Comic Book Creator #11

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Characters TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

A Tw o M o r r o w s Publication

Cover art by Gil Kane & Klaus Janson

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W i n t e r 2 0 1 6 • Vo i c e o f t h e C o m i c s M e d i u m • N u m b e r 1 1

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Ye Ed’s Rant: ACE was not the place and Ye Ed’s upcoming projects.............................. 2 WOOdy LANTERN CBC mascot by J.D. King ©2015 J.D. King.

About Our Cover

All characters TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Pencils by GIL KANE Inks by KLAUS JANSON Colors by Glenn Whitmore

Comics Chatter An Enthusiastic Man: Talking to those who loved and cherished the gentleman, we ask the family and friends of the late, lamented Herbert William Trimpe to share their memories of and affections for the legendary comic book creator.......... 3 Incoming: Roy Thomas talks about faked alien invasions, Evertson Zell enlightens us about the fanzine Yandro, and reader complaints about our interview style........ 8 Hembeck’s Dateline: Our Man Fred talks about how the great comic book artist and celebrated raconteur Gilbert Eli Kane changed his life...................................... 13 Eisner’s Enduring Esprit: A short interview with Paul Levitz, author of the new book Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel............................................ 14 Comics in the Library: Explaining what libraries need from comic publishers............ 19 THE MAIN EVENT

One of our favorite inkers on the pencils of Gil Kane is Klaus Janson, and we are delighted he agreed to delineate Gil’s work on the back cover art for the “Giant Superhero Team-Up” Marvel Treasury Edition (#9, 1976). Art scan is courtesy of Heritage. The original inker on the published piece was John Romita. — Y.E. If you’re viewing a Digital Edition of this publication,

PLEASE READ THIS: This is copyrighted material, NOT intended for downloading anywhere except our website or Apps. If you downloaded it from another website or torrent, go ahead and read it, and if you decide to keep it, DO THE RIGHT THING and buy a legal download, or a printed copy. Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR DEVICE and DO NOT SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. If you enjoy our publications enough to download them, please pay for them so we can keep producing ones like this. Our digital editions should ONLY be downloaded within our Apps and at

www.twomorrows.com

Comic Book Creator is a proud joint production of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows

The Invention of Gil Kane: CBC takes a comprehensive look at the life and times of the man born Eli Kacz. From a childhood growing up on the mean streets of Brooklyn and early entry into the nascent comics field, we chronicle his years as DC Comics’ stalwart and witness an epiphanous breakthrough that transforms his work and ambitions into becoming among the first graphic novelists. The artist’s tenure at Marvel, stretch as newspaper comic strip creator, triumphant return to DC, and stay in television animation are detailed, as are personal hardships and medical difficulties, all culminating into a quintessential American story of selfinvention, constant refinement, and perpetual quest for excellence that made Gilbert Eli Kane into one of the greatest comic book creators of all time................ 20 One Last Thing: What to learn from the example of the man called Kane................... 77 BACK MATTER Creator’s Creators: Rob Smentek’s Great Comic Book Trek.......................................... 79 Coming Attractions: The transcendent King’s ’60s/’70s work and Howard Cruse......... 79 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Saddle up the frog! The Atom’s at it!.......... 80 Note: Yet again, with honest regret, we were unable to include any number of items that have been prepared for recent issues, including this one, due to the excessive length of our cover feature. We will strive to be more precise in the solicitations and will do our best to include omitted material in future issues. We beg the indulgence of our magazine’s understanding contributors and our readership.

Right: Detail from a Gil Kane presentation, pitched to DC (but not purchased), of a series called Zero-Man.

Comic Book Artist Vol. 1 & 2 are available as digital downloads from twomorrows.com!

Comic Book Creator ™ is published quarterly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614 USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Jon B. Cooke, editor. John Morrow, publisher. Comic Book Creator editorial offices: P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892 USA. E-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Four-issue subscriptions: $36 US, $50 Canada, $65 elsewhere. All characters are © their respective copyright owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter ©2016 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Comic Book Creator is a TM of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. ISSN 2330-2437. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

This issue is dedicated to the memories of MURPHY ANDERSON and Michael Gross ™

JON B. COOKE

Editor/Designer

John Morrow

Publisher & Consulting Editor

MICHAEL AUSHENKER

Associate Editor

GIL KANE

Cover Penciler

KLAUS JANSON Cover Inker

GLENN WHITMORE Cover Colorist

Contributing Editors

Brian K. Morris Senior Transcriber

STEVEN THOMPSON Transcriber

J.D. KING

CBC Cartoonist

TOM ZIUKO

CBC Colorist Supreme

RONN SUTTON

CBC Illustrator

ROB SMENTEK CBC Proofreader

SETH KUSHNER CBC Photographer in Memoriam

Greg PRESTON

CBC Contributing Photographer

KENDALL WHITEHOUSE

CBC Convention Photographer

MICHAEL AUSHENKER FRED HEMBECK GEORGE KHOURY TOM ZIUKO

CBC Columnists

To contact CBC, please email jonbcooke@aol.com or snail-mail CBC, P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892 2

Hard lessons learned seeking space on retailers’ comics racks ture a whopping 43k-word piece on the life and Heavens to Murgatroyd! What a stinging times of Gilbert Eli Kane, among the very best rebuke that was! Back in 2014, yours truly comic book creators of all time, and next issue and longtime pal Rob Yeremian, propriCBC will include a bookend essay to compleetor of the Time Capsule comic shops ment my piece on Jack Kirby in our first issue, in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, back in 2013. Plus, those interested may like had a notion to produce a magazine that to know that my 10,000 word biography of filled a niche left empty by Wizard magSam J. Glanzman (with 14k in annotations) azine, one devoted to the comics scene will serve as introduction for the U.S.S. Stevens of today and yesterday, with an up-tocollection coming from Dover Books this spring, date and accurate price guide. Actually, and my Mike Ploog bio in FPG’s The Art of truth be told, the entire concept Ploog should now be in the shops. was Rob’s and he saw in me the I’ve also been digging through the person who could execute a archives to dust off unfinished projects, comic-sized, 128-page monthly, and am happy to announce that I’ve half-feature/half-guide. just signed with Last Gasp Books to Thus was born ACE: All produce The Weirdo Book, a definitive Comics Evaluated and, man, we history (and “best of” collection) of hit the ground running, organizthat outstanding alternative comics ing a crack team to cover comics anthology edited by R. Crumb, Peter and related stuff with intelligence Bagge, and Aline Kominsky-Crumb and enthusiasm. Joined by Joe from 1981–93. Dunno the release date McCabe, Mike Hall, Steven on that, but likely sometime in 2017.

Thompson, Eti Berland, Will In addition, I’ve joined with French Murray, Brian Saner Lamkin, and comics scholar Jean Depelley (Mssr. others, we kicked ass! And Rob Patience to moi!) to complete our histowas so committed to the idea, ry of the formation of Métal Hurlant and he enlisted Diamond Distributors the first ten years of Heavy Metal, the to send a free copy of ACE #1 adult illustrated fantasy magazine, and to every account in the country, we’re currently seeking a publisher. around 3,500 retailers.

Inspired by Bill Schelly’s great Starting last March and Gil Kane by Ronn Sutton work, especially his out-freakin’-standing Harvey Kurtzlasting for three issues, ACE delivered… and man tome, I’d love to continue with the biographies of then some. But, in early May, the moment order important creators — a comprehensive examination numbers were received for #4, which would indicate of the great Archie Goodwin would be awesome, don’t how retailers responded to the free copy, orders rose cha think? — and hopefully there’s a few publishers out by 15 copies from the previous issue. Fifteen. there who could use my talents. Drop me a line, will ya?

Live and learn. That was the end of ACE. The Internet wins. Thanks, Rob. That was one helluva ride!

We hope you enjoy the epic look at Gil Kane, one The sudden demise of ACE has given yours truly the opportunity to devote much more time for research and writing and, believe you me, I’ve been taking advantage of the situation, and over the last half-year, I’ve been scribblin’ and schemin’ like crazy! And there’s no better example than the last few issues of this very magazine.

CBC #10 contains my 20,000 word piece on the history of Warp, the science-fiction play, and this issue we fea-

of my personal favorite artists and, still today, a friend I miss tremendously, 16 years after his passing. The impetus for this issue, I confess, is a fear that appreciation of the raconteur, a stunningly talented and tenaciously ambitious creator, ever looking for paths to extend the form, is starting to fade and I’ll be damned to see that happen to the Amazing Kane without a fight!

Enormous thanks to Gary Groth for his help this ish.

cbc contributors Neal Adams Jim Alexander Richard J. Arndt Allen Bellman John Benson Athos Bousvaros Tim Burgard Aaron Caplan Mike Catron Howard Chaykin Mark Chiarello Ernie Colón

Richard Corben Ferran Delgado Jean Depelley John DiBello Kirk Dilbeck Tom Durwood Scott Edelman Jules Feiffer Linda Fite Brent Frankenhoff Steven Grant Karen Green

Gary Groth Russ Heath Heritage Auctions Rick Hoberg Al Jaffee Klaus Jason Elaine Kane Scott Kane Stan Lee Victor Lim Will Meugniot Joe Murray

—Y e Crusading Editor jonbcooke@aol.com

Melissa Trimpe Olds Rick Parker Bud Plant Norman Podhoretz Darryl Ponicsan Linda Lessman Reinhold Dan Riba Arlen Schumer Cory Sedlmeier Jan Strnad Hugh Surratt Roy Thomas

The Time Capsule Alex Trimpe Amelia Trimpe Patricia Vasquez Trimpe Sarah Trimpe Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. Michael J. Vassallo Barry Windsor Smith Marv Wolfman Jim Woodring Rob Yeremian Tom Ziuko

#11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Portrait ©2016 Ronn Sutton. His Name is… Savage TM & © the respective copyright holders. Blackmark TM & © the estate of Gil Kane.

GEORGE KHOURY RICHARD J. ARNDT CHRISTOPHER IRVING TOM ZIUKO

ACE was not the place

passages

An Enthusiastic Man Remembering the passionate and generous artist, deacon, educator, and family man

by Jon B. Cooke CBC Editor The last time I saw my friend was at the Asbury Park Comic Con a few years ago. I approached his table, our eyes locked, a huge, tooth-filled grin erupted across his kind face, and my pal rocketed out of his chair to embrace me with an incredible hug. In those few minutes we had together, in that New Jersey convention hall, with typical Herb Trimpe exuberance, he shared the recent doings of his life and a newfound gratitude for attentive fans, and he introduced his wife, Patricia. Ever since my very first meeting the comic book artist, at another con, one of many years before, I liked Herbert William Trimpe. I liked Herb a lot.

Upon Trimpe’s shockingly abrupt passing on April 30, at the age of 75, I’ve been mulling over CBC’s proper response, and when reading his book, The Power of Angels, written about the man’s experience between 2001–02 as a volunteer at ruins of the World Trade Center towers (dubbed “the pile”) I came across this passage: I came to see that grief was not suffered best alone.

Grief did not have to be buried within oneself like so much dead weight. It was something that needed to be shared. Grieving was a time to lean on others for assistance and comfort. Once that understanding becomes part of the grief equation the anger is cancelled out. Anger no longer serves as a defense mechanism to guard against the anguish. It no longer has to be a poisonous factor blocking the healing process. I came to understand that the number one priority at Ground Zero, as well as for life in general, was to care and share and to be there for one another.

That remarkably compassionate and spiritually resonant paragraph offered the most fitting approach: Ask those friends and family who loved and cared for him to share about the remarkable man.

Mutual pal Barry Windsor-Smith, the legendary storyteller whose relationship with the departed stretches back to the late ’60s, related very simply, “Herb Trimpe was my oldest and dearest friend. I loved him unconditionally. He was a wonderful man.” BWS also shared the photo at right.

Readers doubtless know the story of “Happy Herbie” (a nickname given by Stan Lee), who, just out of the Air Force and year in Vietnam, joined with the Marvel Bullpen in the 1967, soon to become the predominant artist on The Incredible Hulk. Along the way, he co-created Wolverine, another cash-cow for the House of Ideas, and Trimpe also became known for art stints on Marvel titles G.I. Joe and Godzilla.

Stan Lee said to CBC, “Herb was a great guy. He did so many strips for us, mainly the Hulk, but he could do anything. And he was a pleasure to work with. A nice, even-tempered, pleasant guy. I liked him.” Trimpe was, indeed, a get-along kind of guy, and much more. His second wife, onetime Marvel writer now journalist Linda Fite, alluded to a “type of nobility” and “chivalrous element” to his make-up, aspects he shared with his close friend Barry Windsor-Smith. And Herb Trimpe was also a family man.

I asked the artist’s children about their memories and his oldest, Melissa, daughter with first wife Merri-lee, offered, “My dad liked learning, his knowledge, and interest, changed and morphed as he experienced life. Lately, he Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

would tell me facts about the planets, like ‘If the sun were the size of the Earth, the Earth would be the size of a basketball.’ And he was fascinated by Saturn. You could ask him just about anything and he would know the answer.

“He liked to be busy, not idle. As he got older, he told me he didn’t want to just sit around and wait to expire.

He didn’t get it that everyone didn’t feel this way.

‘Why don’t they want to be productive human beings?’ he would ask.

“In the ’70s, he was a registered Republican and, as an idealistic kid, I would demand to know why. He would say, ‘Hey, Melissa, it’s good to know what the other side is thinking.’ I wonder if this line of thought lead him in his pursuit to become a deacon in the Episcopal Church. I never asked, but when he was a Republican, he was also an agnostic.

“As for his time as a chaplain at Ground Zero, he spoke to me mostly about his experiences with the people, the first responders. He met folks from all walks of life, with all types of backgrounds, and I think the experience opened his mind and changed the palate he had known for so long to a much richer and colorful one. He wrote a book about his experience, The Power of Angels. The word angel in the title refers to the first responders and the folks who gave unconditionally of themselves in the aftermath of 9/11.

“My dad was free and he didn’t care what you thought of his style. Later in his life, he took to wearing an arm full of braided macramé and leather bracelets that went from his wrist up his for arm — like a rock star, I always thought.

“He liked adventure and we had a few in his plane. Once, coming back from Bethany, we were forced to land in a big field because of weather, camped right there next to the plane to be awoken the next morning by the curious farmer and his son. My dad made fast friends of them. To say he was likable would be an understatement.

People were drawn to him. He had real charisma.

“I think he saw the comics as a means to an end.

Above: A contemplative Herb Trimpe in an undated photo shared by Amelia, Herb and Linda Fite’s oldest daughter.

Below: Barry Windsor-Smith sent this Polaroid picture of his best friend, snapped by BWS in 1981.

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The beginning of his working career and also the end. Although, in the end, it was a much looser arrangement. I saw an interviewer once ask if he could have super-powers what would they be, and he said, ‘To fly and to be invisible.’ In his passing I believe he has attained both.”

Above: Herb working at Marvel Comics in an undated photo.

Below: Undated photo of the artist and family man horsing around the yard. Courtesy of Amelia Trimpe. Family members mention that this is one of their favorite photographs of the man. Bottom: Ye Editor and Herb Trimpe at Asbury Park Comic Con a few years back.

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Alexander, Herb’s only son and first child with Linda, offered these thoughts: “When we were kids and my mom went to the city for work, he was in charge of dinner. He’d either make pasta or we’d get subs or pizza. One time we went to get pizza and he put the box on top of the car as he got us all into our seats. As we drove up the winding, hilly road back home, we realized he’d left it up there when it went flying off the roof. It landed in the road behind us. He stopped the car and ran back to get it when, like in a movie, a big truck crested the hill, bearing down on our pizza — but he whisked it out of harm’s way and we got home and peeled the cheese off the inside cover.”

Asked if there were any little known facts about his dad that might be of interest, Alex answered, “I don’t know if this is little-known, because anyone who’s met him or heard him speak on the subject may have gotten the hint, but he really didn’t know much of anything about super-heroes. I mean, anything beyond the very basics. Of course, he knew a little, but I think a lot of it came from me when I was a kid, and then later, fans at cons. I don’t know, maybe this is totally common knowledge. I think he learned enough to get by after a while, but at his core, he was blissfully unaware.

He wasn’t that interested in the overarching universe and mythology.”

Alex added, “Another thing that springs to mind is he initially liked the Ang Lee Hulk movie. I remember him saying they basically got it right. He changed his mind, but I think that was because so many fans came up to him saying it was no good, he was eventually convinced.”

Regarding his father’s experience at Ground Zero, the son recalled, “I visited a couple times when he was down there and he was clearly invested, as most everyone was. I’m not 100% sure

what compelled him. He did like to help out. Beyond that is probably a lot of guesswork and/or armchair psychology. As for the effect it had on him, I think it gave him fulfillment and some pride, but at the same time it was a dark and serious task that took a toll.”

Considering Marvel’s firing of his dad in the late 1990s, Alex was asked whether Herb might have given more than receiving back from the comics industry. “I’m not sure I can make this judgment really. I think he’d probably say, for the most part, he did the work and was paid for it. He wasn’t underpaid compared to other artists, as far as I know. I think, in the end, in the last decade or so, he was ‘recognized’ more by the community, but in terms of money paid it was all par for the course. I’m one that agrees generally that artists and writers probably should have had a financial stake in what they created or cultivated, without a lot of arm-twisting, especially once some of these characters grew to the stature they now have. Ethically, I’d say that would be the right thing to do; entities like Warner Brothers and now Disney, with their piles of money, they could make all these guys and gals relatively rich without feeling even a hint of a pinch. But they don’t have to, and the way things are, that’s kind of all there is to it.” Alex added, “But in terms of appreciation, I think it’s been pretty fair.”

Pondering how his father should be best remembered, Alex said, “In terms of comics, his Hulk and his work ethic.”

Amelia, the late artist’s oldest daughter with Linda, shared some photos and said, “Herb was a fantastically complex man. He was an incredible father, especially when we were kids, because he loved to play. And, as a grandfather, that spirit followed through, and his grandchildren loved visiting him. He was an artist, of course, but he was also a pilot, a teacher, a damned good baseball player, an author, an historian, a chaplain at Ground Zero, an ambulance driver, a mean head-stander, and a talker. He will be greatly missed.”

The youngest of Herb and Linda’s kids is Sarah, who ventured these memories: “I was never into comics growing up. When the monthly stack of books came in the mail, I would go right for the Barbie and Groo. Even when I learned, as I got older, the role he played in comics, it didn’t make me any more interested. That was just his job, just the thing he was doing as he sat in his studio, and the reason why he’d go to the post office so often, and the reason I’d sometimes get to play hooky and drive down to the city with my parents on a Wednesday.

“My dad and I would talk. Hoo-boy, my dad could talk.

But we hardly ever talked about what he was working on.

For me, comics were not my dad.

“He was really fun and charismatic and affable and liked to do things. And he was good at them! Whether it was assembling models, flying his plane, writing short stories, building kites (from scratch!), painting miniatures (of which he had thousands), playing guitar, taking photos… he was a jack of all trades, although admittedly not that handy.

“He loved the movies and Star Trek and The Twilight Zone, going on hikes and jogging. He was always a cheerleader in anything we wanted to try our hand at. He taught me to change a tire and clean the sparkplugs on our crappy Chevy Cavalier. But he wasn’t super-human and didn’t, just like the rest of us, have the ability to Hulk-out. And I think that is why his wheels were always turning, looking for the next project he could get mildly obsessed with.

“He certainly felt slighted, to say the least, when Marvel did away with him the way they did. Like the old dog taken out back to be shot. He was despondent. But he wasn’t the only old dog being put down and I think, I hope, he took solace in that, in some way. The silver lining there is it opened the door for so many more life experiences for him, things he would have never done had he been working at Marvel until the day he died. Things that included becoming a student, a teacher, a chaplain, a writer, a volunteer for the #11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The Hulk TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Art ©2015 the Estate of Herb Trimpe. Photo © the respective copyright holder.

rescue squad, and a comics creator — Firehawks was his short-run of strips for the weekly online publication Aces Weekly based in the U.K. “Going down to Ground Zero was, I believe, cathartic for him in some ways. He loved to help other people and, I think like everyone, he felt helpless right after 9/11. So this was his way of being proactive and reaching out and not feeling entirely helpless. Although it was a rewarding experience in that way, I think he was f*cked up from the things he saw. It definitely changed him. How could it not?

“When he started the comic con circuit heavily in the last 10 years, he certainly lapped up the appreciation and adulation from fans and cons that treated him with respect and admiration. He felt validated. But he also realized it had become such a circus, especially at the bigger cons, where the organizers really didn’t give a sh*t about comic artists anymore, and it was all about commercialism and franchises. But he loved his fans and they loved him.

“I suppose, even though he was a much more complex man than the man on the surface (I mean, ‘Happy Herbie’ is an awfully chipper title to live up to at all times, ha-ha!), he should best be remembered for his kindness, creativity, and his genuine Peter Pan-like enthusiasm and love for life and the people around him.”

I also asked Linda Fite to participate, her being one of my favorite people in the field since beginning this magabout-comics phase of my life, and she kindly shared the following under the heading “Remembering Herb.”

“I loved to watch Herb work on comics,” Linda writes.

“He had a sureness of movement, a graceful sweep of his right hand and arm as he drew or inked, and his left arm resting on the drawing board, sometimes using that hand to adjust the paper or move the lamp clamped to the edge of the drawing table. I loved the sound of the pencil as it bit into the paper and the lines formed scenes before my eyes, like magic.

“And it was so much fun to hang out with him as he drew or inked because he loved to talk while he worked.

You can get a real sense of how he carried on if you ever manage to see a copy of Jon Riley’s New York University student film, Herb Trimpe, We Love You, which features a great scene shot in the Marvel Bullpen in 1968.

“If there was no one around with whom to chat, he often listened to the radio or to books on tape or on CD. Back in the early days, in our apartment on East 27th Street, in Manhattan, both of us were working at home, both of us doing art stuff (I was doing layouts and mechanicals for a downtown publisher), which meant no one had to have quiet in order to crunch numbers or write copy. Which meant we were often ‘watching’ (mostly listening to) TV when we weren’t listening to music. We had our own little two-person studio set up in our good-sized living room. I remember our being particularly fascinated watching the Channel 13/PBS coverage of the Bobby Fischer-Boris Spassky chess match in Iceland. How could a chess match be so interesting, not being televised live, only reported move by move by Shelby Lyman and assorted other chess masters of Greenwich Village’s Marshall Chess Club, analyzed and discussed? Herb was totally mesmerized by that production!

“Another show we used to love to watch/listen to as we worked was the first version of Dave Letterman’s show, which was broadcast sometime around noon, as I recall. We were very bummed when it was cancelled after a short time.

“But you get the picture, right? Busy, cozy, chatty fun.

“And, as I said at the outset, I loved to watch Herb work. His drawing seemed so bold and effortless, his layouts were so clean and inventive, without being showy and pointless. Always they were created to advance the story, never to be an ego-driven tour-de-force of the kind that often drew gasps of appreciation from neophytes in the Marvel Bullpen. The pros knew his worth. The writers greatly appreciated him because he was able to make Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

sense of any loose plot, elaborating and expanding and enriching as he went along. He was a great inker, just great.

And he took pains to ink beautifully and, well… agonizing over the quality of the ink, the brushes (he preferred to ink with a brush), the nibs on the pens. I used to watch him and exclaim, ‘How the heck do you do that, Trimpe?!?’

“During our marriage, it was a real boon to have the dad of our three kids work at home. First, how swell to have a grown-up to hang out with all day, unlike most stay-athome moms I knew. I could run out to the store and he’d gladly watch the baby or the toddler. As the kids grew up, he was always on hand to help them with a project or stop working long enough to go outside and have a catch with the baseball.

“I loved how he always made his own little lunch, very particular about it: sandwich with dill pickle (when available), chips, a diet Coke, maybe a bowl of soup. He’d sometimes put it all on a tray and carry it into the living room to watch TV, especially (over and over) his videos of Star Trek TV episodes and movies, which always made him happy.

Always. I also cackled when he would grab his lunch tray and make a bolt for the studio upstairs if an unexpected visitor’s car pulled into the driveway just as Herb was taking his first sip of soup. “‘Tell ‘em I’m not home!’ he’d hiss, as he took the stairs two at a time!

Above: Dr. Athos Bousvaros shared this extraordinary commission piece of the Incredible Hulk drawn by Herb Trimpe and used by the Hero Initiative. This appears here with permission from Patricia Trimpe.

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“I married Herb with my eyes wide open, having known him for five years at that point. One thing I knew: Herb would never be boring. And the other important factor was that I could not imagine my life without Herb in it. Well, here we all are, in a Herb-less world.

But his spirit permeates my life still — in his children, his children’s children, in a lifetime of memories and fond associations, in an appreciation of so many aspects of this world as seen through his eyes and expressed in exultant comments.

Herb was a world-class grouch at times, but he was also life’s Number One cheerleader. The planet is a duller place without him. Quieter, too (man, could that guy talk!) — but duller.”

Above: Herbert William Trimpe during his stint in the U.S. Air Force, 1967, taken while stationed in Vietnam. Courtesy of Sarah Trimpe.

Inset upper right: The pilot fueling his beloved Stearman bi-plane. Courtesy of Sarah.

Below: Dad and his three kids with Linda Fite, Alex, Amelia, and Sarah, who shared the photo and added it might be from a Christmas in the early 1980s.

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An old friend of Herb and Linda, one who also worked for a spell in the House of Ideas, is Linda Lessmann Reinhold. She shares, “I first met Herb Trimpe in the fall of 1972, in the Marvel Bullpen. I walked in and saw him sitting at a small desk next to John Romita, drawing a page of The Incredible Hulk. He was friendly and, with his tall, dark, smiley and boyish good looks, I liked him immediately.

“I had started working for Marvel in the production office and, with the urging of — and help from — the wonderful Marie Severin, I soon phased into comic book coloring. Looking back, it seems to me that Linda, Herb, and I had become friends by the time I started dating Barry Windsor-Smith (then, simply, Smith) in June of ’73. And, as he had been friends with them long before I came on the scene, we were soon all getting together fairly regularly.

“With two-year-old Alex, Herb and Linda decided to live in England for six months, renting a lovely 400-year-old stone cottage in St. Mabyn, Bodmin, Cornwall. In October, 1975, Barry and I went to visit the family for ten days and I confess this was one of the most memorable trips of my life.

“Herb took us all on trips to show us bronze-age hut circles and on to explore ancient castle ruins. We visited Restormal Castle, and that was where we all hid in the bushes and pretend we were Robin Hood and his Merry Men. And we visited the ruins of Tintagel Castle, long thought to be the real Camelot of the legendary tales of King Arthur. Perched on a cliff, the scene was quite dramatic, what with the wind blowing and the waves crashing. It was low tide and we were able to see Merlin’s Cave at the bottom of the cliff.

“It was on that trip that Herb told us of his interest in learning to fly and he began taking flying lessons there.

I was privileged to have flown with Herb twice: Once in a small training plane (might have been a Cessna) and once in the beautiful Stearman that he bought, a single-engine, open air cockpit bi-plane. What a beautiful plane and what an amazing ride!

“When I think of Herb, Linda and the family, what stands out in my memories are the many holidays that Barry and I spent with them over the years: Halloween,

Thanksgiving, Easter, Fourth of July, but my fondest recollections have always been our Christmases together.

“Herb owned an elaborate train set, which was quite large, and it took him weeks to set it up in the dining room every Christmas. It was simply magical! There was everything you could think of: hills, roads, crossings, houses, shops, cars, people, trees, dogs… everything!

He even included an airplane and a hot-air balloon hanging from the ceiling! How we all loved that train set. I have thought of it every Christmas since.

“I left New York, in August of 1984, to move back home to Illinois and, sadly, I never saw Herb again. Although I know little of the details of his life after that, I learned, of course, that he had become deacon of his church. I heard that he volunteered his services as chaplain during the aftermath of 9/11, and that he had written a book about his experiences.

And I was glad for him and proud of his accomplishments, although I was sorry to learn that he had left Linda and the children, gone off and started a new life. I figure that relationships are forged for a variety of reasons and relationships dissolve for as many reasons.

So I know very little of his life after that, other than that I heard from various comic-book friends over the years that they had seen him at different comic book shows. I don’t think that anyone would have guessed that he would leave us so soon.

“All things considered, Herb Trimpe was my friend and I’m grateful to have known him, especially as long as I did. I believe my life has been enriched by his presence in it, even though those good times happened a long time ago.”

Herb married Patricia Vasquez-Trimpe seven years ago, and before moving to California to live with daughter Natalia, she shared her memories of her late husband. “We met years ago,when he was my student and I was his Spanish teacher,” Patricia shared. “What I loved about Herb were the conversations we used to have. I loved the fact that he was such a good listener. That was the way we connected.

We used to talk and talk for hours about so many different subjects. He was a very, very intelligent man.

“We loved to travel,” she continued. “He didn’t like to leave home, but once we were at our destination, we would explore and it was something we enjoyed very much. We had the opportunity to do a lot. We had the chance to travel and see so many different places in the world, which was our fortune and luck to have done that.

“When we first got together, he wasn’t interested in comics anymore. But one day he received an invitation and he said, ‘I’ve been invited to Mid-Ohio Comic Con on Thanksgiving.’ I said, ‘Let’s go! Let’s go! Why not go? We love traveling!’ So he said, ‘Okay, let’s go.’ So the three of us — we went with my daughter, Natalia — got there and that’s where we spent Thanksgiving. And then someone else would invite him to another con and I would plead, ‘Come on, let’s go! I want to go so much!’ And Herb couldn’t say no. So we started going everywhere! We went to so many conventions together, it was unbelievable.

“Then we started going abroad. We went to Spain, Copenhagen, and so many places. We went to my home country of Columbia twice and we went to Mexico many times.

People loved him! One time we went to Cancun, where we were invited by a fan of his, and it was a wonderful time.

And all of this because he was a comic book artist! We had #11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

everything paid for, so why wouldn’t we go?

“Oh my god, Herb was just so loved by fans! I really don’t think Herb had such an expression of affection like this in his life. He was just so much admired by people everywhere we went. And wherever we went, there were lines of people! There were so many who wanted to meet him! He was just so well loved.

“We used to work so hard at those conventions, but it was very satisfying. And it was financially very sound for us, too. The money was good. But the most important thing was for Herb to feel so much affection from people who truly admired him. That was just wonderful because it renewed that interest of comics in his life. He became so motivated and started getting so much commission work. At the end of his life, he was so incredibly busy, but he loved it! He felt wanted! Because, when he left Marvel, it was a sad time for him, so it was good for him to meet with his fans and be rejuvenated.

“It was just such a lovely time I had with Herb. It was so precious. My life is never going to be the same. He made me very happy and I think I made him very happy.

“Herb loved his step-daughter Natalia. She was a very serious type of child, and now she is 25 and serious about working as a project coordinator at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, where she does an amazing job. He had a lot of admiration for his step-daughter because she is so focused in her life helping other people. And my daughter just loved him so much.

“It was wonderful that I got a chance to share my past with Herb when we went to Columbia and met with my old friends from school. He loved Columbia. And, ay-yi-yi, did my friends love him! He drew so much for everybody there and people couldn’t believe that I was married to him, such an important person, you know?

“He was a handsome man, too. I love him so much.

He just made me so happy. It’s so good in life to know that somebody really loved you, the way he loved me. It is just so satisfying to know that at least I can say that about my life: he loved me very much. And that was Herb.”

The “Service of Remembrance” for the Rev. Deacon Herb Trimpe was held five days after his death, on a beautiful Saturday afternoon at St. John’s Episcopal Church, in downtown Kingston, New York. Any number of comics pros were among the congregation — Joe Staton, Fred HemComic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

beck, Terry Austin, Ramona Fradon, and Joe Sinnott come to mind — and Herb’s two oldest kids, Missy and Alex, shared memories at the lectern, as did nephew Mark and Episcopal N.Y. Bishop Andrew Dietsche, former graphic designer, still today a cartoonist for The Episcopal New Yorker, and bona fide Trimpe fan, who presided over the remembrance.

Missy’s husband, Lawrence, sang a pitch-perfect, lovely rendition of the old standard “We’ll Meet Again,” and after the service, many of us gathered to recollect, to share tears, and to laugh in the fellowship hall.

On the way to the back room, Joe Staton and I snagged the last two remaining copies of the church bulletin. It goes without saying, we’re comics collectors of yore, and both of us knew this would be memorabilia worth saving, reminding us of the passing of man we cared for. Plus, there was quite a clever aspect to it.

I believe Bishop Dietche mentioned it was nephew Mark Trimpe who had persuaded the church to allow slight changes to the bulletin. The back cover was altered to feature the circa-1970 Marvelmania poster self-portrait of Happy Herb at the drawing board, and there was a curious change to the front cover, which had usually displayed a line drawing of the Albany Avenue frontage of the Episcopal church. Oh, St. John’s was still there, only now it was under attack from Godzilla (exclaiming “Mraw!”) and a Marvel super-hero swooping past the spire to save the parish!

It was cute and also spot-on appropriate, I reckon….

Top: The exuberant Herb Trimpe shares the joy at the Grand Canyon. Above: The cover for the St. John’s Episcopal remembrance bulletin was modified to include very comic-booky elements. Inset left: Herb worked on staff in the Marvel Bullpen, doing art corrections as well as regular story assignments. This photo is likely from the late ’60s.

Below: Happy Herb Trimpe and his gregarious gang of giggling and grinning grandchildren. All pix courtesy of Sarah Trimpe.

Yes, ours is now a world without the infectious enthusiasm of this complex, generous, and kind man, but we rejoice in having known him. Herb Trimpe, we love you.

7

incoming

Comments from Hither & Yon… Aliens, Yandro, too little imagery, and not enough interview are the topics this time Roy Thomas Write to CBC: jonbcooke@ aol.com or P. O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892 Below: The late Rick Obadiah, co-founder of First Comics, who tragically — and suddenly — passed away last August, was the managing director of the Organic Theater Company, which had produced Warp. To initiate a subscription program for the troupe, Rick enlisted the help of writer Paul Kupperberg and artist Joe Staton, and together they produced a promotional, self-cover comic book to get the effort going.

Here’s the cover of that 1981 rarity. CBC had plans to talk with Rick about his involvement with Stuart Gordon’s company for last issue — he was always very friendly and quite willing to participate — but he suffered a massive, fatal heart attack while on a treadmill at his gym.

[Always a pleasure, R.T., and we’re delighted you enjoyed the TwoMorrows birthday surprise Ye Pub and I concocted last year, with the help of over 75 stalwart artists! — Ye Ed.]

Evertson Zell Yandro [mentioned in CBC #9’s Joe Staton interview] was a science fiction fanzine produced in Hartford City, Indiana,

by Buck and Juanita Coulson. The comic book fanzine from Don and Maggie Thompson, produced at about the same time, was Newfangles. Buck and Don both had the ability to write short summary/critiques regarding science fiction and fanzines (Buck) or comic books (Don), which let the reader know that Buck or Don liked or disliked what he read and explained why the reader might or might not (the phrase “if you like that sort of thing” comes to mind). Buck wrote science fiction and fantasy and even a couple of Man from U.N.C.L.E. books under a pen name. Juanita wrote science fiction and fantasy and Gothic romances — she still does — I believe she has a new book out this year.

Don Thompson’s recommendations were so spot-on for me that I still remember the one — one — that I was disappointed with from 40 years ago. There are a lot of Joe Staton checklists out there, but they all have some shortcomings; perhaps you can point to the ones you find most useful and complete. I hope my one complaint about the issue doesn’t suggest that I didn’t enjoy it greatly: I did.

Thank you for doing such a great job.

[Thanks, Bud! We pretty much rely on cross-referencing the Grand Comics Database at www.comics.org and the Comic Book Database at comicbookdb.com, though neither are perfect. Also helpful: comics.ha.com and eBay. — Y.E.]

Alan Spinney I wanted to drop a line with a few comments about CBC #8.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading it cover to cover! I have mixed feelings about the interview style though — I realize that it’s a really fine line between allowing the interviewee to ramble at free will, but sometimes I am tempted to skip a paragraph or two when things go off the rails too much.

As far as the visual tone of the book, I really like the use #11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Weird Organic Tales TM & © The Organic Theater Company.

