and that was it for me. I was gone! Those two issues blew my mind, and I loved that artwork—and there’s something about Subby… I mean, he is such an absurd idea in so many ways, a guy dressed in a swimsuit. But he had a kind of alien nobility about him, an elfinlooking eeriness, with that weird head and the eyebrows, pointy ears, and really, the stupid idea of the wings on his feet… stupid, but cool, like comic books are supposed to be! [laughter] I have this concept that I haven’t been able to do in print yet about how he can fly with those little, tiny wings… it’s a real great pseudo-scientific explanation… but if you go by straight physics, I don’t think so. [laughter] CBA: Did you seek out the Golden Age issues?

Alan: I did eventually send for a few of the earlier issues from the guys who were hawking old comics at the time. I ended up getting some of the ones from the ’50s.

CBA: The Bill Everetts?

Alan: Yeah, actually that was some of Everett’s best work. In fact, I think it was some of John Romita’s best work on Captain America, too, when John was doing nice, tall figures. Those books were really special. At the same time, I found a couple of Mac Raboy Captain Marvel, Jr.s—Raboy’s right out of Alex Raymond, and that was my favorite stuff. Fortunately, my father encouraged me. He was more into fine arts, but he wasn’t a snob, so he loved good animation and illustration, and he certainly loved Prince Valiant and The Spirit. He remembered The Spirit from the newspaper insert, the cinematic quality of it. It was great to have a father that well-rounded.

CBA: Was your father from Chicago?

Alan: He was originally from New York, and then lived in Chicago for many years before going out to Las Vegas. He worked at various jobs in the gaming industry; but my grandfather—his father—had been a gambler always, back to the old speakeasy days in New York and Chicago. “Silent Max” had the connections, so he was there when Vegas was first starting up. Casinos used to hire him to not only shill, but also to keep an eye on everybody else, because he could spot the cheaters. It was just kind of a cool thing. So, both my father and his brother followed him out to Vegas. I was real sick as a kid, with very bad asthma, so they thought it would be a good idea for us to be in a warm, dry climate.

CBA: Was growing up in Las Vegas like one would imagine—provocative?

Alan: I don’t know if it’s like what you’d imagine! “Nobody lives there, do they?” [laughter] You know, we were kids, didn’t go near the gambling. We just got to sort of enjoy the fringe benefits of it, the pretty lights and the food. Mainly, as kids, we had desert two blocks away from anywhere you were at that time, so you could run around, chase lizards, and play cowboys. It was just really a great place!

Of course, when we first landed, I was very disappointed. “Where are all the horses? What are these taxicabs doing here?” I was a little kid, I thought it was going to be like a Western movie. I had no idea we were actually going into the modern West. I thought we were just going to ride horses from then on, there wouldn’t be any cars…

CBA: The Wayback Machine. [laughs] Alan: But it’s an amazing place. Everybody dwells on just the strip or the downtown area, but 40 miles in one direction you’ve got the world’s largest man-made lake, with that fantastic dam across the Colorado River, and a few miles in the other direction, you’re up in the mountains, where you can ski in the Winter. Every time I’d go back there, I’d have friends come through, and it was great to take them out of the city… like Steve Englehart. We’d go up to Pine Creek and spend a day going around checking out the petroglyphs, you know, and making up stories. Vegas is really beautiful, but it’s become so huge and congested compared to what it was—about 50 times larger than what it was back then, and a whole lot more pollution—but it’s still a great town. It really is the adult Disneyland, if you can take that as a compliment. [laughter] My brothers are still there. I went to school there, UNLV. “Tumbleweed Tech,” it was called back then.

CBA: Did you make a conscious decision then that you were going to be a comic book artist at a certain stage?

Alan: It’s the kind of decision you make in stages. You say, “I’d like to do this, but I don’t know if it’s really a practical thing,” so you think, “Maybe I’ll become a medical artist,” or “Maybe something in design.” None of them quite got to the level of reality, but I worked for both newspapers in town, working my way, proverbially, through college, so….

CBA: What were you doing?

Alan: Artwork. Different kinds of things, some for the paper, some

Above: Detail of a Solomon Kane pin-up by Alan Weiss, the same work the artist and pal Jim Starlin “liberated” from a fan during a 1976 cross-country trip. The omitted section of the drawing features a gruesome sex crime murder scene.

Courtesy of the artist.

Art ©2000 Alan Weiss.

Solomon Kane ©2000 Robert E. Howard Estate.

Left inset: Page from Alan’s 1968 fanzine comics story, “Boy, You Sure Don’t Look Like a Hero,” appearing in Star Studded Comics #13. The entire six-page tale can be found reprinted in compiler Bill Schelly’s Fandom’s Finest Comics Vol. 2. ©2000 Alan Weiss.

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terrific artist, he’s as good as anyone ever has been—did you ever see Savage Tales in the ’80s? Herb wrote and drew this postapocalyptic flying strip—you’ve got to see this! It’s the best Herb Trimpe artwork you’ve ever seen in your life. It’s real high-contrast, illustrative… beautiful.

CBA: Did you read Herb’s article in The New York Times?

Alan: Oh, I read that, that just broke my heart. Yeah, that really hurt, because… that story’s become all too common these days.

Herb deserved a lot better from the industry—and he’s not the only one. Fortunately, that story had a happy ending. Herb’s okay, it’s Marvel’s loss.

CBA: You had the opportunity to work in a different field, in advertising, which is obviously much more lucrative and varying.

Alan: Neal brought a bunch of us in to advertising work through Continuity and his own work. I learned everything I knew about advertising work from Neal—storyboards, comps and animatics. I started out assisting him, and then he let me move up a little, do a little penciling. When I came back from California, I got into splitting my time between advertising work and comics. To me, the comics work was much more important and most enjoyable.

Later on, after working with Neal, I worked with Jim Sherman for a while, and I did some work out of Studio 23 with a bunch of guys that included Ralph Reese, Joe Barney, and Joe Desposito. Carl Potts had a couple of clients that he would get his comic book pals to do storyboards for. Sometimes they’d call in three or four of us for four days running to do an entire campaign. We’d do all-nighters, and then we might not hear from them for a bit, so then I’d go back and work on comics. For me, this was really, in its way, the best of both worlds. It wasn’t this incredible grind for a relatively small amount of money. But it also wasn’t the way to stardom, I’ll tell you that. The way to stardom is frequency and visibility. [laughter] CBA: And ownership?

Alan: Well, for ownership, I would do it! That was part of the decision, too, if I was going to go through that much of a grind, I’d like to do it as an investment in some future, rather than just being the 895th guy to draw Batman. There’s nothing wrong with that, depending on where you are when it happens. Don’t forget, this was before the big royalties kicked in. Look, I still never quite got my shot at Superman, and there’s no question I’d still like to, but I did this Batman Elseworlds Western graphic novel a couple of years back, The Blue and Gray and the Bat. It was my concept, and I co-plotted with Elliott Maggin. Okay, so I was number 896, but I had a great time.

Elliot’s a good friend and a terrific writer. Again, I don’t think he’s as well-appreciated as he ought to be. He’s not the only one.

Cary Bates is terrific. Remember Cary’s book Video Jack? I drew a pirate segment for him. Cary and I also did a story for Secret Origins, the origin of Captain Atom, and it was the old Charlton Steve Ditko Captain Atom… I loved the chain-mail. I did another Secret Origins, Johnny Thunder, with Elliott. It was a beautifully-written, solid little 13-pager. That was fun, and that kind of led in to working on the Batman thing with Elliott, who was a big Abraham Lincoln fan, and he took direct quotes and inserted them into within the narrative.

CBA: You did one mean Sub-Mariner, a great Captain America, but there was one character that is somewhat identified with you.

You drew Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane for a couple of stories.

Alan: Yeah. I loved that character. That character was introduced to me by Bernie Wrightson. I’d read Conan before I got to New York, but I’d never seen Solomon Kane. He said, “Oh, you’ve got to read these!” And he pulled out one of the paperbacks with a Jeff Jones painting on the cover, and he says, “This guy is right up your alley, because you like to do those tall, wiry-muscled guys,” and he was right on the money! So, I was really glad to have gotten the chance to kind of be, in essence, the signature artist on it. The first one was drawn by Ralph Reese, but I did ghost several pages of that job.

CBA: In pencil?

Alan: Yeah. I believe Ralph inked that job, he probably did. But I loved the idea of that character, and I really think I made a real connection with him… Here’s this guy, this religious Puritan, swordsman, swashbuckler. “Yeah, okay, I’m going to rationalize my skewering people by the fact that I’m doing it for the Lord.” [laughter] They were mysterious, really gritty stories. So, again, while I might’ve done

a total of three or four stories, it feels like a lot more, because I was so into that character. I did research on the Matchlock rifle he had, I was really working with the leather textures of the boots, and trying to get the right angle of that hat. I suppose Solomon Kane really could’ve become a signature character for me, my Swamp Thing or Shadow, but there weren’t really enough of them. The same goes for Pellucidar.

CBA: Did Joe Orlando approach you for that?

Alan: No. The Burroughs line-up went like this—Joe Kubert was doing Tarzan, Frank Thorne drew Korak, Murphy Anderson had “John Carter of Mars.” Orlando had Kaluta on “Carson of Venus,” and he’d signed Wrightson for “Pellucidar.” Again, I hadn’t read Pellucidar, but I had the books because of the Frazetta covers, so I said, “Well, my roommate’s going to be drawing this strip, I should at least pay him the respect of reading the books.” So I read the first four of ’em, and it’s a good thing, too, because about the time I was finishing up, Wrightson had done the first Swamp Thing story around that time—not to digress, but I worked on that, too; a couple of us did. I penciled most of the female heads, and I think I drew a head or two of Bernie, with the long hair and the round glasses.

CBA: Was the main female character based on Weezie?

Alan: Weezie Jones, absolutely. So around the time he would’ve

Above: Page from Shazam! #34, featuring Alan’s Raboy-esque version of Captain Marvel, Jr.!

Pencils by Weiss, inks by Joe Rubenstein. Courtesy of Alan Weiss. ©2000 DC Comics.

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Above: Page from What If? #37 X-Men story featuring The Beast, written and penciled by Alan, inked by Jim Sherman, from 1982. Courtesy of the Alan Weiss. ©2000 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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started on “Pellucidar,” they decided to do Swamp Thing as a series.

Given the choice, of course, he preferred to do horror. So, that left “Pellucidar” up in the air. I used to hang around Orlando’s office, and he had the covers of the books he edited up on the wall, and I didn’t want to say anything outright—I would just kind of hang around and look up there and say, “Yeah, Burroughs’ stuff, I really like it.” At one point, he said, “What?!? What do you want?!?!

What?!?” I said, “Well, you know, this ‘Pellucidar’ thing, Bernie’s not going to do it.” “Nope. Gil Kane’s going to do it.” That’s it, nothing more to be said, Gil Kane’s going to do it, he’s got it, I’ve got no chance. So I walked away. A couple of weeks later, I get this call from Orlando, and he says, “Uh… Gil Kane can’t do this thing, what do you know about ‘Pellucidar’?” I said, “Oh! The Thipdars and the Mahars and Hoo-Hahs,” whatever the hell. [laughter] So, he said, “Okay, do me up a couple of sketches.” So I did samples, and that’s

what got the gig. It was Bernie’s intention to do Roy Krenkel as Abner Perry, which couldn’t be more perfect, because not only was Roy a wonderful Burroughs artist, but a delightful curmudgeon as well. We all loved him. So I wanted to follow through on that Bernie had taken a bunch of Polaroid shots of Krenkel, so he gave them me, so I worked from that reference.

I did the character samples on Vellum overlay-type sheets, inked with Pentel felt tips.