8

When I received CBC #9 this morning, I was surprised to see the letter I’d written about the “Skull of Silence” flap — I’d kind of forgotten I’d written it, though I stand by my assertions therein — and then I backed up a bit to read Keith Hammond’s opening letter about possible sources of Alan Moore’s basic concept for Watchmen. The Kurtzman story he cites in Weird Science #5 [Jan.–Feb. 1951] may or may not have been Moore’s inspiration — I’d be interested to hear if Alan remembers reading it prior to 1985-86 — but the concept that Hammond summarizes (“creating [a fake] alien menace, sacrificing some number of Earth people, and the nations of Earth uniting against the ‘alien menace’”) may well have other sources than Kurtzman. For one thing, did Kurtzman make up that concept out of whole cloth… or did he get it from somewhere, just as Gaines and Feldstein “borrowed” most of their early SF stories from prose SF stories?

In fact, while I would hardly claim (and have no special reason to believe) that Alan Moore got that general concept from me, the fact remains that I made pretty much that same concept the basis of All-Star Squadron #10–12 [June– Aug. 1982], another DC Comic, and one published four years before the first issue of Watchmen. In my version, drawn by Adrian Gonzales and Jerry Ordway, in December 1942 an eye-shaped “space ship” lands on the White House lawn and out steps a tall “alien” who announces he’s come to take over the Earth for its own good, so to speak (a visual partly inspired, of course, by certain aspects of the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still). Eventually, the Squadron learns that a bunch of genius scientists created this ship and the synthetic “alien” in order to frighten the world’s warring powers into ceasing their hostilities and joining forces to face a common foe — even if the project has, we’ll learn, been hijacked by the reincarnated Dr. Hastor. I didn’t kill off a lot of Earth people as per the middle part of Keith’s description (I figured the Allied and Axis powers were already busy doing that), but otherwise the concept is pretty much the same, even if it was hijacked.

So where did I get the concept, beyond the Klaatu part, anyway? I’ve always said that I remembered, sometime when I was a young avid listener to the later years of “the Golden Age of Radio” (in my case, the late 1940s through the early ’50s), I heard some dramatic radio program with

exactly that theme. I’ve tried, for decades, though admittedly in a rather desultory way, to track down that show so I could hear it again and see how accurate my memory is, and what the other details were. I have this feeling it was not part of some “hero” series, but rather a stand-alone drama… like an episode of Suspense or some science-fiction equivalent such as X Minus One. Of course, since I’m a bit vague on exactly when I encountered the drama, I can’t be sure it was before late 1950, when Weird Science #5 (which I probably didn’t see, and certainly never owned in those days) hit the nation’s newsstands. If it was just a wee bit earlier, it could be that Harvey heard that same show… and, if it was a little later, I suppose it’s not inconceivable that a radio writer swiped the idea from an EC comic!

So, sure, Weird Science #5 could have been the ultimate source of the theme of Watchmen… but so could All-Star Squadron #10-12 or probably any number of other sources... including a mysterious radio show that came over the air waves a third of a century before we started watching the Watchmen. If anybody has any idea what radio drama I heard, hope they’ll let me know.

of colorful and strong graphics to accompany the interviews, but the images tend to be really tiny. I would prefer to see panel enlargements and details rather than so many comic pages reduced to postage stamp-size.

Keep up the diversified subjects and topics. I think it’s really fun and informative to read about Michael Allred and Bob Burden in the same issue!

[Duly noted, Alan. Interview style is pretty much dependent on the style of the subject being interviewed. We try to keep on subject, but sometimes… As for diversity, hope you enjoyed Peter Bagge’s chat last ish and comix pioneer Howard Cruse coming next time. — Y.E.]

Tom McKinnon I just read your letter column in CBC #8, where you said that you haven’t been getting any mail, so I decided to drop you a line. I love your magazine and I have a subscription, as I did to CBA when it was at Top Shelf. I like the mix of new artists, and old-timers that you feature. I am glad that you aren’t finishing articles digitally, as I prefer to read the physical magazine, not online. I was especially disappointed by the shortness of the Denis Kitchen interview. In the future, how about an article on Gilbert Shelton’s Wonder Warthog or, a personal favorite of mine, Bob Boze Bell’s, Honky Tonk Sue? All in all, a great magazine!

Warp TM & © Stuart Gordon & Lenny Kleinfeld. Sketch art © Neal Asams.

[Thanks for the suggestions, Tom. You may be delighted to hear that, by special arrangement with TwoMorrows, Mr. Kitchen will be publishing — in print — the entirety of my interview with the multi-talented D.K. in a single publication. Keep ye eyes peeled for details, coming soon! — Y.E.]

Jim Martin I’m reading this issue of Comic Book Creator [#7] and, as a long time Bernie Wrightson fan, I have enjoyed what I have read immensely. Of course, people seldom write to simply praise someone.

Normally, those who are totally happy are silent, while those with suggestions or complaints are not.

Please be aware my remarks are in no means a condemnation or complaint, as I enjoy the issues I buy. I often let them sit around until I have sometime to read most of the main interview.

What I’m saying is more of a level of disappointment in seeing that this issue could have been so much more.

First off, the interview is ten years old. Which is fine since it is a retrospective of Bernie’s career, so nothing changes in the past, but why not include an update? I know Bernie has had some health issues which may have occurred since press time, but still ten years is a huge gap.

Even if you can’t get Bernie to answer a few questions via Skype, email or whatever, certainly updating what he has been doing would be easy enough.

Also I think a few side interviews with creators he has worked with would have really made the issue, especially Steve Niles in recent times.

Finally — and this is my biggest issue — “The discussion turned to House of Secrets #92 and Swamp Thing” and it is in another issue??? I felt a little cheated there as I wanted to hear what Bernie had to say. Subscribers could just skip over that section, but reading a magazine that is Wrightson-focused and cutting out that was a disappointment.

Sorry if this sounds harsh, but it is meant as sincere.

I like these publications, but feel less inclined to buy the next issue focused on a creator whose work I love if I’m going to be short-changed, so to speak.

Thanks for all your efforts and great interviews.

Above: This recolored Neal Adams illustration depicting the Warp poster was shared by the artist for last issue’s mammoth retrospective on the Broadway production. Colors

by Continuity Associates.

Inset left: Courtesy of Victor Lim, here’s a sketch of Lord Cumulus of Warp by Mr. Adams.

Below: Ye Crusading Editor contributed substantial essays to these two new books on a pair of great comic book artists, Sam Glanzman and Mike Ploog. Buy early and often!

[Well, in the words of Rick Nelson, “If you can’t please everyone, you’ve got to please yourself”… (though I’m not attempting to be snarky, Jim). We really do try our very best every issue and it was my call, for better or worse, to keep Bernie’s talk of the big green guy in our Swampmen special, CBC #6. And that had been the aim for the years I had been planning both. I did the same last issue with Peter Bagge’s interview, excising the Weirdo discussion for its inclusion in a forthcoming book on that mag’s history. Certainly my intent is never for anyone to feel cheated. As for an update with B.W., it just wasn’t in the cards. — Y.E.] Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

9

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#5: MORE DC 1967-74

#1: DC COMICS 1967-74

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#8: ’80s INDEPENDENTS

#9: CHARLTON PART 1

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CHARLTON COMICS: 1972-1983!

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#14: TOWER COMICS & WALLY WOOD

#15: 1980s VANGUARD & DAVE STEVENS

#16: ATLAS/SEABOARD COMICS

#17: ARTHUR ADAMS

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

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

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#18: 1970s MARVEL COSMIC COMICS

#19: HARVEY COMICS

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Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

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championing the champ

Eisner’s Enduring Esprit A chat with Paul Levitz about his latest, Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel

by Jon B. Cooke CBC Editor [Yours truly is happy to include this feature on friend and fellow historian Paul Levitz’s new tome, Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel (published last fall by Abrams), but it must be disclosed that I helped out with the book, if ever so slightly, when the author asked for an assist. The interview was conducted by email this past July. — Ye Editor.]

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CBC: What was your first exposure to the work of Will Eisner, Paul, and what were your impressions?

Paul Levitz: I think I first saw The Spirit in Jules Feiffer’s wonderful Great Comic Book Heroes, but I was too overwhelmed by the joy of discovery of the Golden Age super-heroes to focus on him. A couple of tastes in the early 1970s, with the bagged black-&-white reprints and the like, and then my friend Mark Hanerfeld got me hooked on Will. Mark sold me about half of The Spirit sections (his duplicates), and I started a futile quest for the rest.

CBC: The Spirit had poked his head up from Wildwood Cemetery a few times during the 1960s — in an Israel Waldman one-shot, momentarily revived in a New York Herald Tribune magazine feature, in a reprint appearing in Feiffer’s book, and in two glorious issues of a Harvey Comics resurrection. In your memory, and in retrospect, how were these sparse appearances received by comics fandom? Did they whet the appetite of readers or was there overall indifference?

Paul: I’m a little later than that in my introduction to fandom. My first con was is 1971 and my fanzine reading only really goes wide just before that. By the time I come in, The Spirit has won an Alley Award (the first organized comics awards), and is being written about in early historical works, from Steranko’s History of Comics to Richard Kyle’s Graphic Story fanzine. The older fans are definitely holding it in reverence, and Will’s regarded as a father figure already.

CBC: Can you describe what the atmosphere of the Seuling Comic Art Conventions were like in the early 1970s with some comparison to the mega-events of today? (To set the stage for the environment Will stepped into when encountering the field after his long absence.)

Paul: It was a magic time, certainly for me, but for others as well. In those pre-Internet days when even a #11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Gerhard Shnooble, Will Eisner logo, and book cover art TM & © Will Eisner Studios, Inc. Portrait ©the estate of Seth Kushner.

Above: Portrait of Paul Levitz by the late Seth Kushner. Inset right: Vignette of Gerhard Shnooble by Will Eisner, from The Spirit #34 [Sept. ’87] cover.

Below: Cover of Paul Levitz’s Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel.

One of the remarkable aspects of being on a first name basis with William Ervin Eisner was not only the rapt attention and respect he would grant you when speaking one-on-one, but also the ease and comfort in which he engaged differing points of view. Here was Will Eisner, certainly the true “elder statesman” of the comic book field, if ever there was one, a honest-to-goodness leader in this art form, with oodles of bona-fides to prove it, willing to earnestly listen and ponder even the most outlandish ideas… and he’d just as ardently — and graciously — refute any silly notions and set you straight. He was a class act.

Back in the day, when overwhelmed by some epiphany, I would be gripped with an urge to ring him up. (Understand, that was the thing with Eisner: besides possessing a demeanor that effortlessly commanded he be dealt with courtesy, promising the same in return, there were no egotistical vibes coming from the legend that

would prompt any hesitation in making the call). Y’see, folks, I just had to share my totally original and utterly brilliant idea, about which, upon hearing, he would unfailingly pause and — kindly, mind you, ever so kindly — render my scheme to smithereens. Will Eisner had thought it all out long before… and he suffered fools like me very nicely. And maybe, God bless ‘im, I came out a little wiser for having the temerity to engage him.

The point is, I reckon, Will Eisner was a mensch, a good man who treated others well. And he was also smart, prescient, and vital. I guess this is a long-winded (if not incoherent) intro about how Paul Levitz’s new book is utterly appropriate regarding the great graphic novelist. It is a beauty to behold and a joy to read. And Mr. Levitz, being a mensch in my estimation as well, was kind enough to chat about good ol’ Will with yours truly and suffer through some of my foolish questions…

Portrait © Greg Preston. Snarf © Kitchen Sink. The Spirit and related characters TM & © Will Eisner Studios, Inc.

“long distance” phone call was an impractical expense, it was a clan in-gathering of people who had challenges connecting. My first con, as I said, was 1971, and I think we had 3,500 people — the largest comic con that had yet happened, and we didn’t think it was possible to get larger.

Legendary artists were being coaxed to appear, top talents were sketching (my Neal Adams sketch was six dollars), and there was joy in the air. The dealers’ room was small, and we all knew each other — by face, if not by name. I was there selling my fanzine, Etcetera, and fanzines for other people who would be lifelong friends and colleagues.

CBC: The rise of underground comix is arguably one of the most crucial developments in the development of sequential art (to use Eisner’s high-falootin’ name for comics), and yet that segment has been Balkanized from general fandom (using the category’s exclusion in the Overstreet Price Guide as a prime example that the comix are “different”).

Was that necessary and has the division adversely affected the field overall?

Paul: It’s an interesting argument, which to some degree I’ve been having with [comics historian/dealer] Bob Beerbohm for a couple of decades. As a teacher, trying to put the development of the field in cognitive order, I’ve become convinced that the undergrounds were critical in reigniting creativity in the form. I consider the development of American comics as a tension between storytelling and expression, and at the time the undergrounds come along, most comics (periodical and syndicated) had retreated into the safest forms of storytelling. That doesn’t mean there weren’t wonderful comics to read and enjoy — much of my personal favorites were created in those years (as a Mort Wesinger/Julius Schwartz DC kid and later a Stan Lee/Roy Thomas/Jack Kirby Marvel kid) — but the creative chances being taken were structural and incremental. The undergrounds opened up subject matter.

On the other hand, the issue of how critical they were to the business development is, I think, more arguable (which is where Bob and I often part ways). One aspect of the argument is a New York perspective versus a California one, and another is the question of how important you feel mass exposure or profitability are to the equation.

As we enter an era of massive small press publishing, self-publishing, and mini-comics, so many elements that were present in both the undergrounds and fanzines have Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

returned to comics. Is witzend an underground, a fanzine, a “prozine,” or simply comics? In any case, it’s a critical progenitor.

It’s easy to get hung up on the labels (not that categorization doesn’t have value), and not to see it all as comics.

CBC: Interestingly, as Eisner wanted to tell non-genre stories about real-life (non-fantasy, if you will) experiences and he had a past history with an almost super-hero, popular character of its day, the comics creator was straddling the cusp between mainstream and underground comics. In retrospect, was that an apt place for Eisner to be, and how comfortable do you think he was in that position few others could be?

Paul: I’m not sure I’d qualify The Spirit as real life… certainly not in the way that Will later used his skills in A Contract With God and his graphic novels. The scale of the stories is modest, both because of the short story format and Will’s choices, but he does tales about alien invasions in the run too. And “Gerhard Schnobble” isn’t real life, though it’s a powerful metaphor, but it was Will’s favorite.

I think Will made little distinction between the forms of comics and their labels. He cites the wordless novels of Lynd Ward in his introduction to Contract, tries to do a newspaper strip several times as a younger man, and ultimately did work in pretty much every form comics were done in during his lifetime until the emergence of web comics. He loved telling story in cartooning.

CBC: Please describe your first meeting the man, any evolving impressions of his work (old and emerging) and your subsequent relationship.

Paul: I first met Will when he was doing The Spirit magazine for Warren Publications, gathering info for my fanzine. I was very young, and it didn’t turn into a friendship then. Over the years, as I matured and gained more senior positions in the field, we’d run into each other at industry events (endless

Above: Opening title spread of Will Eisner: Champion on the Graphic Novel, featuring CBC’s own contributing photographer Greg Preston’s superb 2001 portrait of the legendary comic book artist, as well as letterer Todd Klein’s wonderfully apt logo design.

Below: Will Eisner was challenged by the emerging underground comix that were transforming an industry into an art form and, leaving government contracts behind, he got back into the game. Kitchen Sink’s Snarf #3 [Nov. ’72], with cover art by Eisner.

15

Above: Calling Will Eisner’s seminal work, A Contract With God [1978], the first graphic novel is a dubious claim, considering Harvey Kurtzman’s Jungle Book [1959] and Gil Kane’s works discussed in this issue, but what is inarguable is the profound effect this deeply felt and moving book by a Golden Age veteran had on the field overall, inspiring generations to look inside themselves for honest and true story ideas.

Below: Please check out willeisner.com for information on 2016’s Will Eisner Week, celebrated across the nation by schools, universities, libraries, and museums. This event takes place every year during the week of Mar. 6 (what else but good Will Eisner’s birthday!).

discussions of how to raise funds for the Walkers’ Cartoon Museum come to memory) and began a friendship that ripened when I became his publisher after Kitchen Sink collapsed.

I adored Will and Ann, as friends, and as role models. Working with him was a pleasure, given his professionalism, and genius.

CBC: Can you discuss the genesis of your book on Eisner, what you hope to have accomplished, and the differences between yours and the biographies

by Bob Andleman (Will Eisner: A Spirited Life) and Michael Schumacher (Will Eisner: A Dreamer’s Life in Comics)?

Paul: Abrams editor Charlie Kochman approached me when I returned to writing [after retiring as DC Comics publisher], and asked if I would do his book on Eisner — as he saw it, his companion to the works Mark Evanier had done for him on Kirby [Kirby: King of Comics] and Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhle on Kurtzman [The Art of Harvey Kurtzman].

The original thought was an Art of Eisner volume, but I didn’t feel that was the right direction.

There’s a challenge in doing books on artists who are no longer active, in that the public has a sort of natural “half-life” to awareness of them. As a young assistant at DC, I heard lectures from Joe Orlando about the importance of people like Noel Sickles, and they mostly went right over my head. So I wanted to see how best to make Will relevant to the current audience. There’d been biographies, your documentary*, and tons of Will’s own words were available in interviews.

I’m not confident enough in my own research skills to try to read every document at Ohio State University and interview every living soul to find the small facts others have missed.

What to do, then?

The answer, for me at least, was to look for context and motivation. Considering the path of Will’s life, why was he important to us in comics? If I could make that case, it might be a useful work of history. And along the way I came to a clear view of his motivation which made the disparate parts of his career fit together. At least I hope so… that’s why the book is Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel.

CBC: As writer of a film documentary on Eisner, my overall impression of the man is that he relished a challenge and was competitive to the core. Do you perceive he saw something that perhaps was lacking in the field which he could fulfill or was it a case of “I’ll show these kids what for!”? That is, was he possessed with a sense of mission or was it a desire to jump into the fray and go toeto-toe with upstarts (or both/neither)?

Paul: I think Will was endlessly curious. I

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#11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

All material TM & © Will Eisner Studios, Inc.

* Paul is referring to Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist, the 2007 feature length movie documentary directed

by Ye Editor’s brother, Andrew D. Cooke. See advertisement on the page opposite.

don’t see him as competitive — just aspirational. I think his competition was himself, and what was possible.

CBC: What is the fundamental nature of Will Eisner? Was he rectifying (or in conflict with) the two greatest influences on his life, the common-sense, pragmatic mother and the artistic, dreaming father? Please imagine his mom and dad examining his career and life: What do you suspect their reaction might be?

Paul: My argument is that his life was, in many ways, a search for respect. Not an unusual goal for a first generation Jewish kid in his situation. His gift was his art, and he understood that. I don’t think it’s coincidence that he uses his entrepreneurial spirit to start Eisner & Iger to generate an ongoing living, then jumps to The Spirit when newspaper comics are the most respectable part of the field, and leaves comics for commerce when comics are beginning to be under assault (and he’s newly married with a fatherin-law who views his comics work as suspect or fragile).

And when he returns to comics with Contract, it’s with a conscious effort to gain respect for the form.

CBC: In the pantheon of comics, where stands William Erwin Eisner? What is his importance and what is his legacy?

Paul: Rankings are always suspect, but it’s hard to think of a fourth comic book creator in the first generation whose work and teaching were more influential than Will’s.

Kurtzman and Kirby are certainly peers in those regards (Kirby more in teaching by example than in a formal sense), and there are other brilliant artists, and some who reached wider audiences (Barks comes to mind), but there’s a good argument for Will. His legacy is in the work he inspired — read the book for the argument.

CBC: Please describe your professional relationship with Eisner and his estate. (That is, how and why DC Comics became the publisher of The Spirit Archives, the graphic novels, etc.)

Paul: When Kitchen Sink closed, Will needed a new publishing home, and I’m pleased that he chose DC, particularly for the Archives, which I think we did better at the time than anyone else would have. We also got to do a number of his graphic novels, before he decided that he had an opportunity to go with a “real” book publisher, and needed to bring his backlist with him for that to work.

CBC: Do you take away any sense of frustration on Eisner’s part that he did not achieve greater success? A memorable moment in David Hajdu’s essay in the Comic Book Artist Eisner tribute issue was of Will in a bookstore, lamenting to David that his work wasn’t displayed alongside

Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist ©2016 Sequential Artisit, LLC. The distinctive Will Eisner signature is a trademark of Will Eisner Studios, Inc.

TM & © Will Eisner Studios, Inc.

Saul Bellow’s or John Updike’s novels, commenting that his own work was the equal of Bellow’s. Is an unquenchable ambition one of the comics creator’s hallmarks?

Paul: I don’t think of it as unquenchable ambition, but aspiration. I think the reason “Gerhard Schnobble” is Will’s favorite is in many ways it was a metaphor for his feeling about his own work: I flew, and no noticed.

There’s a joy in seeing your children (biological or professional) surpass you, and I think Will took that in seeing

what was done by others in the graphic novel field, but I think it’s only human that there occasionally was a tinge of envy.

CBC: Nearing the end of his life, Eisner took on more religious/ethnic themes (particularly confronting straight-on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion). Simply put, Eisner was Jewish, of immigrant parents, from the ethnic melting pot of urban New York. In considering Eisner’s life, what role does his heritage play? Even more, is it worth exploring — the relationship between comics and the Jews? (Are they inseparable? Is it relevant?)

Paul: This is a very long conversation, probably best for another day.

CBC: What is the most surprising thing you learned writing this book (and do please describe the process and notable moments)?

Paul: The happy surprise that Mark Hanerfeld probably wrote the first cover copy putting the words ‘graphic novel’ on the front of a comic. Lots of little surprises, like realizing Jack Katz’ First Kingdom was the first sequential collection of a series comic in trade form, and that Simon & Shuster did it and I hadn’t even noticed!

CBC: What do you most want readers to take away from the biography?

Paul: It’s not a biography, as I said above. But I’d like them to take a sense of how Will’s life and work influenced his field… and perhaps, gain a sense of how a person can work to change the world they’re immersed in by example, by evangelism, and by teaching.

CBC: In 100 years, how do you imagine Will Eisner will be considered?

Paul: I hope as the champion of the graphic novel… a great talent, who inspired others to make a form culturally important and popular even beyond his own successes.

Below: The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, presented each year at Comic Con International: San Diego to those voted best in their categories, are, needless to say, comicdom’s Academy Awards. For Ye Ed to say we have five of these puppies lining our bookshelf would be bragging, huh?

The Storyteller’s Story Official Selection in over 25 film festivals worldwide “The best comics bio I’ve ever seen… It’s wonderful, well done.”

Brian Michael Bendis “An essential doc for comics fans, ‘Portrait’ will also enlighten the curious.”

John DeFore, Austin American-Statesman “Entertaining and insightful. A great film about a visionary artist!”

Jeffrey Katzenberg Arguably the most influential person in American comics, Will Eisner, as artist, entrepreneur, innovator, and visual storyteller, enjoyed a career that encompassed comic books from their early beginnings in the 1930s to their development as graphic novels in the 1990s. During his sixty-year-plus career, Eisner introduced the now-traditional mode of comic book production; championed mature, sophisticated storytelling; was an early advocate for using the medium as a tool for education; pioneered the now-popular graphic novel, and served as inspiration for generations of artists. Without a doubt, Will Eisner was the godfather of the American comic book.

The award-winning full-length feature film documentary includes interviews with Eisner and many of the foremost creative talents in the U.S., including Kurt Vonnegut, Michael Chabon, Jules Feiffer, Jack Kirby, Art Spiegelman, Frank Miller, Stan Lee, Gil Kane, and others.

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The Comic Needs of the Many Publishers must reach out to libraries to inform about the value of their catalog

March TM & © John Lewis. Rocket Raccoon TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

by R icHard J. Arndt CBC Contributing Editor I know that this column was supposed to be about mythology books, but I thought I’d rather make this one about library needs as opposed to personal wants in regards to the library.

I’m fully aware that many fans only consider the artist or the character in picking a comic or graphic novel but, to me, the creators — both writer and artist — hold the key as to where I’m going to buy that book. Very seldom is it the character. Roger Stern and John Byrne on Captain America? I’ll buy that. But every single issue of Cap just so I can say I’ve got a complete run? Not so much. Buy every issue of Batman when I’ve only liked the work of Brubaker, Dini, or Snyder on the character in recent years? No. You’re going to have to do good work that respects the character to get me to buy that.

I’m even more picky with choices for my library. Of less concern is the characters, artists, and writers. It’s not the graphic in “graphic novel” you have to focus on, but the novel. Does the book you’re buying serve an educational purpose? Is it a more than just entertaining? Can I convince a teacher to use it and others like it in a lesson plan? Can I convince a teacher to allow a student to use it in a lesson plan? That last one is often harder than it sounds. While librarians in general have come around to the usefulness of graphic novels, many teachers, both young and old, have not. It’s your job to convince them. Then it’s your job to convince students, many of whom have never read a graphic novel, that they’re fun to read. They’ve had it rammed down their throats that books with pictures are “kid stuff” since third grade. Plus, learning to read a comic at age 12 or 13 is not as easy as learning at age six or seven. It’s practically a new language. Pre-teens are nearly always fundamentally lazy. They’ll take the easiest route every time and comics are not necessarily easy.

So what did I buy for this year’s batch of graphic novels?

Well, I started off with John Lewis’ two March books. I’m also picking up George O’Connor’s Ares; two Classics Illustrated books — Tom Sawyer by Mike Ploog and Poe’s The Raven and Other Stories, adapted by Gahan Wilson. The first Star Wars Omnibus is on the list, as is Wayne Vansant’s excellent war history book, The Battle of the Bulge, and Bomb Run by Harvey Kurtzman and John Severin. There are also two books on comic book history — The Comics: An Illustrated History by Jerry Robinson and Marvel Comics: the Untold Story by Sean Howe. I don’t know if I’ll get everything. You always have to over-order books in the library business because there usually only one chance to order (less your budget is tightened during the school year) and you want to get your books that are available now.

Notice what’s not on the list? With exception of the Star Wars book, there isn’t anything from any of the major comic book publishers. There’s a reason for that. They don’t make it easy for the libraries to get their books. Librarians want the smoothest route possible to purchasing books both entertaining and educational. Comic book publishers don’t operate like regular publishers. They have not, in my opinion, made the slightest effort to convince school and public librarians as to the value of their books. None of the major companies alert librarians to books that might have a special use. Chris Staros, whose Top Shelf publishes John Lewis’ March autobios of the Civil Rights movement, sent Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

out an email to alert libraries of the first volume’s release.

That is the only time in my 30 years as librarian that a comic book publisher has ever sent any promo material to me alerting that they have something I might like, though regular book publishers routinely do that sort of thing.

It’s not just promotion of the books either. Every library has a limited amount of shelf space for new books. Every librarian knows how much shelf space is eaten up by the book series like Harry Potter or Twilight. Asking librarians to pick up an unending series of super-hero graphic novels, which traditionally will only appeal to half the patrons — boys — is simply a non-starter. They won’t do it. I love comics and won’t do that. Give me a stand-alone book any day. One with a beginning, middle, and end. Not a cliffhanger ending that means I have to wait for another book that may take years to appear. Give me a definite ending.

Give me a book that is not unrelentingly dark, bloody, or gloomy, an author can get away with writing a grim, dystopian future novel such as The Giver or The Hunger Games.

Draw those same books as original graphic novel and I’m going to have parents, teachers, and religious groups coming from all directions to complain. And I’m talking about responsible parents, teachers, and religious groups, not the nut-jobs who bitch and complain about everything (from Dr. Seuss to Stephen King) because it might actually challenge their kids’ minds from their own crazy world-set.

Don’t give me Grant Morrison’s Batman; give me Kelley Puckett’s Batman Adventures. And where is Mr. Puckett? He hasn’t written a comic in years and is sorely missed.

I want Skottie Young’s Rocket Raccoon or Dan Abbott and Mike Allred’s Silver Surfer marketed to libraries as well as the general comic fan. Let us see the cool stuff for our age level in advance. We’ll buy it!

Above: Libraries are in desperate need of thought-provoking, informative, and entertaining graphic novels of the caliber recently produced by Congressman John Lewis and company, the March trilogy (of which the first two volumes are currently available from Top Shelf Productions). Below: While nowhere near as socially relevant, Skottie Young’s Rocket Raccoon sure is fun! Vignette from S.Y.’s Rocket Raccoon #5 [Jan. ’15] cover.

Next: Part two of “Jobbers and Publishers” 19

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for? All is silver-grey, Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!

I know both what I want and what might gain And yet how profitless to know, to sigh “Had I been two, another and myself, “Our head would have o’erlooked the world!” No doubt

— Robert Browning, Andrea del Sarto

As with all things, there was a time when comic books were new, and the form was born in a gray city, in a downtrodden country, amid a dispirited era called the Great Depression. Children of that glum period responded to the guileless, emerging medium with instant devotion and fervor; here, finally, was an entertainment wholly their own, easy to ingest, portable, and inexpensive. Some kids, those who could recognize that real, live human beings drew the pictures and composed the words in those four-colored exploits, vowed to become a part of the effluent scene, especially those whose families were desperate for any additional income.

In those early days, the nascent industry was in frantic need of talent, even if crude, to fill the pages of its publications. Adolescents willing to produce stories at often-abysmal page rates flocked to the Manhattan publishing houses, among them a teen-aged Latvian immigrant who resided with his Yiddish-speaking parents in the neighboring borough of Brooklyn. The boy, who ardently embraced the adventure milieu, whether newspaper comic strips, episodic radio programs, or the moving pictures, had became an impassioned aficionado of comic books, especially the violent and bombastic stories produced by Bill Everett and those by Jack Kirby. Eli Katz’s ardor and devotion to the form’s pulp affectations would last all of his 73 years, long after he had reinvented himself from a mouthy, exuberant ghetto kid into the erudite and debonair Gil Kane.

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Portrait photography ©2016 Greg Preston.

This is the story of Eli the boy as well as Gil the man, who melded to become one of the greatest of all comic book creators. The man-child possessed a remarkable talent and, over many years, he fashioned a new identity for himself, and yet, sometimes to his lament, would never shed his childhood mania for pulpish melodrama, heroic derring-do, and garish spectacle. For Gilbert Kane, the promise of comics was ever fresh and alive, a form perpetually rife with possibilities, and quite simply the medium he loved the most, always bringing to his dynamic work the same enthusiasm that consumed an impressionable Eli Katz when the boy opened his first comic book.

Prologue The Mark of Kane: In his twilight years, during the ascent of the graphic novel, Gil Kane would bemoan that he had not produced substantive work in the comic book field — any achievement that went beyond genre and was singularly personal in content. “Gary Groth, my best friend, has always felt that I could do some sort of serious comic,” the artist explained.

“When Maus came out, he said, ‘Jesus, you were born over there, you were in World War II; why don’t you do something like that?’ But I don’t have any interest and I don’t think I have the capacity for it. I grew up reading and absorbing all of the great classic romances of my age.”1 It wasn’t that Kane lacked the ability to self-reflect or realistically assess his presence in the world; the man consistently expressed a lucid and remarkable candor about his own limitations (and sometimes adolescent predilections) and about how he could fall short of lofty goals. Yet despite being willfully ensnared by the trappings of genre — and such glorious genre work he did manage to share with us! — the artist would puzzle over how to extend the form, reshape it into different formats, and give readers something new yet still familiar.

However mired in romance, the man was nothing if not ambitious. And, while the obituaries after his passing on Jan. 31, 2000, invariably cited the artist for his assignments on the super-heroes Green Lantern and Spider-Man, what too few people celebrate is his grandiose and energetic attempts to create something unique out of the form. One can debate whether the content of His Name is… Savage (one part James Bond, one part Sam Peckinpah) and Blackmark (sword-&-sorcery against a post-apocalyptic backdrop) have endured the test of time, but what is indisputable is that Gil Kane’s undertakings were determined attempts to take the sphere of comics into a more substantial, advanced level.

The origins of his aspiration, to leave a mark on his field of endeavor, are found in yearnings that began to emerge during an impoverished childhood spent in a New York City ghetto.

Artwork ©2016 the estate of Gil Kane.

Part One: The Boy from Riga The Family Kacz: On Tuesday, April 4, 1926, a boy named Eli, their first and only child, was born to blacksmith Max Kacz and his wife, Helen (née Moran).2 The mother had likely given birth at home, as was the era’s custom, in the Jewish ghetto of Riga, the capital of the northern European state of Latvia and city that was home to some 43,000 Jews. The infant arrived amid a recovering Jewish presence in the Baltic state, a time of liberalization when his people gained citizenship and some government participation, though deep-rooted antisemitism — as always in Eastern Europe — remained prevalent among the ruling Gentiles.

In the first two decades of the 20th century, Latvia was the object of a perpetual tug of war between Russia and Germany, a nation alternately occupied Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

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Previous spread: At top is detail of Gil Kane Star Hawks montage (from the cover of Future #7, Jan. ’79). At far right is Kane’s self-portrait from the cover of The Comics Journal #113 [Dec. ’86]. This page: Top is young Eli Kacz (front row, left, detailed above) and his parents, as well as extended family, in a portrait that was included in Gil Kane: The Art of Comics [2001]. The caption in that book states the photo was taken prior to Eli and his parents traveling to the United States, and it notes, “Everyone in this picture, except Kane and his parents, was killed in the Holocaust,” though, upon examination, the boy looks older than three years old, his age upon leaving Latvia, so it may have been shot after arriving in the states. Inset right is Eli and his parents before the family’s emigration to the U.S.

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by those hostile neighbors, though after World War I and subsequent Latvian War of Independence, it began a period of autonomy, when Jews gained (albeit limited) social advancement. Still, Jews were overwhelmingly segregated, said cartoonist Al Jaffee, who as a boy at that time resided in the second largest city (now known as Kaunas) in Lithuania, Latvia’s southern neighbor. “I lived in what was a ghetto,” Jaffee said, “and it was called Slobodka, in [the city of] Kovno. It was all Jewish: there were Jewish schools, Hebrew schools, Yeshiva, temples… it would be like all of Brooklyn were Jewish.” The future MAD contributor also said that, as a youngster, “I had come from the United States to live in Lithuania for five years and, right from the beginning, I found that there were certain areas where a Jewish kid didn’t walk through, day or night, because you were going to get beat up.”3 The Kaczs were poor and opportunity beckoned far westward, where much of the extended family had already emigrated. Yet it was familial misfortune that brought the threesome to America, when Eli was a mere three-yearold. “They came because his paternal grandfather was ill and dying,” Gil’s wife Elaine Kane shared. After sitting for portraits with Latvian relatives — loved ones they would never see again — Max, Helen, and Eli voyaged for the U.S. in 1930, a time when immigration was discouraged and the Great Depression was beginning to bear down.

To enter the country, Elaine said, the Kaczs had to be vouched for by relatives. “I still have the letter that his relatives living in America wrote to sponsor the family to emigrate to the U.S.,” she said. “In those days, you had to have sponsorship to come here and had to guarantee they had put away $1,000 so they wouldn’t become wards of the state.”

In the winter or early spring of 1930, the family arrived in America.

“Gil said he remembered when their ship was coming into New York harbor, and his father ran below to bring the boy up on deck to see the Statue of Liberty,” Elaine recalled. Processed through U.S. Immigration, a slight alteration was made to the Kacz family name (which may be an abbreviated name derived from the Polish word for duck, Kaczka). Whether by intention or error, Kacz became Katz, Elaine said. Sadly, as to the reason for their journey, “By the time they got here,” she said, “the grandfather was already dead.”

Brunzvil: As with many of the diaspora arriving from Eastern Europe in the early 20th century, the family found lodging in the Brownsville neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. An area dubbed the “Jerusalem of America” for its enormous Jewish population, Brownsville was a stunningly impoverished and crime-ridden section of the city by the time the Katzs arrived. Plagued by the worsening Depression, in an area comprising a little over one square mile, the vicinity was the densely-packed home of approximately 300,000 people, with Jews comprising an estimated 80 percent of that citizenry. #11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Photos © the respective copyright holders. Brownsville TM & © 2006 Neil Kleid & Jake Allen.

Notoriously, around the same time the Katzs were just settling into their tenement apartment at 1675 Park Place,* Brownsville witnessed the birth of Murder, Inc., the mobster hit squad formed by Jewish gangsters Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky, which would be responsible during its 1930s to mid-’40s reign for executing upwards of 1,000 murder contracts. Literary critic Alfred Kazin, born of Brownsville and son of a house painter, said of his environs, “We were the end of the line. We were the children of immigrants who had camped at the city’s back door, in New York’s rawest, remotest, cheapest ghetto… [W]e were Brownsville — Brunzvil, as the old folks said — the dust of the earth to all of Jews with money, and notoriously a place that measured success by our skill with getting away with it.”4 “It was a difficult childhood,” said Elaine about young Eli. And with the need for blacksmiths on the wane in the modern automotive era and unemployment rapidly ascending to catastrophic levels nationwide, father Max was in desperate need of a job. “They had no money,” Elaine continued. “His dad had a rough time getting work.

Apparently the family had gone to the beach and the father got an ear infection and they didn’t have the money to do anything about it, and he lost his hearing. (He would have hearing aids and, if you would yell, he could hear you.) So that made life even more difficult.”

The artist shared with friend Jim Woodring stories of childhood hardship. “Gil told me stories about the poverty of his youth that were hair-raising,” Woodring said. “Such as three or four people using the same bathwater. I remember him telling me that he got hit in the mouth and broke some teeth, so it was suggested by his mother that he drink ice water to alleviate the pain. These stories didn’t contribute to my sense to who he was as a person, but they were memorable stories. And he did change his tone when he spoke of the deprivations of his youth; he wasn’t blithe about it at all.”5 “We were terribly poor and we lived in a cold-water flat,” Kane said. “We didn’t have any heat, hot water, and we had an old iron stove. My mother and I used to have to go into the marketplace to find wooden fruit boxes and break them up to use as fuel because we couldn’t afford coal.”6 (Kane’s boyhood friend Norman Podhoretz points out that for a Brownsville couple at the time to have only one offspring was not common. “It was unusual to be an only child of Jewish parents,” he said. “There were at least * The 1940 United States Census lists that address as the Katz residence and records they had lived there since five years prior. Howard Chaykin has repeatedly cited 420 Saratoga Avenue as Eli Katz’s boyhood address, but verification of any address other than 1675 Park Place has yet to be made.

Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

two kids in every family, usually more.”7 The Wikipedia page, History of Jews in Latvia, hints at Latvian government restriction, the “limiting of the [Jewish] family size [between 1925–35] to one or two children by the majority,”8 though verification was not available by presstime.)

Perhaps exacerbating problems (though hardly unusual) was the fact that Yiddish, the everyday language of Eastern European Jewry, was the only language spoken in the household. “Gil said that when he started kindergarten,” Elaine said, “he practically spoke no English, so that wasn’t easy.” Gil’s son, Scott, recalled, “My grandparents continued to speak Yiddish throughout the rest of their lives.”9 Still, with eight out of ten Brownsville residents being Jewish, daily life didn’t necessitate adherence to goyish culture. “I thought the entire world was Jewish,” Brownsville native and daughter of factory workers Lillian Elkins said. “I didn’t realize I was a minority.”10 But on the street, Podhoretz related, “Between us kids, we never spoke Yiddish to each other.”

Birthplace of the reputable Hebrew Educational Society of Brooklyn, Brownsville was also home to many dozens of synagogues and a flourishing Jewish culture.

“There was a thriving Yiddish theater in Brownsville,” Podhoretz explained. “There was a theater on St. John’s Place, right near Eastern Parkway, a sort of main drag, and the shows from Second Avenue would come there and it was

This page: Photos of Brownsville, including (top right) Helen Levitt’s portrait of kids mugging for the camera and (above) street vendors selling out of their pushcarts. Below is the cover of Neil Kleid and Jake Allen’s graphic novel, Brownsville.

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Podhoretz said, “I remember the chicken-pluckers. If you wanted to get fresh but relatively cheap chicken, you didn’t go to the butcher shop; you went to Prospect Place and bought it from the vendors. The smell was awful! It’s a Proustian memory! You basically got a bargain compared to what you’d pay in a butcher shop.”

Pleasure Paradise: About Brownsville during the Depression, Arthur Klein revealed, “It was like a paradise for Jewish kids. My grandparents were very frum. They really wanted to obey the laws… But, of course, youngsters like myself just went ahead and had a good time and did whatever we wanted to.” Gil Kane said, “It was just all of the great things that were going on. Nobody had any money and everybody who lived [there] was pretty much the same. It was simply extraordinary. I mean, we were poor, but my experience was very, very rich, and so it was for others. It’s almost like a club… you talk to anyone growing up in New York in the 1930s and they’re kith and kin.”13 Young Eli began to develop a rich fantasy life, Scott Kane explained. “My father fell in love with the ‘story of the hero’ when he was a kid. He used to cut out these characters and animate them, playing in his bed. It was if he was destined to be a storyteller. He had an advantage, at the very beginning, playing with those characters on his bed and later bringing them to life. It was as if this path was laid out for him.” Fueling the youngster’s imagination was a wealth of inexpensive boy-centric entertainment, material that would influence an entire generation of comic book creators, most of whom were living in a special time and place.

“Certain cities have a moment in the world when they are the Mecca for everything,” Kane said. “During the middle of the 19th century, it was Vienna — all the great music, science, philosophy, everything came out of Austria and Germany around that time, and that lasted until World War I. By the 1920s, New York had already started to take over.

New York had Jews, Italians, Irish, and the mix was so incredible. Cultures just spilled over, one into another, and everything was in the process of development. Movies, radio, publishing, newspapers — New York had nine daily papers in the ’30s! Nine papers! — that’s the center of the world! Everything was wired to New York’s ass! It was just a great time to be alive. I was lucky to have been a kid and a young adult during that period.”14 Those daily newspapers, usually priced at two cents (a nickel for the thick Sunday edition), were crowded with heroes in exceptional adventure comic strips, a genre only recently created, and the serial exploits of Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs (with daring co-star Captain Easy), Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates, Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, Hal Foster’s Tarzan, and Nowlan and Calkins’ Buck Rogers, all capturing the rapt attention of American kids — as well as a good number of action-craving grown-ups.

The extravagant four-color newspaper Sunday comic sections that subscribed to King Features included the seminal adventure strip Flash Gordon, exquisitely rendered by the legendary Alex Raymond, perhaps the most influential series and artist of the freshmen class of comic book creators. Soon King Features’ Prince Valiant by Hal Foster would grace the color funnies, a strip that would also have a huge impact on fledgling artists.

“I think that the Scorchy Smith work that Noel Sickles did was probably the highest point ever achieved in comic strips in terms of drawing,” Kane said. “The only thing that equals it is the Egyptian period of Hal Foster and Tarzan, in 1936. They’re easily, far and away the most brilliant pieces of artwork, they influenced me and shaped me beyond anything else. Nothing has ever come close to them.”15

This page: Movies, Little Big Books, and pulp magazines would have an enormous impact on the young Eli Katz’s imagination, influencing the future Gil Kane for the remainder of his life. One might surmise, given Kane’s extolling comments about Big Little Books (or, in this example, Better Little Books), with their contents of text pages balanced with full-page illustrations, that they had influenced the creator’s endeavors as progenitor of the early graphic novel.

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All material TM & © the respective copyright holders.

a serious enterprise. And, besides the theater, there were movie palaces, as they were called, including the Loew’s Pitkin Theater.

There were also at least five Yiddish daily newspapers that I remember, maybe more. There was Forverts, Der Tog, Der Morgen Zshurnal, the Morgen Freiheit (which was a Communist paper), and at least one other. And they all had large circulations all over New York.”

Of bustling Pitkin Avenue, fourteen blocks of some nearly 400 businesses (mostly Jewish-owned) intersecting the neighborhood, native Samuel Peckerman was quoted as saying, “To write the story of Brownsville without mentioning Pitkin Avenue would be like telling the story of the Pilgrims and omitting Plymouth Rock.”11 About Prospect Place, Arthur Klein told the Yiddish Book Center, “The whole street was loaded with pushcarts… and on the carts was everything that you could possibly think of was for sale — they had clothing, pots and pans, books, any kind of food you could think of, and there was a big chicken market on the street, as well.”12 Podhoretz recalled, “My mother shopped at Prospect Place; everybody did. In retrospect, you’d think it was quite colorful. I was there a lot when my mother would schlep me to help her carry packages.”

Max Katz did find work in the neighborhood, Elaine revealed, “And here he was a deliveryman on horse and wagon, selling fruits and vegetables. It was a difficult life, but they did what they had to do to survive. Gil’s mother worked in a bakery.” The patriarch eventually did gain employment as a vendor, perhaps at Prospect Place, as Elaine said, “He ultimately opened up a kosher chicken stall in the market.” While Gil’s son, Scott, joked that his grandfather was a “chicken-plucker,” Max, in a specified manner to make the fowl kosher, would have to slaughter it as painless as possible for the bird, conforming to kashrut, the strict dietary laws of the Hebrew people who remained frum, the Yiddish word for devout.

“We used to go in [to the poultry market] and get kosher chickens,” Klein said in a video interview, describing the ritual.

“We used to pick out our own live chicken, and, right then and there, they would cut their necks and let the blood drip into a can, to make it kosher, and then they would flick it for you, take the feathers off, if you gave them an extra nickel, because you don’t want to do that at home.”

All material TM & © the respective copyright holders.

This page: Clockwise from left are examples of enormously influential cartoonists in the artistic development of Gil Kane. Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Burne Hogarth’s Tarzan of the Apes, and Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant. At bottom is a favorite movie of Eli Katz, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

The airwaves featured the episodic exploits of an array of radio heroes, including The Shadow, The Lone Ranger, Green Hornet, and Jack Armstrong, among others, and also the comic strip adaptations of Little Orphan Annie, Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, and their brethren. And movie houses catered to Depression-era kids, who faithfully filled Saturday matinees to watch Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon chapter plays, Warner Brothers gangster movies, Rudyard Kipling adaptations, and the Westerns starring Tom Mix and Ken Maynard.

“When I was a kid,” Kane said with Gary Groth and Robert Crumb, in 1986, “over and above any of the things that may have set me up emotionally, I had a ripe sensibility ready for impress. I remember going to the movies and seeing Ken Maynard. He had a horse named Tarzan — these were the first movies I ever saw, ’33, ’34… I was just a kid. I wasn’t even going to school. I just couldn’t get over that horse. I never got over the miracle of that horse running, leaping, its mane and tail streaming in the wind. I became so aware of movement and that horse that I just ran; I never walked anywhere. I just ran and jumped. I was a very good athlete when I was a kid. I was simply obsessed with movement and action. That horse began to represent to me — I didn’t know the world ‘lyrical’ at the time — but I was drawn to idealized images of grace, power, and lyricism.

I can say that from this perspective. I pursued those qualities all my life. I began to fall in love with images and ultimately my bent in comics was not to dramatize like Crumb but to illustrate.”16 Other movies had great impact on the boy. “Snow White [and the Seven Dwarfs] was one of the pictures that changed my life,” Kane said. “I was 11 years old when it came out. It was the first full-length animated movie! I used to go every Saturday, like 100 million kids who would go every Saturday afternoon to the movies, and I went to Snow White, and Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

I remember — it was a little theater called the Waldorf, in Flatbush, and I ate up the movie, and for the next eight or nine weeks, I never went with my friends again. I would just go to whatever theater it was that was showing Snow White that week. And I just followed it, all the way through the chain, through all the theaters. And that’s the way I was with everything. About 1939 or so, they released King Kong and Gunga Din — I didn’t see King Kong when it first came out because it came out in 1932, so I didn’t see it until ’39. After that, it came around every summer on a double-bill, and of course all the kids used to go… [A]t the end of the [Gunga Din] movie when they would read that last Kipling piece about: ‘And it was din, din, din…’ and Victor McLaglen would go out with a tear in his eye and there would be a picture of Sam Jaffe superimposed and we’d all cry. It was just part of growing up in the ‘30s.”17 The popular genre fiction magazines called pulps — usually 128 pages, priced between 10¢ and 25¢, containing novellas and short stories — also would have a big influence. “I don’t think that kids have a concept of entertainment; they read for pleasure. I would read comic strips as a kid,” Gil said. “In school, I read Doctor Dolittle, Tom Sawyer — that was good — and I also started reading pulps. The Shadow came out in 1932 as a monthly, heavily promoted by a radio program starring Orson Welles. The magazine started to get very popular and it began to come out every two weeks. In 1938, I started to read it and I read every issue back to 1932. In those days, they had a million stores that did nothing except sell back issues. I read most of Doc Savage, some of Operator 5 (but I wasn’t terribly interested), some of The Spider, G-8. That was when I was twelve years old.”18 25

This page: Of huge impact (obviously) was the advent of the American comic book in the 1930s, with the two most important examples of that era being the one-shot Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics [1933], generally considered the first such publication. Action Comics #1 [June ’38] introduced the super-hero genre with the coming of Superman. Two artists who had great influence on Eli Katz were Bill Everett, creator of Amazing-Man, and Jack Kirby, who originated Red Raven with partner Joe Simon, as well as many other super-characters.

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All material TM & © the respective copyright holders.

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The notion of text coupled with illustrations more effusively than in the pulps had a lasting impact on the child, one that arguably influenced his adult work to stretch comics into different formats during his particularly creative period in the late 1960s. Big Little Books, predating comic books by a year, debuted in 1932 and were published to great success by Whitman, prompting competitors to duplicate the format. Roughly three-and-a-half inches wide by four inches high, these thick books (each devoted to popular characters from movies, radio, pulps, and comic strips), were between 200–400 pages in length and they contained full-page illustrations opposite text pages on each spread and retailed for the kid-friendly sum of ten cents. “When I would go into and five-and-dime and look at the new Big Little Books, it was a high moment for me,” Kane later said. “I was just a kid, but I felt privileged.

Ours was a kind of innocent devotion and we didn’t have parents instructing us or anything; we did it all on our own,

all individual choice. And I don’t think that exists anymore. It’s just a different climate.”19 During the mid-’30s, Katz would attend P.S. 144 for grade school, situated at the corner of Howard Avenue and Prospect Place, just around the corner from home, and he engaged in a good share of mischief. He would later tell Howard Chaykin (who decades later would attend the same public school), “I used to hang around with a friend of mine in the parks in those early days, and we used to wear — we couldn’t afford black, so we got dark purple, and we made a cape and a hood. And we would hide in these bushes — we were only about 12, 13 at the time — and what we would do is simply wait and scare the hell out of anybody who came to the park. Nothing terribly serious, just a little Headless Horseman in the park. This went on for a while, until I got to high school.”20 Elaine confessed that her late husband often chose to enjoy life outside the classroom. “He had a lot of fun as a kid,” she said. “He would cut school to go to movies. As a matter of fact, his mother made a deal with him and allowed him to skip.”

Rise of the Comic Books: In 1933, Max Gaines and Harry Wildenberg released the revolutionary one-shot Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics, followed by a regular series the next year. Famous Funnies would jumpstart a brand new publishing industry. Future comics artist Al Jaffee recalled, “I picked up the first copy of Famous Funnies on the newsstand and I thought that it was a miracle. I thought that I’d died and gone to heaven! I woke up one morning and there, lying on the newsstand next to the newspapers, was this ten-cent comic book, Famous Funnies. Well, that blew my mind!”

Artist Allen Bellman, another Golden Age veteran — like Katz, a Depression-era Jewish kid from Brownsville — was spellbound by the comic book and immediately sensed opportunity. “I was mesmerized by Famous Funnies,” he recalled, “even though they were reprints. In fact, I went up to Famous Funnies for a job with a good friend of mine, Sam Burlokoff, who also became a comic book artist.

We were still in junior high school. I remember going up to the office and I remember the guy [likely Stephen A. Douglas, the first professional comic book editor] pasting down the strips to ready for publication. I wanted to draw so I went there for a job, but it didn’t work out. Sammy was a very good artist but they were using reprints, so nothing became of it.”21 What would set the field ablaze in 1938 was the advent of the super-hero, the invention of two teenage Jewish boys from Cleveland. “I bought the first issue of Action Comics, with the first appearance of Superman,” Bellman shared nearly eight decades after the purchase.

“I was coming home for lunch from the William J. Gaynor Junior High School and I had a dime that was burning a hole in my pocket. I was supposed to go home to eat, but… instead I walked into a candy store called Cheap Sam’s and there, hanging on a wire, was the image of a guy in blue underwear holding up a

Artwork © the estate of Gil Kane.

car. Boy! I was mesmerized by that cover and that was the beginning for me! I was inspired by that, let me tell you!”

Young Eli Katz, who had quickly become a discerning consumer of boys entertainment, was also bowled over the Ohio boys’ creation, as well as their other features. “I was very excited about Superman,” Gil Kane said. “And it wasn’t just Superman; Siegel and Shuster were my favorite creative team in comics. There was Slam Bradley, Spy, and Radio Squad. In 1937, they did Doctor Occult. I followed them but didn’t realize that what I liked about them was that Shuster was a very watered-down version of Roy Crane and that Superman was influenced by Captain Easy.”22 Bellman was also a Shuster fan. “I don’t why it was so inspiring,” he enthused. “The drawing wasn’t that good.

Nobody is born a Michelangelo — we develop as we go along — but he had a style and I loved his style! And the idea was so different and so amazing! It inspired me to create all sorts of characters in my mind. I wanted to duplicate Superman.”

Jaffee, on the other hand, was less impressed by the new genre. “I honestly wasn’t into the super-heroes,” he said, “because I could not draw that way, or at least I didn’t think I was good enough to draw super-heroes, but I could draw funny figures… Now, Gil Kane, on the other hand, was eventually an excellent artist (though not at the beginning) and he had a very rich fantasy life… and, after all, adventure is all about fantasy! It was a natural fit for Gil Kane, but not so much for me or Willie [Elder] or Harvey Kurtzman, because what we did was make fun of the super-heroes.”

High School Hijinks: The future MAD artist, who would in time become a friend of Kane, had been accepted to the recently opened High School of Music & Art, where Jaffee would become best friends with classmates Elder and first encounter Kurtzman. In 1936, the same year Music & Art was founded, another Manhattan school was established in midtown. Founded by four young art teachers, the vocational facility occupied a decrepit warehouse (formerly a Civil War era hospital) on West 40th Street, and students, The New York Times stated, “made their own desks and storage from orange crates and plywood.”23 Eli Katz would join the institution during the school’s primitive beginning.

“When I was a kid,” Kane later said, “I used to go to a high school called the School of Industrial Art. Actually, at the time, it was just an idea that they had in New York, and we used to bring food boxes to the classroom to work on, because we had no desks. They didn’t have any kind of a curriculum.”24 The New York Times described the school’s program, possibly a syllabus set after the teenager’s term, as “immersing its students in four or more art classes a day, in a choice of 13 majors from architecture to fashion design.”25 During Katz’s time there, fellow schoolmates (and future comics pros) included Al Plastino, Chic Stone, and Carmine Infantino, the latter who would briefly become a creative partner of Kane in the ’40s.

At the dilapidated high school, Katz continued his mischievous adventures, telling Howard Chaykin, “[O]ne day, as I was going through this old building, which was built before the Civil War, and was full of little labyrinthian turns and stairwells and dark… and I found, at the top floor, a little room with an iron ladder… the attic of this building. In the ceiling was a hole, and light came down, a little cheek of light came down on this catwalk… that ran down the entire center of the attic, and there were two-by-fours and plaster on either side. What my friend used to do was, he would get someone up there, and I would be hiding — I was a terrific actor… I’d have the cape on, and… hood on, and I was about 14 years old… and someone would come up, filled with the same sense of wonder at finding a place like that like I was, and then my friend would abandon him, and I would swing down from the catwalk, landing on this little bit of light there, and somehow or other the cape would be flying, and of course, there were screams, and Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

these guys would leap right past that top floor, right past that iron ladder, and run through the corridors of the school.”

Kane continued, “Well, after a couple of weeks of bringing people up there, I was waiting for my friend to stooge another guy up there, and all of a sudden I heard… an enormous amount of noise, and guys started coming up this ladder… looking for me, and there was no way out except the way they came up… I didn’t know what to do. So I leaped off the beams, I landed in the light, and for a moment, they stepped back, the whole mob, and they caught themselves and they started to chase me. They chased me down this entire catwalk… And I was doing pretty good: the cloak was going, everybody’s screaming and it’s chaos. And then I slipped and fell, and the plaster collapsed under me, and I came fluttering 10 feet into the room below me, where a woman was teaching a science class. And I dropped like a bomb into this room, and I didn’t know where the hell I was going, the whole cape was twisted, and everything else — and she screamed. The room was chaos, just screaming and yelling, and of course I was completely unhurt. I jumped up, could only see out of one eye, ran out of the classroom, everybody yelling. By this time, everybody was spewing out of all the other classrooms, you can’t imagine all the din and noise, and I jumped into one of these stairwells, and once I started running, I meant serious business — nobody could ever catch me. So I ripped off the hood, ripped off the cape, threw them out the window, and kept on going until I left the school.”26 Gil’s son, Scott, remembered hearing of that antic. “I heard that story told at the dinner table many times,” he said. “His life was living out the fantasy of the hero’s

Above: Jerry Siegel (standing) and Joe Shuster, the creators of the super-hero. Below: To accompany his memories of teenage high jinks , Gil drew this illo of himself as “masked adventurer,” one who caused all sorts of mayhem while attending the School of Industrial Art (inset). Art from The Comics Journal Journal #91.

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for work,” she answers yes to “other source of income,” presumably alimony, which likely pays for their lodging, maybe serving as Max’s secondary source of income.) All, including the Katzs’ boarders, are listed as having resided in the apartment since 1935.27 The fledgling business of comic books beckoned and Eli Katz quit the School of Industrial Art after his junior year.

“He left school at 16 to work in the business,” Elaine said.

“His father and mother were very disappointed because they wanted him to succeed. To them, you should get good marks in math and everything, but all he ever wanted to do was draw. He didn’t quit to necessarily help the family; it was something he always wanted to do. And everything he became was because he was self-taught.”

“I lived what my friends used to call a rich sort of fantasy life,” Kane said. “As a matter of fact, it took me a long time to become a good comic book artist, because I was really into running, jumping, into sports. I was a great street ballplayer, let me tell ya, and that was my life. I really loved it, and I lived all of my fantasy. I didn’t have anything vicarious about my involvement.”28 Still, menace wasn’t far from the stoop. “When you’re a kid, you don’t really know what your surroundings are; they’re what you know,” explained Norman Podhoretz, who grew up around the corner from Katz. “But it was a fairly rough neighborhood. There was a lot of fighting. There were three kinds of people in the area: there were Jews, practically all of them immigrants; there were Italians, most of them immigrants from Sicily; and there were Blacks, most of them recent arrivals from the South. There was a lot of tension and a lot of fighting among the kids. Everybody belonged to some kind of gang (not like the gangs now, not like the Crips and the Bloods) — they were clubs where kids played various sports and kind of chased girls together. There was a lot of street life.”

Podhoretz continued, “We used to hang out at the corner candy store. Everybody in Brooklyn practically would hang at the corner candy store and we certainly did in our part of Brownsville. As I say, there was a very lively street life: a lot of fighting, a lot of sports, a lot of petty gambling. When you got a little older, you’d hang around the poolroom; the big one was on Pitkin Avenue.”

Part Two: The New Generation Rumbula, the Road Not Traveled: On May 12, 1981, The Hour, a Norwalk, Conn., newspaper printed a feature article on nearby Wilton resident Gil Kane, who had previously hosted a “Chalk Talk” for charity. The opening of John Sargent’s “The Artistry Behind the ‘Superheroes,’” reads: It’s a safe bet that Gil Kane is the sole alumnus of his kindergarten class in Riga, Latvia, who ended up making a living by drawing comic strip superheroes such as “Spiderman” and “The Incredible Hulk.”29

This page: Photos of the fate of Latvia’s Jewish population after the German invasion of 1941, including the death march to the Rumbula Forest and the selection process by Nazis and collaborators at the Riga ghetto.

28

journey. Living the dream! So he began to enact it and live it out and he finally communicated that through the comics.”

The 1940 U.S. Census, taken in his apartment building two days before Eli’s 14th birthday, gives insight into the Katz family situation: 1675 Prospect Place contained 15 apartments with a total of 61 residents. Max Katz is listed as the head of their apartment’s household, aged 39 years old, possessing a fourth grade education, “having first papers,” and employed as a buyer of scrap iron, with a secondary source of income. Helen Katz is recorded as wife, 36 years old, having finished second grade, “alien” status, and was unemployed. Eli is cited as son and 13 years old, with an 8th grade education. Lodging with the family are Lillian Josie, 33-year-old unemployed divorcée (originally from Russia, but a naturalized U.S. citizen), and her New York born son, 15-year-old Martin. (While Lillian is cited as “looking

A more accurate — and horrific — wager could be made that Gil Kane would be among the few survivors of any gathering of Jews in the Latvian capital by the end of World War II. Back in 1930, when first arriving in America, the Katz patriarch initially despaired over not finding work and he longed to return with his wife and son to the old country. “Gil’s father had a great deal of trouble making a living here because of the Depression and everything,” Elaine revealed, “and he wanted to go back. But, of course, they never had the money to return to Latvia, which was a good thing, because none of them would have survived.”

Indeed, the murder of the family of three would have been a statistical certainty.

By 1939, the year Katz turned 13, about 40,000 Jews lived in the capital city of Riga, comprising more than ten percent of the populace. “The community had a well-developed network of Hebrew and Yiddish schools, as well as a lively Jewish cultural life,” cites the United States Holocaust Museum. “Jews were integrated into #11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The Shield TM & © Archie Comic Publications.

most aspects of life in Riga and even sat on the city council.”30 After the German invasion in 1941, the Nazi S.S. Einsatzgruppen — mobile killing units — executed thousands of Jews and a ghetto was quickly established where the remaining 30,000 Jews were confined to a 16-block area. By late fall, under the pretense of “resettlement,” the ghetto was cleared of 26,000 Jews (among them most likely Max, Helen, and Eli Katz if they had returned to Latvia), who were slaughtered in the Rumbula Forest by the Nazis and their Latvian accomplices.

Eli was 15 by then, just getting his start in the comics industry. By December 1943, survivors had been deported to certain death in concentration camps and the ghetto was razed.

“On the 13 October 1944,” the Holocaust Research Project website states, “the Soviet army liberated Riga. A few days later, some one hundred and fifty Jews, among them a few children, came out of their hiding places.”31 These people were all that remained in Latvia of the city’s once considerable Jewish population. By that date, Eli Katz was 18, serving in the U.S. Army, and destined to be stationed on a Pacific archipelago.

Breaking In: Al Jaffee explained that one appeal of the comics industry for nascent Jewish artists was simple accessibility. He said, “My personal view about why so many Jews got into comics is that, when we were coming out of art school, when we were starting to consider how we could make a living at this, the inside dope was, ‘Don’t even try the ad agencies. When they see your name, you’re not going to get in, no matter how terrific your portfolio is.’

That was sometimes not entirely true, but, in general, the ad agencies were lily-white and non-Jewish. But along comes Jews like Max Gaines, [Harry] Donenfeld, [Jack] Leibowitz, and a number of others, who were publishers of this new thing.” (Gaines, who helped devise the first comic book, the one-shot Famous Funnies, teamed with DC Comics co-owner Leibowitz, in 1938, to establish All-American Publications, which would be purchased by DC publisher Donenfeld by 1944.)

“Jews jumped into this new business because they realized here they could be entrepreneurs and didn’t have to go to a gentile publisher or printing house,” Jaffee said.

“They could do this on their own. When a lot of Jews started publishing, you didn’t get thrown out of the office when you walked in. Will Eisner wasn’t a publisher, but I walked into his place and got work. I think that’s how that developed: a lot of Jewish guys got into the business because they weren’t being discriminated against.”

Still, it was comics or nothing for young Katz. “I’d already been a fanatic of comics for years, so, at 15, I started to go around to various publishers,” Kane said. “When I went up to the offices at DC, it was like stepping into a cathedral, at 480 Lexington Avenue. There was an enormous six-foot painting of Superman right on the wall opposite the entry as you came in.”32 Presumably he made the rounds of the comic shops during the summer of 1941, was rejected

by DC assistant editor Murray Boltinoff and, after completComic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

ing his sophomore year at the School of Industrial Art, Katz finally hit pay dirt, finding work in a production department.

“I come from an immigrant, lower middle class experience,” Kane said, “and no one in my family was formally educated. The environment in which I lived was essentially populated by prosaic people, who had no education of their own, and essentially dealt with very traditional ideas, which were nearly always misconceived. I grew up in the cloistered, parochial situation until I was exposed, to the people I had to deal with in comics.”33 In Oct. 1942, Eli Katz applied for his Social Security card34 and that same year found work at the publishing outfit eventually known as Archie Comics. “During my summer vacation,” Kane explained, “I went and got a job working at MLJ… when Harry Shorten was the editor… I would put in the borders, balloons, and I’d finish up artwork — whatever had to be done on a lesser scale.” But the bullpen engaged in too much raucous horseplay, and Katz was let go, proof perhaps that the last one hired is first to be fired. “I was expendable,” he said.35 In short order, the youngster found work at the newly formed studio of Jack Binder, probably best known as artist on “Mary Marvel” for the Fawcett line. “I met him,” Kane said, with a chuckle, “he asked my name and I said it was ‘Eli Katz’ and he said, ‘Jesus, you’re right out of the Bible, right?’ Loved him right away!”

The studio was a loft on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, he said, “and it looked like an internment camp. There must have been 50 or 60 guys up there, all at drawing tables.”

Hired as a penciler, Katz split his time working at home and toiling in the studio. “They weren’t terribly happy with what I was doing,” said Kane.36 But, within weeks, Katz was back at MLJ, now working as a penciler. Kane said, “[N]ot only did they put me back into the production department and give me a [wage] increase, they gave me my first job, which was ‘Inspector Bentley of Scotland Yard,’ in Pep Comics, and then they gave me a whole issue of the Shield and Dusty [Shield-Wizard Comics #11, Summer 1943], one of their

This page: Examples of some of Eli Katz’s earliest professional comic book work, including two splash pages from Pep Comics depicting his strip, “Bentley of Scotland Yard.” From #41 [Aug. ’43], left, and #39 [May ’43], right. Above is a vignette from Shield-Wizard Comics #11 [Summer ’43]. All were done for MLJ Comics, percursor of Archie Publications. Background image is facsimile of Katz’s pseudonym “Staktil” signature (“Stak” being, sort of, Katz spelled backward).

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This page: Above is Eli Katz in a photo after his discharge from the Army. Above right is 20-year-old Katz and friend Phillip Papp. Kane said that he did not, in fact, play the trumpet but was rather just horsing around. Prior to his enlistment, Katz worked for Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, drawing “The Newsboy Legion” and “Sandman.” Whether he drew the Star Spangled Comics #32 [May ’44] cover (below) is debatable, though inset right is a detail of his Sandman work from Adventure Comics #91 [Apr.–May ’44].

scripts, but with the King off to fight the Nazis, DC editorial took back the assignments and showed the young artist the door. “They just threw me out,” he said.39 For a time, Katz would team up with a future antagonist, Carmine Infantino, a former classmate at the School of Industrial Art, who would go on to become the publisher at DC Comics in the late ’60s and early ’70s. They had worked together at Continental Comics in 1944. “I was doing pencils and they wanted to know about getting an inker so I got Carmine. Carmine and I had a partnership, but we were so competitive it was absolutely impossible,” Kane confessed, adding, “We had a great dislike for each other… I think just we were temperamentally unsuited.”40 (Infantino even would later dispute that the pair had been a team.) And, just prior to entering the service, Katz said a studio with cartoonists Jack Sparling, Al Plastino, and Dow Walling.

That Norman Podhoretz: Somewhere in this mix, before or after a year’s tenure with comic-book packager Bernard Baily, Eli Katz sought out the help of a Brownsville acquaintance to create a feature for Hillman Publications, likely in 1942 or ’43. “I got a job doing something called Night Hawk for [editor] Ed Cronin,” Kane said. “Finally I wanted to write it and he said, ‘All right, give me some scripts.’ So I went to Norman Podhoretz, that Norman Podhoretz, and we worked out scripts. Norman could type in those days, I couldn’t. I took the scripts in and they bought them! We did two of these scripts together. The money was too unsteady though, so he devoted himself to his studies and I did some additional penciling there.”41 The political commentator and author, who would express amusement when referred to as “that Norman Podhoretz” when he read the Comics Journal #186 interview, did recall a short-lived collaboration with the artist. “Eli — or ‘Elya,’ as his parents liked to call him — lived about three short blocks from me,” Podhoretz said, whose family apartment was on Pacific Avenue, around the corner from Park Place. “He was older than I was, by four years. I knew #11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Characters TM & © DC Comics.

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leading books.” The artist was now making the princely sum of $17 a week, a two-dollar bump from his initial stay at the House of Archie. “I wasn’t their pride and joy, but I got one assignment after another,” he explained. “I was not too smart, and constantly mouthed off and didn’t know anything.”37 Perhaps due to his being a smart aleck, the young artist lost his MLJ gig, and Katz hit the bricks yet again in search of a comics industry job. “There were a number of offices, I would just make the rounds and everybody turned me down,” Kane admitted. “In fact, these agencies were like Ellis Island, you know? Coming into the business, you’d pass through these little agencies until you get to understand what was happening… unless you were really able to have a style strong enough to go directly to the publishers. But usually that didn’t work out.” Describing the offices, Kane said, “There were pencilers, inkers, letterers, and background artists… It was exactly an assembly line. You could look into infinity down these rows of drawing tables.”

And while the young artist was frequently terminated, “Generally speaking,” he said, “people weren’t fired, art jobs were very hard to get, so something really calamitous had to happen to a person who was working there in order for you to find a space.”38 But there was a war on, and opportunity beckoned for those below draft age, sometimes to work, however briefly, for comic book legends. “I was hired [by Simon & Kirby] to do as many Boy Commandos, Newsboy Legion, and Sandman stories as I could,” Kane said.

“I was there for six months.” With his induction into the Army, Jack Kirby handed the young Katz a batch of

All material TM & © the respective copyright holders.

him because his cousin Marty Elkin was my closest friend, who was also trying to break into the comic book world as he had some artistic talent.” Elkin would work in the comics industry during the early to mid-’50s, contributing horror stories to Atlas (later renamed Marvel) and smaller publishers, though Podhoretz last heard that his childhood best buddy was, by the early ’60s, working for the Avis car rental company.

“As I recall,” said Podhoretz, “Eli was mainly inking at the time. He had a foot in the door of the comics industry, but he hadn’t yet become a professional — he had no steady gig. I was 12 or 13 years old when we decided to create a comic strip of our own. The thing is, I can’t for the life of me remember anything about it except that it was about a hero and a sidekick, a Batman and Robin type thing. But we did sell, if I remember rightly, three of the stories for about ten bucks apiece, my first published works!

People have been trying to trace those things, but nobody seems to be able to find them.”

Podhoretz did possess a creative streak and — importantly — access to his sister’s Smith-Corona typewriter, a luxury for those of limited means in that era. “I learned to type when I was about eight years old,” he said, “so I was writing poems and stories and all that, even at that age, and that’s how Eli got the idea to have me write a story.

He did, of course, the illustrations, and they were good enough to sell to a publisher.”

The neocon pundit continued, “I would write the script and then we would revise it together while he did the sketching. I vaguely remember that Eli’s goal was to make this a continuing feature — like Batman or Superman — and when it became clear that it wasn’t

Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

going to happen, he decided to drop it. As for me, I never had any desire to make a career in the comic book world.”

Podhoretz would confess that, as a youth, he did have a passion for the form. “I absolutely loved comics,” he said.

“What I remember are the famous characters, Superman and Batman, and I had a lot of comic books.”

Besides a love of comics, the youthful team also said a yearning to make it in the shining metropolis across the East River. Podhoretz would later write, “One of the longest journeys in the world is the journey from Brooklyn to Manhattan — or at least from certain neighborhoods in Brooklyn to certain parts of Manhattan.” They held, too, a mutual desire to transcend their roots. “The immigrant milieu from which I derive,” the author wrote in his first memoir, Making It, “is by now fixed for all time in the American imagination as having been driven by an uninhibited hunger for success. This reputation is by no means as justified as we have been led to believe, but certainly on the surface the ‘gospel of success’ did reign supreme in the world of my childhood. Success did not necessarily, or even primarily, mean money; just as often it might mean prestige or popularity.”42 Despite the age difference — Katz would have been around 16 during this time — Podhoretz said, “Absolutely we were friends. At that age, four years difference is a big gap, so he was an older guy, but Marty, Eli, and I did a lot of hanging around.