Orlando loved the look of the inking, he thought it was very unique, and he said, “Why don’t you ink the book this way?” I said, “Well, do you think it’ll reproduce all right?” He says, “Oh, yeah, the way our reproduction is now, it’ll be just fine, no problem.” So, that’s how I did the first installment, and when I saw it printed, I just about died, because half the linework dropped out. It looked broken, it looked sketchy, and the originals did not look like that. I felt, “This is my first series thing, oh, my God, everybody’s going to think this is what it’s supposed to look like!” I felt awful about it, so I made sure on the next one to just ink the sh*t out of it, you know? I took out the brush and really went to work. I was much happier with the second one. After that, as the dreaded deadline doom descended, we got the Crusty Bunkers on the inks. #3 was among the first jobs the Crusty Bunkers worked on.

CBA: Were you a Crusty Bunker?

Alan: You bet, one of the charter members! [laughter] I’m a charter Bunker! Yeah, it was Neal’s name.

CBA: Did the name come from working on Swords of Sorcery?

Alan: You mean Chaykin’s thing?

CBA: I think that was the first job. Were you called the Crusty Bunkers because you guys were doing basically swashbuckling on the first story?

Alan: No, no, no. Crusty Bucklers?

Swashbunkers? The name “Crusty Bunkers” has nothing to do with swashbucklers at all; it was a phrase that Neal’s used with his kids. It was like calling somebody a name that really wasn’t dirty.

CBA: [laughs] “You crusty bunker!”

Alan: “You crappy bastard”? No, “You crusty bunker”! It didn’t really mean anything, it just sounded good, you know? So he adapted it as a name. I think at one point, before it was even “The Crusty Bunkers,” it was just “Crusty Bunker,” singular—but that’s all it was. Neal just threw that name on it. We liked it. It sounded tough, abrasive, and a little bit rebellious, right?

CBA: Yeah, sounds like pirates to me! So you worked on ‘Pellucidar,’ and then you worked over at Marvel for a time. You were basically back and forth?

Alan: I was freelancing for both Marvel and DC and other companies as well. I did some humor stuff. I did some work for Lampoon.

Did you ever see that Esquire thing? Jeff Jones, Barry Smith, Bernie Wrightson, Mike Ploog, and I invented characters for this short feature—we were “the new artists of the ’70s” Bernie did “Redneck,” this flying super-hero. Mike Ploog did a “Spirit” kind of a guy, but I think he was black, it was really nice. Barry Smith did some sort of super-soldier, Jeff Jones did an out-of-body soul/spirit thing, Egyptian… what was mine? Oh, yeah! [laughs] Geez! He was called “The Incredible Phizgink.” He was the most insane, mundane, and something else that rhymes with that… inane, mundane, insane, that’s it. [laughter] He was just this surrealistic hero who could return lost time in bio-degradable containers. [laughter] He fought against such villains as Plastic Patsy and Captain Apathy. It was vaguely political satire, weird, bizarre. He had sparklers on his helmet. I don’t

even know where the idea came from now, but it was a lot of fun.

CBA: You told me a story about the creation of Shang-Chi. Alan: Yeah, but Englehart didn’t tell the whole story [in “Everybody Was Kung Fu Watchin’,” CBA #7]. In fact, he forgot the punch line! Englehart talked about the use of the Bell Telephone Building for ShangChi. Well, this was a night that four of us prowl all night around town—as a matter of fact, it’s the very night before the day I was to leave New York to go to Vegas, and I don’t know if I’ll be back or when. So, we just have this all-night incredible prowl and adventure in the streets… he mentions there were guys working in the street with big arc lights, with welding torches that cast these gigantic shadows? That’s exactly true, it was a phenomenal sight—middle of the night, quiet, no traffic, and we’re watching these giant shapes in shadow moving on the skyscrapers, on the buildings. It’s downtown, so it’s older buildings, not as high as midtown skyscrapers. There’s a huge, big construction site that we go into and we’re climbing on all the big rigs and construction tools—they are all shut down, but we’re climbing on everything that night. We go down to the World Trade Center, which is still under construction, but we get in there—I don’t know how, we just kind of walk past everybody.

At one point, we go to this big skyscraper with no windows! It looks like this big monolith. It looks like something out of George Pal’s The Time Machine that the future Morlocks would construct…no windows! Two openings out of a building that must be 30 stories high, with four kind of separate pods. They look almost like giant meerschaum pipes on each side, we don’t know what they were.

We’re trying to figure out, “What the hell kind of building can this be with no windows?”

We go walking all around it, looking for an entrance or something, and we finally get to a doorway, and it’s the Bell Telephone Building. It looks like the wall to the door is eight feet, then there is the door, then on the other side, there is eight feet of thickness. By now, we’re attracting the attention of the rent-a-cops. It’s the middle of the night, and there’s these four hippie types running around!

What the hell are they up to?

CBA: “Are they Weathermen?” [laughs] Alan: [laughs] You know, of course, that’s the last thing we are. It’s just, “Oh, what a great idea! How about we have the Sub-Mariner come in.” “Oh, no, what about Captain America… “ So this guard

comes out, and he ascertains that we’re completely harmless, and friendly, and he needs somebody to talk to, because it’s lonely up there—no way is anyone breaking into this building! [laughter] He is from the Burns Detective Agency—I’ll never forget this, the guy has a Spanish accent—and he is explaining why the building has no windows, because it’s where the transatlantic cables come in, so it’s atom bomb-proof! So, they can keep the telephone lines humming even if the rest of New York is reduced to ashes around it! [laughter] And the people inside can stay alive, until the radiation filters through those little apertures that we saw, right? So we think this is pretty

Above: 1986 cover illustration for Steelgrip Starkey and his All Purpose Power Tool. Pencils by Alan, inks by Jim Sherman.

Courtesy of and ©2000 Alan Weiss.

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CBA Collection Extra!

When Jack Kirby came to DC in the early ’70s, his obligations included producing a line of black-&-white magazines intended to appeal to adult audiences. While his In the Days of the Mob and Spirit World made it to the newsstands (albeit for one issue each), an aborted project called True Divorce Cases was initially developed and later refined into an all-black romance title, Soul Love. While the project was abandoned, copies of Jack’s stories survive and we’re proud to feature pages (sans the splash—which can be found in The Jack Kirby Collector #23) from the tale, “Dedicated Nurse.” Inks by Vincent Colletta. Courtesy of and art ©2000 the Jack Kirby Estate. Soul Love ©2013 Jack Kirby Estate.

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CBA Collection Extra!

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Previously unpublished, here are six pages from an unfinished House of Secrets story penciled and partially-inked by the legendary Jeffrey Jones and written by Marty Pasko in 1971. (See page 172 of this Collection for a photo of Alan Weiss modeling for this very story!) Our thanks to the artist for his consent to publish most of the eight-page story, supplied to us courtesy of Albert Moy. Art Š2000 Jeff Jones. Story Š2000 DC Comics.

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Bernie Wrightson Portfolio

CBA Collection Extra!

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CBA Interview Extra

Bringing Back the Bat Steve Englehart returns the Darknight Detective to his roots Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by LongBox.com Staff

Below: A quintessential iconic image of the Batman by his cocreator Bob Kane. From Detective Comics #34. ©2002 DC Comics.

Steve Englehart, noted Marvel writer of the early to mid-1970s (as well as numerous other companies and time-frames) only briefly resided as a DC Comics scribe when he first arrived in 1976. In fact, his work on Justice League of America, Mister Miracle and Detective Comics lasted a mere 12 months, as Steve intended this to be his last year in the industry as he hoped to move on to a new career as a science-fiction author of “real” books. But what a year that was!

Though destined to periodically return to the field, his Batman stories, drawn by artists Walter Simonson and newcomer Marshall Rogers respectively, are considered to be classics. [CBA interviewed the writer in our 18th issue regarding his ’70s Marvel work.] This interview took place by phone on and the transcript was copyedited

by Steve.

Comic Book Artist: What did you think of the Batman overall?

Steve Englehart: He was always my favorite character. I can remember as a little kid reading a Batman comic book, Detective Comics #230. (I saw it 20 years later on sale and instantly knew it was the one I had read.) I remember going to doubleheader baseball games with my father; we would stop and pick up a comic book somewhere, and Batman was always the character that I wanted. In many ways, he’s the archetypal comic book character because he, among all them, works best in black-&white. That, of course, is the basis for all comics, but

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any other comic book character needs color to be defined. I was also always a sucker for a nice black line in the artwork, whether it was Paul Murry’s Mickey Mouse or Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy. When I was a kid, Dick Sprang was drawing Batman and his stories were always spectacular. All in all, I liked the character and was more than happy to get a chance to write him.

CBA: Before you wrote Batman, did you have any exposure to the quintessential Batman of the early Detective Comics, the pre-Robin stories?

Steve: When I got this gig at DC, the first thing I did was to ask for photocopies of those stories from their library. DC has all the comics they’ve ever published in nice bound volumes in a room somewhere in the building. So they agreed and got somebody to get me all that stuff. In fact, Denny O’Neil got interested and got a second set made for him. They gave me the first two or three years of his appearances in Detective and Batman in gray xeroxes (which were not all that clear but good enough). I always knew that Batman had come from a pulp background, knew about his connection to the Shadow and the Spider—that general dark-hooded thing had been around before Batman first appeared. That I knew from Steranko’s wonderful History of Comics. So I just soaked in those photocopies, getting the whole pulp atmosphere of the character, which certainly had a big effect on what I did with him.

CBA: Obviously, your intention was to get back to the essence of the character, the quintessential Batman?

Steve: When I came over to DC Comics, [publisher] Jenette Kahn had just taken over and she wanted me to revamp the Justice League to get them up to speed with the Marvel characters. I really didn’t have an objection, but I did say, “Well, I really want to do the Batman.” I like a lot of those Justice League characters and had a good time with the Hawkpeople, Wonder Woman, and so forth, but Batman was the guy that I was most interested in. Most people’s concept of Batman in 1975 was based on the late ‘60s television show. If you went out on the street and asked people about the character, they’d say, “Oh yeah, that campy Adam West thing with all the pops and pows and bams.” Nobody outside of comics was taking him seriously as a general concept.

CBA: In the interim, the character reached a highpoint under Neal Adams and Denny O’Neil.

Steve: Absolutely. I had worked with Neal during some of that time, but that was a period where DC was steadily losing readership to Marvel. Neal had even gone over to draw X-Men and Avengers.

Denny and Neal had done work which certainly caught the attention of comic book readers, but as a general concept, most people on the street didn’t know about that stuff. I don’t think DC or I expected to change that perception, but there was a feeling that because I was well known and coming off some regarded runs of Marvel titles at the time, my coming to DC would help put them—and Batman—back on the map. I knew I would enjoy writing the strip and realized that I had just come off some top stuff at the competition, so I had a pretty good regard for what I might be able to do. But, going into it, I didn’t think it would as become as big as it did become. I just knew that I was going to do something that was going to make me happy.

CBA: Was Batman the top-selling character at the company at that time?

Steve: I have no idea. During the TV show’s heyday, they sold a million copies

ent from the one I knew.

CBA: You weren’t thinking about the comics?

Steve: I had written all eight scripts and then left the country and I did not know who was going to draw them. Considering who was available at DC, they probably weren’t going to be very good. All I could do was write the best scripts I could, hand them off and leave the country. It wasn’t until eight months later, at least, that we were living in Majorca. We had a house in a little village overlooking the Mediterranean where I got a package from Julie Schwartz and inside were three comic books. I was like, “Holy smokes, look how good this is!” I had no idea what had transpired in between that time. I did not know Marshall and don’t think I knew Terry. I didn’t ask for them.

It must have been Julie who went out and found them.

CBA: Did you suggest or instruct in the scripts themselves for the artist to emulate the late ‘30s stories look?

Steve: So much of that was in my brain, I really don’t know if I put it in my scripts. The one thing that I did ask was for all the panel borders to be thicker than normal. If you make all the panel borders a little darker it would add darkness overall to the page, a good thing for the Batman. Beyond that, my best guess is that I was wandering around the halls raving about making him more pulp-like and somehow that got conveyed to Marshall because he obviously caught on.

CBA: Well, however it happened, there certainly was incredible collaboration, and everyone involved seemed to click.

Steve: Marshall did what he did, Terry had that nice black line which I really liked, we had the thicker panel borders, and it was all perfect for what it had to be. John Workman was doing his superb lettering, and Julie must be acknowledged. Julie had been an editor who pretty much generated all the stories for his books. He would sit down with Gardner Fox, John Broome or whomever and say, “Here’s the cover and here’s what I’ve been thinking about,” and then they’d sit in the office and work out something to Julie’s satisfaction. Now, I certainly didn’t work that way. That wasn’t the milieu that I came from. During that initial lunch with Jenette, I recall saying that as much as I liked Julie, there might be a problem with me writing one of his titles. She said, “Julie just wants the books to be good.” When I started to work with Julie, he said, “I understand how you want to work and so long as it all comes out okay that’s all right by me.” Julie was a hands-off editor as far as I was concerned, which was the right thing to be to get my best work.

CBA: Marshall recalls the only edits Julie put in was in the scene when the Joker goes into the copyright office and does his soliloquy.

Julie added some banter between the Joker and his henchmen.

Marshall summoned up the courage to change it back to your version and he said, as far as he knew, Julie never noticed.

Steve: I never knew about that. That’s a tough scene to draw. The Joker is flamboyant but he’s still just talking to this particular bureaucrat and Marshall captured all that beautifully. I’ve said for years comics is a collaborative effort. I’m always very appreciative of people who can hold up their end of the process.

Marshall, Terry, John, and Julie all did on that. I’m not trying to say I did something and they helped me out. We all helped each other out and were all on the same wavelength.

CBA: Did you have an inkling of the critical acclaim that it received.

Steve: To some degree, because there were the letter columns printed in the book, saying “the definitive Batman,” “Best Batman ever!” [laughter] When I did come back to America, I spent some time in New York before heading to California. I went to the DC offices and was hearing it from all sides how well the books were received. I read a lot of the letters that didn’t get published. I hung out with Julie and told him thanks, and I also met Marshall there for the first time, and maybe Terry, too. I have this slight feeling that I might have known Terry before but I don’t think so. I was going to meet these guys who had done such a nice job, and they had been hearing it and we had long conversations about how cool we all were.

CBA: Did you hit it off with Marshall on a personal level? You guys worked together pretty often after that.

Steve: Yes. We later did Scorpio Rose, Madame Xanadu, Coyote, and Silver Surfer. Marshall and I got along very well. It’s interesting because, though we hadn’t actually met when we did the Batman stories together, we very much resonated to the same things.

Whenever we had a chance to work together, we did.

CBA: Did you have any idea that DC was nervous about having Marshall on the series?

Steve: Not at all. I never heard that.

CBA: John Workman vividly recalls the editorial staff being antsy about whether this new kid could pull through with this stuff. They were just astonished when they saw the final job.

Above: Professor Hugo Strange, as he appeared in his third and final Golden Age appearance, in Detective Comics #46. Art probably by Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson. ©2002 DC Comics.

Above: Three decades later, the evil prof reemerges, albeit briefly, to torment the Batman in the first Englehart/Rogers/Austin Batman collaboration, “The Dead Yet Live,” in Detective Comics #471. ©2002 DC Comics.

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Above: Though Marshall Rogers is generally credited with refining her attractive appearance, Bruce Wayne’s greatest love, Silver St. Cloud, debuted in an Englehartscribed story drawn by Walter Simonson and Allen Milgrom.

These panels of the couple’s first meeting appeared in Detective Comics #470. ©2002 DC Comics.

Below: Marshall drew this sketch of Silver getting ready to join her boyfriend for frequent collaborator Terry Austin. Courtesy of the inker.

Art ©2002 Marshall Rogers.

Characters ©2002 DC Comics.

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Steve: Marshall was the new kid (which is why I had no idea he was around to do it). When I saw who was available at DC, I was looking at the old guys and they weren’t really there. Part of the reason DC was in the situation they were in is that they did get nervous about anybody who didn’t fit into the mold that had solidified over 30 years. That was an era that needed to change and I’m glad I had something to do with that. I can easily believe that the people would have trouble trusting Batman to some new guy.

CBA: Over at Marvel, you developed women characters like the Scarlet Witch and Mantis into being pretty strong characters, certainly having personality.

Steve: To me, they are all characters, all interesting. Another writer once said, back when we were first getting started, “The only people we can ever really write are white males.” I said, “Bullsh*t. I’m never going to be black.

I’m never going to be female. But as a writer, you need to put yourself

inside other people’s heads.”

CBA: It’s called imagination.

Steve: I never had a problem writing dialogue for characters who weren’t white, Anglo-Saxon and male.

CBA: Would you call yourself a feminist?

Steve: Yes, but I have a populist attitude that believes everybody is cool, not just women. I’m sure this is all leading back to Silver St. Cloud, and it seemed to me that I wanted to do two things with this Batman. I wanted to do the quintessential creature of the night, vowing over the graves of his parents, but I also wanted to see the realistic side of Bruce Wayne. If he’s supposed to be this rich playboy, he ought have a girlfriend. If he had a girlfriend, she’d have to be somebody who could live with that kind of personality and stand up on her own. If she were some shrinking violet, he wouldn’t be interested. All that stuff just came together. She was somebody who moved in Gotham circles (and we all knew Gotham was really New York City).

It just had to be that way.

CBA: In her first appearance by Marshall Rogers, Silver is lying in bed, talking on the phone to Bruce, and it’s obvious that she had had sex with him the night before.

Steve: I’m not shy about sex. Batman is a mature guy and this was an adult woman he was with. He’s a playboy so why wouldn’t he have sex with her? When I wrote that scene, I distinctly recall it made total sense and I knew I could do it, but at the same time I knew some would be taken aback with this because comic book heroes never slept with anybody, and if they did, they certainly wouldn’t talk about it. These were grown people living in a grown-up town — that was just another aspect of the Batman.

CBA: Did you feel that she would go the way that she did, leaving Batman’s life?

Steve: I think so, because I was aware that I would leave the strip and would tie it all up. So I threw her and Boss Thorne up in the air and saw where they landed. Pretty soon I came up with a way to get the Joker and the Penguin in there as well and then the last couple of issues just wrote themselves. I had all these balls in the air and they were all coming down right at the right time and the right place and it just rolled very trippingly off the tongue. Boss Thorne running out of town and meeting Silver and she comes back and he’s haunted by a ghost (the ghost I stole from Dick Tracy, my homage to what got me interested in comics to begin with. Flattop Jr. killed Skinny and then she hung on his neck till he went crazy in 1955, although I read it in reprint). [laughter] I got halfway through my run and then saw what the other side of the hill was going to be like and I rolled down it. But like I said, for the first couple of issues, I did not know how it was going to end.

CBA: In the ever-present comic book obsession with continuity; there isn’t a beginning, middle and end to story arcs necessarily.

What made your Batman story refreshing was it was your swan song for comics, so it was a complete package. I always felt that maybe it

CBA Interview Bonus

The Englehart Outtakes Spending a bit more time with the writer on his background Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson As promised in Comic Book Artist #18, the special issue devoted to the Cosmic Comics of the 1970s, what follows are outtakes from writer Steve Englehart’s interview, detailing pertinent biographical information of the outspoken scribe’s life. We thank Steve for his patience and understanding. This interview was conducted by phone on Dec. 16, 2002, and was copyedited by Steve.

Below: Another laudable Englehart project from DC Comics in the later ’70s was his revival (with— surprise!—artist Marshall Rogers) of Mister Miracle. Here’s a shot of Steve during a visit to a comic shop during those years, where he met Scott Free, Big Barda, and some gloomy cat name Darkseid.

Courtesy of the writer. Characters ©2002 DC Comics.

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Comic Book Artist: Steve, where are you originally from?

Steve Englehart: I spent most of my childhood in Louisville, Kentucky, but when I was 13, we moved up to Indianapolis, where the rest of my family still lives.

CBA: How many siblings do you have?

Steve: One brother, one sister. I’m the oldest.

CBA: Were you drawn to comics at a young age?

Steve: Yeah, I liked comics as far back as I can remember. The stuff that I enjoyed were the “dark” ones, Batman, Dick Tracy, and even the Mickey Mouse mysteries in the back of Walt Disney Comics and Stories. Paul Murry’s Mickey Mouse was the version I was into.

(Murry came along after Floyd Gottfriedson, and he had a nice, black, juicy line. I was always a sucker for a juicy line.)

CBA: Those were the back-ups with Goofy as the side-kick?

Steve: Yes, they were three-part mysteries. They were pretty fun.

CBA: Did you start drawing at a young age?

Steve: I didn’t know until sometime towards the end of my college days that I wanted to draw comics, but I always drew and always wrote, and there do exist comics I did when I was seven, which I would write and draw. But there are also novels I’d type out, and

make sure all the pages came out right, so if I folded them together, they’d work. I was always doing projects like that.

CBA: Did your homemade comics feature established characters, or were they your own knockoffs?

Steve: Both. Like a lot of other kids, I was inspired by “Mickey Mouse,” and I did Paul Murry-like stories, but I was also creating my own characters. I was also inspired by the Dick Tracy reprints, where they’d take the original art and add to it on the side, I always thought that was kind of cool, you could see where it was done, so it was like solving an old mystery. There was about a year when I cut out all the Dick Tracy strips out of the newspaper and pasted them up and drew on the outsides of them to make them look like the comics. As we talk, I’m sitting here coloring “Russell’s Christmas Adventure,” a free project I’m releasing on the Web. So I color, draw, write; I do all that stuff. Even the process, I guess, of doing comics, publishing, whatever. All the different aspects of it have always fascinated me, too. I don’t letter, but I’m impressed by people who do! [laughter] CBA: Did you drop out of comics during adolescence?

Steve: Yes, I got too old for them. When I was 13 or 14, I read an issue of Superboy where somebody wrote in and asked, “How come Superboy doesn’t fight the Communists?” and the editor’s answer was, “Well, he just doesn’t, because Superboy’s not involved in that kind of stuff.” I thought, “Eh, I don’t know… in the real world, people fight Communists!” (This was back when they did.) So, I said, “This is fantasy, not reality, and I’m interested in reality.”

It’s interesting to me that I delve into fantasy with my work, but I always try to base it in some sort of reality, even if it’s Doctor Strange, the Silver Surfer or Green Lantern, any characters like that. If it were real, it’d be like such-and-such. So, I’ve always had a real strong interest in what’s real, though I consider magic to be real, on one level or another, so I can incorporate that into my world view. At that time, Superboy was just pure fantasy, and I said, “I’m not interested in pure fantasy, I want something that’s got a little more meat to it.” So I gave up on comics when I was a teenager.

CBA: Did you get into juvenile literature at all?

Steve: Well, I read The Hardy Boys when I was younger. My dad had actually kept a lot of his Hardy Boys collection from when he was a kid, so I was able to read the 1920s versions, and I thought it was interesting to see a different reality, one from the ’20s. Frank and Joe would ride their little putt-putt motorcycles, and their fabulous little motorboats, and they called each other “chap.” [laughter] CBA: Did you read juvenile science-fiction, or did you develop more mature tastes early on?

Steve: Actually, I was reading a lot. In high school, I was read-

ing a lot of Shell Scott, who was a very funny, very ’50s sort of private detective who always had a lot of sexy babes around. It’s action and mystery, but the guy’s also funny! Plus he got laid a lot! [laughter] But I was never big on science-fiction. It’s not that I dislike it, but I never really went into it. I’ve read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy, Ray Bradbury—the classics in that sense—but I really spent my time on mysteries. I read a lot of Ellery Queen, Perry Mason, Shell Scott. I think that’s what I went after in comics: Action-adventure and mystery.

Mind puzzles were always interesting.

CBA: Did you read Doc Savage when he was resurrected in the Bantam paperbacks?

Steve: Yes, I read those, and a couple of The Shadow books, and while I like The Shadow as a concept,the books didn’t do a whole lot for me. I did read the first 80 or so Doc Savage novels.

CBA: [laughs] “The first 80 or so”?