This page: Top left is a portrait of a young Norman Podhoretz, the neocon pundit who had collaborated with Eli Katz as a youngster. This photo is from the cover of The Norman Podhoretz Reader [2003]. Try as we might, as have others who searched high and low for a “Night Hawk” series published

by Hillman — the collaboration as purported by Gil Kane in his Comics Journal #186 interview — we just couldn’t find such a series… and Podhoretz only recalls it was a hero and sidekick strip, akin to Batman and Robin. Above is a 1944 page by Katz for Terrific Comics #3 [May ’44] and inset left is a detail of Katz’s cover artwork for Meteor Comics #1 [Nov. ’45].

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Above: Private Eli Katz of the United States Army, 1944.

Below: Two war themed first pages by the artist Katz. “Heroes All” appeared in Cat-Man Comics #25 [July ’44] and the “Sgt. Strong” episode is from Red Band Comics #1 [Nov. ’44].

never knew he was ‘Gil Kane.’ I had never heard of Gil Kane after we lost touch many years ago and I didn’t realize he had become an important figure in the comic world, which he obviously was, right? I doubt we talked about things like politics or current events; I do remember talking about jazz and popular music. I was a fairly precocious reader and it’s entirely possible that we talked about books now and again.”

Author of the 2000 memoir My Love Affair with America, Podhoretz would, on one occasion, be reminded of the lanky artist, likening the angular, pre-nose job Katz to an Oscar-winner. “I remember that he looked a lot like Adrien Brody, the movie actor,” he said. “When I first saw the actor, I thought he was Eli!” War: By mid-1944, the war caught up with Eli Katz, who signed up with the military, to his parents’ distress. “I went down and registered and came back about one o’clock in the afternoon,” Kane explained, “and I told my mother and my father, who were eating lunch, that I had registered.

My father started to cry.” On Aug. 28, 1944, the 18-year-old enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army, and enlistment papers record his height at 80" (6 foot, six inches), having had three years of high school, and an occupation as commercial artist (as well as an erroneous listing of Lithuania as his native land).43 Elaine recalled, “When he was walking with the group of guys to the subway to go to the induction center, he felt something and turned around, and there was his father standing there by a tree, crying.” While his boy was in the service, Max did what he could. “In those days, Gil smoked,” Elaine said, “and his father used to send him cigarettes, even though Gil could get them at the PX.” Katz received Army basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and was stationed in Abilene, Texas. Kane said, “They were going to send me over to Europe,” but his service was then requested in another hemisphere. After departing San Pedro, the port of Los Angeles, and a 22-day voyage across the Pacific, “We ended up landing in the Philippines,” he explained. “I got dengue fever while I was there.

I was disembarked, passed hand over hand down to the landing craft because I couldn’t stand up.”44 The length of his hitch was ordered “for the duration of the War… plus six months, subject to the discretion of the President.”45 “He was on the first ship that came back from the Pacific,” Elaine said, “and when it came into San Francisco harbor, he remembers they came home to tugboats spraying water, greeting them in celebration.” After 19 months of service, the veteran returned to his parents, in December 1945. “When he was finally discharged,” said Elaine, “Gil came home across country by train. He remembered that it was night when he came back to New York City and, when they got onto the street, he did a back flip because he was so happy and back with his family.”

Back Home: After his arrival in Brooklyn, #11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

All material TM & © the respective copyright holders.

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I remember Eli was very much interested in jazz, which was unusual in that era. Everybody was interested in the swing bands — Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James — but Eli had a more refined taste.”

He added with a laugh, “I remember that Eli felt Mel Torme was a better singer than Frank Sinatra.”

Today, Podhoretz still strikes a tone of admiration about his one-time partner. “Eli had aspirations beyond the neighborhood, so to speak,” he said. “He sort of had a toe in the larger world out there and he seemed to me to be not cosmopolitan, but much more advanced than I certainly was.

At that age, I don’t remember having much ambition beyond becoming a great poet.”

Alas, any métier as a bard would elude the precocious youth, as Podhoretz would take that “longest journey” from Brownsville to Morningside Heights, at the tender age of 16, to attend Columbia University, and after graduation earn another degree at Clare College, Cambridge. Once called a “filthy little slum child” by his high school mentor, he became editor of Commentary magazine for 35 years and turned into a leading — and controversial — neoconservative opinion-maker, as well as recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004.

Given his “that Norman Podhoretz” aside in 1996, the well-read Kane was obviously cognizant of the man’s rise as a commentator, though that former collaborator would himself lose track of the former Eli Katz’s career path. “I

Wildcat TM & © DC Comics. John Wayne Adventure Comics TM & © the respective copyright holder.

Kane said, “[M]y mother almost passed out at the sight of me. I got chicken pox on my first date with a young woman.”46 The Katz family was still living at 1675 Park Place, and until he married his first wife in 1952, Eli Katz would reside with parents Max and Helen.47 Scott recalled his father’s parents, sharing, “My grandfather, Max Katz, never really became Americanized. He never learned English very well and spoke broken English.

He read Yiddish and they spoke Yiddish at home, and my grandparents continued to speak it throughout the rest of their lives. My grandmother, Helen, had a great sense of humor. She was sharp and I think she passed that on to my father. She also never learned English very well.” They were proud of their son’s achievements in America, though it took Max some time to comprehend the nature of Eli’s work. “His father didn’t appreciate what Gil was doing,” Elaine said, “until he started to make a living at it and then his father saved everything. He was proud of his son.” She added, “Gilbert had a close relationship with his parents.”

By the time Gil Kane rented a Manhattan workspace in the mid-’60s, “Max used to come up to visit my dad in the studio,” Scott explained, “always bringing some schnapps and ladened with gifts — big salamis or whatever it was he brought to share — so they continued to have a relationship on through the years, though there was a huge cultural gap between Max and my father — who did everything he could do to become Americanized… changing his name, changing his nose… My father never denied his Judaism, but he was concerned he would be discriminated against. Of course, it turned out the whole industry was Jewish. My grandfather was from the old country and he continued to reflect the interests and limitations of his past.”

In 1946, facing a competitive job market in the postwar field and entering his twenties, Kane struggled to get serious. “As I got older,” he told Chaykin, “all of the guys who were my contemporaries, like Carmine [Infantino] and Joe Kubert, they really were excellent, and at 20 or 21 they were already competing seriously with most of the older men in the field. But I was still out there running in the cold with a cape, and I really didn’t know much!”

“It took me a long time until I sort of pulled myself together,” Kane continued, “and began to recognize that I had a feeling for this material, but I had to inform it, I had to learn it, I had to understand anatomy and design and so forth, and once I began to gain a certain amount of control, I found my personality beginning to express itself, and then it became easier. I found a direction for myself, and I knew what I wanted to do, I knew what I had to learn in order to achieve Louie Fine’s quality, which was a kind of grace and power. Gymnastics sort of suggest everything that I ever wanted to do in my work. A lyricism and strength.”48 The legendary editor Sheldon Mayer, who had mentored Katz contemporaries Alex Toth, Irwin Hasen, and Joe Kubert, publishing their work in his titles, spotted talent in the young artist. “I’ve been doing material independently since I came out of the Army,” Kane said. “My first independent effort was a book called Mr. Fear… It was completely inspired by Eisner, and I worked on it to such an Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

extent and I was such a tenth-rate artist… but I committed myself.

When I finished the book, I took it to DC and Shelly Mayer thought I was a genius. He was taken by my conviction, because there was nothing else in the material. I never was able to bring that to any of the material he gave me, so he never liked what I did.”49 Still, in 1947, Katz was assigned the “Wildcat” feature in Sensation Comics by the editor. Though fired after about seven months, Kane would soon return by ’49 (after Mayer went freelance) and commence a tenure that would last some two decades at DC Comics, usually under the editorship of Julius Schwartz. Of Mayer, Kane would

Above: Page one from “The Battle of the Giants,” in John Wayne Adventure Comics #2 [Apr. ’50]. Artwork by Eli Katz, who would soon change his name to Gilbert Eli Kane. This image of the original art is courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

Inset left: Splash panel from one of the artist’s few jobs for legendary DC Comics editor Sheldon Mayer. Katz’s “Wildcat” story, “Murder Masquerade,” featuring villainess The Huntress, appeared in Sensation Comics #73 [Jan. ’48].

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Above: Incremental improvements of the artist’s abilities are apparent in this unpublished strip by Gil Kane, likely drawn at the start of the 1950s. Courtesy of Heritage. Below: Before his decades-long tenure at DC Comics, Kane contributed to Juke Box Comics. This splash is from #4 [Sept. ’48].

say, “[H]e loved comics and loved working on them. He was the only true impresario I remember in comics.”50 Before being ensconced at the House of Superman, Katz worked as inker for cartoonist Dan Barry, as well as grabbing assignments from Bernard Baily, and he briefly contributed to Famous Funnies. But times were changing rapidly in the field. “The end of the ’40s signaled the end of the first great era of comics,” Kane said. “It was the end of the super-heroes, and it was also the end of most of the publishers who had come into comics during the previous ten years or so. Something like ninety percent of the publishers were wiped out, went out of business.”51 Change was also coming for Eli Katz.

Part Three: Inventing Gil Kane

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#11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

All material TM & © the respective copyright holders.

Inset right: While we remain unsure why the artist chose “Kane” as a new last name, longtime friend (and often the artist’s editor) Julius Schwartz said that the name Gilbert was borrowed from the that of movie character actor Gil Lamb, who was host of the DuMont Network’s 1949 variety series, Window to the World.

Namechanger: Since its inception, the comic book industry, abundant with talented young Jewish boys and men, was producing material for the mass market. Many of those writers and artists, in an effort to appear goyish, established pen names, some of which would be adopted for the remainder of their lives. Jacob Kurtzberg would become Jack Kirby, Stanley Lieber was modified to Stan Lee, and Bob Kahn switched to Bob Kane. And some changed their first names to sound less Jewish, as Milton Finger became Bill Finger and Abraham Jaffee became Allan Jaffee. “Antisemitism was in the air,” Jaffee said. “With Hitler slaughtering the Jews in Europe and with the antisemites in America, with the German Bund taking over Madison Square Garden, marching in Nazi uniforms — in the city of New York!

— a city with a huge Jewish population, escaping semitism didn’t seem to be all that illogical. We didn’t want to change our religion; all we wanted to do is say, ‘I don’t need to advertise it. I don’t need to walk around with a Jewish Star of David on my chest, which is a name like Abraham or Lipshitz or Katz. I want to blend into America; I want to be Tom Sawyer. So that was the motivation. When you have

the hatred of certain things; you wouldn’t want to wear clothing that everybody laughs at.”

Famed graphic novelist and playwright Jules Feiffer explained, “You’re talking about a first generation of assimilationist Jews, many of whom changed their names — Jack Kirby was not born Jack Kirby — and there were dozens who did so. I had many close friends who changed their names. Part of it may have been that he thought it would make him more commercial (though Eisner was a Jewish name and he was pretty commercial). Another thing is that a lot of them didn’t want to be judged or recognized as Jews. They wanted to Americanize themselves. As I’ve written before, what Superman is all about is assimilation — Siegel and Shuster not being little Jewish boys from Cleveland, but white WASP jocks, but they didn’t come from the planet Krypton; they came from the planet Poland.”52 “You have got to remember that we were all very young!” Jaffee said. “We were teenagers when we started to have these dreams of going out into the world and becoming great artists and cartoonists and musicians. We had to do any little thing that would take the onus off a bad rap. So just calling yourself by a different name seemed easy enough. We admired guys like Will Eisner, who didn’t feel the need to do that and still managed to become highly successful both in the military and in civilian life. I would see him in the Pentagon from time to time, where he became a warrant officer running a whole department and he didn’t change Eisner to something else. So, y’know, some did and some didn’t.”

At the beginning of his comic book career, Eli Katz adopted a number of pen names (when given the infrequent opportunity to sign his work), according to Who’s Who of American Comic Books, including Al Stak, Al Kame, and Staktil (though he would put his legal name in at least two Golden Age stories).53 And the beginnings of his new first name — as “Gil Stack” — could be found adorning a pair of “Wildcat” stories for DC, in the later ’40s.

DC editor Julie Schwartz suggested that Kane chose his new first name because “He was a great admirer of Gil Lamb, a vaudeville dancer.”54 Gilbert L. Lamb, best-known as a character actor in film (for instance, playing “Gil” in the Breakfast at Tiffany’s party sequence) and many television shows as well as Walt Disney film productions of the 1960s, was described by The New York Times: “While the phrase ‘rubber-limbed’ may be overused in describing pencil-thin entertainer Gil Lamb, it’s the only adjective that truly fits. Lamb gained fame in vaudeville and on Broadway in the 1930s as an eccentric dancer; he was also blessed with an astonishingly mobile face, which lent utter credibility to his most famous routine, wherein he pretended to swallow a harmonica.”55 Perhaps not surprising the actor was endowed with the same jaunty and slender presence as the former Eli Katz.

First Family: By 1951, he was publicly declaring his name to

Johnny Thunder and Doll Man TM & © DC Comics. Profusely Illustrated ©2016 Paul Kupperberg. Used with permission.

be Gilbert Eli Katz, as evidenced by an engagement notice, published in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, which announced his betrothal to Diane Claire Pearle, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Edward A. Pearle of 1342 St. John’s Place.56 Gil was 25 and Diane was 22. “He always regretted changing his first name to Gilbert,” said Elaine, Gil’s second wife, “and thought he should have kept it Eli.” The following year, according to Social Security records, he changed his name officially to Gilbert Eli Kane.57 Longtime DC production staffer Jack Adler told Jim Amash about an early ’50s incident in the office. “I had taken a picture of Gil Kane when he was Eli Katz,” Adler explained. “Now, Gil Kane had met a girl who wanted to marry him on three conditions: one, that he fix his nose; two, that he change his name; and three, that he fix his teeth, because he had small teeth. He did all three, but I had a [photo] of him sketching from before he had all the work done, when he had a tremendous, hooked nose.”

Editor Julius Schwartz coaxed Adler to participate in a cruel practical joke on Kane. “The gag was that I would be taking pictures,” Adler continued, “and Gil would surely come over and ask me to take a picture of him. He did, and I took a picture of him from the same angle as the earlier picture.” The jokesters replaced the new profile photo with the old one, Adler said, “When he saw the old picture, I heard him say, ‘Whaaa—?!’— and then he turned white as a sheet. It isn’t so funny, because he almost passed out.

He didn’t talk to me for two years after that, and we had been very close.”58 “Gil Kane changed a lot of things,” Jaffee said. “He Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

changed his name and, though I didn’t know him before his facial changes, but my friend [Timely artist] Dave Gantz worked with him and said he looked like Ichabod Crane because he had a very prominent Jewish nose and got rid of that.

And he had very bad teeth, from what I was told, and he had that completely redone.

He turned himself from an ugly duckling into a very handsome guy. He did more than most of the people who I hung around with — and I’m not saying that in any kind of deprecating way — so more power to him!”

“My mother is from Brooklyn and they met when they were young,” Scott Kane says of his parents’ first encounter, in their 20s. “She actually took a tour of the studio with her class one day when he was working there.” In due course, Diane and Gil were engaged, and married by 1952, setting up their first home in the Queens neighborhood of Hollis. Gil said, “When I first got married, I was only making about $125 a week… My rent was only $96 a month! I had a two-bedroom, private apartment with a living room and a kitchen… In fact, I lived next door to [film actor] Paul Newman, at that time.”59 “Diane was a lovely, very sweet woman,” Al Jaffee said. “In Yiddish, we would have called her a ‘heymish meydl,’ a homegirl. No pretensions, just a good wife. She was truly crazy about Gil.” Soon they settled in the small town on Long Island, purchasing a small house on Birchwood Park Drive. “I lived in Babylon and Gil Kane lived not far away, in Jericho, where my wife and I had dinner a couple of times,” Jaffee said, adding, “Jericho was really cookie-cutter suburban housing after the war, just row upon row of singlefamily homes.”

On the 15th of March, 1955, Scott Edward Kane was born, dubbed thus because his father admired the name of Hollis neighbor Paul Newman’s oldest child, with the newborn’s middle name likely chosen to honor Diane’s father. (Gil would once use the pseudonym “Scott Edward” when moonlighting at Marvel Comics in late 1965.) The baby arrived amid an unhappy union, as

This page: Left inset is unpublished All-American Western #122 [Oct.–Nov. ’51]cover by Gil Kane. Alex Toth used the same staging for the published cover.

Above is the Oct. 14, 1951 engagement notice that appeared in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Below is a panel detail of Kane’s story in Doll Man #19 [Nov. ’48].

The character inspired the artist when Kane sought to create a new version of The Atom in the early ’60s. Bottom is an excerpt of an unpublished “Profusely Illustrated” strip by the late Alan Kupperberg, one relating an oft-repeated anecdote told by DC staffer Jack Adler.

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This page: An obvious strength of Gil Kane’s artistry was his dynamic rendering of animals, particularly horses and dogs, which came in handy during the Western-crazy ’50s. Kane’s cover is All Star Western #107 [June–July ’59]. Cover detail is from The Adventures of Rex the Wonder Dog #24 [Nov.–Dec. ’55].

Illustrators was such a treat! And to sit with my childhood heroes — Milton Caniff, Rube Goldberg, Otto Soglow, Roy Crane (who was such an inspiration and a lovely man) — and they were all terrific. There were no snobs. The NCS was formed by syndicated artists and, at the time, being syndicated was on a much higher level than being a comic book artist, but on a personal basis they didn’t look down their noses at people like me who came from comics.”

“We were friendly,” Jaffee said of his acquaintance with Kane. “We sometimes drove in together to go to the NCS meetings and went out afterward. We invited Gil and his wife to our parties in Babylon. I stayed in touch with Gil over the years, but we didn’t have a close social or working relationship. It was occasional and it was friendly. He got to meet a lot of my friends in Babylon, who were artists and neighbors working in the advertising business, and he liked them and we all got along, and he would invite my friends and others when he would have a party. These were just occasional things; it wasn’t a very close-knit relationship.

We enjoyed each other on occasion.”

Kane would have a lifelong association with the NCS, which he described as “primarily [consisting] of the aristocrats of cartooning,” and where the artist’s accomplishments were recognized. In his career, the artist received three Reuben Awards for “Best Comic Book Story,” in 1971, ’72, and ’75, and one for “Best Story Newspaper Strip,” in 1977.60 His 1980 National Cartoonists Society Album entry records that he ran organization shop-talks and was a member of the NCS Professional Committee.61 The Raft of Medusa: While the decade would prove a devastating one for the entire industry, as dozens of publishers and hundreds of comic book pros would be permanently thrown out of work in the wake of condemnation by Dr. Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent and the Kefauver U.S. Senate Subcommittee hearings on juvenile delinquency. But DC, with its handsomely produced but bland comics aimed at the ten-and-under set, would weather the tempest. “They were the only outfit in town,” Kane said.

“If you didn’t get on there, you had to go into advertising or someplace. I never wanted to go into advertising.”62 Kane explained the post-Wertham situation: “That’s when the field started to change, but nobody new came into it because there were fewer publishers, there was less work,… in fact, you know [the Théodore Géricault 19th century painting] The Raft of the Medusa? That’s what comics were like. The raft was DC and all the people swimming around it were survivors of all the companies that had washed out.”63 The artist discussed the situation at DC Comics during that decade of insipid conformity. “Everyone had vested interests in doing as little as possible as quickly as possible — the inkers, the writers, so it was the artist who was left with the need to make something out of the material,” Kane explained. “The editors were failed in every other level of editing and publishing: the writers were all either ex-pulp writers or people couldn’t make any other kind of place for themselves professionally, and colorists were just the kind of marginal craftsmen that comics were made for.”64 He continued, “[DC’s editors] made everything into a General Motors assembly line and institutionalized everything in order to get the work out expediently. The truth of the matter is that they never had to worry about content because, for years, everything sold. For years Superman had sales in excess of a million copies.”

The artist would retain a steady flow of assignments from those editors, usually working for lifelong friend Julius Schwartz, who kept Kane contributing to the Western, crime, and science fiction books, often illustrating the scripts of Robert Kanigher, a less-friendly acquaintance who was an astonishingly prolific (and often quite good) scribe. Regarding DC, Kane said, “It was just like a family business. We all worked there for years.”65 #11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Rex, The Wonder Dog, All Star Western, and Johnny Thunder TM & © DC Comics.

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husband and wife would argue incessantly. “My mom contributed a lot to his early work,” Scott said. “He bounced ideas off of her. And my father was always reflecting on the nature of his work and sharing that with us as he developed his craft. My mother did contribute to that even though they didn’t get along in other ways.”

In their tense home, “My dad set up a studio in the basement,” Scott said, “and that’s where he did all the early Green Lantern work. My earliest memories would be to wander around aisles of comic books. I’d be crawling around mountains of comics.

I thought I had the most ideal kind of upbringing. Here he was creating all of this stuff in the basement and I was able to see all that material fresh, all the comics that he would bring home. My memory of him was to be working at the drawing board constantly. He lived down there! It isn’t his best work maybe, but it’s the work he’s most remembered for.”

Gil’s son, who today lives in the same house, recalled a father chained to the drawing board when Scott was a boy. “I remember having an argument with my father and asking him, ‘Have you ever heard of the game of “catch”?’

Because we never played catch! But I was always welcome at his drawing board to hang out and talk with him — to be with him — but drawing was his primary passion and motive. Maybe I could have enjoyed a more intimate relationship with him, but I have to know my limits. This was his destiny. He made up for whatever foolishness in his life with the fact he also was a genius, so there was compensation.”

About his status among the neighborhood kids, Scott explained, “It was so cool to have a dad who was a comic book artist!

I was the envy of all of my friends. I mean, we all collected comics, but I got them in stacks of hundreds!”

Joining the Club: In the 1950s, Gil joined the prestigious National Cartoonists Society, often traveling into the city with Al Jaffee for the monthly dinners. “I never missed a NCS dinner,” Jaffee explained.

“When you work in your own studio out in suburbia and the only people you have to talk with are your children and your next-door neighbor, getting the opportunity once a month to drive into Manhattan and go to a meeting of the National Cartoonist Society at the Society of

Adam Strange and Strange Adventures TM & © DC Comics. Robert Kanigher portrait © the estate of Joe Kubert.

As with any family, there is rivalry, and so it was between Kane and Kanigher, an intellectual competition that became sustained at DC. “[Kanigher] browbeat me about the general level of my work,” Kane said.

“I had only read pulps and pulp fiction and paperbacks at that time. I started to read better material in order to arm myself so that he wouldn’t beat my head in every time I came in there.

I started to read essays, and found that I liked to read essays, and little by little I started to hit back. I didn’t win anything in the beginning, still got my head knocked in. But I was able to stand up to him.

Finally, would you believe, I got to the point where I could bloody him a little, and then finally I could bloody him at will, and finally he used to tag after me whether he’ll ever admit to this or not, You wouldn’t believe how far up my ass he’d stick his nose.”66 An intellectual curiosity would be conspicuous in the artist for the remainder of his life. It would permeate Kane’s most treasured friendships.

Calling his conversations with the artist “a pleasure and a privilege,” Gary Groth noted, “Gil’s conversation was furious, full of insights, observations, theories, wit, humor, asides, gossip, personal reminiscences… He evidently started reading the New York intellectuals at the Partisan Review… and branched out from there, reading voraciously, immersing himself in a world of ideas, delighting in the discovery of a level of critical thinking he’d previously been unaware of.”67 Recalled Jules Feiffer, who believes he became friends with the man through Groth, “Gil loved to have intellectual chitchat and we never talked comics. We’d talk about the Partisan Review. He liked to talk about Norman Podhoretz, who was then the editor of Commentary, and he liked to talk about the world he knew that I had become a part of and, as a comic book artist, he had no access to, and so had nobody to talk with, so he used that time to talk with me about all of that stuff. He was very smart and very knowledgeable, and we had a good time insulting the same people. He was a stimulating talker and I was certainly stimulated, and I also, I think, stimulated him. So we had a good time!”

Elaine reiterated that her husband, a high school dropout from one of the poorest neighborhoods in America, with non-English speaking parents, with a mind drenched in bloody pulps and course culture, always sought to better himself. “When he started working with writers in comics,” she said, “they used to tease Gilbert because he didn’t know anything about the finer things in life, shall we say? It forced him to read and start teaching himself. He had no idea about table manners, because it wasn’t taught in the house. In the apartment here, I have 7,000 pounds of books because he collected everything! He was constantly reading and teaching himself. He would take college courses. It was like that actor who said that he was given another name and he grew to become that other person, and that was Gil!” Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

Though enriching his mind with the criticism of Lionel Trilling, Irving Howe, Phillip Rahv, and other intellectuals, Kane continued to use his hands to draw children’s comics at the House of Superman. “At DC, I was doing everything,” he said. “First, I was doing the stuff that everybody would move on from: If Alex Toth would move onto something, I would take over what he was doing.

I would take over Jimmy Wakely, which he started.

I took over Johnny Thunder, which he started. I took over Rex, the Wonder Dog, which he started! So, you get the idea.”68 In fact, Kane would draw the Wonder Dog series for seven years, as well as a litany of other regular features, including the Nighthawk, Trigger Twins, Space Cabbie, and Big Town, in addition to short stories for their SF, romance, and mystery titles, which kept the artist busy for much of the 1950s. By the end of the decade, when some of those features were cancelled, including Rex and Nighthawk, the artist started fretting as the workflow began to slow. But the reinvigoration of the super-hero genre at DC would secure the artist for years to come.

In Brightest Day: In 1956, The Flash is reinvented, ushering in the so-called Silver Age of comics and heralding the rise of the super-hero, which has become the dominant genre in mainstream comics ever since. The Scarlet Speedster’s debut was followed in the next few years by Green Lantern, the Justice League of America, Hawkman, and the Atom. Gil Kane would be the penciler — and occasional inker — for 61 consecutive issues of Green Lantern (as well as eight more, plus three issues of Showcase), amounting to almost 1,800 pages of art.

A cosmic reinvention of a Golden Age namesake, Green Lantern possesses a “power ring” which manifests the bearer’s wishes into “green energy” and also gives him the pow-

Inset left: Gilbert Eli Kane’s quest for intellectual self-improvement began when being repeatedly browbeaten by DC editor and writer Robert Kanigher, who berated the young artist for perceived cultural insufficiences. Soon enough, Kane would later relate, the tables would turn. This detail of a portrait of the legendary curmudgeon Kanigher is by Joe Kubert and it appeared as the cover for The Comics Journal #85 [Oct. ’83]. Courtesy of Mike Catron. Below: Gil Kane was the main cover artist for DC editor Julius Schwartz’s science fiction comics during most of the ’50s, creating any number of memorable images. He was also cover delineator of the first few Adam Strange appearance.

This vignette is from Mystery in Space #53 [Aug. ’59]. Strange Adventures cover is #17 [Feb. ’52].

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Usually scripted by John Broome, Green Lantern would be Gil Kane’s career signature character, though the artist held no great passion for the series. In fact, the work being done over at Marvel Comics, with the House of Ideas introducing its own super-hero line, was far more appealing. “I think Stan Lee started off with a more naturalistic point of view about super-hero material,” Kane opined, “and that differed it from the absolutely unnatural two-dimensional quality of the DC super-heroes. They had no personal lives, no personal qualities, the strips didn’t deal in people; they only dealt in puzzles.”69 Due to the loss of other assignments, Kane co-created The Atom and drew all but one of the character’s bi-monthly issues, totaling 979 penciled pages comprising 40 issues.

Most often scribed by Gardner Fox, the character, which had the ability to reduce to subatomic — as well as pintsize — stature, was originally envisioned by the artist as a mixing together of a third-tier same-named DC character and Quality Comics’ puppet-sized Doll Man, both Golden Age creations. (In fact, 22-year-old Eli Katz had contributed a 14-page story to Doll Man #19, in 1948.)

Both The Atom and Green Lantern were popular enough with readers to continue throughout the decade (with Kane’s artwork improving incrementally) and subsequently survive innumerable reboots, but what gave the two characters a modern, dynamic panache setting them apart from any other super-hero’s appearance are the respective costume schemes fashioned by the artist, two of the most striking designs in the history of the genre.

These titles remain fondly recalled by comic book aficionados, who often single out Gil Kane as among the ranks of the field’s finest artists because of these stories from the ’60s. Arlen Schumer describes the artist’s emerging style as “one that matured demonstrably during lengthy runs on a pair of DC silver age super-heroes, Green Lantern and The Atom. Kane’s figure-work was both a primer of structural anatomy and musculature, and a lifelong quest to bring his characters to life, by endowing them with all the grace and lyricism his drawing prowess could muster.”70 It was, in fact, a development honed after years of contemplating the approach of a famed art instructor and that of a favorite cartoonist, which led to an epiphany.

Part Four: Epiphany

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#11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Green Lantern TM & © DC Comics.

This page: Despite Gil Kane’s myriad accomplishments beyond his super-hero work at DC Comics, for better or worse, the man is most widely recognized as artist of the Silver Age Green Lantern. Top is his pin-up from Green Lantern #46 [July ’66], which we’ve slightly manipulated digitally. Above is Ryan Reynolds as the character in the 2011 silver screen adaptation (which, alas, failed at the box office). Inset right is a teaming of the Golden and Silver Age versions of the character in Green Lantern #40 [Oct. ’65].

er of flight. Both Earth super-hero and intergalactic police officer, he is a member of the Green Lantern Corps, which at times sends him on interplanetary adventures.

The Atom, another ’40s reboot, is a scientist who gains the ability to shrink to miniscule proportions and becomes a crimefighter.

(For a time in the late ’50s and early ’60s, Kane would contribute, sometimes in collaboration and sometimes alongside fellow comics veteran Russ Heath, a steady stream of Western stories to the Dell comics line, adaptations of then popular television shows, including Tales of Wells Fargo, Laramie, and Have Gun, Will Travel.)

Refining Craft: Gil Kane’s epiphany, one that proved transformative within his work, was indeed lackadaisical in arriving. And the artist lamented not only his slow growth, but also a paucity of development among his more accomplished peers, who were, unlike himself, able to establish their marketable styles at a young age but had stalled. “It’s not even automatic pilot — they just weren’t able to evolve,” he said. “In other words: it’s one thing to have an emotional, a subjective attitude but it’s another to have an overview that allows you to control elements in order to achieve some specific point. For instance, I’ve always found it amazing that none of these artists have ever thought of writing their own material — which is symptomatic of the fact that the drawing wasn’t

The Atom TM & © DC Comics.

in the service of an idea, it was an end in itself.”71 Dissatisfaction over his work was gnawing at the comics pro as the 1950s were ending. “My problem was that I didn’t have a single ‘role model,’” Kane admitted. “I liked artists who were diametrically opposed in values. I liked Louis Fine and Alex Raymond, but I also loved Kirby and [Mort] Meskin, I loved the poetic, lyrical potential at the same time as loving that powerful, direct, primitive quality — and it just took me years to reconcile those elements.”72 “I’ve always felt that if I had to characterize my own work,” he continued, “when it finally started to hit its stride and take on a style of its own, it looked like powerful gymnasts, ballet dancers, trapeze artists — you had a kind of lyrical quality to the body, a poetry of movement but at the same time a degree of power, strength. The artist I felt most analogous to was Reed Crandall — in the early days when he did The Ray and all that stuff for Quality before he went into the Army. His work had its focus on classic figure drawing — right out of Bridgman — and at the same time he had a great sense of movement — his figures were so powerful.”73 By poring over Crandall’s work and that of the lauded cartoonist of Captain Easy and Buz Sawyer, Kane began to see how to improve his draftsmanship. “I just didn’t know enough,” he explained. “I was an action man who couldn’t support what I was doing. My figures weren’t strong enough, and my picture-making — I needed to understand more about design. So I took a long course for myself, mostly through Roy Crane. I studied Roy Crane obsessively, and that sort of opened up things. Finally I solved some of the puzzles about George Bridgman, who I had approached six or seven different times and been turned away. I couldn’t understand him. It looked like I could understand him, but when I tried to transpose that stuff into drawing comics, I couldn’t do it.”74 George Brandt Bridgman (1865–1943) was a legendary anatomy and figure drawing instructor at the Art Students League, in New York City, and author of Bridgman’s Complete Drawing From Life; The Book of 100 Hands; The Human Machine; and Constructive Anatomy. Among his students were Norman Rockwell, Stan Drake, and Will Eisner. Said Howard Chaykin, “Bridgman was the guy who brought the concept of anatomical drawing into the 20th century.”75 Sometime during the mid-’60s, Kane was thunderstruck. “Finally, all of a sudden, a key [thing] happened,” he exclaimed.

“And it was through Reed Crandall, who of course was a George Bridgman man.

And through the medium of Reed Crandall, I was able to get into George Bridgman and then all of a sudden the richness, and the power and the glory, and everything that Bridgman was, was open to me.”76 In 1964, amid his revelation, the artist stumbled into an unexpected gig, as on-set storyboard artist for a weekly television series, the short-lived Mr. Broadway, the hour-long drama starring Craig Stevens. In his National Cartoonists Society Album entry, Kane noted, “For a while I worked with director Garson Kanin when he was Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

involved in TV… I created drawings which staged the action and composition for every foot of film.”77 Elaine recalled, “Garson had no imagination at all and there was one point there’s a scene with [guest-star] Tuesday Weld and she is supposed to kick off her shoes and — Gilbert always told this story — they couldn’t figure the scene out, so he had to go in to show them how to shoot the scene!” The series, about a public relations man and filmed entirely on location in New York City, was broadcast on CBS for a mere 13 episodes.

Studio Space: James Warren, the maverick publisher of Famous Monsters of

This page: After GL, The Atom is Gil Kane’s signature super-hero character, at least at DC Comics, a co-creation of the artist that has a somewhat convoluted history involving Kane, Julius Schwartz, Gardner Fox, and Jerry Bails… Read about it in Alter Ego Vol. 3, #2 [Autumn ’99].

Top is pin-up from The Atom #26 [Aug.–Sept. ’66], also with slight digital manipulation. Above is actor Brandon Routh as the character in the upcoming TV series Legends of Tomorrow.

Left inset is new Atom smacking down old on the cover of The Atom #36 [Apr.–May ’68].

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Above: Gilbert Eli Kane’s predilection with pulp material and his utter obsession with the comics medium are all too apparent in this 1961 biographical passage composed for the “Inside the Atom” feature appearing alongside the second appearance of The Atom, in Showcase #35 [Nov.–Dec. ’61] 40

Filmland, as well as the then-new black-&-white horror comics Creepy and Eerie, had a desire to branch out into the teenage genre market and he enlisted the aid of a new, increasingly ambitious acquaintance. “[A]ll of a sudden, I had become filled with the desire to do my own stuff,” Kane said. “Warren seemed to be making a success doing that, so I became quasi-friendly with Warren, and he put me in a studio in his building.” Having the space at Embassy House, at 47th Street and Second Avenue, where he could focus on work, away from an increasingly quarrelsome home, proved a godsend. “Would you believe that stuff was never done?” Kane exclaimed about the proposed Archie-type comic. “The book never came off, and he paid for the studio for about six weeks or so. I got so caught up with the idea of having this studio, that I went out and took a studio of my own, and in order to support it, had to become competent.”78 The new digs were at 63rd Street and Second Avenue.

With a super-hero explosion happening at DC’s main

rival, the artist sensed opportunity to initiate a change in style — and also help pay the rent for the new workspace. “So with a need to make money, and a need to be good in order to make the money, and with a breakthrough into Bridgman, all of a sudden the first things I started to do were for Marvel,” Kane said.79 Assessing the artist’s Marvel material of 1966, Arlen Schumer wrote, “Kane paid homage to his mentor Jack Kirby by incorporating all of Kirby’s new dynamism into Kane’s own idiosyncratic style.