Steve: Well, they were coming out monthly, but I read most of them when I first came into comics. It was just an adjunct to my comics work.

CBA: Where did you go to college?.

Steve: Wesleyan, in Connecticut.

CBA: What brought you there?

Steve: I wanted to go East. Again, I’d lived in the Midwest—well, Louisville is quasi-South, sort of on the border. I wanted to see the world beyond the Midwest.

Wesleyan is not an Ivy League school, because it’s too small, but if it were bigger, it would be, and it was only a couple of hours outside New York City. I liked the location and the ambiance of going East to college. I was just 18, I wanted to see some other part of the world.

CBA: When did you get into college?

Steve: 1965. I graduated in ’69.

CBA: When did you start thinking about a career as an artist?

Steve: When I was in college. Again, Wesleyan’s in Middletown, which is only half an hour away from Derby, Connecticut. One rainy Friday afternoon, I either didn’t have class or bailed out on it, and I didn’t have a car in college, so I hitchhiked down to Derby, and I showed up at Charlton Press, where the editor—a guy named Dick Giordano—was very friendly to this kid showing up in the middle of a rainstorm. He invited me in (they weren’t doing a whole lot on a Friday afternoon) and showed me the printing presses, showed me Steve Ditko pencils, I met Rocko Masteroserio, and I got to know Dick. He lived not too far from Derby, in Bridgeport (which is not all that far from Middletown), so I’d go down and visit Dick once every four months for an afternoon.

It’s not like I was hanging on him or anything, but he was a comic book guy, and this was Charlton comics when they were publishing Steve Ditko’s Blue Beetle, Jim Aparo’s “Nightshade,” and that mysterious writer Sergius O’Shaughnessy. This was in the middle of the big Charlton era, and it was right there, pretty much on my doorstep.

I was also able to go down to New York City, and go to Marvel, where they said, “We’re a bullpen, and there’s only ten people working here! We have no time for you! Go away!” [laughter] Then I went to DC, and they said, “Really? You’re interested? Come on in and meet Julie Schwartz,” and Julie said, “I’ll spend an hour talking to you. Gee, it sounds like you’re interested. Would you like some copies of The Brave and the Bold”—whatever the Justice League issues were—”I’ve got some extras here, you want any of those?” I went, “Yeah, sure, I would!” Remember, this was back when it was possible to do stuff like that, and of course, all that just fed my appetite. I now knew people in the field, and I was close to comics. Once I got interested, once I got to hang out with Julie Schwartz, Dick Giordano and people like that, I thought, “Well, they’re not weird, demi-god, strange people! These are cool guys!” Once I got into it, I started thinking maybe I’d like to draw comics. Dick was kind enough to critique my stuff. I’d come down and say, “Here’s what I’ve been working on since we last met,” and he’d tell me what was wrong with it,

which was a lot. But he was always nice about it, never judgmental.

CBA: Did you take art classes?

Steve: No, that was later. Sometime in there, after I moved to New York, after the Army and all that, I took a life-drawing class at one of the major art schools in Manhattan. I did take art classes in college, but they were generalized classes, not comic book courses.

CBA: What was the process of working with him? Was it an afterhours kind of thing?

Steve: This was while I was still in the Army. I was stationed three hours south of the city down in Aberdeen, Maryland. When I had a three-day pass that allowed me to get up to New York, I’d up and go.

You know who Wayne Howard was, right?

CBA: Sure!

Steve: He also went to Wesleyan, and he had some of his work published by Charlton. So I went back to Wesleyan and saw him. He was the first working professional of my generation that I had met.

On that same trip, I dropped back down to New York, went to DC, and ran into Neal. He heard about my situation in the Army (this was before I decided to get out), and he said, “Well, look: How about you take the train up and come to DC every Friday, and I’ll be up here whatever the time is.” I was usually able to get off around 2:00 P.M. in Maryland, drive up to Wilmington, hop on a train, go to New York, show up at DC by 5:00, before everybody had left DC. So I’d work with Neal while he’d be drawing Green Lantern/Green Arrow. I remember we were discussing “Ulysses Star is Still Alive” [GL #79] at one point, telling me about Denny’s scripts, and telling me how he would draw this and that. He was teaching me, and in the early days, it was all, “Here’s what I do, here’s how it happens, now I’ll work on

Above: Nice commission drawing of the Golden Age Batman by Marshall Rogers. Courtesy of Sandy Jarrell. Art ©2002 Marshall Rogers. Batman ©2002 DC Comics.

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CBA Interview Extra

Prelude: Dr. Phosphorus Walter Simonson recalls the real origin of the brilliant bad guy Inset right: Artist/writer Walter Simonson smiles for a pic (by Ye Ed) in his New York home.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by LongBox.com Staff It goes without saying that Walter Simonson is one of the most highly regarded artists in the comic book industry. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Walter first gained notice drawing that award-winning “Manhunter” strip, written by Archie Goodwin, and he went on to greater fame with his 1980s Thor revamping.

Having just completed a 25-issue run of Orion, the artist/writer is planning next to reteam with science-fiction author Michael Moorcock for a major comic book project. For a career retrospective, please see CBA #10.

Below: Walter Simonson had a hand in the creation of the short-lived Batman villain, Dr. Phosphorus, as you’ll learn in this interview. Here’s Walter and Allen Milgrom’s splash page art to the back-up story in Detective Comics #469. ©2002 DC Comics.

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Comic Book Artist: What are your feelings about Batman?

Walter Simonson: I like the character. I think he is one of the most elastic super-heroes out there. Batman has been done so many different ways. And a lot of those variations have worked very well indeed, more so than with any other super-hero character.

CBA: Can you think of highlights in the approach to Batman?

Walter: I like some of the very early material by Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson. The first Joker story's really creepy. I also enjoy the Dick Sprang stories which seemed completely from some other planet, even when I was a kid. I like the Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams take on

the character in the ’60s. Of all the Joker stories I've read, the Englehart/Rogers/Austin Joker story [Detective Comics #475-76] remains my favorite. It seems a remarkable encapsulation of the Joker’s ruthless insanity wedded with his hysterically funny but insane logic. Alex Toth drew a beautiful Batman story with a World War I triplane [Detective Comics #440] for Archie Goodwin in the early ’70s. All these stories were very different takes on the character visually. They explored various aspects of the essence of the character. And yet, they all seem to partake of the essential quality of the Batman. I always think of the Platonic Theory of Forms; somewhere out in the abstract, there is the perfect Batman in all his many variations, and all these writers and artists are accessing some aspect of that perfection in the dimension of their stories.

CBA: Do you enjoy drawing Batman?

Walter: Sure, I’ve done him several times and I really tried to do him a little differently with each assignment. I did the long-eared, long limbed, long caped Batman in “Manhunter,” a version that was inspired by Neal's visualization and by Bernie Wrightson's in Swamp Thing #6. That version seemed almost a dancer to me in the way I tried to suggest his movement. I did a squat, short-eared, lanternedjawed Batman in a single story Elliot Maggin wrote called “The Cape and Cowl Death Trap,” two years after “Manhunter,” maybe less. It had a very different inking style and was a very different visualization, a bone-crunching, teeth grinding, criminal hater. The two Batman stories I did with Steve Englehart were drawn as layouts, not full pencils.

And I was really trying to do a super-hero Batman, wasp-waisted and wide shouldered, taller than the guy that I had done in the Maggin story and probably broader shouldered and not quite so graceful as the character I had done in “Manhunter.”

CBA: Have you drawn the character since?

Walter: I did two or three stories that Dick Giordano inked in the late ’70s including a story for Detective Comics #500, and that was pretty much straight super-hero stuff. Len Wein wrote a couple of those and he and I also did a little two-page Batman story. We really cribbed it from Snoopy’s Great American Novel. Len's idea was to take all the quotes that Schulz had written for Snoopy's novel in the Peanuts strip, things like, “It was a dark and stormy night…” and “Suddenly a ship appeared on the horizon…” and stuff like that. Len sandwiched the quotes together and I drew a two-page story that was just those quotes as captions. It made a very short Batman adventure but it was fun. I did a Batman black-&-white story four or five years ago which was a look at the legend of Batman rather than the actual character. Visually, I was thinking in some ways about all the Batman toys, the action figures with their myriad costumes and accouterments, that were available about that time. So I’ve really played with the visualization of Batman myself in the opportunities I’ve had to draw him.

CBA: Do you feel like you’re Batman-ed out, so to speak, or would you like to re-approach the character one more time? It’s interesting that you haven’t done a major story arc with Batman as your angular, designy style seems a nice complement to the character.

Walter: These days, there are several Batman books and they’re all tied together in some ways, not unlike the Superman books. Or at least they were last time I looked. Generally, I work and play well with others, but I’m not so interested in doing Batman under those circum-

CBA Interview Extra

Breakdowns & the Batman Artist Allen Milgrom discusses his inking job on Simonson Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by LongBox.com Staff Artist and editor Allen Milgrom came on the scene of mainstream comics in the early ‘70s, quickly becoming an established and prolific inker for both Marvel and DC Comics. CBA interviewed Allen on his contributions to Marvel in the ‘70s in our recent 18th “Cosmic Comics” issue. This short interview on his work inking Walter Simonson on Detective Comics #469-470 was conducted by phone and was copyedited by Allen.

Allen: The first of the two was pretty successful. He was happy with it and I was relatively happy with it. The second one, I was in the middle of a deadline crunch and may have stretched myself a little thin. I tried experimenting. I know that Joe often worked with markers as well as regular brushes and I think in an effort to try to duplicate what he does, I tried to do the same and I’m not a good enough artist to pull that off. I should have stuck with the regular utensils.

CBA: Walter says he gave you pretty loose layouts?

Allen: Walter’s job on the Batman/Doctor Phosphorus story was loose but they were supposed to be breakdowns. I wasn’t sure if I

Below: Bats and the mad doctor tear it up in this Detective Comics #469 page by Steve Englehart (words), Walter Simonson (pencil breakdowns) and Allen Milgrom (inks). ©2002 DC Comics.

Comic Book Artist: How do you recall your work with Walter Simonson on those two Batman stories?

Allen Milgrom: Only vaguely. It was 30 years ago. Walter and I were living together at the time in Queens. He and Steve Englehart were talking about what Batman should be, and Walt was excited about drawing the character, having worked briefly on him in the “Manhunter” strip. I don’t remember if it had a tighter deadline than he was used to or he was working on something else at the time, which is possible, but instead of doing full pencils, he decided to do breakdowns, looser pencils and I don’t even know who asked me to come on board as the inker. I don’t remember getting an official call from Julie Schwartz. It was possible they just said, “Hey, let’s get Milgrom to ink it.” Julie, being an old-style editor, usually would go through the proper channels. I was tapped to do it and was into it. I don’t know if I had done any Batman prior to that, maybe just backgrounds for Murphy Anderson.

Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were the DC triumvirate, and everyone wanted to work on those icons. I decided to not do as much linear work as Walter, but more as a black-&-white design approach and I think it was a mistake to go that way. This was very early in both our careers and I didn’t do quite as much extra drawing on the stuff as I should’ve and on top of that at the time this was all new and exciting to me and I was getting to work with Walter. We worked together before on Swords of Sorcery, on the “Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser” strip. This was must have been 1973 because I had just finished a year with Murphy doing backgrounds and suddenly I started getting a little bit of work on my own. Walter had a real tight deadline and said, “I could really use some help inking this strip. Any chance you could come over and hang out at my place for a couple and while I’m penciling it? I’ll hand pages over for you to ink.” We did that production line thing. I moved in with him for a couple days. We talked way too much considering the deadline, went out for pizzas, and hung out in the neighborhood. Chaykin may have lived in the neighborhood at the time, too. So Walt would pencil a page and I would immediately then ink it. I had a tight deadline of my own, working on some pages for Dave Cockrum on Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes and was due to fly out of town at the end of the week, so we were busy cranking out stuff.

Some time during that stint doing those two Batman stories, somebody called and said, “We have a job we’d like for you to ink.”