This caused a quantum developmental leap in Kane’s own artistry.”80 Despite evidence to the contrary — proving to this writer, at least, a remarkable ability to replicate the essence of Kirby’s explosive perspective without, as so many have done, aping the style — Marvel’s editor was unhappy with Kane’s bombastic work. “Stan [Lee] used to think that my stuff looked like David Niven in a super-hero suit,” Kane said, with the Marvel editor/ writer telling the artist that he #11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Blackhawk TM & © DC Comics. All other material © the respective copyright holders.

Above: By the 1960s, the artist was experiencing an epiphany leading to a transformation of his artistic approach. By studying Golden Age comics artist Reed Crandall (whose Blackhawk is seen at right, a Military Comics #18 cover detail), the wonders of anatomy artist George Bridgman became suddenly apparent. At top is Bridgman instructing at the Art Students League, where he taught for 45 years. Inset is his portrait and above is one of his tremendously influential books, many of which are still in print today.

All material TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

thought, “[A]ll of my figures looked homosexual.”81 “In the beginning, Stan was never happy with me,” Kane remarked about the abbreviated ’60s tenure. “I just never felt like I was terribly secure there. He never felt that I was a team player; he never took me into his confidence (which I didn’t care about). But the big thing was, if an assignment came up, I wouldn’t get it; I would get the second-level assignment.”82 No doubt adding insult to injury was for the artist to be humiliatingly given the nickname “Gil ‘Sugar Lips’ Kane’ in the credits.

(Revealed Scott Edward Kane, whose first and middle names were used in a single instance as a pen name by his father on a Hulk story, “I didn’t know he used my name as a pseudonym! Though I knew he had nicknames, like ‘Sugar Lips’ Kane, and I remember that some readers thought he was a girl, because they pronounced ‘Gil’ as ‘Jill’!”)

During that period at Marvel, in addition to a handful of covers, Kane primarily worked on Captain America in Tales of Suspense and the Hulk in Tales to Astonish and, particularly with the Hulk stories featuring the monstrous villain, the Abomination, the material is quite impressive and has been often reprinted, perhaps attesting to its quality. Besides the explosive layouts, the fact that Kane inks his own pencils adds to the startling presentation, a quantum leap from his previous material at DC. His peer Neal Adams is conflicted about Kane’s embellishing. “It wasn’t inking, in the standard sense,” Adams said. “He didn’t ink; he would just finish his drawings with what we would call a ‘dead line.’ The line was dead; it was just a line. It’s like having a pen that flows the same amount of ink, the same width of line, like a Rapidograph. In comic books, inking requires thick and thin, varying thickness of lines, but Gil didn’t do that. Basically the lines he was doing were the same has he would do with his pencil. Gil never was an inker, yet the work that he did had the character of his pencils and the character of his pencils was great! I’m sure that Gil felt — and those of us around him felt — that he didn’t know any better… but we liked it! There’s another contradiction!

Yes, he’s inking it like he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing, yet we like it. What the hell is that? It’s just translating his pencil line into an ink line, but it looks good!”83 At precisely the same time he was penciling and inking his Marvel work, Kane began doing the same for a notable eight-issue run on his mainstay DC assignment, Green Lantern. Remarkably, the artist took on the dual chores to as a shortcut and to earn more money, while also retaining the fidelity of his penciling on the work, something that was lost, he frequently complained, by other inkers.

Time was saved in not having

to tightly pencil the pages and money was necessary because the artist not only needed to pay the rent on the Manhattan studio, but also because things were getting chaotic at home.

The Burden of Debt: “The thing is that, always in my life,” Kane confessed, “finances have totally determined where I was going to go. And at one point, when I had my studio, I threw it all to the wind, and that began my period of indebtedness which took me ten years to get out of.”84 By that time, divorce proceedings had begun and Kane was determined to keep the workspace, stuff that costs money.

To ease the burden, the artist began to freelance for other publishers, many of whom who were eagerly hoping to cash in on the super-hero boom that was prompted by Marvel’s success and the sensation created by the Batman television show.

This page: The artist who would have the greatest influence on Gil Kane was Jack Kirby, co-creator of the Marvel Universe.

Here are examples of Kane’s work during his initial stay at Marvel in the ’60s, including his Tales to Astonish covers and a panel detail from Tales of Suspense #89 [Mar. ’67]. Kane depicted his Hulk/Abomination work for the 30th anniversary issue of The Incredible Hulk, #393 (May ’92, repro seen at right)

Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

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This page: Conceived as a modern-day Conan with a gun, His Name is… Savage, Gil Kane’s 1968 self-published one-shot is considered by some as one of the earliest graphic novels. The Lee Marvin film Point Blank was an influence both visually and also with its violent content.

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His Name is… Savage, Point Blank TM & © the respective copyright holder.

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“I had just gotten a divorce and had a studio,” Kane said, “so money was just going out like crazy.

I was just doing everything I could handle, so I was putting out more work than anybody… I did work for Tower, Gold Key, everybody; I worked all the time, seven days a week. I got to a point when I was just penciling to do three or four pages a day; when I was inking for myself, I could pencil seven pages in a day, and ink three to four pages without too much trouble.”85

For Harry Shorten, the Tower Comics publisher (who had dismissed upstart Eli Katz back in the ’40s, during the MLJ days) Kane would contribute to the Wallace Wood-developed super-hero line, on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents features Menthor and Raven, as well as Undersea Agent; King Comics enlisted his work on Flash Gordon; Joe Simon retained the artist for Harvey’s Thriller comics line on a wonky feature called Tiger Boy; and Warren Publications boasted a few “Loathsome Lore” pages written and drawn by Kane.

Through Jim Warren, the artist would meet Archie Goodwin, today widely regarding as one of the finest editors in the history of comics, and Kane quizzed the talented young writer/editor of the publisher’s horror line about the black&-white comics magazine game. “I used to talk to Archie,” Kane revealed, “and I found out how the thing worked.”86 Savage: Gil Kane had an idea. Freed from the censorship of the Comics Code Authority, which neutered the content of color comics by prohibiting horror and other sordid content, his new friend Jim Warren had successfully created a foothold on the grown-ups’ magazine stand, away from the kiddies color comic book spinner racks. This new niche was rife for exploitation to make an appeal for a long-neglected readership — the older male reader who had been left in the cold by the comics industry for nearly a decade with the collapse of the E.C. line — especially those who now devoured the ultra-violent Mickey Spillane potboilers and their pulp-saturated ilk.

Kane’s high concept? A modern-day Conan wielding a pistol amid a 007 scenario.

“I had this image of a guy walking on a city street,” the creator revealed, “people would give way because there was something at once so threatening and malignant that people just melted aside. That’s the kind of quality I wanted to generate, just a frightening person.”87 The artist modeled the character’s appearance on actor Lee Marvin, whose 1967 film Point Blank also influenced the notion, both in violent content and the lead’s screen persona.

After an attempt to interest other publishers, Kane decided to self-publish His Name is… Savage with financial help from a major periodical distributor, which would cover printing costs and distribute the magazine onto newsstands. “I finally talked Kable [News] into this new idea I had, a combination of prose and comics, paperbacks and comics. So they backed Savage.”88 To help with the script, Kane first approached science fiction and Western author Lee Hoffman, who suggested she collaborate with famed SF editor Ted White on the writing. White submitted an outline, but the artist said, “His plot was very conventional; he didn’t have any sense of the character. It was just a plotline without a sense of the character animating it.”89 Kane then turned to Archie Goodwin, who would

All material TM & © the respective copyright holder

write Savage under the nom de plume Robert Franklin.

On working with the artist, Goodwin later said, “Gil and I would get involved in the breaking down and laying out of the stuff and reshaping it. But we would always be reshaping it as we would go along because, by then, the deadline was on us.”90 The scribe described the pressure of getting Savage done. “When I would deliver [the script], it was like going into some emergency center or a camp under siege. Gil, Roger Brand, Michele Brand, Frank Giacoia, and Gil’s partner, Larry Koster, were holed up in Gil’s apartment on E. 63rd, grinding day and night to get the material done. And the only good thing about it was that I could walk out… But the rest of them were sort of trapped there, trapped with those pages and having to get them done.”

With Kable giving the greenlight, Kane informed DC that he was resigning the Green Lantern assignment, and the nascent entrepreneur dove into the project facing a tight deadline. The artist would later boast he produced the pencils for 40-page story, “Return of the Half-Man,” in a single week. Working under such pressure proved to be liberating. “I see that it was a freeing thing,” the artist said.

“I take in consideration how quickly it was done and under [what] kind of pressure. It was the equivalent of penciling six or seven pages a day, when I think of what I had to contend with.”91 To help with the inking of Savage, Kane enlisted stalwart comics journeyman Frank Giacoia, who received no credit, and commercial illustrator and frequent paperback cover painter Bob Foster produced the painted cover, which sported a dead-on — and unauthorized — portrait of Lee Marvin as the titular anti-hero, replete with smoking gun. (Though Kane would never hear any protest from the actor’s representatives, for the Savage reprinting by Fantagraphics in 1982, the character’s face, which was Marvinesque in the interior art, was altered therein to a more generic visage.)

Conan: Gil Kane long after insisted he hoped to have produced a companion magazine to His Name is… Savage featuring the first comics adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian, years before the Marvel Comics series.

In the ’50s, the artist had become acquainted with a fellow Long Islander, Gnome Press publisher Martin Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

Greenberg, from whom Kane had purchased the Gnome editions of the Cimmerian’s adventures, the first such collections ever compiled, stories which enthralled the artist.

Through Greenberg, Kane made contact with the Howard estate literary agent, Oscar J. Friend, and, for at least one favorite REH tale, he optioned the rights to do a comics version nearly a decade before Savage. On April 19, 1959, Friend reported to the estate, “I have just completed a two-year lease for $15 for ‘The Valley of the Worm’ with a Mr. Gilbert Kane to make a cartoon pix of it, and I herewith include my check for $13.50 in payment thereof.”92

This page: In 1968, industry forces were aligned in opposition to Gil Kane’s effort to produce an adult oriented magazine, His Name is…

Savage (on which Archie Goodwin, Frank Giacoia, Roger Brand (and wife Michelle), and even Kane’s fiancée and son would help out). In 1982, after Fantagraphics publisher Gary Groth had struck up a friendship with the artist, the one-shot was reprinted as Gil Kane’s Savage.

The character would be updated for the ’80s with a four-page, wordless story in Anything Goes! #1 [Oct. ’86], as well as being featured on that benefit comic book’s cover. Above is the splash page and unfinished table of contents page intended for His Name is… Savage #2.

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Above: Found at Heritage, a page from Neal Adams’ violent story intended for the unpublished His Name is… Savage #2. Below: Widely considered to be the finest American comic book editor, Archie Goodwin, a frequent Kane collaborator.

#11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Material TM & © the respective copyright holder.

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Kane would later explain, “I made a deal with the agent … he was an old pulp writer and, in fact, he gave me a box to take home which contained everything they owned that Howard had ever done… I went through every scrap of paper in that box and held onto it for about nine months — I thought that Friend had possibly forgotten about it but he didn’t.”93 In early 1963, Friend had died in nearby Levittown, and the box wasn’t retrieved until around ’65, when a new agent was chosen and made contact with Kane. “What I did was, through Glenn Lord, I auctioned a couple of stories,” he said about again optioning Howard’s work.

“I owned ‘Valley of the Worm’ and ‘The Blonde Goddess’ [also known as “The Gods of Bal-Sagoth”], which I used as the basis of the two Conan issues that I did [for Marvel].”94 Why a companion magazine featuring Howard’s most popular creation wasn’t realized by Kane remains unclear, but Roy Thomas suggested Kane’s money partner insisted that a contemporary series would be more commercial, rather than one set in the Hyborian Age. “Gil told me that he had first wanted to do Conan before His Name is… Savage,” Thomas said, “but that his financial partner — I don’t remember who it was — had insisted on a modern-day thing, and so then Gil wanted to do Conan as a companion magazine.”95 Perhaps the artist couldn’t afford the license,

but a practical consideration might well have been in play.

By 1968, Kane was a very, very busy man.

Though Kane had by then quit the eight-issues-a-year Green Lantern gig, the artist still would pinch-hit for DC as needed, notably as replacement artist for the Steve Ditko-created titles after that creator abruptly quit the company. Plus Kane was developing Blackmark for Bantam books and would soon contribute mightily to Marvel. Given the volume of work flowing from his midtown studio, Kane was in need of assistance, which he received over the years courtesy of a steady roster of young artists, and even a family member or two. And, more than once throughout his career during deadline crunches, Kane sought the help of peers, as well.

Breakdown Men: Some of those who pitched in to help Gil Kane meet deadlines over the years included cartoonists Al Jaffee, Russ Heath, Harvey Kurtzman, Neal Adams, and Joe Staton. Jaffee, best known for his “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” and “MAD Fold-In” features for the humor magazine, had a definite “cartoony” style, one that would seem a poor fit for Kane’s more dynamic work.

Yet the super-hero artist did seek the MAD-man’s help. “I didn’t have any business dealings with him until subsequently when I did a couple of story breakdowns for him,” Jaffee revealed. “That was an interesting experience. In comics, I went into humor because I thought I wasn’t good enough for the adventure and the super-hero stuff, but Gil, of course, studied anatomy obsessively, because he had this terrific imagination for fantasy. I got a call one day from Gil and he said, ‘Al, I’m so overloaded with deadlines and so far behind, I wonder if you’ll be able to break down a story for me.’ So I asked, ‘Is it a cartoon story?’ He said, ‘No, no, it’s a super-hero adventure story.’ (Frankly I can’t remember what the story was, but it was straight art and not cartoony.)”

Jaffee continued, “Breakdowns are basically layouts and I have never had any problem whatsoever of very quickly laying-out six, right, ten pages of a story with rough sketches. And basically what that is is staging. Y’know, you’ve got a character coming into the room, another character holding a gun… it’s a layout for dramatic effect, like a movie still… and that I’m good at. I may not be able to draw the detailed muscles, but I can put figures in their right place with the right expressions, with movements of the arms and legs and stuff like that; that I’ve always been able to do.”

It’s curious that, as an artist celebrated for his innovative page designs and dynamic figures, Kane would need periodic help breaking down stories. Perhaps a clue can be found when he confessed, “When I start every job, every new job, it scares the living sh*t out of me. I approach it with a certain apprehension, especially if it’s a break in genre or background — for instance, if I go from a science fiction strip to a Western — I have to reacquaint myself with all these images of Western strip drawing. It takes me a day or two. The first couple of days are just slow and painful until I build up enough confidence to take it through.”96 By the late ’50s and early ’60s, when Kane was jumping between genres — from science fiction to super-hero to Western — often hopping between companies, he regularly contributed to Dell’s TV Western adaptations during that period. While Kane said they teamed-up on those Dell titles, Russ Heath (one of the industry’s finest draftsmen, best known for his Haunted Tank series) recalled otherwise: “No, we didn’t work together as a team,” Heath said.

“He did his penciling and then I came along [and inked] and corrected his horses — they looked a little too fairylike. We worked together on Tales of Wells Fargo. We did a book together and then a half a book. He couldn’t finish — didn’t have the time to put in — so I finished up the last one myself.”97 Asked to describe his buddy, Heath said with a chuckle,

Captain Action TM & © Captain Action Enterprises, LLC.

“He was tall. I don’t know. He was always there, and so on.

He even got me a date one time, and that was… umm… fairly interesting. We would go to lunch together and, at the conventions, we would be eating the same breakfast table.

Sure, I was friends with him!”

By the later ’60s, a creator who was tremendously admired by Kane lent his layout talents for a special project.

“I worked with Harvey Kurtzman on Blackmark,” Kane said. “He made breakdowns for me. When the book came out, Harvey called me up and said it was the best thing he ever saw.”98 (Kurtzman, of course, is remembered as one of the field’s true geniuses, being the creator of MAD and author of perhaps the first graphic novel, Harvey Kurtzman’s Jungle Book, published in 1959.)

Another who pitched in was Joe Staton, the prolific comic book artist best recalled as the co-creator of E-Man and a cartoonist adept at innumerable genres. In the early ’70s, Staton recently explained, “[Gil] called one day and asked me to work for him. I was working at Charlton by that point and somebody had pointed out my stuff to Gil, and Gil said I could compose in depth. That was his phrase: ‘Compose in depth.’ I didn’t just crop the large figure, but I had levels one after the other. That’s what he liked, so he wanted to know if I’d do layouts. I knew what he meant. I associate that phrase with Gil.”99 “Actually, there is one of those [oversize Artist’s Edition] books on Gil that’s out now that includes some of my layouts!” Staton said with a laugh. “It varied with Gil how much he’d redraw things. If he wasn’t much interested, he’d just trace my layouts. There’s an issue of Ghost Rider that has Gil’s name on it that has basically none of his work in it. And Spider-Man! I can’t remember the number, but it was a fill-in issue Archie Goodwin wrote. I did the layouts for that and Gil redrew a couple of figures. It was a fill-in issue. It was inked by Frank Giacoia. It was really nice.”

“I did a bunch of stuff for Gil,” Staton continued. “I did one issue of [Savage Sword of] Conan for the black-&white books, and Gil says, ‘Don’t worry about getting into detail here. The Filipinos will fill it all in.’ There was a thing we did, it was a kind of graphic album for Europe called Jason Drum, which was printed in Tintin. It was a science fiction. It was kind of like Blackmark, a fantasy sort of thing.

Gil had almost finished it. Somebody else did the last five pages.” Staton also did breakdowns on an unpublished adaptation of cult TV show The Prisoner that was finished by Kane.

The Virtuoso’s Apprentices: Starting around the time of His Name is…

Savage, the artist took on a string of hired hands, with his first bona fide assistant being young artist Roger Brand, late of the Wallace Wood studio, who also contributed to underground comix and a few Warren magazines, as well as an issue of King Comics’ Jungle Jim. “Roger was one of the most wonderful assistants I ever had,” Kane said. “He was my first assistant. He started working with me somewhere around ’67 or ’68, working on Savage… While I was there, Roger came by one day, sent by somebody who heard I had a studio — probably Wally — and showed me some work. I really wasn’t looking for anybody at the moment, but he was such a bright guy, and we found ourselves on a copacetic level.”100 Roy Thomas recalls Brand telling him that the assistant did layouts for Captain Marvel #17, the first Kane/Thomas collaboration.

Brand’s then-wife, Michelle, would also help out at the studio.

Tim Battersby-Brent, another Wood protégé, joined Kane in the late ’60s, as did a person apparently never Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

again heard from in this field.

Howard Chaykin shared, “Gil had a guy by the name of Hudson Armstrong working for him on Blackmark (I have no idea what became of Hudson Armstrong, a name that just rings with comic-book joy!), and the guy who I replaced, Tim Battersby[-Brent], who died very young in his sleep. Tim’s work looked sort of like Wayne Howard’s — there was a Wallace Wood kind of thing going on there.” Battersby-Brent, cited by fellow “Woodworker” Bhob Stewart as having died at the age of 19, had seen work published in King Comics’ The Phantom before his passing.

Even future wife Elaine would pitch in when the deadline was pressing down and, in the process, she was ribbed by her two children. “The kids used to tease the life out of me,” she said, “because I would be Gil’s assistant and put in blacks — spot blacks — and I would type up the script for Blackmark and His Name Is… Savage.” Gil’s fiancée was also fated to help out with accounting. “After we got married,” Elaine said, “I took care of all that and

This page: In 1968, Gil Kane revelled in his all-too brief assignment as writer/artist on Captain Action for DC Comics. In the fourth issue, he modeled the character’s dead wife on his then-fiancée, vivacious Elaine, seen with Gil inset left in a 1975 photo.

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freed him up so he didn’t have to think about that stuff.”

Elaine said how he would utilize his and those layouts prepared by other artists. “He did his breakdowns on regular size paper,” she explained, “and I would use the photocopier to blow them up so he could use them on the lightbox on the drawing table. When he needed help with the backgrounds, I spotted in the blacks.”

So too did Gil’s son put in an effort. “I do remember His Name Is… Savage,” Scott said. “In fact, I did some of the Zip-A-Tone work on that. It was a family project!” When asked if any other Kanes or Katzs lent a hand on his father’s projects, Scott said, “My dad was considering hiring his cousin at one point, who was interested in starting a career in comics, but he had no talent. My dad did try to foster his abilities and use him.”

Kane’s most accomplished assistant was Howard Chaykin, who would become, by the 1980s, a prolific and important American comic book creator, as well as a lifelong aficionado of his mentor, even before meeting the legend as a chubby Brownsville boy. “I was a serious partisan for Gil’s work,” Chaykin said, and among fellow collectors, “there was this ridiculous competition of, ‘Oh, I like his work more than you do.’ I’ve told this anecdote many times and it shows up in a story I did in Solo

Left: Art intended as cover for the second volume of Blackmark.

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Blackmark TM & © the estate of Gil Kane.

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[“Horrors!” Solo #4, June 2005]: I was at a used bookstore and was in the process of selling some comics I had stolen from someone else and I met Gil there, who was shopping for Will James books (Will James was a Quebecois who became a major children’s book writer and illustrator in the ’20s and ’30s), and Gil learned a great deal about drawing horses and was deeply influenced by James.”

Chaykin continued, “I was in awe of Gil Kane! First of all, I was a short fat kid and he was this tall, languid guy in the classic Oxford blue blazer, broadcloth shirt, flannel slacks — he looked like a New Yorker cartoon! Later, when I got to know him, I learned that that was a construct. He invented himself in this way and that he was just a classic Jew from the ghetto, much as I was… we went to the same grammar school 30 years apart, P.S. 144 — and I cannot convey the capacity of awe I had for him. Years later, when I went to work for him, some of that awe had rubbed off, but I was still deeply intimidated by him. He was a very intimidating guy.”

The young man, who was then house-sitting around the corner from Kane’s studio, began his apprenticeship by dialing the phone. “I called Gil up and said, ‘Hey I hear your assistant’s dead. You need somebody?’”101 Despite his samples being judged harshly, Chaykin got the job. “As I said more than once,” he admitted, “I did the least actual hands-on work for him than for any of the people I had ever worked for. But, in retrospect, I believe that I learned more from watching Gil work, as I worked for him as his gofer and toadie, than for anyone else.”

Asked to clarify that education, Chaykin couldn’t share specifics, but did say, “It was more of an aesthetic, an ethos, and a sensibility. Anecdotally, this is a guy who said, one day when I came into work, ‘We’re not working this afternoon. We’re going to watch a movie.’ This was in the days before VCRs, so you watched movies when they were televised; there was no alternative. The movie was Cover Girl [1944], with Gene Kelly, Rita Hayworth, and Phil Silvers.

The movie was annotated by Gil as we watched and it was a fascinating experience. I learned to have a different way of looking at things that day.”

Chaykin also admired how Kane enjoyed life beyond his work. “He always had other passions that didn’t connect with his vocation,” he said. “He wasn’t like a lot of the guys of my generation who completely lived at the drawing board. The antithesis of Gil was someone like Mac Raboy, who I understand… never left his desk. Gil had other lives!

He was a socialized guy. He liked people, he liked the world — he was a night-clubber who knew how to live, which I deeply respect.”

Kenneth Landgraf, a Vietnam vet and School of Visual Arts student who had previously and briefly worked in Chaykin’s studio, said, “I had seen Gil Kane at a lecture he gave at the Brooklyn Museum and showed him my work. It was amazing because he was willing to take the time to show me how to improve my work.” SVA instructor Will Eisner bought in Kane as guest lecturer and, Landgraf said, “After the class was over, he was heading down the stairs and I bolted after him and asked if he needed an assistant. Surprisingly, he told me to meet him up at Marvel on Thursday, and gave me his calling card.”102 Landgraf continued, “When I met him there, he told me to read several Conan paperback books and break them down into pictures and describe what was happening in the story. I drew hundreds of panels in his style. He then took these and used them to speed up his work and he gave me a check for $50!”

The assistant helped Kane find buyers for his original art and, he said, “I continued working for Gil doing breakdown sketches for a few months. I asked him if, instead of getting paid, could I just make photocopies of everything he did. He agreed to this and I got to see and copy some Iron Fist pencils. After a long time practicing drawing com-

Blackmark TM & © the estate of Gil Kane.

ic pages, I got good enough to start getting work myself.

I asked Gil if he thought I should stay in school or pursue art jobs full time. He told me, ‘You just got a break, so take it.” I agreed that this was better than anything they could teach me in art school, so I left school and started working as a professional.”

A New Comics Tradition: His Name is… Savage #1 was published in the Spring of 1968 under Kane’s imprint, Adventure House Press, and the magazine had a tumultuous time making it to the stands, a journey likely doomed from the onset. Industry forces, whether other publishers, a rival distributor, the Comics Code, or World Color Press (the Spartan, Illinois, monopoly which printed virtually every American comic book and most consumer magazines), appeared aligned against the artist’s efforts. Rumors were spread that Savage was sexually explicit, though (while exceedingly violent) it was nothing of the sort. “I lost three of the printers that I had by having people make phone calls and suggest I was turning out a pornographic book, something that would bring great [disrepute] to the entire field and threaten the publishing of comics, by all the legitimate publishers.”103 Eventually the printer of Ramparts, a glossy, politically radical magazine, produced the 200,000 print run of His Name is… Savage #1.

For whatever reason, by Kane’s estimate, only ten percent of the copies made it to the newsstand. Scott Kane recalled that his father personally made an effort to improve its chances. “He distributed copes of Savage himself to different comic book outlets,” Scott said. “Its exposure was just so limited.” Gil’s then-fiancée was wholeheartedly behind the venture. “He did invest a lot of money and time into Savage,” said Elaine, “and I supported him in whatever he wanted to do. I helped as much as I could.”

Despite its failure in the marketplace, Savage did indeed make an innovative bid, as its cover subtitle trumpeted, to carry comics into a “new tradition.” “Well, Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

the thing is,” Kane said, “I did try. My ideas were this: They had less to do with content, which I didn’t respect all that much, I didn’t care; I was indifferent to content. But I was not indifferent to form. The thing that I tried all my life with comics was to adjust the form. I tried with Savage very earnestly to mix the kinds of prose that was typical of E.C. in the early days.”104 The content of His Name is… Savage #1 amounts to an intensely brutal knock-off of the James Bond espionage movies, starring a feral hero and the requisite adversary, a world-hungry super-villain, as well as the obligatorily doomed romantic interest, and an epic fight to the death showdown (including the presence of then-U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, no less). While only this debut edition would see print, a finished second issue, featuring the work of Neal Adams (on a particularly gory crime story), as well as covers for Savage #3 and 4, would remain unpublished.

Today, Savage is recognized as among the first graphic novels. Rather than simply a long-form comic book, Gil Kane was striving for a mix of text and pictures that is considered unprecedented by some. Comic scholar R.C. Harvey writes in his introduction to a reprint edition, “A remarkable early attempt at a new form, Savage exploits the resources of its form about as thoroughly as they can be exploited. The fledgling [graphic novel] form emerged from the egg in full feather, already on the wing.”105 The tenacious innovator was hardly in retreat with the failure of Savage.

In fact, already in play was a push by the artist to bring original comics material to the paperback book market.

Kane, bounding with enthusiasm, drive, and an elated sense of freedom, would also even infuse some of his mainstream comics material with a decidedly literary approach. In 1968, he lobbied to write as well as draw a new DC series, one based on a toy line, as Kane related, “Not that Captain Action was an intellectual strip at all, but I was saying things in it that I felt deeply or thought about. I started right off with a cataclysm and I thought that I was really going great.

[The book’s editor] Julie [Schwartz] was very sympathetic through all of my efforts when he would allow me…”106 The assignment, in which the writer/ artist would, of all things, infuse aspects of George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman, Nietzsche, and even include a comic-book version of Kane’s betrothed, Elaine, “[T]urned into one of the happiest experiences ever in comics,” he said years later, “simply because I was so self-indulgent with the writing. The girl Katherine, who plays the ghostly wife of Captain Action, was modeled after my own wife. I was doing everything that I could think of doing.”107 But the series would end abruptly with #5.

By that time, DC

This spread: Taking no time to lament the failure of His Name is… Savage, Gil Kane immediately began work on a proposed paperback book series, Blackmark, of which only one volume would be published by Bantam Books, in 1971.

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Above: Gil Kane in the late ’60s in a photo from Alter Ego #10, appearing with the artist’s interview. Inset top right: The original Marie Severin/Gil Kane cover art for A/E #10. Below: Panel from Howard Chaykin’s autobiographical story “Horrors!,” from Solo #4 [June 2005], which includes a cameo by the silver-haired artist. Inset bottom right: Banal caricature of the raconteur in a panel detail drawn

by Mike Sekowsky for The Inferior Five #6 [Jan.–Feb. ’68].

‘What are you doing here?’ and he said, ‘What are you doing here?’ So, just talking and commiserating, we became better friends and it grew from there.

He was very nice and very knowledgeable and very charming. I was a big music fan and I loved the ballet, opera, theater, and concerts, so we had these things in common. That’s how it started: we were friends!” The couple, one a strikingly attractive lady, and the other a suave, urbane gent, made for a dashing pair of sophisticates.

Roy Thomas described Elaine as, “A dark-haired, quite attractive, and very intelligent woman with a nice figure. She was a calming presence for Gil, who could get a little excited.”

The oft-collaborator added that Elaine was also a tough and staunch ally of her husband. “She had known Gil for so long that, much more than a lot of the artists’ wives,” Thomas said, “she got to know a lot of the professionals and knew where a lot of ‘the bodies were buried,’ so to speak. She knew them all, their strong points and weak points.”

The couple married in 1970 and by then Elaine had a teenage daughter, Beverly, and young son, Eric, from her previous marriage. Gil’s son, Scott, who often spent weekends with his father (though still lived with his mother in Jericho), was 16. “Gil had a studio in the city when we first got married,” Elaine said, “and I had an apartment in Brooklyn, but neither was big enough for all of us, and that’s when we moved up to the house in Wilton.” Settling in 1971 on Signal Hill Road, in that suburban Connecticut town, the newly expanded family got along. “The morning after we got married,” Elaine said, “my husband told my kids, ‘You can’t call me Gil any more.

You can either call me Mr. Kane or Dad.’ And they called him Dad. It was wonderful. His mother would never say ‘These are my daughter-in-law’s children.’ She would say, ‘These are my grandchildren.’ And, if you talk to my kids today, that’s the only father they know, especially my son who was younger. Gil was Eric’s father. And when we moved to Connecticut, they both started using his last name.”

Gil’s son remembers fondly those sunny, welcoming days of the early ’70s. “I had such a fortunate situation when I was younger,” Scott said. “I had a room in Jericho, where my mom was living, and I had my own bedroom in Wilton, where my dad lived.

One thing I always appreciated about my dad, although there were limits to our relationship, is that wherever he moved with Elaine, he #11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Solo panel © Howard V. Chaykin. Alter Ego TM & © Roy & Dann Thomas. Inferior Five art TM & © DC Comics.

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was under the editorial direction of former Kane partner Carmine Infantino, prone to capricious decision-making on occasion and, Kane said, with Infantino ally and DC editor Joe Orlando, “[T]hey did everything they could to needle me.” The cancellation of Captain Action was a disappointment. “I was really unhappy about it because I felt that I finally had something of my own, something that had my stamp as penciler and writer. Whatever crazy notion I had, I felt free to utilize, if it suited the material. It was a blow to me.”108 Ever the professional, Kane took on another job for Schwartz, penciling The Flash, as well as backup stories for Detective Comics. But things came to a head at DC in 1969, when the artist came in to pick up his check, which would typically be waiting in the editor’s desk drawer. “I said, ‘Carmine has it,’” Schwartz explained.

“When Gil went in to see him, Carmine snapped, ‘Is this the rate Julie is paying you? It’s too high. I’m cutting it down a couple of dollars a page.’ There was no response from Gil. He took the check, returned to my office, and announced that he wasn’t working for DC anymore.”109 Besides, as a potentially lucrative deal gestated with Bantam Books and fortuitous changes occurring at Marvel Comics — which had trebled its output since the artist’s initial stay and was in desperate need of top-tier creators — Gil Kane was finding opportunity outside DC to flex his expanding creativity. Marvel was losing its most important artist-architect as Jack Kirby was poised to hop over to the competitor and Stan Lee was relinquishing more responsibility to his right-hand man, Roy Thomas, who, unlike his boss, was a huge Kane aficionado. The artist, who would still contribute, now and again, to DC Comics, was about to find a long-lasting berth in the House of Ideas — and, as life, love, and luck would have it, begin a new union with an old friend.

Life with Elaine: Erstwhile acquaintances Elaine (neé Kitt) Weinstein and Gil had reconnected by the later ’60s, when both were divorced from their respective first marriages. Elaine was a Brooklyn native who, in 1950, attended the New York State Institute of Applied Arts and Science. Elaine recalled how she again met her once friend and future husband. “I was out at some singles function in Queens or somewhere,” she explained, “and in walks Gil! I said,

All characters TM & © the respective copyright holders. The Comics Journal TM & © Fantagraphic Books. From Aargh to Zap © the estate of Harvey Kurtzman.

always made sure I had my own room. It gave us the opportunity to really get together as a family, with Elaine, her kids, my dad, and me.

We were just one happy family. I’d go up on weekends and spend the summers there. There were a few great years there when we first moved up to Connecticut, when my dad was very productive. It was a very optimistic time.”

Scott continued, “I attended my father and Elaine’s wedding. I got along very well with Eric and Beverly in those early years. I looked forward to going up to Wilton and we really did have a family unit. Elaine worked very hard to maintain that, and she would come to New York every weekend to pick me up and bring me up to Connecticut, all so I wouldn’t be estranged from my father and so I had a place in that family and that let me feel I was a part of that home. She succeeded and I’m always grateful for her effort.”

Man of History: Fanzines — amateur publications devoted to specific subjects, emerging from science fiction fandom and into the realm of comic books by the 1950s (which particularly focused on E.C.) — were abundant in the latter

Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

’60s, with readers ever more hungry for substantive content. Though by then a professional editor at Marvel Comics, Roy Thomas briefly revived, in 1970, Alter Ego, one of the earliest ’zines devoted to super-heroes, and its tenth issue featured a landmark interview with Gil Kane by comics scholar John Benson. While conducted in 1967, the discussion is renowned to this day for its insight, prescience, and unfiltered opinion, characterized by historian Bill Schelly as, “[O]ne of the most interesting interviews ever printed in a fanzine,” succinctly describing the artist as “an unusually articulate and perceptive subject.”110 Kane’s Alter Ego #10 exposition was a call to arms for writers to improve their craft beyond “pap” and for artists to intellectualize their work and become introspective.

When asked by Benson whether comics can be legitimate art, the artist replies, “I feel that it has succeeded despite what the writers have done, and it is strong and viable as the result of the artwork; the storytelling developed by the artists has created a viable medium that has survived the onslaught of rapists for years. And it is just waiting for somebody like Kurtzman or Eisner, someone to come in and control and utilize the medium and give it direction and purpose, and not just come in there like

Inset left: Kane gave key historical info for Harvey Kurtzman’s “visual history.” Top: First photo taken of future best friends Gary Groth (front) and Kane (rear) together, shot at the 1969 Comic Art Con. Kane often contributed to Groth’s The Comics Journal.

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#11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Conan TM & © Conan Properties, Inc.

This page: Kane first encountered Robert E. Howard’s hero in the Gnome Press editions. Top is Kane’s Conan the Barbarian #17 [Aug. ’72] splash page.

a bunch of kids playing with sand. To create something mature within such an exciting form is hard to do; it’s no snap.”111 The interview was remarkable for featuring the unvarnished views of a comics pro speaking candidly of the strengths and shortcomings of his peers, as well as a virtual condemnation of the industry in general. The discussion would immediately establish Kane not only as historian and spokesman, but also a preeminent gadfly, whose diatribes were often included scathing assessments of fellow professionals.

(One comic book legend Kane lauded to high esteem in the interview was Harvey Kurtzman, who would recognize in the raconteur a man with an extraordinary grasp of the field’s overall history.

Under pressure with a very tight deadline to produce his own survey in the early ’70s, a book that would eventually see print decades later as From Aargh!

To Zap!: Harvey Kurtzman’s Visual History of the Comics,

the MAD creator enlisted Kane and Benson to help.

“John Benson came over to the studio,” Kane said years later, “and, from Friday night to Sunday night, I dictated 200,000 words on the business… And that was the basis for what Harvey was going to use… I think Harvey used 2,500 words finally.”)112 Amid contentious opining about writers in A/E #10, Kane spoke to Benson of his own desire to push the form.

“Each story creates its own conditions,” he said, “but, for myself, the kind of story that I would like to do would be approached by using a great deal of narrative prose and also by using a great deal of space. And I don’t mean a 12-, 15-, or 20-page story; I am for lengthy, extended pieces of work where characterization can be developed, and not superficially or on a primitive level the way it was developed in comics today.”113 Blackmark: As mentioned, Gil Kane had hoped to introduce in comics format the exploits of Robert E. Howard’s barbarian hero, but plans fell through. In 1966, Lancer had begun its Conan compilations to great acclaim, due in no small part to Frank Frazetta’s iconic cover paintings. Thereafter, Kane would insist it was his suggestion to Roy Thomas that prompted the writer/editor to license the property for Marvel, resulting in a sustained success for the company and the launch of a new comic book craze, of which Kane was a major contributor. (For his part, Thomas says that though he knew of Kane’s devotion to the character, his own pursuit of the license was conceived independently.)

Sword-&-sorcery was a genre where the artist would repeatedly delve, whether short stories for DC editor Joe Orlando’s mystery books or in concert with the Conan furor over at Marvel, including his artistry depicting the Cimmerian on numerous occasions (memorably on “The Blonde Goddess of Bal-Sagoth” adaptation, in Conan the Barbarian #17–18, the same story he optioned from the Howard estate years before). Melding blade-slinging fantasy with a post-apocalyptic science fiction milieu, the artist developed Blackmark, a paperback series to be published by Bantam Books, and it would prove another example of the comic book creator pushing the boundaries of the form.

Concurrent with the Savage project, the artist secured an agreement with Bantam for four books — his take being $3,500 per 120-page volume — and, alongside his mainstream comics assignments, Kane finished the first volume of Blackmark (again with the writing assist of Archie Goodwin, though the scribe recalled “[S]omeone like John Jakes had actually done a synopsis and several chapters writing for Gil”).114 When publisher Oscar Dystel saw the result, “He wanted eight, he was so crazy about them,” Kane said. “It was going to be a mass-marketing situation.

When they turned it out, they didn’t do what they said they would do, which was originally to put two or three of them out at once so they could get noticed on that stand. And they only put out one, which got lost immediately — nobody knew where to put it. We sold very well in big cities and college towns. In New York, we sold out three times.

But everywhere else… We ended up with something like a 59% sale — which wasn’t too bad, but they thought it would be more. Anyway, they gave me a chance.”115 Juxtaposing fire-breathing dragons, medieval swordplay, and blood-thirsty emperors with spaceships in a mutated, post-nuclear war landscape, Blackmark is, as the 2002 reprint edition cover blurb trumpets, “the story of an embittered slave who stages a revolt against a corrupt and brutal regime — a tale of righteous vengeance against a background of political intrigue and rampant injustice.” It is also terrifically violent and outlandishly exciting in all of its pulpish splendor.

Besides the breakdown help of Harvey Kurtzman and the writing of Archie Goodwin (who received no credit because, he said, “Gil felt that he would have problems with Bantam because it had been sold as having been [entirely] done by Gil Kane”), another comic book luminary

Conan TM & © Conan Properties, Inc.

who assisted on Blackmark, both with layouts and inks, was Neal Adams. “A couple of times, Gil pulled me in to help him out because he was jammed,” Adams said, also referring to his time in the studio doing work on His Name is… Savage. “The money wasn’t that good, but he did seem to be in a jam. It’s a little hard for me to imagine why he would have someone like me, who draws so realistically and so tediously, to help a guy who can dash these things out so dramatically and so beautifully. How I could have been of help, I don’t know, because if he inked it, he would end up changing it to look much more like Gil Kane.”

Adams continued, “It’s just an opinion here, but I think he wanted company. I don’t think I contributed very much.

I did the best I could for him and he paid me for the work that I did, in a conservative way. But he liked to have someone to talk to. And the conversation really had to do with his personal life, which was first a tragedy, then a comedy, and then a wonderful story. I think I was there to be a sounding board and maybe to give him some advice about life, rather than just be an artist who helped him out… I really, honestly, in my heart of hearts, think that he just wanted to talk.”

About the time working on the Bantam paperback project, Adams said, “On a personal basis, I had a lot of fun and I rose to the challenge. In Blackmark, for example, there are pages where it is very, very easy to tell that I did them, but there are other pages that you would be hard pressed to recognize that I did them. Because, after a while, I learned how to do that Gil Kane thing, and people can guess half the pages, but they never guess the other half, because I was able to get it.”

The audacity of this particular comic book artist breaking into book publishing didn’t surprise Adams. “You have to remember that Gil Kane was also an intellectual adventurer and he knew more about the European graphic novels than anybody that I was aware of,” he said. “In fact, he was the one who introduced me to European graphic novels; I had no idea that people actually drew pictures in Europe! He showed me Asterix and Lieutenant Blueberry and all the rest of this stuff. You could tell, after thinking about it and listening to what he was saying, that he was interested in doing this too.

If he wasn’t going to get a syndicated strip, he would do a graphic novel in America, and even though America wasn’t the artistic place to be as a comic book artist, he still would make the best of it. Where everyone else was grubbing to do pages for DC and Marvel and whatever they could do, he was not only doing that but also putting together graphic novels like they did in Europe. It had to be different, of course, because the formats weren’t there, but Gil was essentially a European artist trapped in America. He wasn’t going to go to Europe to do this stuff, but that was sort of where his heart was; this was not the business that he wanted to be in.”

Though Blackmark would earn the creator a “Special Recognition” award from the Academy of Comic Book Artists in 1971 and feature some of Kane’s finest drawing to date, only one volume would be published by Bantam. The paperback format, at 4¼" x 7", was simply too constrained to give readers an adequate Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

presentation, as cartoonist Burne Hogarth exclaimed to the creator at the time.

“It was too small,” admitted Kane. “Everything was squeezed… It needs scope and it needs range.”116 Though completed when the first effort was on the stands in 1971, the second volume wouldn’t see print until the end of that decade, reconfigured for regular magazine size, in Marvel Preview #17. Both chapters were posthumously collected by Fantagraphics, in 2002, at an aesthetically pleasing 6" x 9¼".

“The failure of Blackmark wasn’t due to Gil,” Adams insisted. “It was due to Bantam. They didn’t have big enough eyes and they didn’t have enough ambition.

You could only go to the publishers who were there. Who else would he go to? That’s a tremendously frustrating position to be in: To know that you can do it, to be willing to do it, and then to do it with a bullsh*t company who didn’t have the ability to see into the future.

So he was fighting a losing battle. Doomed? Yes, mostly by the inability of the publishing company to think.”

Adams continued, “We were in a very primitive business, so Gil Kane, a reasonably civilized individual who could see the writing on the wall, who could see the syndicated strip guys, because he went to their meetings, who could see the European guys because he recognized what they were doing before anybody else in the States. He was tremendously frustrated because he had this tremendous ability and nowhere to go. What do you do with that?”

Regarding the historical impact of Gil Kane’s experiments, comics scholar R.C. Harvey wrote, “In the stories of Savage and of Blackmark, he showed the potential of the form — in many instances, deploying that potential about as fully as it could, at the time, be envisioned.”117 And while the creator would put aside his independent projects for a spell and focus on page-rate jobs to cover for his ever-increasing debt, Kane did bring his newfound storytelling exuberance to the work-forhire game, undeterred by the setbacks and excited by the prospect of collaborating with a young, admiring writer with pulp sensibilities that matched his own.

This page: The above Gil Kane piece, Conan from “Night of the Dark God” (Savage Takes #4, May ’74), appeared as cover art for the Harvard Journal of Pictorial Fiction [Spring ’74]. Inset left is Kane’s cover art for Conan the Barbarian #45 [Dec. ’74], sporting inks by Neal Adams and the Crusty Bunkers.]. Below is Frank Frazetta’s killer cover art for a Lancer paperback edition. It was Frazetta’s breathtaking work that was no doubt a factor for folks to write letters to Marvel, suggesting a series.

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Part Five: Maturity

Above: An exuberant, albeit shortlived Gil Kane/Roy Thomas collaboration was their twoepisode Gullivar Jones, Warrior of Mars series, appearing in Creatures on the Loose 16–17.

Cover detail from #16 [Mar. ’72].

The Marvel Age: Though now married to the love of his life, financial security remained elusive for Gil Kane into the early ’70s. “My personal life was still upside down because I had divorced,” he revealed, “and was desperately in need of money, and was working my brains out trying to make enough money to sustain two families.”118 It would prove a persistent struggle that would not subside for more than a decade to come, but with the support of Marvel’s soon-to-be editor-in-chief Roy Thomas, the artist would weather out a good portion of the ’70s in relative monetary comfort, albeit while working around the clock. “[B]etween Roy as chief editor, and with John Verpoorten as production head, I started to get the best page rates,” Kane said, “and some of the work turned out pretty good and some of it was just rushed out — actually, all of it was rushed out,

but some of it hit, and some of it didn’t. But I felt myself developing continuously.”119 What hit, at least aesthetically, were his collaboration with Thomas, who Kane had casually chatted with at comic conventions over the years. Increasingly annoyed by DC publisher Infantino, the artist approached Stan Lee and suggested he return to Marvel for another go, this time drawing their

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#11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

All material TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Above: Cover detail from Gil Kane’s first issue of Captain Marvel, #17 [Oct. ’69], which dramatically re-envisioned the character as homage to the “Shazam!” Fawcett comic book character of the Golden Age. In place of Billy Batson, writer Roy Thomas put the onetime Hulk companion and Captain America sidekick, Rick Jones. The creative team’s four issues would usher in the Bronze Age of Marvel (if you will) when a second wave of characters populated the House of Ideas line-up in the early ’70s.

version of Captain Marvel. “Stan knew I was about to take the series in a new direction,” Thomas would relate, “so he brought me into the meeting and asked if I thought Gil could become the title’s artist.”120 Thus began a short but remarkable collaboration on the character, as well as “an instant mutual admiration society that would last ’til Gil’s untimely passing more than thirty years later.”121 For those issues, Kane would pull out all the stops with his vigorous layouts (assisted by Roger Brand) and figure work, as pages sported action virtually bursting out of the panels, and his pencils were graced by the faithful inks of former Wallace Wood studio alumnus Dan Adkins (who the penciler would thereafter recall as a favorite embellisher).

Embracing the “Marvel method” — where the artist, usually from an outline from the writer, would lay out the tale, establish pacing, and often add story elements — Kane also significantly contributed to narrative itself and found in Thomas a perfect collaborator. “With Roy’s coming in,” the artist said, “I came into my own.”122 Unfortunately, Captain Marvel suffered an erratic publishing schedule, and despite the lively Kane/Thomas run — which would re-imagine the Kree warrior as a dual-identity character like his Golden Age “Shazam!” namesake, as well as touch upon (at Kane’s request) the Holocaust, and pit the cosmic hero against the Hulk — it would finally be cancelled after only five issues in 11 months.

But the artist was immediately put to work on the imprint’s flagship book, as Kane would pencil Amazing Spider-Man while the title’s main artist was perhaps attending to his new position as Marvel’s art director. “The only reason I got Spider-Man was because [John] Romita left the book,”123 Kane said, though Romita did often ink his pencils. Despite his relatively short stints on the series, issues bearing the Gil Kane credit are some of the most controversial in the character’s history: the Comics Code-busting “drug” issues and notorious “Death of Gwen Stacy” storyline. (Romita recalled, “There was an interesting play between us; I used to tell him all the time he was getting all the plum issues, the landmark issues!”)124 “I was involved in the plotting, but the idea of doing the drug issues wasn’t my idea,” Kane said. “As usual, the idea came from Stan. Then, when it came to actually structuring the story, the plot that you’d get from Stan was a couple of lines of conversation after which you’d have to flesh-out an entire story. You’d bring it in and he would say, ‘Jesus, I don’t care too much for the way you did this character; he doesn’t have any real strength.’ He held you responsible for the plotting.”125 Kane did say about Lee in the early ’70s, “Stan could be a good collaborator, but soon he had moved on.”126 (Of the “death of Gwen Stacy” storyline, the artist could only relate, “I collaborated, but it wasn’t my idea. They had already wanted to kill her when I was assigned the material — my first Spider-Man job when I was called back.”)127 As “Stan the Man” went searching for success in other entertainment realms, Kane’s “perfect collaborator” stepped in to script a delightful run of Amazing Spider-Man with the artist as enthusiastic co-plotter. “[W]e decided to do a King Kong story… [and] we put Jack Palance in as Morbius, the Living Vampire, and I have to say we had a lot of fun. It was an absolute pleasure working with Roy.”128 The team would go on to produce Warlock, a series influenced, by all things, the then-popular rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, featuring an audacious, super-heroic re-imagining of the New Testament, and, a few years later, Kane and Thomas would co-create Iron Fist, a martial arts character whose genesis is found in Amazing-Man, a favorite super-hero of young Eli Katz back in the late ’30s and early ’40s. (Of the Bill Everett creation, the spirit of which permeated other Kane/Thomas collaborations as well, Kane would later enthuse, “”I just loved the whole

All material TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

idea, loved the resilience, loved the anger — the character was always in a rage and, taking on the Amazing-Man persona, he became insane and a homicidal maniac! I just loved it!”)129 Cover Man: Gil Kane would become, from the early to mid’70s, the predominate cover artist for the entire line of the Marvel Comics Group, producing an phenomenal number of pieces that number, by this writer’s impromptu count, over 800 published covers. The images represent nearly every genre being published at the time by the House of Ideas, including super-hero, horror, sword-&-sorcery, war, monster, science fiction, literary and movie adaptations, jungle, licensed properties, and — his favorite cover subject — Westerns. Infused with his Kirby-inspired approach and often embellished by an astonishing array of talented inkers (including Bill Everett, Ralph Reese, Tom Palmer, and Joe Sinnott, among many others), Kane’s artistry would symbolize that era at Marvel as no other artist.

The reason for the profusion of Kane covers was purely financial, yet on any number, the trouper would give it his all, though his own assessment could be less generous.

“Sometimes I would do five cover pencils in a day,” he said with a chuckle. “It wasn’t great stuff. But I managed to get a couple of nice covers out of the batch, though I would also do a lot of stinkers.”130 Kane’s favorite of the 800-plus covers would be for a reprint title, Mighty Marvel Western #44 [Mar. ’76]. “They always allowed me to ink my own Western covers,” the artist said, “and, at first, I wasn’t that great with the inking, but then I caught the hang of it. I think I turned out the best Western cover I ever did. It’s Kid Colt lying in a ditch of water, with his hand scooping the water up to his face — but in the water you can see the reflection of a gunman with a gun pointed at Kid. I was drawing like a son-of-a-bitch in those days!”131 But Kane admitted that by focusing on the better-paying one-off assignments, “I made a bad mistake: I didn’t stick with any one character but was an opportunist, just jumping to the next best opportunity. I missed the chance of being identified with a character, whether Spider-Man, Conan, or any of those features, like I held on to Green Lantern. Every time there was an opportunity, I would jump. The covers paid more than anything else, so I would jump to the covers. The only thing is that nobody collects covers and you have a million guys who are connected to Spider-Man, and locked-in. If I think about all the characters I did, and had put in two or three years on each one, I would have a following. When people recall me, it’s always from Green Lantern.”132 The artist described the cover sessions, when he would make a weekly visit to the Marvel Bullpen. “I would come in and, in one morning, Roy and I would plot 25 covers. I would go home and do ’em, come back at the end of the week and that was it. Once in a while I would take a break and do a book for them.”133 Roy Thomas recalled, “Gil would come in some afternoon, Friday probably, and I would have the large, full-size photocopies of the stories there, and we would go through them to find a cover scene. We would do it as quickly as possible, because we would often have five or ten of them to get out, and Gil would sit there and do a very fast sketch.

Sometimes I had a particular scene in mind, sometimes he would find something, and sometimes we would go for a symbolic image because we couldn’t find exactly something Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

worthy. We would try to keep them varied. I would keep trying to have Gil make the poses different from cover to cover, as his figures were often like gymnasts as opposed to Kirby’s body-builder types… but I don’t think I succeeded. But, other than that, I really liked the covers that he did. If you would use different inkers on them and different copy, that worked out pretty well.

Maybe it would have been better to have the regular artists do their own covers, but if you’re going to have only one person do a great majority of the covers, Gil was certainly as good a choice as you could have had in those days, especially with Jack not available to us.”

“Some of the best memories I have of Gil,” John Romita said, “are from when he was doing the lion’s share of Marvel covers. He would come in once every ten days or so and Gil, Roy

Thomas, and I would kill an afternoon planning ten covers or so; Gil would sit there with a ballpoint pen and scribble these quick shapes and Roy Thomas would accept them as sketches. I would get a little apprehensive and say, ‘They’re all starting to look alike,’ or something like that, to which Gil would reply, ‘Don’t worry, my boy. Everything will be fine.’

Then I’d get the covers from Gil, three at a time,” he added with a chuckle, “and have to spend a day and a half adjusting the costumes, putting cloaks on characters, taking them off others…” The onetime Marvel art director was sure to add, “Gil’s covers were always dynamic; he never did a dull cover in his life. He was one of a kind.”134 About whether cover work paid better than the rate for interior pages, Thomas was unsure. “I don’t know if we had a special cover rate,” he said. “I think he got a page rate, but it was just one drawing and that’s what Gil really liked. He may have gotten a little something extra for doing

Above: Perhaps history will prove that their most successful creation was Thomas and Kane’s Iron Fist (given the Netflix TV series set for 2017), who debuted in Marvel Premiere #15 [May ’74]. Cover detail from Iron Fist #5 [June ’76].

Inset: Warlock was a particularly creative property originated by the Thomas/Kane team. Part Jesus Christ Superstar, part extrapolation of various Jack Kirby concepts, the character was conceived to have a finite existence. This detail is from Kane’s Marvel Premiere #1 [Apr. ’72] cover. Inks by Dan Adkins.

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This spread: In the early to mid-’70s, Gil Kane was the predominant cover artist at Marvel Comics, amassing a career total of well over 800 covers! Here are some of his best work in that department, ably inked by Ralph Reese, Bill Everett, John Severin, Joe Sinnott, and Frank Giacoia. Below: One particularly fine embellisher over Kane’s pencils was a young Klaus Janson, who actually became pro on the penciler’s initial advice. This is a cover detail of Jungle Action #13 [Jan. ’75].

The artists’ first pairing was on the Black Panther story in Jungle Action #9 [May ’74].

Their combined work on Giant-Size Defenders #2 [Oct. ’74] and What If? #3 [June ’77] are particularly well regarded.

stories. In fact, “Valley of the Worm” would join Kane’s version of Edmund Hamilton’s short story “He That Hath Wings” as two of the finest comic book adaptations of the decade and both poignant fables appeared within weeks of one another in a pair of editor Roy Thomas’s pet projects at the time, the bi-monthly comic book anthologies Worlds Unknown and Supernatural Thrillers, containing well-regarded genre fiction adapted into comic book form, .

“Gil had talked to me at various times about this story

by Edmond Hamilton, ‘He That Hath Wings,’” Thomas said, “which he liked very much — he just loved that story exploring the concept of a winged person — so when Worlds Unknown was developed, I gave Gil the opportunity to do the story. I would have written it but asked if he wanted to write it — I figured he would want to and knew that he could write — so I just turned it over to him and he did a nice job with it. If he had more room, he probably could have done it a little better, but it’s a nice looking job.”

Leigh Brackett, who edited her husband’s 1976 collection, Fifty Years of Wonder, The Best of Edmond Hamilton, discussed the heart-wrenching story in her introduction. “[I]n July of 1938,” Brackett writes, “Weird Tales published what many people consider to be the best of all the Hamilton stories of that period, equaled but not surpassed by anything he has done since. ‘He That Hath Wings’ became an instant classic. It is, simply, the story of a child born with wings, and how that affects him in the time of his growing up, and in the time of his maturity when he falls in love and has to chose between a normal Earthly life and the freedom of the skies. Hamilton’s ability to think himself inside the skin of another being, to know what it would feel like to be something other than an ordinary mortal, is nowhere more evident than in this unforgettable tale.”135 In choosing flight over family, the story’s protagonist seals his fate with a majesty and grace that somehow echoes, if not literally, the spirit of the artist himself, who also wrote the adaptation. To quote Hamilton’s tale: He knew suddenly that this alone was living, this alone was waking. All that other life that had been his, down there, that had been the dream, and he had awakened from it now. It was not he who worked in an office and had loved a woman and a child down there. It was a dream. David Rand who had done that, and the dream was over now.136 #11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

All material TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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the cover. I didn’t really deal with the rates that much. As editor-in-chief, I was more like the shop foreman.”

Of Wings and Worm: Beyond Captain Marvel and Warlock, Kane did produce exceptional work for his relatively infrequent interior jobs — including issues of Conan the Barbarian, his “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” adaptation (with exquisite inks by Ralph Reese and script by future Star Hawks collaborator, Ron Goulart), an origin of Ka-Zar tale written by Thomas, among others — and worthy of mention is 1972’s Gullivar Jones, Warrior of Mars, a buoyant and enchanting series by Thomas and Kane that briefly headlined Creatures on the Loose. While based loosely on a book written a few years before Edgar Rice Burroughs’ first Barsoom story, the comics series was produced while rival DC had just snagged the ERB license. Gullivar Jones was an obvious and unabashed homage to the John Carter of Mars series, albeit a mere pair featuring the Thomas/ Kane team among the six 10-page installments starring the character, who has never been seen since.

Curiously, Creatures on the Loose #17 includes a fight between the sword-slinging hero and a gang of ravenous “slugs,” which are actually — and quite effectively — portrayed as fanged caterpillars, depictions the artist would soon reprise when adapting one of his favorite Robert E. Howard

All material TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Another of Kane’s finest jobs of the early ’70s was an adaptation of the Robert E. Howard story, “The Valley of the Worm,” scripted by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway, which was published in Supernatural Thrillers #3. “That was a fun project,” Thomas said, “except that I was going through one of my more painful areas of separation from my first wife, Jeanie, at the time, so I couldn’t concentrate on work. So Gerry Conway ended up doing some dialogue at the end. I’m real proud of that book.” He added, “It may have been Gil’s idea that we adapt the story, though it was, of course, a story I would have wanted to do anyway. But Gil may have suggested that we do it. He liked the story even more than I did. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case, but at that stage I would not have needed much encouragement to do a Robert E. Howard story.” In fact, this was the same tale Kane had optioned from REH estate literary agent Oscar J. Friend back in 1959.

The artist obviously relished finally getting his chance to draw the story — the monster here is again envisioned as an enormous larva with horrific fangs — but he would be disappointed with the final presentation. “I must say here,” Kane complained, “that I hated Ernie Chan’s work on the ‘Valley of the Worm’ adaptation I did, but then I was unhappy with quite a few of my inkers at that time.”137 His creative partner often enjoyed what Kane would bring to the narrative in addition to the art of the adaptation. “I believe it was Gil who added images of legendary heroes on quests, like Beowulf, on the two-page spread,” Thomas said, “just as he added some wonderful ideas to The Ring of the Nibelung later. He contributed a lot; it was definitely a co-plotting situation. He got paid for the art and not for the writing, but we paid him as much as possible.

Gil, more than a lot of other artists, always wanted to be involved in the plotting, because then he’d be potentially more interested in doing the story.”

In 1974, the Kane/Thomas team created the Marvel “kung fu” character Iron Fist (a property slated to receive its own Netflix television series), the martial arts super-hero influenced, as mentioned, by Kane’s childhood affection for Bill Everett’s ferocious Amazing-Man. “I was always trying to get Gil to do the things I knew that he would be interested in,” Thomas said, “or, if I had an idea for a story, he would be one of the people I would think of. Gil was fond of saying that he was never anybody’s first choice; but he often was for me. For Iron Fist, he was the first Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

person I thought of, because he should have that kind of body, not the big, wrestler/bear body that John Buscema gave characters.”

The duo would soon produce a “Worm”-like story, replete with epic battle between swordsman and vicious, long-toothed behemoth caterpillar, entitled “Birthright,” published in Monsters Unleashed #3, which Thomas described as, “My idea of a swipe of an E.C. story from Weird Science-Fantasy, and even named the characters ‘Galt’ and ‘Ayn’ after the hero and author of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. It was just my idea of a post-apocalypse E.C. story. The only similarity with ‘Valley in the Worm’ was that it was a story that had a Howard feel; it was half-Howard, half-E.C. science fiction.” Still, Kane did return yet one more time to the REH story, while working as editor of a small press outfit (sort of) born of a prestigious institution.

One Fine Pair: Though Gil Kane would often pass harsh judgment on his inkers, he would be fond of a handful, including heaping praise on Dan Adkins and Kevin Nowlan, to name two. One neophyte delineator who made a remarkable impression with readers embellishing Kane’s pencils was Klaus Janson, who quite memorably contributed to Giant-Size Defenders #2 [Oct. ’74] and What If? #3 [June ’77]. “I am enormously puzzled and grateful at the number of people who remember that particular issue of Giant-Size Defenders that Gil and I did,” Janson said. “That was pretty early in my career. I look at it and go, ‘Oh, god, look at all the amateurish and ignorant decisions that I made.’

But Gil was an artist’s artist.

He was a classic penciler, a classic storyteller, and he had all the tools that are required for someone to succeed in this business. But even more, he had all of the requirements to be great.

Below: Gil Kane was a frequent artist on the Marvel flagship title, The Amazing Spider-Man, filling in for longtime artist John Romita, sometimes for extended runs, including some particularly important issues in the history of the series. With writer Stan Lee, Kane produced the famed Comics Code-busting “drug issues,” #96–98 [May–July ’71], which helped to liberalize self-censorship restrictions in the industry. Kane also drew the seminal “Death of Gwen Stacy” issues, #121–122 [June–July ’73], which he also co-plotted with John Romita and writer Gerry Conway. Detail from #122.

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This page: Two pet projects of Gil Kane were his adaptations of Robert E. Howard’s “The Valley of the Worm” (above) and Edmond Hamilton’s “He That Hath Wings” (below). They would respectively appear in Supernatural Thrillers #3 [Apr. ’73] and the first issue of Worlds Unknown [May ’73].

asked him, ‘What do you think?’ He said, ‘Well, you know, not that bad.’ I asked, ‘How long do you think I need to practice before I can break into the field?’ He said, ‘Maybe a year or two for your penciling, but your inking is really good, and you probably can get work right now.’ So that changed my career trajectory because I needed to get work. In a lot of ways, Gil was responsible for me becoming predominately known as an inker before developing a penciling career.”

“Like all great artists, he was just amazing!” Janson enthused. “I don’t know what else to say about him. And I think, frankly, he’s a little underrated at this point. He had the power and dynamics of Kirby, but he also had the lyricism and poetic figures of someone like Hal Foster or Alex Raymond. The elegance of his work combined with the power of Kirby made him quite unique in this industry.

Howard Chaykin told me that Gil loved ballet and appreciated movement and the elegance of the human body, and you can see that in Gil’s work and in the warm-up sketches he would do. So when you hear that he loved ballet and all dance, it makes sense.”

For Janson, the essence of Kane was his well thought out approach. “If you look at some of the pages that he did in Amazing Spider-Man,” Janson said, “the Gwen Stacey funeral sequence, there wasn’t that in-your-face Kirbyisms that #11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

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A lot of people can succeed without being great, but he was so talented in his storytelling, drawing ability, composition, in his use of negative/positive space — Gil had the entire arsenal in the requirements to be great. He’s my favorite American artist, and I learned so much from him not just by studying his work, but by working on it. I inked the very last job that Gil penciled, the Legends of DC Universe two-parter, and only then did I think that I finally figure out how to ink him correctly.”138 Janson explained that Kane was integral in his finding work as a professional. “Gil was directly responsible for my inking career,” he said. “I first met him at a Phil Seuling con in New York, when he was coming out of one of the hotel’s ballrooms. I had pages with me that I had drawn and inked, and I stopped him. I thrust the pages in front of him — like we all do when we’re at that age — and he looked at them.

I remember he was very tall and kind of intimidating, and I

All material TM & © the respective copyright holders.

Gil can be known for; they were quiet and subdued, and they were intelligent!

He was able to convey feeling through his choice of angles, shots, and composition. He was a very, very smart artist, which you can’t say about a lot of people!”

Harvard Days: Ivy league student Tom Durwood joined with his fellow Harvard University Comics Society members to publish a smartly produced fanzine, The Harvard Journal of Pictorial Fiction, which debuted in the spring of 1974. What’s curious about the journal is that not only did Gil Kane contribute cover art and an essay for the inaugural issue, but he also served as the publication’s advisor for its final two editions.

Durwood, who edited the journal and is now an assistant professor at the Valley Forge Military Academy and College, described his memories of the artist raconteur.

“I spent a summer afternoon at Gil Kane’s house, in Wilton, Connecticut, drinking ultra-sweet iced tea and talking about comics,” he recalled. “Gil had lots of opinions. One theory of his was that a comic book artist’s wife was often a key to his success; case in point being Frank Frazetta, whose wife insisted on keeping both copyrights and original art for all of Frank’s commissions. I think the original ethnicity of many Anglicized names — Lee, Kirby, Kane, [Burne] Hogarth [born Spinoza Bernard Ginsburg] — also came up. I also remember him agreeing with the film critic Stanley Kaufman that narrated movies don’t work — it’s like cheating, to tell your audience what is going on. He also had some idea about transposing Hamlet to a Western that I couldn’t follow.”139 Yet the purpose of the Harvard undergrad’s visit wasn’t only social, but to interview Kane in his suburban home for the journal. “I was really just a comic fan,” Durwood says, “like many males in the 1960s and early ’70s, I found certain artists’ works compelling — mostly Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Neal Adams, Joe Kubert. I liked Gil Kane’s work, but did not love it; my interview with him was mostly because I happened to meet him and he seemed okay with the idea.”

Durwood had encountered the artist through a mutual friend and he says, “I spent time with him, just that one afternoon, for the Journal interview. I think he helped line up Burne Hogarth [for the second issue’s feature interview].

Gil was a very smart guy, and had lots of theories about comics and film.”

As for Kane’s advisory role, Durwood explained, “Gil was more like a friendly uncle we could talk to. He was not actively involved with Crimmer’s. His main interest was his own work, projects he wanted to do in various graphic formats. Have you seen that crime strip [His Name is… Savage] he did? With the good guy ramming a gun in the bad guy’s mouth? That had him pretty excited. He wanted to do more work beyond the limits of Green Lantern.”

He added, “I know Gil felt constricted by comic book publishers. I’m sure he would love the wide-open opportunities in the field today.”

The editor described the Harvard comics group, saying, “It was informal, maybe a half-dozen members. Chuck Wooley was extremely knowledgeable about comics, and had a folklore perspective.”

In short order, Wooley would, with comics art expert Jerry Weist, establish The Million Year Picnic, a renowned Cambridge comic shop, as well as author of Wooley’s History of the Comic Book, a 1986 monograph about early super-hero antecedents.

The publication lasted for three issues, each with its own title change — the second being Crimmer’s: The Harvard Journal of Pictorial Fiction [Winter ’75] and, lastly, Crimmer’s: The Journal of Narrative Arts [Spring ’76] — before yet again morphing (in a fashion) into the longer-lasting Ariel: A Fantasy Magazine, a slick, oversize publication. Durwood explained that there was no “big story” behind the well-produced Crimmer’s: “It was

This page: Years after their involvement with Morningstar Press and Ariel Books, Gil Kane and Richard Corben met at a Wichita comic convention. “He told me his parting from Morningstar Press was far from friendly,” Corben shared, “and that it was one of the most unhappy times of his life.” According to Mediascene #16 (where the centerspread at top appeared), Kane had big plans while working with MSP, an ambitious graphic novel titled The Flame Horse. The artist would, according to Corben, critique and approve Bloodstar pages.

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This page: Another ambitious project put together by Gil Kane was Excalibur! (unrelated to the contemporaneous John Boorman film of the same name), which involved a book to be followed up by a pair of graphic novels. The artist enlisted novelist John Jakes to help and the prose novel was published by Dell in 1980, but the comics component was aborted. At left might be a portfolio pencil piece related to the King Arthur adaptation, which purchaser Kirk Dilbeck had inked by Scott Williams, though Kane later pitched another related project to DC, The Dragon King. One of the few remaining artifacts of that pitch appears to be this image at bottom, used as the cover of Amazing Heroes #177 [Mar. ’90] and vignetted here.

just an amateur journal. I had edited my high school newspaper and really enjoyed it.

We put together a few articles and printed 1,000 copies or so.

I was pretty clueless about distribution, so it did not get any kind of circulation. I was happy with the way the three issues turned out. Looking back at them now, it seems fairly pretentious.” He added that the name Crimmer’s had no specific meaning. “Understandably,” Durwood said, “the Harvard administration asked us to stop using the school name, so I made up a name.”

Ariel, the Worm, and King Arthur: Tom Durwood would go on to establish Morning Star Press, which released the first issue of Ariel: A Fantasy Magazine in 1976, with #2–4 published in conjunction with Ballantine Books. “I enjoyed that very much,” he admitted. “We published features on Frank Frazetta and Barry Smith, and illustrations by Jack Kirby, Rich Corben, and Alan Lee, among many others.”

The imprint, to become known as Ariel Books, was co-founded by editor, writer, and art director Armand Eisen, and Mel Eisen, and it had Gil Kane as an unofficial advisor and active agent. Kane’s contributions included enticing another hugely talented comic book creator to adapt one of the raconteur’s favorite stories.

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Richard Corben agreed to do a full-length book for Morning Star, as he explained in 1981, “They had some high ideals about doing graphic novels, whereas [Kane] was going to do some of them but needed other artists. He got in touch with me first, and I had to think about working on that project.”140 More recently the artist said, “They talked a good deal and offered a dream project with a higher page rate than Warren [Publications] was paying.”141 The dream project was Bloodstar (though initially dubbed King of the Northern Abyss), a reworking of “The Valley of the Worm,” the same Robert E. Howard story Kane had adapted in Supernatural Thrillers #3 a few years prior. “The idea of Bloodstar with the star on his head was Gil Kane’s,” Corben said. “[Bloodstar] took about nine months, and… I shipped the stuff to Gil Kane, as he was judging everything to make sure it was okay. Bloodstar is my favorite story so far.” The creator added, “Gil Kane was acting as producer, and he also got the writer John Jakes to add quite a bit of additional material.” Considered by some as the best adaptation of a Howard story, Bloodstar was published as a limited edition hardcover in 1976, crediting Kane and Armand Eisen as co-editors.

According to Mediascene, Jim Steranko’s prozine, Bloodstar was to have a companion hardcover graphic novel, Gil Kane’s The Flame Horse, apparently a sword-&sorcery-slash-science fiction epic not unlike Blackmark.142 Quoted by reporter Phil Seuling (also the most important promoter of comic conventions of the day, progenitor of the direct market, and Kane’s good friend), the artist exclaimed, “Comic books never fully satisfied me as an artist.

And Blackmark? That was just the raw beginnings!”

Alas, despite Mediascene #16 [Nov.–Dec. ’75] sporting a centerspread poster of The Flame Horse — which trumpeted “Sorcery so strange, it could destroy the stars!

Spectacle so savage, it set a world afire!” — the book never appeared. (Interestingly, according to Steranko’s editorial in that issue, Kane had sought out the superstar comics artist to ink the book and, “The request was met with mild surprise… The challenge of working with a skillful storyteller and designer like Gil Kane seemed quite appealing,” though such a creative pairing was, aside from the two-page spread, never to be.)143 After he delivered Bloodstar to the publisher, Corben said, “I learned Gil had left. Years later, my wife and I met Gil at a convention in Wichita. He told me his parting from Morningstar Press was far from friendly, and it was one of the most unhappy times of his life.”Corben, too, had a “painful and embarrassing” experience, offering, “Nobody came out well with them.”144 Throughout the ’70s, Kane’s need for money remained dire. “I was desperately in debt from my divorce,” he said, “and no matter how I kept trying to manage it, the fact is that somewhere, supporting six people and trying to manage on the money I was making, I was just getting deeper and deeper into the hole.”145 And, ever seeking to retain a niche in the book field, he continued to pursue publishing ventures, including an association with science fiction legend Isaac Asimov, with whom the artist hoped to adapt Buck Rogers and, after that fizzled out, a multi-volume graphic novel version of the author’s celebrated Foundation trilogy. That scheme also nixed, this time by Asimov’s publisher.