I said, “I’m really pretty busy right now, I don’t think I can.” They said, “Don’t you want to ask who the penciler is?” I said, “Okay.

Who’s the penciler?” They said, “Joe Kubert.” And I said, “Of course, I’ll squeeze him in!” [laughter] So while I doing the two-part Batman story with Walter, I also ended up working on a two-part “Sgt. Rock” story for Our Army at War. I remember it featured Mussolini. It was a scary thrill to be able to ink Joe Kubert.

CBA: Did it work?

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CBA Interview Extra

The Rise of Marshall Rogers The renowned artist on his breakthrough work with the Batman Opposite page: Marshall Rogers’ painting of the Batman, the character he is perhaps most fondly associated with, from the cover of Phil Seuling’s 1979 Comic Art Convention souvenir book, the event where the artist was the featured guest of honor.

Art ©2002 Marshall Rogers.

Batman ©2002 DC Comics.

Right: Late ’70s photo of artist Marshall Rogers from the 1979 Comic Art Convention souvenir book, taken by Bob Keenan.

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Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by LongBox.com Staff The unanticipated arrival of Marshall Rogers on the increasingly dull and tepid mainstream comic book scene of the mid- to late 1970s caused a sensation with readers hungry for new and innovative work.

Most creators of note from the previous glory years—Neal Adams, Steranko, Barry Windsor-Smith, Bernie Wrightson, Michael W. Kaluta, Frank Brunner, Mike Ploog, and many others—had moved on to other fields (including advertising and the then-hot portfolio market), with the anemic industry in dire need of infusion. Along with John Byrne, Michael Golden, a young Frank Miller, and very few others, the fresh blood Marshall gave us were moments of majesty in the comics ghetto of those years, helping to bridge the time when the field would again meet their promise. This interview took place by telephone in the Spring, and was copyedited by the artist.

Comic Book Artist: Where are you from?

Marshall Rogers: Ardsley, New York.

That’s in Westchester County, about 20 miles north of Manhattan. It’s just next to Dobbs Ferry.

CBA: What did your father do?

Marshall: He was an electrical engineer.

CBA: Did you have anyone else who was artistic in your family?

Marshall: Well, my dad. After he died at a fairly early age, I was going through some of his stuff and found single spot cartoons that he had done as contributions to The New Yorker. He never sold them, but had aspirations at one time. He was artistic in that all of his free time was spent in rebuilding our house; he was a carpenter and woodcraftsman. That’s how he expressed his artistic side. My mother was a seamstress, not a professional, but she was of tailor quality and did sewing for friends, and that was her artistic outlet.

CBA: Was it pretty much a typical Westchester County suburban neighborhood?

Marshall: Absolutely. It was a white-bread environment.

CBA: Did you spend your entire youth in Westchester?

Marshall: Yes. CBA: When did you develop an interest in art?

Marshall: As a kid, I read comic books, and that made me want to draw.

CBA: How many other siblings do you have?

Marshall: One younger sister.

CBA: Did you spend a lot of time alone? For instance, did you read comics on your own or did you share them with neighborhood kids?

Marshall: Both. I would

have my downtime by myself and had a number of friends who were also into comic books so we would go around the neighborhood, traveling for miles, looking for trades.

CBA: Were you initially into the Dell comics, the Walt Disneys?

Marshall: Yes. The first comics I actually read were Mickey Mouse Adventures. I soon moved on to the very homogenized Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman of the ’50s.

CBA: You obviously missed the ECs, right?

Marshall: Yes, I did. I think there was basically a neighborhood censorship on those items. I don’t remember seeing them on newsstands.

CBA: Where did you buy your comics?

Marshall: There was a luncheonette, about a mile away from my house, in the downtown section of the small community.

CBA: Did you have outlets like that where you could buy older comics?

Marshall: No, not really. My grandparents lived out in Stonybrook, on Long Island and a very small community at the time and there was a small drugstore and they wouldn’t return their titles, so I would be able to find issues four or five months old and that’s really where I got my first Marvel titles.

CBA: So you were able to buy small runs of certain titles?

Marshall: Exactly. I actually found X-Men #2 there after buying X-Men #3 or 4 at my own town store.

CBA: The artist of those issues, Jack Kirby, was the first artist that influenced you?

Marshall: Absolutely. [For a thorough discussion of his memorable late ’70s run on Mister Miracle and Marshall’s opinions regarding Kirby’s work, please refer to Ye Ed’s interview with him in The Jack Kirby Collector #35.] But not just Jack. I was reading everybody. Gil Kane certainly caught my eye. Though Jack was the main influence. I would go down, once a week, buy a stack of comic books, bring them home and arrange them so that the Kirby issues were on the bottom. Then I’d quickly go through the others and then get down to the Jack’s work.

CBA: That’s self-discipline! [laughter] How about Steve Ditko?

Marshall: In the stack, he was always just above Jack’s work and I would start savoring at that point.

CBA: You mentioned in your TJKC interview the impact of Ditko’s first 20 issues or so of Amazing Spider-Man. There was also a wonderful run by Stan Lee and Ditko on “Doctor Strange” in Strange Tales. Do you recall that at all?

Strange embarked on an around-the-world sojourn, trying to keep away from Baron Mordru and his minions in astral form.

Marshall: Absolutely, and when I did my run on Doctor Strange [#48-53], I went back to those issues of Strange Tales as my source material.

CBA: What was it about Ditko’s work that compelled you?

Marshall: It was so different, and he was also an artist who put a lot of himself in his work. And I also felt that way about Jack. I got more than a twodimensional feel out of Jack and Steve’s work. I think they were men putting their heart into the material they were doing.

CBA: At what point did you say, “Hey, I want to be a comic book artist”?

Marshall: As a youngster, I’m sure that I dabbled with the idea, but I never remember announcing it to anyone. I had gone to college more to placate my parents as a dutiful son. They wanted me to get a degree and a career to get on with my life. As a compromise I chose architecture because I thought there would be some artistic outlet afforded me. When I had finished in two years, I had realized that the world probably wouldn’t accept Frank Lloyd Wright’s work in today’s economy at that time. The architecture that I was learning was designing parking lots for malls, heating and cooling systems, and it wasn’t giving me any artistic satisfaction. I realized what I really wanted to do was tell stories and comic books would give me the venue to do that and it was at that point I decided that I wanted to be a comic book artist.

CBA: This was in the early ’70s?

Marshall: That’s right.

CBA: Now, were you aware of that new generation that you’re a part of— Wrightson, Kaluta, Windsor-Smith, etc.—who were coming in at that time?

Marshall: Chaykin and Simonson’s work in particular made me feel that I can also do this. I really admire both men’s abilities. They weren’t following the tradition that Neal Adams had established; they were breaking away from that mold. They were working in a more linear, more impressionistic style in their approach to comics and that was what I could also execute. In doing samples, I tried to emulate Neal’s work, but I’m not capable of doing that type of finesse of which Neal is so expert. And that’s not really where my interest lies as much. I had to learn anatomy to tell stories, rather than knowing how to draw to get me into comic books. Storytelling made me want to get into it rather than having the chance to draw. I had to learn how to draw to do what I wanted to do.

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Below: Before they were made a bona fide fan favorite art team through their Detective Comics breakthrough, Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin also drew a story for Batman Family #12. Courtesy of Terry Austin. ©2002 DC Comics.

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CBA: The early ’70s were a great time to appreciate comic books because there was a plethora of reprint material coming out at the time. Nostalgia Press was reprinting Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Eisner’s Spirit was back, there were DC’s 100-Page Super Spectaculars where you could see early work of Jack Kirby, Jack Burnley, Dick Sprang and any number of cartoonists. Did you look back at the past masters?

Marshall: Not at that time, I was looking at Chaykin and Simonson to see how I could execute the work that was more in my mind. Then I left DC Comics because I wanted to ink my own material. I went back even further and looked at the cartooning and the stylization of the 1920s and ’30s. I really studied the work of Herriman, McCay, Caniff and those newspaper syndicate artists and looked at the inking they were doing there, because it was so organic.

One of my all-time favorite contemporary pieces of cartooning is Calvin and Hobbes. I think Bill Watterson is a master cartoonist.

CBA: Absolutely. One of the compelling things of your work is that in late ’60s and ’70s, while there were enormously different styles coming to the fore, certainly Neal Adams’ influence really dominated at the time. The ultra-realistic, hyper-real approach was going on, which often devolved into the grotesque, in the literal sense of that word. Yet you came on the scene with an almost minimalist style. So you were attempting a minimalist, more cartoony approach?

Marshall: Yeah. A lot of my time was spent in the design and composition of the page, and so I had to take some short cuts and it resulted in minimalist approaches to the finished work. There’s just an innate artistic feel; negative space and simplicity not only aid in the design, but also propel the storytelling momentum. When there are dead areas in the story or in-between spots that just bridge one story element to another, I don’t think that the reader should linger on that panel so you can make it as minimalistic as possible to compel them to move on to the next panel.

CBA: Did you enjoy Alex Toth’s work for instance?

Marshall: Yeah, absolutely. Very much.

CBA: In our other interview, you said you had left comic collecting for a period of time. By the early ’70s, did you get back into reading comics after you decided to become a comic artist or before?

Marshall: It was more in conjunction. What was out there at the time, just after a third company had come on to the scene, Atlas/Seaboard, I had made a try at DC and Marvel and was getting rejected and I thought because Atlas was new they wouldn’t have all their slots filled and might be interested in talent that was more raw.

CBA: What happened?

Marshall: I started to get a couple small nibbles and got a couple small assignments to do spot illustrations for one of their black-&white books and we were talking about my being assigned to draw that kung fu character, Hands of the Dragon, and I had done a character design for that. The editor and I were starting to do some serious talking about it but at the time they were revamping the line because sales weren’t good and they were trying to boost them, but then the bottom fell out. I was dealing with a young guy, Jeff Rovin.

CBA: How did you approach DC and Marvel? Did you draw up sample stories?

Marshall: Yes. I was writing my own stories and drawing them and I gave them way too much material and somebody—I don’t remember who—suggested that I just start taking some existing stories and just start redrawing one or two pages of how I would approach the work as compared to getting them a whole body of work. At the time I was talking with everybody I could at that point, trying to get into the companies and then going to conventions and talking to the young artists who were getting work and they were giving me critiques on my work.

CBA: You’re from Westchester. Did you attend the Phil Seuling conventions?

Marshall: That’s where I was going before I started working professionally.

CBA: Did you approach people like Bernie Wrightson and Barry Smith?

Marshall: Everybody, including Neal Adams who told me to give it up and get a real job. [laughter] CBA: Did you remind Neal of that when you were later renting space at Continuity?

Marshall: I think it may have come up. I do remember it being like a challenge that I had to prove that I could do it.

CBA: Was it to your advantage, eventually, that you did not get in on the first go-round because that gave you time to develop your own style or were you ready at the initial stage?

Marshall: It certainly made me hungry when I got my first opportunity. I wanted to prove myself and wanted to do the work. When I finally got my chance it has been so long in coming that I was ready to give it everything I had.

CBA: Your first professional job was with editor Julie Schwartz on the Calculator back-up stories in Detective Comics?

Marshall: No, my first work was over at Marvel, through Marie Severin and Dan Adkins. Marvel was reprinting American material for a British audience and the pages were in a different format that was wider than it was high. They would reprint two American pages per British page and would only do half an American story per issue so they needed splash pages for every second issue and I was doing splash pages in everyone’s different style for those books.

CBA: So you would actually do a Daredevil splash in, let’s say, Gene Colan’s style?

Marshall: Yeah. There was a Colan Dracula story that I had to do a splash for. I had to do splashes in Jack’s style for the Fantastic Four stories.

CBA Interview Extra

The Artistry of Terry Austin The sublime inker on his early years in comics & the Batman Inset right: Fading Polaroid shot of Terry Austin, posing in Continuity Studios in the mid1970s. Courtesy of Terry.

Below: Marker sketch by Terry Austin done for a fan. The artist added, “I’m the guy who does the grinning Batman!” Courtesy of Terry. Art ©2002 Terry Austin.