Undeterred, as usual, Kane developed the notion of joining with a writer acquaintance, John Jakes, who was then enjoying phenomenal success with the best-selling

Jason Drum TM & © the estate of Gil Kane.

At the beginning of the 1970s, Gil Kane still yearns for creator-owned success. Despite their commercial failure, the artist/writer had relished his experience of almost total artistic freedom with his graphic novels, His Name is… Savage and Blackmark, projects the comic book artist had pursued while becoming more and more dissatisfied with the mainstream comics publishers. Ever hoping to become a creator who retained ownership of his creations, Kane perceives opportunity an ocean away.

In ’71, the artist meets with Michel Regnier, better known as the cartoonist Greg and, since ’65, the editor of the European comics anthology Tintin (as well as artist/writer of Achille Talon and writer of the comics Bernard Prince, Comanche, and Bruno Brazil). That same year, Kane had produced some sample pages for a science fiction/fantasy project called Jason Drum, which he offers for sale to Tintin.

The Franco-Belgian comics weekly seems to half-heartedly accept the project since it prints only four panels of Jason Drum’s first two pages, illustrating “2000 Magazine section #44” (dedicated to the astronauts of the year 2000), in Tintin #1203 [Nov. 18, 1971]. Though it shares similarities with Blackmark and Kane’s version of Gullivar Jones (which would appear a year later at Marvel), Jason Drum is an obvious swipe of John Carter, the Martian dwelling hero of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Barsoom” novels.

In July 1978, Gil meets with Greg again, at the San Diego Comic Con. By now, Greg is living in the United States, as head of the American branch of Dargaud, selling French series to U.S. publishers, as well as purchasing U.S. properties for the European market. After meeting with Kane, Greg convinces new Tintin editor André-Paul Duchâteau to finally publish Jason Drum, which had been gathering dust at the Tintin office. To Kane’s delight, the series triumphantly debuts in the Belgian edition of a renewed Tintin weekly, making the cover of #202 [July 1979], an issue only made available to French subscribers.

But between the end of 1978 and March ’79, a medical emergency drastically slows Kane’s productivity. Very late with his obligations, Kane has to employ ghost artists Howard Chaykin and Ernie Colón on his main assignment at the time, Star Hawks. For Jason Drum, Kane reaches out to Joe Staton to help with layouts and, starting with Tintin #205, uninked

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penciled pages are sent to France by Kane... but soon no more pages arrive from the States. Deadlines force Duchâteau to find a new artist to finish up the series and he writes the scripts himself. Belgian artist Franz (with whom Duchâteau collaborated with on Hypérion) inks five pages of Kane’s pencils and pencils and inks the last five of the story himself (in #206 and 207 [Aug. ’78]).

After his recovery, Kane loses contact with Duchâteau and succeeds Russ Manning as artist on the Tarzan Sunday comic strip and, thanks to Greg (who promoted the syndicated comic strip in France), three albums of Star Hawks are published in the early ’80s. Surprisingly, the first are printed in black-&-white by Les éditions du Square and not Dargaud (probably due to bad feelings between Kane and the Tintin publisher). But the next two albums are full-color and sport the Dargaud imprint, replete with new covers by Kane. In 1981, Kane attends the Angoulême comics festival to promote the collections.

In 2006, during this investigation, this writer contacted Fantagraphics publisher and Kane friend Gary Groth, and after some delving into the artist’s archives, he discovered a Jason Drum file, which revealed an astonishing discovery. It turns out that the science fiction/fantasy graphic novel was evidently finished, with 44 fully inked and dialogued pages of pure Gil Kane still waiting to be published! One can only hope a publisher will make the Jason Drum collection a reality soon!

— Jean Depelley The writer acknowledges the kind assistance of André-Paul Duchâteau, Frank Le Gall, Claudine Sterlin, Jérôme Allard, Gwenaël Jacquet, Louis Cance, Patrick Gaumer, Tristan Lapoussière and the Pimpf Forum. This article is dedicated to the memory of Tibet (1931–2010), whose precious help and generosity was crucial to this research.

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All material TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

This page: Gil Kane, an avid Edgar Rice Burroughs fan, drew the Tarzan Sunday strip from July ’79 until Feb. ’81. He also penciled 10 issues of John Carter, Warlord of Mars for Marvel between ’77–’78, and, in 1957, the artist contributed cover art (inset) to a collection of two scarce ERB novels published by Science-Fiction & Fantasy Publications.

“bicentennial” historical fiction series, the Kent Family Chronicles (though only a few years earlier a contributor to Marvel Comics, which also briefly published the writer’s Conan knock-off, Brak the Barbarian). The idea was Excalibur!, an interpretation of the age-old Arthurian myth in both prose and comics form (unrelated to the 1981 John Boorman film of the same name). “It was supposed to be a two-volume sort of Elfquest book,” Kane said. “The first was going to come out as a regular paperback novel and then that was going to be transposed into a two-volume comic book graphic novel.”146 The 509-page Dell paperback — “The stirring saga of King Arthur, a hero caught between savagery and civilization, uniting a nation with the fire of his mighty sword,” or so states the cover blurb — was published in March 1980, giving Kane first billing as co-author before the more recognizable name of John Jakes, at the insistence of the best-selling writer. (Roy Thomas recalled, “Gil felt that John Jakes wasn’t especially good at coming up with plots, but that the quality of his language was impressive.”)

“Unfortunately, several things happened,” Kane related. “One was the novel didn’t move. I don’t know why it didn’t move because Jakes was at his absolute peak. It moved to the extent that they had about three printings. But they had a change in editorship at Dell, which I found out happens very regularly at paperback houses. And all the people who were so enthused about the idea had left. So there was nobody there to support it! So we still had the money and ended up with $65,000, and that was it. We never got any further royalties.”147 Kane did produce some pages for the envisioned two-volume graphic novel, but perhaps surprisingly — given some Kane collectors (including this writer) searched high and low for the Dell paperback in pre-Internet days, only to be disap-

pointed to find — there are no illustrations therein, and not even Kane cover art.

Kane’s reign as predominant cover artist was over by late 1975 or so, when Jack Kirby returned to Marvel. Aside from startling art gracing a few comics of that era and a breathtaking string of self-inked covers for their waning Western reprint titles commissioned in the later ’70s, opportunities beckoned outside the comic book industry, though not before the artist would finally get his chance to depict a beloved character from his youth, the Burroughs-created warlord of Mars, a concept Kane was known to appropriate time and again.

Martian Chronicles and Jungle Tales: At the start of the ’70s, inspired by John Carter of Mars, the then-ongoing Apollo space missions, and quite likely by his own Bantam paperback creation, Gil Kane first developed a property wholly intended for the European comics market, thus the series remains virtually unknown in the United States. In an accompanying sidebar, French comics historian Jean Depelley reveals that the genesis of sword-wielding science fiction character Jason Drum, began around the time of Blackmark, though the first few completed pages were shelved and the story finally commissioned by the French-Belgian weekly comics magazine Tintin, with Kane finishing 15 pages before sidelined by a brief illness. Suffice to convey, the artist was widening his international contacts and enjoying increased recognition from comic fans the world over, as well as returning yet again to the Edgar Rice Burroughs oeuvre for inspiration, a realm that the creator directly mined from the latter ’70s into the early ’80s.

In 1977, Marvel secured the license from the Burroughs estate and an editor/writer at the House of Ideas snagged the assignment, one who also longed to have his favorite boyhood artist draw the series.

“While I was growing up,” Marv Wolfman remembered, “I didn’t know who drew what comics, but I found myself gravitating toward the science fiction stories Gil Kane drew for Mystery in Space and Strange Adventures, and because I loved reading SF, Green Lantern was my favorite and Gil my favorite artist of that time.”148 The scribe, best known in the ’70s for his impressive run on Tomb of Dracula at Marvel, had worked with Kane in the late ’60s, soon after Wolfman’s arrival as a young comics pro, though not so much in collaboration. “I don’t remember any early meetings with Gil at all,” Wolfman explained. “He did draw the Teen Titans Donna Troy [Wonder Girl] origin story that I wrote back then and I was thrilled that he did. I’m sure we ran onto each other up at the offices.

Star Hawks TM & © the respective copyright holder.

It is strange I can’t remember much about them.” But the writer was impressed with the artist’s presence, sharing, “As for his looks, Gil was tall, lanky, and carried himself with a bit of an aristocratic demeanor. Perhaps it was that demeanor which kept me from talking to him much in those early days. But I did think he was one of the few artists I had met who totally drew characters who sort of looked like him.”

Though Wolfman doesn’t precisely recall their previous work together on Werewolf by Night and Daredevil, “I would have always wanted to work with him on a series.”

And then came an opportunity when Marvel grabbed the rights. “Gil, who lived and breathed the Burroughs material,” Wolfman explained, “was selected to be the artist from the beginning, and I lobbied for the chance to write Carter, an assignment I secured, which thrilled me to no end.”

Kane penciled ten issues of John Carter, Warlord of Mars, relatively a substantial run for an artist who was not apt to stay long on any series during the ’70s. “But Gil’s work at this time was very loose,” said Wolfman, “and we needed someone to ink it who could tighten it up. I would have gone with Dave Cockrum, who inked the first issue, if I recall, and loved Carter as much as Gil, but Dave was not fast enough to do the series on a regular basis. I selected Rudy Nebres to give it the Burroughs ‘pulp’ look and thought he gave the book exactly the look I was hoping for.

But Rudy overwhelmed Gil’s pencils, which, as I said, were really loose, little tighter than layouts. I think if anyone, Gil included, had inked the book, they would have had to add a lot to it, too. I know Gil loved Dave’s inking but, as I say, there was sadly no way to get him to do it monthly. If he was able to I would have assigned it to him without a moment’s hesitation.”

Sometime during the 1970s, plans were in motion for Kane — and an uncredited Roy Thomas — to do a spinoff of what he called a major inspiration for Tarzan, the adventures of Mowgli, the legendary youngster raised by wolves. A newspaper account from 1976 notes, “Current activity in his ever churning pace of artistic output is the start of a comic book series called Wolf Boy, patterned after Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book. Mr. Kane calls Kipling one of the best adventure writers…”149 Though reporter Bill McDonald relates, “His wife, Elaine, was ‘even as we speak’ delivering the latest pencil drawings to the editor in New York since the deadline was close,” the project was shelved for six or seven years by Marvel, but it did eventually see print in Marvel Fanfare #8–11, finely inked

by P. Craig Russell.

During the Star Hawks run, the artist re-teamed with writer Archie Goodwin to produce the adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ most famous character, from mid-1979 to early ’81, for 84 weeks of the Tarzan syndicated Sunday newspaper strip. “I used to do the Tarzan page in one day,” Kane said, “and after a while, it ran down. I structured the first episode and they didn’t like my syntax, so I called on Archie Goodwin to do the scripting. But it was my story based on Kipling’s Captains Courageous, taking a spoiled kid who gets lost in the jungle and Tarzan teaches him to be unselfish and a good scout.”150 (Of the Kane-Goodwin friendship, Roy Thomas said, “I think Gil found a better intellectual rapport with Archie Goodwin, who was his other favorite collaborator. But Gil liked us in different ways and we were two of the people he most appreciated working with.”)

Star Hawks: Connecticut’s Fairfield County was home to a great number of artists, many of them nationally syndicated cartoonists who were envied by the numerous comic book artist locals dreaming of having their own daily strips, Gilbert Eli Kane included. Among Kane’s neighbors in Wilton was the mystery/science fiction novelist (and pop culture historian) Ron Goulart, who had previously teamed with the artist on an issue of Warlock and adaptation of a Robert Bloch horror story during Goulart’s brief stint at the Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

House of Ideas. By the later ’70s, the two would embark, at the behest of the Newspaper Enterprise Association, on a three-and-a-half year stint producing a precedent-setting — and exceptional — “space opera,” cited by historian R.C. Harvey as “the most imaginative innovation in the newspaper strip since adventure stories invaded the funnies.”151 Circumstances converged in 1976 when NEA director of comic art John “Flash” Fairfield was in search of a “Star Trek kind of thing.”152 The NEA man was hoping to see realized a double-size daily comic strip, and that, combined with the serendipity of Fairfield’s librarian wife recognizing the name of Ron Goulart, as well as the availability of one Gil Kane were coming together to facilitate the development of a science fiction strip.

Certainly Kane was, as ever, in search of profitable ventures and, of course, yearning to join the “aristocracy” of syndicated comic strip artists at the National Cartoonists Society, but what launched the NEA property was the success of Star Wars, released in the spring

This page: One of the most exciting developments in Gil Kane’s career took place in the realm of the newspaper comic strips with his and writer Ron Goulart’s innovative Star Hawks. Two prose novels, scribed by Goulart, with Kane illos, were also published.

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This page: What made Star Hawks such an innovation was, at least for its early run, its use of two-tier space, an area Kane would experiment with panel sizes and layout variations. It was the equivalent, the artist said, of producing a comic book page every day. Also, the double-space was reduced to single tier by Aug. ’79. Above is the first Sunday strip, Oct. 9, 1977. Below is a Star Hawks print by the artist, perhaps produced as part of the NEA syndicate pitch package.

#11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Star Hawks TM & © the respective copyright holder.

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of ’77. All of these circumstances merged to result in a career highlight for the artist, helping to usher in a decade of change, innovation, and excellence for Gilbert Eli Kane.

With its Oct. 1977 debut, what made Star Hawks unique (as well as giving it a debilitating commercial flaw) was the two-tier layout, with which the artist did not merely place one horizontal strip atop another, but he devised ever-varying panel sizes, taking graphic advantage of the allotted space with great imagination. In an age when adventure continuities were few and far between, and the size of strips ever shrinking, Star Hawks was an impressive sight to behold. Unfortunately, not many newspapers were willing to make room for any new strip — never mind twice the space — thus, by the end of July 1979, the continuity was reduced to a single tier. The strip finally gave up the ghost in the spring of ’81.

The Space: 1970 blog aptly described the science fiction strip: “Star Hawks was a pulpy concoction that chronicled the adventures of Interplanetary Law Service officers Rex Jaxan, Chavez, and Alice K, as they battled a procession of interstellar criminals and miscreants.

The strip actually took place in Goulart’s ‘Barnum System,’ a scifi setting he used in many of his original novels… and, in 1980– 81, Goulart even published two Star Hawks prose novels [respectively] titled Empire 99 and The Cyborg King.”153 During the strip’s run, in 1978, Kane suffered a medical emergency and, given a recovery period was needed, he enlisted the help of a one-time assistant who was quickly becoming a major artist in his own right. “I ghosted a month’s worth of Star Hawks at one point, when Gil was sick,” Howard Chaykin said, “and the greatest compliment I ever received was when it was

assumed that it was Gil’s pencils and my inks, which meant that I had gotten into Gil’s head from a design perspective.” Comics veteran Ernie Colón recalled his ghosting stint on Star Hawks as, “Very flattering and very flattening. I didn’t come close to Gil’s gifted draftsmanship.”154 (All the while, the artist tried (unsuccessfully) to launch other strips as well, including The Kingsblood Stallion, based in the West and showcasing one of Kane’s true specialties: depicting horses and other animals in dynamic fashion. “He could draw dogs and horses,” exclaimed Neal Adams. “Nobody in comics could draw dogs and horses! Gil understood anatomy. Only Gil Kane could do Rex, the Wonder Dog! Maybe Alex Toth could do a little Johnny Thunder, but really if you want horses galloping and jumping and dogs running and guys in action and punching each other, there was nobody like Gil Kane!”)

Star Hawks did earn Gil Kane recognition by his peers at the NCS, winning the “Best Story Strip” award in 1977, and the artist reveled in the increased prestige, hosting with wife Elaine any number of soirées. “We used to have weekend parties in Wilton,” Elaine said, “and they would all come up, because it was a big house and we had a pool. Leonard Starr would come. If they were coming in from Europe, they would visit. And the area had so many cartoonists. We’d be at their house, they’d be at our house.”

Gil’s son, Scott, recalled, “Those big parties, those big bashes, they were the best. He had so many interesting, creative, and intelligent guests. And a lot of these people, since they were family guests, I didn’t realize how great they were and it was only later on when I learned that Hergé, Burne Hogarth… what an influence they had been.

All these interesting people coming, like Al Jaffee… and also of great importance was Harvey Kurtzman, a great friend of my dad. Together they would just speak for hours.

It was almost like jazz! When my dad would be talking, he would improvise like a jazz musician and he had great people to verbally ‘jam’ with.”

Scott continued, “What I remember best were the dinner conversations, with guests and without. My father would pontificate on different subjects — art and culture and comics — and I would encourage him. I knew it was a passing stage of my life and I always felt that I’d better soak this up because one day it was going to be just a memory. So those dinner conversations really stand out as being the closest with my dad.”

One can imagine, given that the notion of collective bargaining periodically arose in the industry, that an informed and progressive social creature such as Gil Kane would participate in supporting a united front. In fact, back in the early ’50s, when the industry was flush, onetime comic book artist Harry Harrison recalled that Kane had attended meetings of the Society of Comic Book Illustrators, of which Harrison was treasurer.155 By the 1970s, when the Academy of Comic Book Arts was being organized, Roy Thomas recalled that Kane was dubious about its chances.

“I think he was skeptical of ACBA,” Thomas said, “be-

Talos of the Wilderness Sea, Superman and related characters TM & © DC Comics.

cause he didn’t think it would amount to much. He wasn’t big on the labor union aspect of it, though he may have liked the general idea.” (Though it would take Kane’s friend and peer seven years to accomplish through ACBA, Neal Adams would spearhead a drive for artists to retain their original art, which resulted in an added source of income for Kane during this dire period.)

Gil Kane also became involved with the local community, as well as greater academia, lending an effort with the Wilton Art Council Festival, and also lecturing about comics at New York area universities and, according to The Bridgeport Post in 1976, at Harvard, Amherst, and Berkeley.156 “For a semester,” Elaine remembered, “he taught a class at New York University, at their uptown campus. The kids had gotten together and insisted that he come up there to teach. But he wouldn’t do it again, though the class was overflowing, because he said he wasn’t one for grading papers and all of the work that goes with teaching.” (In that Bridgeport Post feature, the artist pontificated, “Comics are going to rise to the level of the most articulate reader. It happened with movies and jazz. It depends on how articulate a person is handling it. Comics are satisfying all sorts of levels now, not yet intellectual, but at least emotional.”)157

Part Five: Pinnacle Return to Page Rates: The 1980s ushered in remarkable advances for the comic book creator, an accomplished virtuoso now in his fifties, a period when Kane’s facility would give the artist his greatest satisfaction and also a time that would finally alleviate the perpetual financial difficulties that had plagued Gil and Elaine for innumerable years. But it was a decade not without disappointment, as Star Hawks was cancelled in May 1981, after some 1,250 strips (with writers Archie Goodwin and then Roger McKenzie, respectively, replacing Goulart, whose contract was not renewed by an incoming NEA editor). Plus, as before with projects such as His Name is… Savage and Blackmark, Excalibur! failed to gain traction and the artist looked to the work-for-hire marketplace for assignments.

Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

By that time, the comic book direct market was in full swing, and independent publishers were vying to attract top-flight talent such as Gil Kane, but the artist still had a substantial financial obligations weighing on him and, at that stage, only the major publishers could afford his talents. Plus, any offer would have to pique his infatuations. “I could do an erotic book, any book on assignment, and have the enthusiasm of knowing it’s bringing bread onto the table,” he said. “But at the same time, I’m not doing anything that satisfies me. Don’t mistake me: I’m not looking for high-level material; I’m not looking for writing about historical figures or something. I figure all I can bring to anything is a certain pulp facility.”

Kane added with a chuckle, “I mean, I’ve got the pulp situation stamped on my mind and it runs through my blood. If you cut my veins, I would bleed pulp.”158 The artist continued, “During the course of my life, my wife is constantly telling me, ‘Why don’t you write a book?’ Because I have a lot of stories about when I was growing up and lived the kind of boyhood that was very, very rich, and I think about it. But, Jesus, I’ve read all that stuff in [Henry Roth’s] Call It Sleep, in [James T. Farrell’s] Studs Lonigan, I read it in all these things. I was so typical. Rich, yes, but typical.”159 And Kane would yet again dive deep into his bag of pulp tropes, this time revisiting the sword-&-sorcery realm of Robert E. Howard’s Cimmerian. Only now the artist gave the property a rare, singular dedication, perhaps a short-lived attempt to become associated with a character, though more likely an extended assignment that fortuitously arrived given the demise of Star Hawks. Kane’s 1981 Conan work totaled some 266 pages for eight (sometimes roughly laid-out) issues of the regular title, an annual, and an issue of the character’s black-&-white magazine.

In the back pages of Savage Sword of Conan during that year, Kane also introduced “Chane of the Golden Hair,” an undistinguished sword-&sorcery feature that lasted three 10- or 11-page installments. About Kane’s predilection for creating clever character names, Roy Thomas said, “Gil had a list of a couple of columns that he showed me a time or two… names that he wanted to use for characters… which he’d drag out when we started talking about doing some stuff. (He was good with names, as 63

Above: The Comical Funnies editorial crew gave us this behind-the-scenes tour of the CF empire. Our own J.D. King, the tabloid’s associate editor, joined with Holmstrom and Bagge to produce a full-pager that graced the opening strip in CF #3. Below: P.B.’s decidedly non-PC cover for CF #2.

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with Adam Warlock: I came up with Warlock and he came up with Adam.) The one name I have always felt guilty about, which lodged in my head but hadn’t recalled that it was on Gil’s list, was Cage, which ended up being the name for a Marvel character, Luke Cage, and [subsequently] an Academy Award-winning actor, Nicholas Cage! I guess I subconsciously borrowed that from Gil’s list, and it was only after I had suggested it to Stan as a name for the character in the Marvel series when I realized that. I apologized to Gil, who took it in stride. And I remember that the name ‘Chane’ was on that list. I thought it was one of his best, but I don’t remember any of the others.”

“It would have been good for him to have stuck with a character,” Thomas said. “The closest he came was Spider-Man, but with that character Gil was always aware that he was filling in for John Romita and that was certainly true in Stan’s eyes. So he got some association as a Spider-Man artist, but nothing like he had with Green Lantern and The Atom. I think it would have done him good,

but it just wasn’t in the cards. If he had worked at it, he probably could have, but he always had so many irons in the fire that it was sometimes very hard for him to focus on the one character on which he needed to concentrate.

Partly that was due to the fact that he wanted to work on other things and make his mark, but they weren’t always bringing in money. He was constantly driven from pillar to post between his artistic needs and economic requirements. I think it’s amazing that he did the great work he did considering the things that were tearing him apart. Of course, a lot of those things were of his own making, but that’s true with most of us.”

Back in Action: By ’82, the artist was contributing equally to the top two comics publishers, but in June, Kane signed an exclusive contract with DC, resulting in his being the main cover artist for a spell, as well as taking on some interior jobs. The Comics Journal reported at the time, “As a full-time DC artist, his assignments will probably include both writing and drawing the German editions of Super#11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Superman TM & © DC Comics.

Previous page: Kane’s Superman collaboration with writer Marv Wolfman gave us an artist at the peak of his powers.

The spread at top ballyhooing the series, appeared in DC Sampler #1 [1983]. Below is a detail of The Comics Journal #78 [Dec. ’82] cover featuring Talos of the Wilderness Sea, originally planned as a 12-issue series written by Jan Strnad in the early ’80s. Alas, Kane’s animation career would stall that project and, in 1987, a one-shot special would appear from DC. This page: Pages from the remarkable Kane/Wolfman story, “What if Superman Didn’t Exist?,” Action #554 [Apr. ’84].

Sword of the Atom TM & © DC Comics.

man. Kane is also said to be developing a new super-hero concept with Len Wein and his own mini-series concept, but neither has been approved by publisher Jenette Kahn as yet.”160 The proposal was a limited-run title entitled Talos of the Wilderness Sea, which collaborator Jan Strnad described to Amazing Heroes. “It’s kind of like ‘Moses the Barbarian,’” the writer quipped, “but it’s a little better than that.”161 Alas, the story wouldn’t see print until years later and, even then, in truncated form, as a one-shot special. “Jan was enthusiastic and wrote a comprehensive development of my outline,” the artist explained in Talos of the Wilderness Sea #1’s text page. “Talos would be twelve issues, a maxi-series with a real epic quality, a true saga,”162 but difficulties arose prompting Strnad to bail from the job.

“What happened with Talos was this,” Strnad explained. “I was trying rather desperately to make a living as a comic book writer without a continuing series. I like telling stories with beginnings, middles, and ends, and I wasn’t sure how good I’d be at sustaining a monthly book, (which is why I turned down an ongoing Sword of the Atom series).”163 “Anyway,” the scribe continued, “we had the bare bones of the Talos story and a contract with DC to produce it, and I began writing, but Gil kept going off to do other things such as covers and concept art for animation houses. The animation work was particularly well-paying compared with comics, and he produced some gorgeous work that was largely seen only by development executives (and bore little relation to the resulting cartoon series).”

The crux of the problem was their method of collaborating. “I worked ‘Marvel style’ with Gil, rather than writing full scripts,” he explained, “so I didn’t actually get paid until I’d turned in a final script based on the artwork. Only Gil wasn’t producing the art! It was very frustrating to me and to DC both. Then one day, [DC executive editor] Dick Giordano called to talk about Talos and he offered to let me out from the contract. ‘Let you out from the contract’ might have been an offer or it might have been a kinder way of saying, ‘We’re killing the project,’ I don’t know. But I took Dick up on it, so I could quit being mad at Gil and concentrate on other work. We later managed to squeak out a one-shot of Talos.”

During that era, any number of Kane’s fellow comic book stalwarts were beginning to slow down. Jack Kirby was winding up his comics career with some creator-owned work at Pacific. Increasing focused on his titular art school, Joe Kubert resigned as DC Comics editor and concentrated on more personally satisfying material.

Alex Toth had all but vanished from the field, devoted instead to correspondence and, if whim would have it, the rare art job. Harvey Kurtzman was beset by illness with only enough energy to finish up From Aargh! To Zap! Comics history book and a few other projects, to some just lending his name. Yet while his peers were taking it down a notch, in his own way, Gil Kane was just getting started.

Two of his 1980s assignments stand out as particularly excellent examples of his finest work-for-hire material, produced when his inking was improving tremendously. “[A]t one point,” Kane said, “when I felt it was essential to assert myself and to start by becoming competitive, I made an effort, through Superman and Sword of the Atom, to do work that was on a more competitive level artistically. But it didn’t represent, from my point of view, my best effort; it simply represented the effort I was capable of, considering the amount of time I was spending on it.”164 Between 1982 and ’84, Kane penciled, inked, and co-plotted, with writer Marv Wolfman, a stunning run on Superman in Action Comics. “I thought our Superman collaboration was the best thing we ever did together,” Wolfman opined. “I always got the impression Gil didn’t think much of my work — or me — but when we worked together, it was magic. Because I was such a huge fan of Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

his, I was so aware of Gil’s strengths and, whether he realized it or not, I always wrote to them.”

Wolfman continued, “By this time, Gil seemed to need to hurry through his work, which resulted in a lot of stock poses, but his Superman was brilliant and different, and he kept finding new ways to portray Superman.

I had very firm ideas as to what Superman was and should be, and I still have. But we were limited in doing everything I wanted, because there were other Superman titles being published at the same time, and our Superman couldn’t be radically different from theirs. But, considering that, I thought we did some really good work and would have loved to continue with Gil. And by the way, I was told our Superman, which appeared in Action Comics, outsold the main Superman title for the first time in decades.”

Aside from the invigorated artistry of Kane and a prevailing sense that an epic was in the building, of note was the team’s re-invention of Brainiac (rede65

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This spread: Presentation work from Gil Kane’s tenure in the animation industry during the 1980s and early ’90s. The two vignetted figures are for a show called Future Force (courtesy of Tim Burgard). Whether the top right is a character redesign for Captain Planet is unknown (piece courtesy of Heritage). The top left, obviously Kane’s work, was erroneously included in the Jack Kirby: The Unpublished Archives trading card set from Comic Images. #11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

All material TM & © the respective copyright holders. Superman TM & © DC Comics.

signed by Ed Hannigan) as a malevolent robot and also a story, appearing in Action Comics #554, that imagined a universe without the Man of Tomorrow… a tale that costarred two of the most renowned creative teams in the history of comics.

“As for the ‘If Superman Didn’t Exist’ story,” Wolfman confessed, “it’s my absolute favorite from that time. It’s also one of those stories that was not at all planned. I went into the office and pitched [editor] Julie [Schwartz] the story I originally meant to write that issue (don’t ask what it was; I no longer remember).

As always, Julie and I went over it with lots of give and take, and, maybe an hour later, we finished and I left his office, assignment in hand. Then something happened and this new story suddenly came to me. Complete from beginning to end. I went back to Julie’s office and said I decided on doing a different story instead and pitched the ‘If Superman…’ story. That Julie was willing to drop a story he already approved to listen to my new idea still boggles the mind.”

Wolfman continued, “Julie okayed it and I went home to write out the full plot. As I did with all my collaborations with Gil, we were doing it plot style rather than full script. The entire idea was simple: the memory of Superman — and, in fact, all super-heroes — was removed from our collective memories by an alien race. The heroes no longer existed. Even more than that, the heroic ideal no longer existed. That’s the way the aliens took over worlds: they removed the very concept of heroism, so nobody would think to resist them.”

Thinly veiled childhood versions of Superman co-creators Jerome Siegel and Joseph Shuster are introduced into the story. “But despite [the otherworldly meddling], two kids from Cleveland, Jerry and Joe (no last names) started coming up with ideas to stop the aliens,” Wolfman explained. “Jerry would come up with the ideas and Joe would draw them. Step by step, they thought about what was needed if one was to stop the aliens, then solved them by developing their new fictional hero, Superman. Once the kids’ character existed in Joe’s art, the heroic ideal returned and Superman was re-created and defeated the aliens. All because two kids had imaginations and used them to save the world. At the end of the story, two other unrelated kids, Joe and Jack (Simon? Kirby?) started coming

up with their own hero ideas. The concept of the hero was back in force, and the idea of people having imaginations would never be stifled again.”

About the artwork, the writer enthused, “Gil did an incredible job, although since he was working from a plot he took some really cool action at the end as Superman destroys the alien fleet, and simplified it more than I had hoped. But, nonetheless, it’s my favorite of all my Superman stories with him. (By the way, Jerry Siegel wrote an incredible fan letter thanking us for story. I still have it. As Superman was/is my favorite comic book super-hero, to get a gushing fan letter from his creator, saying he and Joe both loved the story, was a total thrill.)”

The Kane/Wolfman team would last for 10 issues of Action Comics and Kane’s two German Superman Album stories (one of which he scripted) were translated and reprinted as Superman Specials in ’83 and ’84. About the material, Howard Chaykin said, “I loved Gil’s Superman work.

It didn’t look anything like Jack Burnley or Wayne Boring; his was from another world. I’ve never been a constituent of Curt Swan and never understood the appeal of his work.

Gil’s stuff gave the character an energetic balance.”

Atom Strange: Another eye-popping and imaginative collaboration of that era was Kane and writer Jan Strnad’s radical reboot of the diminutive super-hero the artist had introduced in 1961. Regarding Sword of the Atom, Kane said, “What I decided was that we might resurrect him as a sword-&-sorcery character, and in effect we would have all his qualities except that he would be frozen at the sixinch size and would have to deal with all the dangers that a strip set in the Amazon would provide.”165 “I met Gil [in 1982] at a convention in Dallas,” Strnad said. “He told me of a project that he had in mind, involving the Atom, and wondered if I would write it. I said, ‘Sure, great!’ I was tickled pink because Gil… was one of my favorites when I was a kid and I loved the old Atom he did. So I was real excited about it and took him up on it, of course.” He added, “[I]t sounded more interesting to me because it was going to ‘un-super-hero’ the Atom.”166 “Gil’s pitch to me,” the writer said, was ‘The Atom’s lost in the Everglades and trapped at his six-inch size. He finds an alien civilization and falls in love with an alien princess.’

That was about it, and it was plenty. I changed his size to one-inch and changed the Everglades [setting] to the Amazon, but otherwise it’s Gil’s premise.”

Fans were incensed about one aspect of the revision, the writer revealed. “One of the controversial changes at the time was that Gil ripped off the top of the Atom’s cowl.

The effect was more dynamic than the smooth dome of the original. Once a fan was complaining to Gil about it and he replied that, as the designer of the original costume, ‘I giveth and I taketh away.’ I always appreciated the new look.”

Indeed, the character is trapped at Incredible Shrinking Man stature, given a blade to wield, frog to saddle, and damsel to woo. Surprisingly, though, the four-issue mini-series and subsequent three annual specials are more than a mere sword-spectacle, the faux real-life and decidedly non-pulpish subplot of the dissolution of Ray and Jean Palmer’s marriage adds an unexpected poignancy, which speaks to the strengths of Kane’s newest collaborator, who also teamed with artists Richard Corben (on Mutant World) and Dennis Fujitake (on Dalgoda). “I felt his quality would be right,” Kane said, “a turnaway from the standard approaches to writing super-hero material. There was always a great deal of character and mood in his work, and

All material TM & © the respective copyright holders. Superman TM & © DC Comics.

very often an emphasis on stillness: his writing didn’t always have characters in action, but there was always something happening to them.”167 “It had always seemed to me,” Strnad said, “even as a kid reading the original Atom series — which I loved — that Ray and Jean had a really sick relationship, one based on secrecy rather than sharing. I know that if I learned to shrink myself, the first person I’d tell would be my wife, but Ray keeps his ability secret from Jean, goes on adventures he never tells Jean about, secretly bolsters her career, misses dates, and never explains — that’s not a healthy relationship… not much of a relationship at all, really.”

Strnad continued, “So I just extrapolated from there and split them up. It’s all summed up in the dialogue where Jean says, ‘When we had some cash and I wanted to buy a cabin in the woods, what did you spend the money on?’ And Ray says, ‘I bought a portable scintillation detector…’ That detector not only breaks up his marriage, but leads him to the Amazon where he has his adventure. By the end, they’re more estranged than ever as Ray’s found his true calling as a barbarian hero.”

(Now on the cusp of retirement, the writer confessed, “To this day, Sword of the Atom remains one of my favorite works. I feel really privileged to have collaborated with Gil and to have had such a great premise to work from.”)

Aside from the superior quality of Strnad’s scripting, it is the knock-out artwork by Gil Kane that makes Sword of the Atom a highpoint during an exceptionally fertile time in the American comic book scene. Whether or not intellectually invested in the work, the artist was never better in both his layouts and his inking. Just after this period, in 1986, when he would turn 60, the artist admitted to Gary Groth that he regretted not having many more years ahead to produce work of such excellence.168 The Good Life: During the 1980s, the animation industry, which was producing material for children’s television, was hiring any number of comic book artists to create their Saturday morning cartoon assignments. “When the kids were all out of school and gone,” Elaine said, “we were going to go back to the city — because we didn’t need the house in Connecticut anymore — and since Gil was always talking about the animation studios in California, I said to him, ‘Why don’t we do it! There’s nothing holding us back.’ Everything for the comic publishers went through the mail and they could confer on the phone, so he could live anywhere to keep working. And we moved. It was very good, doing the storyboards and presentations, and it was very lucrative.” The couple would reside at San Vincente Boulevard and Kiowa Avenue, respectively, during their Los Angeles stay.

Indeed, the artist would thereafter call his time in the Golden State, in the later ’80s and early ’90s, as one of the best periods in his life, when his debt was finally minimized, his work well compensated and quite appreciated by both employer and co-worker. “When I got to California,” he said, “I started to make money hand over fist.”169 Kane’s son, who would live for a short time with Gil and Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

Elaine, recalled, “Sergio Aragonés welcomed my dad out to California and showed him the ropes and introduced him to people.”