Batman ©2002 DC Comics.

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Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Steven Tice Terry Austin is perhaps the most fondly considered inker in the comic book industry, not only for his superb talents, but because he’s also a truly nice guy. A fan of the art form, first and always (and a very frequent and generous contributor to Comic Book Artist), the artist is best recalled for his award-winning work over John Byrne on The Uncanny X-Men in the late 1970s and early ’80s. He continues to wow readers in the field today. Terry was interviewed by telephone on April 4, 2002 and the artist copyedited the final transcript.

Comic Book Artist: Where are you originally from, Terry?

Terry Austin: Detroit, Michigan. One of our neighbors was a Mrs. Trendle. I found out years later she was the widow of George W. Trendle who created The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet for WXYZ Radio in Detroit. All I knew then was that she made great cookies! [laughter] CBA: Did you get into comics at a young age?

Terry: Yes, I bought funny animal comic books as a little kid. At that point, anything you saw on TV you went to the store and there would be a comic book version. Huckleberry Hound and all the very early Hanna-Barbera stuff, anything that was a cartoon ended up on the spinner rack.

CBA: Did you copy the comics?

Terry: I remember copying what I saw on TV. I was an animation fan initially and then found comic books. I don’t remember much from my childhood, but do recall watching the first episode of The Flintstones and then laying on the floor in front of the set trying to draw Fred and Barney bowling.

CBA: From the very first prime time episode?

Terry: Right. I was also a big fan of Popeye, one of the first things that I grabbed onto as a kid. Howdy-Doody, and then Popeye. They were showing all the old Max

Fleischer black-&-white Popeye cartoons, and I would run home from school every day and watch that stuff.

CBA: Did you get into the DC super-hero books down the line?

Terry: The kids at school had Superman, and I thought, “That’s okay; I can get into this.” I got into the DC stuff fairly early on. I really loved Green Lantern, Flash, Atom, Justice League and all that good Silver Age stuff.

CBA: Did you clue into the early Marvels?

Terry: I remember my parents took me to visit some friends of theirs and I was bored, of course, like every kid who goes with his parents to see friends.

So I wheedled some money out of my parents and walked to the nearest store that sold comics, not much of a hike. I’d already got all my regular books that week, but I wasn’t about to go back and give Dad the change since that would set a bad precedent, so I bought some odd-looking books, Fantastic Four #8 and the first Strange Tales Annual, which reprinted all these monster jobs, and I remember just looking at these comics thinking, “Oh, man, there’s something wrong here!

Everything’s dark and scary.” [laughter] The DC books were so light and airy and everybody looked pretty. Even the men were awful pretty. But here were these grotesque drawings with too much black in them. I read them and put them away, then I read them again and again and again, and then I’d put them away for a while, and came back and read them again. [laughter] I had the same reaction the first time I saw Alex Toth’s work. It was a while before I bought any more Marvel stuff. A little later, I got hooked into Marvel and gave up DC. In those days you didn’t see every issue because Marvel’s distribution was spotty. Then I eventually looked back at DC when Gil Kane was inking himself and that looked great, and I started buying DC comics again, and had to have everything from both companies.

CBA: Was there any appeal to Batman?

Terry: Well, I remember buying some of the stuff when I was a kid in the late ’50s, maybe early ’60s, and there were these dopey aliens and stuff, with Batman and Robin always fighting the “Alien from Dimension X.” There was no continuity, certainly, in those days, and the stories just didn’t do much for me, so I didn’t come back to Batman until I saw the first Carmine Infantino cover on Detective Comics, the first “New Look.” I grabbed it and thought, “Oh, man!

This looks great!”

CBA: So you really clued into the art, specifically?

Terry: At some point, yeah, once I got over the odd-looking style over at Marvel, I started picking artists. In those days, I really loved Mike Sekowsky’s art in Justice League. Early on I thought, “All the

characters look great, better than in their own books.” And I loved the artist on Flash, Carmine Infantino, though I didn’t know his name at the time. And I loved Green Lantern, which I later learned was by Gil Kane.

CBA: Were you all this time doing your own cartoons?

Terry: At some point, I got into doing parodies of the Justice League and stuff like that, though I certainly never showed them to anybody. [laughs] They were just for me. I’m fairly certain nobody else would’ve understood them.

CBA: Did you have any experience with early fandom in the ’60s?

Terry: No, I honestly didn’t. There was a huge fan base in Detroit, but I just never got near it. Maybe I wasn’t in the right neighborhood.

CBA: Did you continue reading comics through high school?

Terry: Yes. I still do. It’s just something I’ve never stopped. There was a race riot in Detroit around 1967 and I remember my parents saying we’d better leave, make ourselves scarce for a bit. I remember going down the street to where the drug store was, and everything was closed! There were tanks and army trucks going down the avenue. I remember being really upset because the first Daredevil Annual was due to be out and I couldn’t get a copy. [laughter] “What’s happening? The world’s going crazy! I can’t get my Daredevil Annual!” [laughter] I also recall the last thing I did when we left the house, which we weren’t sure would still be standing when we got back: I took all of my comics and put them under the table, just in case looters might look in the window and go, “Oh boy! Marvel Comics!” and decide to come in and help themselves! [laughter] CBA: When did you start thinking of a career in comics?

Terry: I was in Wayne State University in downtown Detroit, where I took all the art classes I could. I had a instructor who had been into EC Comics when he was in college. He had me over to his house one day and actually gave me the remnants of his ECs. (He’d kept them in a locker in his chemistry class, and the chemical fumes had started to eat at the books, so unfortunately, the ones he liked best—Weird Science and the horror titles—he put on top of the stack, and were badly damaged. The ones at the bottom of the stack were great copies of the less interesting Psychoanalysis and that New Trend stuff.) I had another professor who was into underground comix. So I basically did comic book stories for those guys. But I got more into painting, which I did a lot of. The professors didn’t know what to make of it because basically I was painting what I thought of as paperback covers, doing science-fiction and fantasy stuff. In the late ’60s, early ’70s, the commercial fields were looked down on and the true artistes were all painting for galleries. If you painted for commercial purposes, you were viewed with suspicion. So I was very upfront, but it was very funny, because I would say, “Well, I’m trying to illustrate this scene from this story,” and they’d say, “Oh! So you’re trying to point out the inhumanity of the mechanized age and our culture.” [laughter] I’d go, “Well, not really.” And they’d go on this whole diatribe about the symbolic value of what I had done. “No, it’s just a painting of a robot and a guy he killed, y’know?” [laughter] CBA: There’s this “Detroit Mafia” of comics fandom, which included Rich Buckler, Greg Theakston, Jim Starlin, Allen Milgrom, any number of people from the area. Did you know any of them?

Terry: I didn’t. I just didn’t run in the same circles. I was in a different part of the city. A couple of guys, Tom Orzechowski and Mike Kucharski, put on a convention and I got involved with them. I was working at a bookstore all through college and it was in Tom’s neighborhood, so I got to know him a little bit, and through him, Mike, and I ended up inking a lot of Mike’s stuff. I did meet Allen Milgrom at a convention in Detroit, about a year before I moved down to New York. I showed him some samples, talked to him for about five minutes. A year later I walked out of somebody’s office up at Marvel, having been soundly rejected again, and Allen looked up and said, “Terry!” I owe him a lot, because I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t remembered me from those five minutes a year earlier. He grabbed me and took me up to Continuity and introduced me to Neal Adams, and that was how I started working.

CBA: And the rest is history. [laughter] What made you think of getting into comics?

Terry: Where my folks lived in Detroit, across the street, there was

a family whose daughter, Beverly Penberthy, my parents had watched grow up. She became a model in Detroit, moved to New York, became an actress and ended up doing TV. For decades, she was a regular on a soap opera called Another World. Anyway, her parents moved from Detroit to upper Michigan and we’d go up and visit, and one time we came in and there was a huge box of Marvel Comics in their living room. I was, like, “Oh, my God! What’s this?” It turned out that their daughter’s son was visiting and was really into comics.

So Beverly and her son, Mark, lived in Westchester County, New York. Of course, Mark and I immediately hit it off because we talked the same language, the language of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. So I’d go up and spend some time in the Summers when he was up there visiting. And before I graduated from college, I flew out to visit them in Westchester. I was coming to New York after I graduated, basically with the intention to paint paperback covers. Somebody had some contact with Rich Buckler and arranged for me to meet him up at Marvel and show some stuff. I did, but didn’t get any work, but I did see the inside of Marvel Comics for the first time. Later, when I graduated, I decided to move to New York as the Penberthys offered to rent me the third floor of their house. In fact, I had gotten to meet John Romita on that earlier trip and showed him my paintings, because Marvel was doing those black-&-white magazines at the time. My mom had said, “Look, you’re going to an office. Make sure that you wear your suit!” so I had these big paintings on stretched

Above: Terry Austin penciled and inked this pin-up of Batman and the Penguin around the same time he was working with Marshall Rogers on the celebrated Detective Comics run. Courtesy of the artist.

Characters ©2002 DC Comics.

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CBA Interview

Signs of the Bat Letterer John Workman on his contributions to the Batman Above: Interestingly, the distinctive use of drop caps—knocked-out letters within circles—in the captions of the early Golden Age Batman adventures, began in the very same story which first introduced Professor Hugo Strange, in Detective Comics #36, a villain which would appear when letterer John Workman revived the usage briefly during the legendary Steve Englehartscribed run. ©2002 DC Comics.

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Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by LongBox.com Staff Comic Book Artist: Do you recall how you got involved in the project? Were you on staff at DC at the time?

John Workman: I was on staff and lettering freelance at night. I would take work home at the end of the day and bring it back the next morning. Mostly, I lettered covers. I had interior-lettered just a handful of books at the time, and Julie Schwartz seemed to like my style. I could never understand why because I didn’t like my style. I was still learning. (I hope I’m still learning today, but at that time, I thought what I was doing was just miserable.) Marshall Rogers was going to be taking over the artwork on Detective Comics, and we

had met in the office and got along real well. So I was supposed to be lettering that. I do remember, in particular, harking back to the old Batman stuff of the early ’40s, Marshall wanted each narrative caption to start with a distinctive initial cap, so I played around with different things there, looking back on the early Batman comics I had.

CBA: Did you actually go to the DC library?

John: I have a decent collection of Batman from that time period, so I just looked at my own stuff. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t avail myself of the DC library. Years earlier, I would have been in hog heaven sitting there reading comic books at lunch time! I intended on doing that, but I just never did.

CBA: Did you appreciate the lettering in the early Detectives?

John: Oh, yes! A lot the very early stuff was lettered by Jerry Robinson and George Roussos, I believe.

CBA: Were you distinctive also with the word balloons or was that homage too?

John: That was me trying to come up with balloons that worked. I used a French curve on those and gave them a distinctive look. I never was completely happy, but I hated my earlier word balloons. I didn’t come up with a type of word balloon that I was happy with until I started to work with Walt Simonson on Thor.

CBA: Which were just circles, weren’t they?

John: Pretty much; they were ovals. I actually used templates for them and would stretch and play with them. Initially, I would do them in pencil and then ink them freehand. After a while, I just started using the template directly and inking from that. Although even with the templates, I do some things to give the “ballooning” a little human feel. The word balloons that I was making use of back during that time were just terrible. I remember a Batman story… with the Penguin… that I lettered and that Mike Grell had drawn. I really messed up his artwork with my lousy lettering… especially the balloons.

CBA: In retrospect, was that a fair assessment?

John: I think so, I looked at it not too long ago, and it’s still awful. I didn’t know what I was doing! It was terrible.

CBA: On staff at DC, you must have had an occasion to encounter John Costanza and Gaspar Saladino. Did you seek advice from them?

John: I really admired both of them, and I stole from those guys like you wouldn’t believe. I thought it was so neat that John Costanza would do that page 13 bit. He didn’t have a credit on the story, but you knew Costanza had done it, not only from the look of it, but also if it was a story that had 13 or more pages, he would do the 13th page number in negative form as a signature. For a long time, I would use weird pseudonyms, sometimes having to do with the name Workman, but not always. I remember lettering a Bugs Bunny story for Joey Cavalieri in the late ’80s. I used the credit name “J.P. Patches” (who was a kid’s TV show host in Seattle back in the ’50s and ’60s). One time, I was watching Cat Ballou on TV, and so I became “Kid Shaleen Workman” for whatever story I was lettering.

People did comment on it, and they got a kick out of it. Sometimes when I dropped the Workman part completely, people didn’t know it was me. I’ve seen several indexes of letterers and old J.P. is in there.

CBA: Did you get the assignment from Julie?

John: He seemed to like my lettering, which I never did understand because all these far better people available; Gaspar is just brilliant as were John Costanza and Ben Oda. All of them were far better than me. I was lettering this Batman stuff and the thing I remember most was how worried people were—Sol Harrison and especially Joe Orlando—about the artwork because it was so different. Batman, at

From the Vault

Cancelled Comics Cavalcade The story behind perhaps the rarest DC Comics of all time

by Jon B. Cooke They’re an unassuming pair of books to look at, nondescript in their blank blue paper covers and black-tape bindings, but the two volumes of Cancelled Comics Cavalcade are just about the rarest DC Comics of all, though if not precisely, they undoubtedly hold the superlative of being the lowest print-run comics the publisher ever released. CCC is an artifact of the notorious “DC Implosion,” when in June of 1978, the company axed an astounding 31 titles, a direct result of the imprint’s rapid expansion of ’77 under neophyte publisher Jenette Kahn (balley-hooed by DC as their “Explosion”) when 12 new or revived titles debuted and the format of each regular book increased from 32 to 44 pages (as well as a price increase from 35¢ to 50¢). As stated in the editorial “of sorts” (penned by credited editor/packager Mike Gold) prefacing the volumes, the two issues were created because DC “had a whole mess of material ready to go to the engravers (or ready for last minute corrections); it was felt it would be a shame if this material would never see print.”

But a more pragmatic business decision was in play, one far more practical: “[CCC is] a two-shot which both preserves the material in question and guarantees DC’s copyright to same.” To that end, 35 pairs were produced, “34 of which will go to the creators and copyright people, set #35 will go to Bob Overstreet [of the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide] to show the world it actually happened.” The first volume, dated Summer 1978, consisted of a Allen Milgrom-drawn “cover” frontispiece, Gold’s editorial, and 410 one-sided Xerox pages, reproducing the covers and/or interiors of various DC aborted books. The second tome, with a Fall ’78 date, sported an Alex Saviuk frontispiece, another Gold text page, and a whopping 530 pages of even more cancelled DC titles. [See accompanying sidebar in this section for CCC table of contents.]

Gold explained that, “Cancelled Comic Cavalcade was essentially the scooping up of an enormous amount of unpublished material, and having it published in Xerox form. It was sent out to Warner Communications’ printing shop… I suspect it was just Xeroxed and bound there, in the sub-basement of what is now the Time-Warner Building. We put it in interstate distribution, you could argue it was efficient for copyright purposes, which DC wanted to protect, and copies were made up for the contributors, so the people who had done the work, had reference copies. You know, this was right after the ‘DC Implosion,’ so a lot of people were out of jobs, and half the line was cancelled at that point. There was some really nice work, and a lot of stuff that really wasn’t so good. In point of fact, I put those books together, and [DC editorial coordinator] Paul Levitz had actually talked me out of running one or two stories that were really bad. You can only imagine what those stories must’ve looked like!

Because there were some books there, some stories we reprinted for that purpose that should’ve never seen the light of day. There was some very, very good material that was published in there, as well.

Not all of which was reprinted in the original from, so it was kind of a cool thing. Of course, the title was based upon the All-American Comics title of the 1940s, Comics Cavalcade.”

While much of the material could be characterized as pedestrian, there are a number of gems among the rough, featuring work by some of the greatest comic book artists of all time, including Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Joe Kubert, Jim Aparo, Michael W. Kaluta, Michael Golden, Russ Heath, and Don Heck. In the following pages, you will get a look at those rare beauties, as well as take a gander at two never released new titles featuring characters never seen since: The

Vixen and the Deserter, as well as taking a glance at fan favorites Deadman, The Creeper, Kamandi, and OMAC! Plus we include a gallery of unused covers, as well as the CCC frontispieces themselves and, because we just couldn’t resist, a glance at the odder pieces.

Many thanks to CBA contributor and pal Bill Alger for entrusting us with this ultra-rare treasure (valued, they say, in the thousands of dollars), to Mike Gold for his background help, to Michael Grabois for use of his invaluable table of contents, and finally Todd Klein (the designer of the CCC logos) who shared high-quality copies of the CCC “covers.”

Above: Allen Milgrom’s “cover” to Cancelled Comics Cavalcade #1, which the indicia told us was, along with #2, “published twice in a lifetime by DC Comics, Inc.,” and cost of a year’s subscription was $10,000, though international subs went for “$9,500 (’bout time they got a break).” Courtesy of Todd Klein. ©2002 DC Comics.

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This page: Annoyed at the editorial shenanigans taking place at Marvel Comics, Jim Starlin took his talents across the way to DC (as well as to Warren and independent realms), where the artist/writer took on some Kirby creations including The New Gods and, of all characters, the notorious OMAC, the One-Man Army Corps. This revised eight-page origin tale of Buddy Blank’s alter ego eventually saw print in Warlord #37 with some minor changes. Words and pencils by Starlin, inks by Joe Rubenstein. Š2002 DC Comics.

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CBA Collection Extra!

portfolio

Opposite page: Black-&-white line art of Paul Gulacy’s cover for Comic Book Artist Vol. 1, #7.

This page: Shang-Chi and Shaka Kharn (no, not the disco pop singer!) drawn by Paul for a fan in 1991 (courtesy of Dave Lemieux). Characters ©2005 Marvel Characters, Inc. Art ©2005 Paul Gulacy.

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CBA Collection Extra!

Marvel Value Stamps Or how to destroy your Bronze Age comics collection

by Rob Anderson

Above: The actual Cooke Brothers’ Mighty Marvel Value Stamp Book purchased in the mid-’70 from the House of Ideas. Courtesy of Andrew D. Cooke. Below: Just for kicks, Ye Ed made up this faux MVS of Mirthful Marie. Art ©’05 M.S.

Let me paint you a horrifying picture: it’s 1974 and I’m eight years old, sitting in the floor of my bedroom. I’ve just flipped to the letters page of a comic. I’m smiling because I’ve discovered that this particular issue contains a strange little thing called a Marvel Value Stamp—specifically, #54, Shanna the She-Devil.

Carefully, scissors in hand, I cut around the edges of the stamp, so as not to mess up the border. Satisfied with my work, I toss my copy of Incredible Hulk #181 back onto the stack. It has some funny character in it called Wolverine—his first full issue appearance.

I bought the comic for the stamp.

To this day, if you take a quick flip through any issue I owned between 1974 and ‘76, you’re likely to find a mutilated letters page that flaps in the breeze.

I wasn’t the only one taken in by this insanity. A search on eBay will reveal countless “reading copies” of Bronze Age comics available in great condition… except for that missing stamp.

In the strictest sense, Marvel Value Stamps weren’t really “stamps” at all. Basically, they were color portraits of Marvel characters, less than two inches on each side, which generally appeared on the letters page of selected issues. They had a little pseudo-perforated border running around the edge, but that was as close as they came to being stamp-like.

Really, they were just square pieces of paper, and they certainly weren’t sticky, unless you added your own glue.

Each stamp also had a number on it, ranging from 1 to 100, and I suspect that was the beginning of the end for obsessive collector-types like me. Add numbers to something that looks like a stamp, provide a book to put them in, and offer ill-defined but fabulous rewards, and a certain part of the population will find themselves compelled to collect them all. Not surprisingly, that portion of the population overlapped pretty well with those of us who were obsessively collecting comics in the mid-’70s.

Why stamps?

So where did this wacky comic book stamp idea come from in the first place? From the 1950s to the ‘70s, stamp programs outside of the comics world were huge. Businesses from gas stations to grocery 92

stores offered stamps to their loyal customers, and completed stamp books could be redeemed for all sorts of things, from toasters to silverware. The most popular stamp loyalty program, run by Sperry & Hutchinson (S&H), penetrated 60 percent of U.S. households at its peak, according to The New York Times (Nov. 26, 2001). S&H claimed that in 1964 it printed three times as many stamps as the U.S. Postal Service!

So stamp collecting was still a common promotion in the ‘70s, but then-Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas recalls that there was also a specific precedent for stamps in comics. “There had been stamps in comics before,” Roy said. “Fawcett had them for several years back in the early ’50s, late ’40s, whatever it was—very similar to Marvel’s in the ’70s… It was a sales gimmick, I suppose.”

Although Roy’s memories of the origins of the Marvel program were vague, he seemed to recall getting the directive from Stan.

“Now whether somebody else suggested it to him or not, I don’t know,” Roy said. “But I have this feeling that it was Stan’s idea.”

The quest for stamp artwork Once the decision had been made to launch a stamp program, the next step was selecting characters and creating the artwork.

Characters chosen for the stamps ran the gamut from Spider-Man to Galactus, with everyone from Brother Voodoo to the Super-Skrull in between. The artwork for the stamps was lifted from covers, interior pages, and even house ads.

“It would have been too expensive and time-consuming to have drawn new art for these things,” Roy said, “and sometimes it took a long time to find just the right picture—and then you had to white out some of the art and maybe… get rid of a balloon that might overlap, or something like that.”

According to the April ‘74 Marvel Bullpen Bonus page, “Jazzy Johnny Romita, [Sr.], Mirthful Marie Severin, and Titanic Tony Mortellaro” were the parties responsible for digging up “the spiffiest bunch of super-hero drawings since George Washington first said ‘Cheese!’”

The stamps featured artwork by a wide array of artists, from Mike Ploog and Gil Kane, to Barry Windsor Smith and Steve Ditko.

Jack Kirby’s work made up the most stamps—18 of Series A, followed by John Buscema and John Romita, Sr. with more than 10 apiece. Marie Severin, a huge Kirby fan, felt that Jack truly “represented Marvel,” and she admitted that the large number of Kirby stamps was likely her doing.

Kirby, Buscema, and Romita were also favored in the selection process because, according to Marie, “Their artwork was clean and clear, and they did the major characters, and that’s what we were after—something that fit nice that wouldn’t need too much touching-up.”

“We sort of had to have a production eye doing it,” Marie continued. “A lot of stuff I did, I chose for reproduction—what would show up best. You can’t choose a mural and bring it down to an inch. So when you found a head, you would maybe cut off part of it; maybe do something like we did with [stamp #100] Galactus.” Lifted from the cover of Fantastic Four #49 by Jack Kirby, Marie remembered adding the “crackle” around his head on the stamp. “A lot of stuff had to be touched-up and backgrounds knocked out,” she said.

Gil Kane’s Man-Wolf stamp was another example of this. Lifted from an interior page of Giant-Size Super-Heroes #1, Man-Wolf needed a right foot, a left leg, and a right elbow added in order to

appear complete within the confines of the stamp. Others, such as Kirby’s Enchantress from the cover of The Avengers #7, were already perfect.

Where covers or famous splash pages were used, the stamp artwork is instantly recognizable—such as the headshot of Mary Jane Watson from the last page of Amazing Spider-Man #42. (“Face it tiger—you just hit the jackpot!”) Other stamp artwork is maddeningly obscure—like the Volstaag stamp, which originally appeared on an unpublished cover to Thor #170.

“Some of the subjects were hard to find,” Marie recalled. “[Volstagg] was hard to find because he wasn’t on that many covers. ...It wouldn’t be like [Doc] Octopus… where he appeared all over the place. Volstagg was [generally] on interior shots only.”

Although she was one of the people tracking down the artwork, Marie was not the person choosing which characters were to be featured—and she couldn’t remember who had done so. But she was central to much of the production, from touch-up to coloring. “I was doing other things,” Marie said, “but if they had a letters page, they might have thrown it at me one month and said, ‘Hey, get a stamp in here of such-and-such.’”

From the sidelines, Roy remembered the effort as “a fair amount of trouble. It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, especially to get it going.”

How Marvel convinced us to cut up our comics So how did Marvel whip so many of us into a destructive frenzy?

The hype-fest began in issues cover-dated February of 1974. An unnumbered Hulk stamp appeared on the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins

page, soliciting guesses from fans as to what the stamp-like thing could be. The comics outfit was tight-lipped about the program, but promised “a zingier bargain than you ever saw on Let’s Make a Deal!” The following month, the Bullpen was still light on details, though heavy on hype, using fully half of the new Bullpen Bonus page to promote the program. Whatever the stamps were, we were told to “keep ‘em safe and secure, like the family jewels.”

To an eight-year-old mind, these stamps were clearly going to be something spectacular. Why risk leaving them in the comics?

Many of us went to work on our collections immediately. I know from talking to other fans that many of us also immediately went about “protecting” them—by pasting them into photo albums, taping them into notebooks, and undertaking other equally logical activities.

Two months after the initial teaser, a surprise followed for those of us who had been diligent. A stamp album would soon be available for purchase. I had already committed to the notebook and tape approach. It didn’t occur to me until much later that the stamps would need to be in a stamp book to provide any benefits.

Above: Opening spread of the first Mighty Marvel Value Stamp Book.

Look for the other 91 stamps on pages 98-99. All characters ©2005 their respective copyright holders.

Below: The book also came with a photo-realistic Spider-Man (produced in England, so ya gotta wonder if the supply was overstock from a weekly comics premium). Courtesy of Rob Anderson. ©2005 Marvel Characters, Inc.

The Mighty Marvel Stamp Book The Series A stamp book was first offered for sale via a mail-in coupon in issues cover-dated July, ‘74. For a mere 50¢, the cost of two Marvel Comics at the time, it would be “winging its way” to you, along with a special bonus poster.

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CBA Collection Extra!

Killraven of the Apes!

Brit Marvel’s weird melding of “War of the Worlds” & POTA Insert right: Vignette of John Romita Sr.’s Killraven taken from the cover of Amazing Adventures #18 (May ’73). ©2005 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Below: The strange and wonderful morphing of “Killraven” with Planet of the Apes began in this issue, #23 (Mar. 29, ’75), of the U.K. edition. Cover art looks to be

by Ron Wilson (pencils) and Mike Esposito (inks). Courtesy of Rob Kirby. POTA ©2005 20th Century Fox. Apeslayer ©2005 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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by Rob Kirby By 1974, the Planet of the Apes franchise was viewed as a somewhat spent commodity, and we certainly didn’t foresee that the next Big Thing was only three years away (or so it seemed in youthful times), coming from some galaxy… “far, far away.” In all probability you probably think that nothing came in between these two cinematic giants, at least as far as comic adaptations are concerned, but you couldn’t be more wrong. There was something else, you just didn’t see it… unless you lived in Britain during the mid-’70s.

It’s name? Planet of the Apes!

After becoming publisher at Marvel Comics, Stan Lee started to take a look at the company’s various worldwide operations, and “The Man” quickly realized that his outfit’s other biggest English-speaking market was getting a pretty raw deal from the very limited imports that did reach the United Kingdom’s shores — usually as ship ballast (just to rub salt into the wound!). By Autumn 1972 Stan had solved that problem by creating a new Bullpen within the heart of the old one, and so was born the “British” Marvel Bullpen, a group of Yanks charged with producing weekly comics for the U.K. news-agent trade, and aided and abetted by some of the latest rising stars in the American comics firmament, such as Jim Starlin, Allen Milgrom, Marshall Rogers, Michael Nasser (a.k.a. Netzer), and Tony Isabella.

The long-lived Mighty World of Marvel comics weekly debuted on the British Isles in Oct. ‘72, and in the two years that followed the line-up began a slow expansion that would accelerate to a full-scale explosion by 1975. In Feb. ‘73, Spider-Man spun out of MWOM (as it understandably

soon became known in the letter pages) into his own title, SpiderMan Comics Weekly, the first in a long line of changing titles for that periodical, as it would be later known as Super Spider-Man With the Super-heroes, Super Spider-Man and the Titans, Super Spider-Man and Captain Britain, and then merely Super SpiderMan, to name but a few of the later merger titles).

The Avengers started out in MWOM before receiving their only U.K. book in Autumn ‘73, to be followed a year later by a double-release, one of which was the U.K. range’s first media crossover title, and so Planet of the Apes joined with Dracula Lives at the newsagents, the debut cover-dated Oct. 26, ‘74.

With the new Planet of the Apes TV series due to air soon in Britain, Marvel obviously felt that now was the best time to promote the Apes material to their new weekly audience, and it was this swift launch that caused the “scheduling” problems which prompted the discussion in this article. POTA (the letter pages positively buzzed with these abbreviations back then) notched up a very respectable 123 issues before merging into MWOM, in the latter’s #231 (coverdated Mar. 2, ‘77) and concluded in #246 (June 15, ‘77). Thereafter, Dracula Lives took over the Apes feature slot (though the bloodthirsty Count had merged as a co-feature in POTA way back in #88, creating a bizarre delayed double-merger. By the time the Apes exited the United Kingdom for good, every American strip had been reprinted at least once, and many of the cut-down color format American reprints had been used up too, probably simply because they were readily available for immediate use.

Planet of the Apes began its life in the same way that most of the early U.K. Marvel books did: reprinting the earliest adventures of whichever characters that respective comic featured. This voracious appetite by British kids for Marvel material created several headaches over the years. Only the gradual expansion of Spider-Man’s stateside titles saved the U.K. books from catching up completely (although the occasional jump back in time between a run of Amazing S-M, and then Spectacular S-M stories were kinda fun!)—even with most strips being divided over periods of anything from two to five weeks at a time. Having only been launched some two months after the American magazine, POTA took just 22 issues—one every seven days, mind you—to run out of material (a lesson soon taken to heart when Marvel prepared Star Wars for U.K. publication, which lead to adopting the task of producing two months of U.S. material on a monthly to grant enough slack for weekly serialization).

Even though the British Bullpen had first-use of each newly completed strip (which technically then makes some of the later American issues the reprint edition), still the crunch came and a desperate plan was hatched. The production team was handed stats from an entirely different American series and instructed to redraw most of the characters as apes, re-dialogue where necessary, and

rename many of the characters. So commencing in POTA #23, noneother than Killraven, star of the “War of the Worlds” series in the stateside bi-monthly, Amazing Adventures, made his first U.K. appearance… as Apeslayer! The American serial co-stars were rechristened for the British hybrid: Old Skull became Socrates, Hawk is called Arrow, and everyone sprouted previously-unseen black hair. I know it sounds too outrageous to be true, but this was a desperate editorial decision, proving the truth behind the saying, “Sometimes you can’t make this stuff up!”

After eight weeks of frantic redrawing and recycling, the Apes weekly resumed its usual rotation of one film adaptation interspersed with new material by writer Doug Moench and artists Tom Sutton and Mike Ploog, backed up by a selection of science-fiction material sourced from Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction, Captain Marvel, as well as the Warlock counter-Earth stories, to name but a few. And yet… still the comic devoured stories at a pace that even Seymour, the ravenous plant, would have been hard pressed to beat. I can almost see the British Bullpen crew eagerly awaiting couriers coming down the corridor outside their little den, deftly redirecting the latest package of Apes artwork into the hungry maw of the overworked production team. This, then, is where it gets really interesting.

For the past decade I have become embroiled in my own personal Mission: Impossible, in an attempt to compile, as near as is practical, a complete index to absolutely everything published by Marvel U.K., as it became known from the early ‘80s (later to be joined by Marvel France and so forth from the continent). When my work is eventually released onto an unsuspecting comics fandom, (and those British readers of this esteemed journal reading this, and who know me, will now be rolling about in fits of surely uncontrollable laughter), it will include listings for almost every teenage to adult reprint and U.K.-only strip (including several annuals that predate MWOM in 1972, but continued throughout the next two decades as official British Marvel products, even though initially released by other publishers). I can feel my pockets emptying of cash already!

The Apes strips turned out to be the most surprising source of previously-unseen material, at least since those six Americanproduced Star Wars strips came to light many years ago; having only ever been published in continuity within the pages of Star Wars Weekly, because they made way for an earlier start to The Empire Strikes Back adaptation in the color comic (the stories later made a brief appearance in two American paperbacks), the three Archie Goodwin and three Chris Claremont stories at least prove that Marvel had learned something from the “Apeslayer” debacle. Mind you, if I hadn’t been buying up cheap copies of any series I didn’t have an index for, in order to list and compare the material, then I might never have come across what follows at all! My collection would have been smaller though… well, slightly smaller anyway.

It was several summers ago when I finally got my hands on a good condition set of all 29 American magazines, and I swiftly listed out their contents in order to identify the source issue for every reprint and to check the page counts in case a story had lost any pages, making note of those tales which were incompletely reprinted (not many). This process had actually provided the impetus to thoroughly index all the U.K. comics in the first place, with a simple wish to compile a personal wants list of those issues that never appeared (or only ever incompletely appeared) in the British books.

I was convinced that I must have made a mistake when adding up the page counts for each story, several chapters from some of the movie adaptations seemed to have more pages in the U.K. comic, which surely couldn’t be right… could it? There was no alternative but to sit down with both versions of each offending story, matching up every corresponding story page-by-page. My initial disbelief quickly turned to delight as I discovered several pages removed prior to U.S. publication, and several more double-page sequences condensed down into just single pages by the time they had reached their American audience. A bit more than a minor discovery, I think!

It now seems reasonably safe to presume that once the UK books had made use of the newly-completed stories, artwork was then passed to the American magazine’s production team, which was when these pages were cut and alterations made in order to keep

within the very strict format they used. At this point, the odd mistake was also corrected before the pages were then grey-washed and many captions were re-photographed from white to black just for good measure, matching the look across the rest of the b-&-w magazine range.

Okay, so we’re not talking about unseen Steranko pages from S.H.I.E.L.D. #1 (we can only wish) or even U.K.-only Paul Gulacy Shang-Chi pages (although Grant Morrison did write a short British Master of Kung Fu story as part of the U.K. produced G.I. Joe/Action Force series), but if you are any kind of Apes fan—and specifically of Marvel’s sterling work across all five of the film adaptations—you really do owe it to yourself to check these strips out. After all, this is Alfredo Alcala, uncut and at his best, hitherto unseen artistry surely worth tracking down.

Good hunting!

Top: Taken from a Marvel U.K. house ad, here’s a smattering of covers for their weekly line-up. Conan ©2005 Conan Properties, Inc. Others ©2005 Marvel Characters, Inc. Above: Herb Trimpe’s Warlord character (a human who collaborated with the evil Martians in Amazing Adventures #20, Sept. ’73) was transformed by the “U.K.” contingent of the mighty Marvel Bullpen into the simian called… Warlord!

This vignette taken from the Marvel U.K. edition of Planet of the Apes #28 (May 3, ’76). ©2005 Marvel Characters, Inc. 99

Adams

This page: Before the War of the Worlds took over the Planet of the Apes: The original panels as penciled by Neal Adams and inked by Frank Chiaramonte from Killraven’s debut tale in Amazing Adventures #18 (May ’73). Panels below courtesy of Rob Kirby. ©2005 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, CLICK THE LINK TO ORDER THIS ISSUE IN PRINT OR DIGITAL FORMAT!

COMIC BOOK ARTIST: SPECIAL EDITION #2

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!

(112-page Digital Edition) $4.95 http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_56&products_id=1110

Top: Yeah, Ye Ed did alter this letters page header drawn by MTG. Above: Lucky letter writers received this MTG exclusive in reply. Both courtesy of and ©2005 M.T. Gilbert.

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