Kane described how he broke into the field: “I went over to Marvel [Animation] and applied, and they gave me work right away. They gave me several storyboards. So I was doing storyboards, and I wasn’t doing them all that well, but people liked the drawings. They started to give me presentations and I got shafted on the prices. Then I got a call by Ruby-Spears by a guy who turned out to be a fan of mine, John Dorman, and he offered me this job at more money than I could ever make at Marvel, and it was just great! I had about five years of an unbroken ride, just got better and better, and my work got better. I was doing comics on the side every now and then.”170 Jim Woodring, today one of America’s preeminent cartoonists, was then employed in the art department at Ruby-Spears. “My friend John Dorman was running the storyboard department, which is why I was working there — pure nepotism,” Woodring said. “John hired super-hero cartoonists who he admired as a kid, as many he could. Alex Toth, Jack Kirby, Alfredo Alcala, and Gil Kane worked there, and I think Mike Sekowsky did work for that department, and they only got the chance to work there because John had grown up loving their work.”

“I remember the day when Gil first walked in,” Woodring continued. “My co-workers and I were all in our early thirties and Gil walked in — he was approaching his sixties — and he walked into the room with such a hail-fellow-well-met, open-handed and open-hearted way about him that everybody immediately took to him right away. I’ve seldom seen something like that happen. He 67

would speak frequently by phone, as Groth said in a remembrance. “I would call him as often as I dared and just talk. Or, rather, listen…

Think of the enthusiastic conversational rhythms of Martin Scorsese channeled through George Sanders. It was an inspiration.”172 Kane and Groth would also share meals, at least once every week and, for a time, the two were joined every month or so by Burne Hogarth, one of the founders of the School of Visual Arts and a renowned cartoonist, and a formidable conversationalist.

Groth related in a Comics Journal memorial:

This page: One of Gil Kane’s most gratifying projects from the latter years was his collaboration with writer Roy Thomas on the four-issue adaptation of Richard Wagner’s opera, The Ring of the Nibelung, published

by DC Comics and seeing print in the early 1990s. Upon publication, the collection received rave reviews not only from the general community (including The New York Times), but also from opera circles, which became a great source of pride for the duo.

Woodring, whose job at Ruby-Spears included the coloring of Kane and Kirby’s presentation drawings, mused about the appeal of his new friend. “Maybe the outstanding characteristic about Gil is that he was a great raconteur,” he said. “He knew that I liked to hear stories about the Golden Age of American cartooning and so he would tell me these (possibly embroidered) tales of these parties that people would have where feelings ran high, and there were feuds and love triangles, and there was lots and lots of exuberant creative wildness that was coming out of all these cartoonists.”

In an interview conducted by Groth, Woodring said about their mutual friend holding court during a meal, sharing reminiscences of Kane doubtless spiced with a bit of hyperbole, but capturing perfectly the melodious tenor and tone of the raconteur: Yeah, it was great going out with Gil, going out to lunch and hearing him talk about life and about cartooning’s past. He really made me feel like I missed out on just about everything good that the cartooning industry has to offer, because he would describe these #11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The Ring of the Nibelung © Roy Thomas and the estate of Gil Kane.

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just charmed a whole room full of people and made them feel that they liked him and wanted to know him better. It was kind of astonishing, especially considering the age difference.”

Asked if he realized that Kane had called his time at Ruby-Spears as among the best in his life, Woodring replied, “Well, he sure seemed up! And when he talked about his life and his career, he described some pretty harrowing incidents regarding serious financial straits. And he did say on occasion how much he liked enjoyed being in our company and working on those jobs. He obviously put a lot of work into them.” Kane would later marvel, “I had never in my life had a job where, after taking a vacation, I would come home to find a small fortune in checks waiting for me, salary checks that I had accumulated.”171 Among the produced series featuring the artist’s contributions were such inane cartoon fare as Centurions; Lazer Tag Academy; Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos; and Bionic Six, as well as a cartoon adaptation of a Sylvester Stallone film series. Kane’s son, Scott, recalled an amusing incident while living with Elaine and Gil: “I was home one weekend when they were away and, at the time, my father was working on Rambo cartoons, and I got a call from the studio asking me to tell my dad, ‘Take out the scene where Rambo is feeding the deer’! The only benevolent scene in the whole cartoon and they wanted him to take it out.”

Friendships: Though 28 years the artist’s junior, comics industry enfant terrible Gary Groth would become Gil Kane’s professed best friend by the early ’80s, as was Kane to Groth. The pair had first met during a 1976 comics convention and they commenced a relationship prior to both living in Connecticut, with Groth’s publishing company, Fantagraphics, reprinting His Name is… Savage, in ’82, and The Comics Journal, Groth’s interview and criticism magazine, frequently including Kane’s insights and memories. The friends

I remember one, singular exchange during that long evening in particular. The conversation was all over the place, as usual, ranging through history to art to films to comics to whatever was at hand with which to make a point or rebut a proposition, and at some point Gil dismissed one of his contemporaries pointedly as a hack… Burne immediately turned to Gil and asked, “How do you see yourself?” This was typically impolite of Burne, but, I’m convinced, asked in the spirit of genuine inquiry rather than any attempt to score a cheap point. Nonetheless, the conversation stopped dead until Gil answered resignedly, but unflinchingly: “I’m a hack.” It was a profoundly existential moment, and, to this day, the momentary silence after Burne’s question followed by Gil’s answer is etched in memory.

Few of us, I think, have the honesty or the wherewithal to face the chasm between our aspirations and our limitations without fudging or rationalizing, and I still regard this as a defining moment, an act of integrity and courage.173

Green Lantern TM & © DC Comics. Re-creation artwork © the estate of Gil Kane.

meetings and shows at the [National] Cartoonists [Society], gatherings where Rube Goldberg and Walt Kelly and Milton Caniff and other luminaries would absolutely scintillate. And he would describe these parties that cartoonists had at their houses back east, and the way he described ’em just made my glands swell. He would say, “My boy, you simply had to be there. It was a time when the sap gushed forth, when men and women were bursting with raw animal intensity that could not be held in check, and when diners in heavily curtained restaurants would succumb to the musk-laden atmosphere and copulate joyfully on the tables among the radishes.” He’d say, “My boy, I remember going to parties in the winter and beautiful, beautiful women with deliciously overripe bodies and roving eyes, and men with cocks like crowbars. We cartoonists were all like lust-crazed bulls, and the sweet nerve of life throbbed in us until we were all driven out of our minds with passion, which we satisfied with these gorgeous women in languorous, salacious couplings in the snow.”174

While the actual material the Ruby-Spears crew would be recalled by Woodring as being “the most debased, sub-literate drivel, just the most stupid, empty-headed crap I have ever seen in my life,”175 the young man treasured his time with the legendary artist. “I learned a lot about life from Gil,” he shared. “He told me that when he was young, he wasn’t raised… I mean, he didn’t go to finishing school, and when he would meet older guys in the business who knew the ropes and then realized that he didn’t, they would give him life lessons on how to behave, such as don’t wear a hat in a restaurant. The kind of advice old guys can give younger guys — or used to give younger guys, as I don’t know if it happens so much anymore. I sensed that there was a standard that other men expected a man to uphold and they would take it upon themselves to educate young guys. Gil had been a recipient of that when he was young and he did the same thing for me. I learned more from Gil on how to be a responsible social person than I did from anybody else in my life.” Woodring added, “I possibly would not have been as receptive had I been instructed by someone who was too much like my father. They might have rubbed me the wrong way if they had tried to do that.

But Gil was so obviously guileless and just doing it for everybody’s good. He was conspicuously right.”

Kane would also share with the young artist regrets about not producing more significant work. “He used to sort of lament that he couldn’t get beyond pulp,” Woodring said. “I remember watching him go through an evolution with Love and Rockets, because that was coming out when we were working at Ruby-Spears, and I brought it in as an example of something I thought was great. He said, ‘It’s just Archie, my boy!’ I said, ‘You gotta read this, Gil! I know it addresses the concerns of a younger, culturally different audience, but look at the character depth! It’s like a novel, the way people are talking and relating, and look how subtly Jaime draws!’ ‘My boy, it’s just Archie!’

Then, later on, he’d say, ‘I have to admit that sonuvbitch Jaime Hernandez can really draw!’ And then later he’d go, ‘I wish I could do work like Love and Rockets, my boy, but I’m addicted to pulp! It’s the only milieu I know. I can’t do anything but pulp.’ And so he started working on a version of Camelot where the people were on motorcycles instead of horses. He also had a newspaper comic strip idea called Divine’s Comedy about a middle-age man who has a heart attack. The strip starts with him waking up in the hospital and the storyline dealt with how the heart attack gave him a new life, in a way. It was sort of a soap opera and I think that could have been a good newspaper strip. I think Gil was aware that serious narrative work was being done by cartoonists in the ’80s and he wanted to be a part of that.

He was obviously aware of what Will Eisner was doing.

Now that I think of it, Divine’s Comedy was probably going Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

to be his version of A Contract With God.” Woodring, who would go on to critical acclaim for his surreal and near flawlessly drawn Frank and Jim comics, remains grateful for his friendship with the veteran artist, which would endure until Kane’s passing. “He was the perfect guy for me to meet at that time,” the cartoonist said, “because he was a knowledgeable, generous, and amiable guy who knew a lot about the world I was trying to break into, and he blessed me with his friendship and his willingness to educate me.”

Gil Kane was not, however, a universally loved man. Joe Rubinstein, a professional inker who was inspired to choose his vocation because of Kane’s insights in the renowned Alter Ego #10 interview, said in an online interview, “Interestingly enough, I got to ink Kane’s work, and we came to a point where we hated each other… It wasn’t that he disliked what I was doing; it was the manner in which he presented his opinion was pretty abusive, I thought. I was certainly open to correction… but he was just not a nice guy.”176

Above: When request to draw re-creations of his classic comic book covers, Gil Kane often punched them up with his “re-imaginings.” Courtesy of colorist Tim Burgard.

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Certainly Kane could come across as ostentatious, even snooty. “I think he felt he was superior and may have shown that in attitude,” Jules Feiffer said. “He thought he was better than the business he was in. And I’m sure he was. But I also think he was frustrated that he didn’t have an outlet for the part of his life that he used talking to me as an excuse to vent his feelings about. I was lucky early on because I found that outlet, so I never had that sense of frustration, but Gil was trapped in the ghetto of comic books and that world. And there was no avenue for the part of himself that he wanted recognized and be appreciated. So, I suppose, he was thought of as a snob.”

The Village Voice cartoonist’s ultimate opinion of the comic book artist is one of affection. “Gil was a larger-than-life, extremely garrulous and likeable man,” Feiffer said. “As smart as he was, he never used his intelligence, I felt, to out-point any other person who wasn’t as bright as he was.

Oh, he would denounce them, but only when they were out of hearing range. I never found him bullying in his intelligence or his wit.”

Summit and Descent: Only a few years after working on the comic book version of the character, Gil Kane would do his animated cartoon rendition of the Man of Steel, working again with the writer of the DC Comics issues. “I was hired by CBS to be the showrunner for the series,” Marv Wolfman said.

“Oddly, CBS had no idea I wrote the Superman comics.” Through a sequence of events, the scribe was

#11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Edge TM & © Steven Grant & the estate of Gil Kane. The Killing Machine TM & © the estate of Gil Kane.

This page: Gil Kane produced some of his finest drawing for the limited series Edge. Above is an unused piece from that Bravura title, written by Steven Grant, below the cover art for the first issue [July ’94].

selected to helm a cartoon series, and, he remembered, “I wrote a pilot for them (and the production company, Ruby-Spears) and they approved it. I was asked to drop by CBS, where they introduced me to Jenette Kahn, publisher of DC. Of course I’d been working with Jenette for years, but they didn’t know it. I still believe that if they had realized I had written the Superman comic, they never would have hired me, but by then it was too late, and I had written a pilot they liked.”

Wolfman continued, “Gil was on staff at Ruby-Spears, working with the show’s producer, John Dorman. Gil was in charge of the art designs for Superman. His work here was absolutely amazing. I think Gil worked based on what he was paid, and here he was paid to do really great work, and it showed. His designs were simply stunning. I only wish, if they still exist anywhere, that they could be put into a book for everyone to see.”

Tim Burgard was one Ruby-Spears staffer who deeply appreciated Kane’s animation presentations (a few that were wrongly attributed to Jack Kirby in an Unpublished Archives trading card set published in the 1990s), and he would contribute to some of the artist’s commission jobs.

“I started working with Gil when I was given a try-out job inking and coloring a 20" x 30" presentation piece that he had penciled for a proposed time travel show,” Burgard said. “Doug Wildey of Jonny Quest fame came aboard near the end, but Gil Kane and Jack Kirby did the majority of penciling the presentations with myself inking and coloring in-house, along with a few other notable people who have gone on to fame and prestige at Disney and Dreamworks.

Comic book fans will recognize work from Alfredo Alcala and Nestor Redondo on the presentations among the freelance inkers.”177 Burgard continued, “Gil and Jack also did designs for the main characters, that were mostly later shaped into animation friendly designs. I would design the incidental characters that were needed for each episode, but I also did coloring for Gil’s characters. I graduated into storyboarding as well as doing the rest until I was let go, along with others when things got slow. Ruby-Spears had accumulated a treasure trove of art and relied on it when pitching shows. I went onto a freelance career as a storyboard artist.”

Kane would always be appreciative of the money he made during his brief spell in the animation business and the generous income finally relieved the artist of the weight of debt that had burdened the couple for decades, but misfortune was around the corner, though not before a re-teaming with a friend and collaborator to adapt one of the great myths of lore.

“Mike Gold was up at DC,” Thomas said, “and suddenly called me up one day because he had decided that Gil and I should do it, and I was certainly happy about that.” “It” was a comic book version of Wagner’s epic opera cycle based on the Norse myths, The Ring of the Nibelung. “Gil and I had often talked about doing something like that,” he said, “and I may have discussed it previously with Mike, so he knew of my interest in it. I had already adapted part of it in Thor [#293–299], where Inset: Gil Kane and we weaved in the legend.”

Archie Goodwin pitched Thomas’s idea was to a crime series entitled produce a stringently faithful The Killing Machine to adaptation, but Kane wanted DC in the ’80s, but the concept was never sold. to deviate. “I had to fight Gil

about all of that!” Thomas exclaimed. “He wanted to bring in the Nibelungenlied, the Teutonic epic version without any gods or supernatural elements. Not that he wanted to get rid of the gods, but Gil wanted to bring in various things, in particular the father and son, I think Sigurd and his father, running around with wolf-heads for headdresses, and while I wasn’t against that if it fit in visually, I fought tooth and nail to maintain fidelity to Wagner and not be half-Wagner and half-Nibelungenlied or part-Volsunga Saga, which I’d also read. He fought me to bring those other things in, but later on he was grateful that I kept over-ruling him, because we would never had gotten the great reviews in Opera News if we had done it his way, a mish-mash of the different versions.”

Indeed, the 1989–90 four-issue series (colored, as it happened, by his newfound friend Jim Woodring) was lauded by the mainstream press, with John Rockwell of The New York Times writing, “This comics version treats [Wagner’s] operatic texts with faithfulness and intelligent care… [it’s] more faithful to the composer’s vision than a genteel, gravity-bound stage production could ever be.”178 Opera News’ Jeffrey Hildt opined, “The graphics are powerful. But most important to the opera fan, these books are remarkably faithful to Wagner. It’s almost startling to encounter the stories in this context, unfolding just as we expect them to in scene after scene.”179 About that stage of his life and The Ring of Nibelung, Kane revealed, “I was doing the best I could, making the living that I needed to make — which wasn’t an extraordinary living, but it was comfortable. As a result, while I enjoyed everything about the material, and towards the end of the material, on the last book, I found out that I had cancer, and in fact I wasn’t able to finish the inking on the last few pages. On the day that last book was finished, I went into surgery.”180

Judgment Day: Aftermath, Fighting American TM & © the respective copyright holders. The Comics Journal © Fantagraphic Books.

Part Six: Decline Cancer, Round One: Roy Thomas recalled, “I only learned Gil had gotten sick late into the period when we worked on The Ring. Alfredo Alcala had to ink some of the last pages of the final volume. He kept his illness a secret from almost everybody in the industry because he was so terrified that the word would get back to DC and that work might be taken away from him. Instead, of course, he would try to keep up his assignments, but would fall behind and that would cause problems, too.”

Elaine explained the medical situation: “Gil had non-Hodgkin lymphoma and it was treated the first time, and the treatment in those days was severe. It damaged his heart and he had to have bypass surgery, and he survived all that for ten years.” The artist, who had always maintained an immaculate, well-groomed, and robust appearance, was physically deteriorated, significantly losing weight and hair from radiation therapy.

“It was the biggest crisis of my life,” Kane confessed, “especially at that point. It was like stepping off a curb that was about four feet high, and not knowing that it was going to be so steep. It jolted me. Because overnight, the person I had invented and become and was used to — I was used to his reflection, I know how clothes would fit and how I would look and how I could comb my hair and so on — and I didn’t have any of these things. I didn’t have a body. I didn’t have hair, I didn’t have anything. And, on top of that, I didn’t have the person that I was ever again.”181 During the initial cancer bout — and as always — Gil Kane still needed to work. Burgard recalled, “The next time I worked with Gil and almost the whole Ruby-Spears crew was when Hanna-Barbera was bought by Ted Turner… and we worked out of the old Hanna-Barbera complex, next to Universal Studios. We did development artwork to pitch for the Captain Planet show. Gil penciled, I inked and colored, and, in one case, we carved a hole in the illustration board in the shape of a computer screen and ran a Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

projected filmstrip through it.

We didn’t get the show.”

Kane’s saving grace came courtesy of his old Ruby-Spears art director, as the artist explained, “John Dorman came to my rescue. He hired me to do the character design and some of the presentation work on a show called [The Pirates of] Dark Water.”182 Burgard was also part of the art department. “Surprisingly, we were kept on to work on another show that had a toy deal attached,” Burgard said, “with the difference being our crew designed everything and the toys would be based on what we came up with.

This was Pirates of Dark Water. Gil did a series of ‘splash pages,’ or bumper art, for the show, most of them used to illustrate individual episodes. Legendary illustrator and [animation art department] head of Hanna-Barbera, Iwao Takamoto, tightened the pencils and put the characters more on-model.

I inked and colored them. If you are familiar with the mini-series Marvel published, they sported bad reproductions of that art. I had a lot more to do on that show, but we’re talking about Gil here. He was recovering from cancer treatments at that time and it was a wonder he could work at all. Unfortunately, like many classic comics artists, he still had to work.”

Above: One of Kane’s final jobs was to draw himself in Alan Moore’s Judgment Day: Aftermath [’98]. Inks by Mario Alquiza. Below: Gil Kane’s interview in The Comics Journal #186 [Apr. ’96] was nothing less than a monumental document.

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The Pirates of Dark Water would retain much of Kane’s design, but the series only lasted for a total of 21 episodes over a three-year span. The artist was still taking on the occasional page-rate gig, including a Jurassic Park mini-series for Topps and, weirdly, a kiddie comic for Harvey, Monster in My Pocket, as well as covers for Back to

#11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Obituary ©2000 The New York Times. Green Lantern TM & © DC Comics.

Above: The tragic passing of Gilbert Eli Kane, on Jan. 31, 2000, was acknowledged by some of the most prestigious news outlets, including the venerated New York Times.

the Future, done in Kane’s rarely-seen humor style.

After Dark Water, Burgard recalled, “Gil asked if I could help him out with his cover recreations. He took the opportunity to make improvements in covers he drew back in the ’60s and ’70s, and I tried to color them as close as I could regardless of the poor coloring choices made [on the original covers] at the time that were only done to make the logos pop on the stands. I loved doing it and a couple stood out. Gil was commissioned to do a Golden Age Superman cover (not his work originally) that came out great.”

Some of Kane’s innovative cover commissions would be auctioned by Sotheby’s.

About the scarcity of Kane animation presentation art in the public eye, Burgard said, “Ruby-Spears and Hanna-Barbera were understandably proprietary with the art.

Some are gone into forgotten drawers or hanging in the private residences of the animation producers involved.

Two were done to entice Tina Turner into getting behind a live action version of the animation show we were developing. Joe Ruby flew out to London where the singer was performing with two 20" x 30" illustrations of the character in a future environment in her future cop outfit, with pencils

by Gil, my enhancing her likeness, inking and coloring her figure, and top illustrators coloring the backgrounds like film posters. The color was barely dry when it left the studios with no one taking a picture and no one thinking Joe was just going to hand the art over to her.”

Edge and Beyond: During the super-hero boom of the early 1990s, writer Steven Grant teamed with Gil Kane to produce a creator-owned series, Edge. “Gil suggested a super-hero strip from an odd angle,” the scribe said. “The idea being that there is no altruism in terms of super-heroes. Edge really just generated from there. The idea for Edge came from my inherent distrust of super-heroes and everything they stand for. It’s really my reaction to the super-hero, and to a large extent, to what some people have done with the super-hero in the past couple of years.”183 The projected four-issue series, published by Malibu Comics’ Bravura line, would be cut short after #3 [Apr. ’95] and eventually collected in full by 2004, by iBooks, with #4 finally seeing print.

“My relationship with Gil was that we basically talked on the phone an awful lot,” Grant explained. “Gil always had a lot of ideas, I always had a lot of ideas, but it was a terrible time to try to get projects off the ground, especially if payment was a concern. So that squashed a lot of potential work. Basically, my initial relationship with Gil was as a fan — he was my favorite comics artist almost from the moment I started reading comics in 1961 and he a major influence on a lot of my thinking about comics, years before I met him. Once we started collaborating, I’m happy to say we were friends, probably much more friends than collaborators.”184 Still, Grant was Kane’s writer of choice during the ’90s, with the team producing an issue of Isaac Asimov’s I-BOTS, two issues of Legends of the DC Universe (featuring a return for the artist to his Green Lantern and Atom characters), and Superman: Blood of My Ancestors,” an “Elseworlds” graphic novel which would still be on the artist’s drawing board at the time of Kane’s death.

Sometime after Archie Goodwin’s passing in March 1998, Kane approached Grant to finally realize a joint Goodwin/Kane proposal that had been shelved in the ’80s.

“The Killing Machine was a project conceived by Gil and Archie,” Grant said. “At one point, after Archie had died, Gil did approach me about taking over writing it, but by then DC was no longer interested in the property. Aside from the name and the character design Gil sent, I don’t know much about it.”

(Recently, Grant has become associated with another Kane creation. “The rights to His Name is... Savage were bought a few years ago by a Canadian development company,” he said, “and they hired me to write a four-issue mini-series. It’s half-written, but I’m not sure where the

overall development stands. At some point I hope to have Savage released as a batch of separate mini-series.”)

As a writer, Howard Chaykin would also collaborate with his former mentor in Kane’s final decade, including a Legends of the Dark Knight story arc edited by Archie Goodwin, entitled “Flyer,” and the beautifully realized 1998 one-shot, Superman: Distant Fires, the 64-page “Elseworlds” story, exquisitely inked by Kevin Nowlan. Chaykin recently said, “I miss Gil terribly, I really do. He was a difficult guy, but he was also a congenial, convivial companion.

And I miss hanging. I really do. We frequently had lunch together and he was an interesting lunch companion.”

Gilbert Eli Kane’s joie de vivre, geniality, and penchant to serve as industry gadfly was made apparent to the entire comics field with an epic two-part interview appearing in The Comics Journal, in 1996. Conducted by Gary Groth, the massive Q-&-A is not only a remarkable account about the rich, vibrant life of one Eli Katz, but also a candid, first-hand account of the history of an entire medium. The impact of the interview was substantial. Kane, already known for his often brutal assessments of the talents of fellow professionals (and especially those artists who, perhaps insensitively, put ink to Kane’s pencils), was excoriated by some of those pros. (In a response, Alex Toth called Kane, “the man of two noses and three names,” a “misremembering malevolent misanthropic mook, who distains truth at every turn”).178 But the interview was also acclaimed by many, including journalist and author Pete Hamill, who called the piece “brilliant, sad, [and] layered,” and the noted author and journalist suggested:

All material © their respective copyright holders. Green Lantern TM & © DC Comics. Spider-Man TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

I wish someone could tell Gil Kane that in the end, the life was valuable, because he lived it to the full — within his limits. I don’t think those limits were educational; like all truly educated human beings, he was (is) an auto-didact, that hateful word (that only Americans could turn into a pejorative). His accomplishments in comics are obvious; but more important, perhaps, they made the life possible, a fully sentient life, in which he pushed to the limits of his intellect. That is a genuine accomplishment; how many human beings ever do it?

Kane has attained wisdom; that it is not wisdom retailed to the public doesn’t matter. He found it for himself.185

Cancer Again: In 1998, the non-Hodgkin lymphoma returned. “There was so much damage from the earlier treatment, he couldn’t recover,” Elaine said. “Still, he was constantly thinking that some of the treatment had affected his hands and his fingers, so he was working out methods to get around that.” Groth remembered, “I spoke to him frequently and his health fluctuated wildly, depending on the treatment he was going through… For the longest time, nothing seemed to change.

He was undergoing treatment; they were trying new drugs.

They were continually optimistic, or so it seemed to me. He still sounded like the Gil I knew and he was still working, albeit at a slower pace. Gil’s sense of humor was intact and his anecdotes about his physical deterioration were so self-deprecatingly funny that I didn’t quite realize that they were also deadly serious. He responded to his cancer the same way he responded to his continuous frustrations with the comics industry: with a wry and sardonic wit and a graceful acceptance of the reality.”186 The recurrence of the disease prompted a move from Los Angeles for Gil and Elaine. “When he got sick the second time,” she said, “we decided we should come back to the East Coast, because our son Eric had children and they couldn’t come to California for a weekend, but if we were on the same coast, they could visit. So we moved to Florida.” The couple chose an apartment in the Miami area. “I spoke with Gil a few times after he called to tell me he had cancer,” Jim Woodring said. “He was, unsurprisingly, terribly broken up about that.”

Perhaps helping to ease his mind from the endless Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

medical procedures, Kane would spend hours talking to friends and aficionados. “Gil enjoyed those long phone conversations with fans,” Elaine said. “Working in comics is a lonely thing. You’re sitting by yourself in the studio, so he enjoyed talking. He loved that. That’s why we always had at least two telephone lines — three, with the fax machine — because, if they were discussing a story idea, he could be on the phone for two hours.”

Among those callers was Daniel Herman, who contacted the artist on Saturday mornings in 1998 for a series of interviews, which culminated in two books, Gil Kane: Art of the Comics [2001] and Gil Kane: Art and Interviews [2002].

Interviewers also included Roy Thomas, who was planning a string of discussions about the early history of Marvel Comics for his magazine, Alter Ego, and this writer (with whom the artist had suggested producing an autobiography-slash-art book).

Those who were friendly with the artist knew of his predilection to call acquaintances both old and new by the appellation “my boy.” Comics pro Ernie Colón shared, “Though his referring to everyone as ‘my boy’ — which he frequently interjected into his conversations and which some found off-putting — it never hid his genuine interest and involvement with whom he was speaking.

This page: Clockwise from top are obituaries from the major news magazines of the time, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, and Time.

All from their respective Feb. 14, 2000, editions. At right is an undated photo of the artist taken from a photocopy of a French article in our files.

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He simply couldn’t remember names.” Discussing a U.K. convention appearance by Kane in 1986, Groth said: I don’t remember the specifics… but I believe Gil got into a debate with [comics writer] Chris Claremont over comics writing. Claremont was getting more and more belligerent and in an attempt to depersonalize the debate, Gil said, “Calm down, my boy.” To which Claremont huffily replied, “I am not your boy.” There was a false sense in which Claremont looked like he was defending himself against condescension, which was decidedly not the case, but I remember, at that instant, being worried that it would play well with the audience and put Gil at a disadvantage. I shouldn’t have worried.

After an awkward silence, Gil calmly replied, “I can’t tell you how much pleasure it gives me to hear you say that.”

It was as if the affection with which Gil always used the locution “my boy” was immediately intuited ex post facto by the audience, who offered their approbation in applause and laughter at the rejoinder.187

Above: Various photos of Gil Kane on the convention circuit.

Below: Self-caricature of the artist doing what he loved best.

#11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Art © The estate of Gil Kane.

74

The End: To the sorrow of many, Gil Kane passed away in a Miami hospital from lymphoma, on January 31, 2000, at age 73. The artist was toiling on assignments until nearly the very end. “He was working in his studio until two weeks before he went into the final hospitalization,” Elaine said. His death — and accomplishments — would be acknowledged with a lengthy obituary in The New York Times, as well as coverage in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Time magazine, U.S. News & World Report, and Newsweek.

About the notices, “I know he would have been surprised,” Roy Thomas remarked in a remembrance. “I suspect he might have been secretly pleased, even though he might not have admitted it.”188 What the artist would have expected — with mild annoyance, no doubt — was the media’s preoccupation with his involvement with Green Lantern.

(The USN&WR headline: “He lit Green Lantern’s light.”)189 But, however tragic his early passing, solace was found by those who loved him by the mainstream breadth with which news of his demise was disseminated.

Enthusiasm might be the operative word when describing the artist raconteur. Jim Woodring said, “Gil was bursting with life and it came out in his stories. He was always full of enthusiasm (or disdain) for anything he spoke about. He was a live wire. He gave you that impression of being plugged into the current of life, being incandescent.” Take, for instance, this 1978 assessment: “Comic art is marvelous, it’s brilliant, it’s beautiful,” Kane professed. “I’m not talking about every piece of comic art done, I’m talking about, as always, the best of comic art, which is what anyone talks about in any area. Ninety percent of everything is tenth rate. But the best — that’s what you use as a yardstick — the best comic art is extraordinary, it’s affecting, it reaches right past all your needs to have some kind of consequential story, and it registers, and it makes an impact, and makes you respond purely on the strength of the lyricism, the drama, the action, the shattering impact, the imaginative quality of the drawing.”190 Woodring has pondered the essential nature of his late friend.

“One thing about him that I always thought was important,” he said,

“was that Gil was very ambitious for his own personal excellence. He really wanted to be great at what he did.

That meant a lot to him: to feel that he was contributing at the top and had a place at the table of the pantheon.

So he was constantly trying to justify that or shore it up or demonstrate it or something. It’s a hard thing to put into words. For example, during the last years of his life, he copied Michelangelo’s sketches, like the famous drawing for the Libyan Sibyl painting in the Sistine Chapel. He would do them in red Conté crayon and he had them framed and hanging up in the living room of his apartment. I think it was a way of saying, ‘Don’t think of me just as a comic book artist; I’m a philosopher and appreciator of fine art.

I can do a credible copy of a Michelangelo, which is not nothing.’ He wanted to be seen not just more than as a comic book artist, but as a deep, accomplished human being. I think that meant a lot to him. And that’s how a lot of people — including myself — saw him.”

“The only thing I regret, and I really regret it,” Kane told Groth, “is that I’m not young enough to see another 15 or 20 years of work. I just feel the best, financially and creatively, is yet to come.”191 Along with four NCS Reuben Awards and the 1971 Shazam! Award, the San Diego Comic-Con presented, in 1975, an Inkpot Award to Gil Kane for his notable achievements in the field. In 1997, the artist was inducted into both the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame and the Harvey Award Jack Kirby Hall of Fame. On May 5, 2000, DC Comics hosted a memorial in appreciation of the artist’s contributions, which was attended by many peers and fans. In short order, the Hermes Press books (including The Complete Star Hawks), Blackmark, and Marvel Visionaries: Gil Kane (featuring some of his best work at the House of Ideas), would see print. In 2013, DC released the hardcover collection Adventures of Superman: Gil Kane, compiling his exemplary ’80s work on the character.

Today, Elaine Kane still lives in the same Miami area apartment, surrounded by her husband’s enormous library.

On occasion, she is contacted by those who remember the comic book artist, such as when Hollywood publicity types asked her to attend the release of a big-budget motion picture adaptation of Gil’s most recognized creation.

“They made the Green Lantern movie a few years ago from Warner Brothers,” she said, “and they flew me out and I attended the premiere. They had a luncheon with the staff and these people looked like they were twelve years old and they were questioning me about the different characters — did I know this one, did I know that one? It was interesting. Of course, I was sad because I thought Gil should have been here, not me.”

Elaine’s two children, both of whom Gil took as his own, are now middle-aged and they keep in contact with their mother. Beverly currently lives out West and Eric has two daughters and resides in the Northeast.

Now 60, Gil’s only biological child, Scott, discussed his regrets about being a difficult son. “I lost it out there in California,” he admitted. “I tore my father up. I had every advantage and yet… I became a fortuneteller on Venice Beach, and I did that for 23 years. That wasn’t exactly the career my father had in mind for me. My father wanted me to live the good life and I shunned the materialistic life to be a more free-wheelin’ tarot reader. I never could get it together in the world. I was a college grad and got my education, but I asked my father why he didn’t give me more direct advice and guidance and developing a career and he just figured I would find it for myself like he did. So I found what I found. He did everything to help me and get me on my feet, but I was persistent.” Scott is now back East where he cares for his ailing mother, Diane.

Gil Kane’s father, Max Katz, died in Sept. 1970. After his death, Helen would live at times with Elaine and Gil in Wilton and Los Angeles, until her demise in the early 1990s.

Art © The estate of Gil Kane.

Epilogue Inventor Kane: Beyond his considerable talents as an innovative artist, Gilbert Eli Kane was an inventor. He invented a new persona out of Eli Katz, immigrant slum child, giving the Latvian native a new name and new face, becoming someone who strove for new frontiers in his profession, a man consumed by a driving ambition. “I define my own personality by inventing myself and finally making myself capable enough so that, for a period of a couple of years, I was getting a lot of attention in the field,” Kane said. “I was a point of reference for some in the field. And it’s hard for me to accept a situation other than that.”192 Elaine still admires how her husband charted his own course. “Gil always used to say, ‘How many people find things as kids that they love to do and end up doing it all of their lives?’ And he loved what he did,” she said. “It was not a chore to him. It was never, ‘Aww, I gotta go in and draw.’ It was never that way. He loved the imagination and creation of comics, and bringing up his skills. He was constantly working.”

Gil’s son shares the same admiration. “My father’s first love and devotion was to his artwork,” Scott said. “I feel he was a great father. My friends always respected the fact that he never had to punch a clock in his life. It’s a miracle!

He really was able to love what he did and be great at what he did. He was blessed in that way.” Scott then added, “Eli Katz created Gil Kane. He created that character and he also rose on the shoulders of giants. And he kept his ears open and his eyes open. And people responded. And that was an amazing thing.”

Historians, too, recognize the man’s achievements. R.C. Harvey, in his Art of the Comic Book, writes, “If the graphic novel is to be something more than a comic book while at the same time preserving the essential character of the comics medium, it will owe a great deal to Kane’s work.”193 Neal Adams touched upon the self-made aspect of his late friend. “I heard stories from Gil himself to the point where he became a thing of wonder and delight every time I would talk to him,” Adams said. “He had learned his attitude and approach; it was not something God-given.

He had sort of manufactured himself, just like he manufactured his work. It was a process of education. He did that thing which very few comic book artists do, voluntarily and consciously: get better with time. I always admired Gil from that point of view. He was anxious to advance himself for no other reason than the desire to get better.”

In The Silver Age of Comic Book Art, author Arlen Schumer states, “In addition to being one of comic book art’s greatest illustrators, Kane was one of its most intellectual, articulate spokesmen, a thinking man’s artist, outspoken and opinionated on topics directly — and tangentially — related to comic book art, its history, and his place in it. ‘The thing with comics,’ Kane said, ‘is that they ultimately present a series of aesthetic problems, and the only thing I recognize is that I spent my whole life trying to resolve them.’”194 Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

In the final analysis, Gil Kane aimed for personal excellence. “Until right before Gil died,” Roy Thomas said, “I would talk to him on the phone every couple of months.

We would have long conversations and he was still very enthusiastic about his work and felt that he was making inroads. He just always wanted to do substantial work and he liked my feedback. He was somebody who was constantly wanting to strive for more. He was a walking embodiment of that Robert Browning quote from the poem, Andrea del Sarto — “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s heaven for?” — and if Gil Kane had a motto, that would have probably been it.”

So that when his tired wings began at last to fail, and he began to sink lower and lower toward the silvered waters, there was no fear and no regret in his breast. It was what he had always expected and wanted, at the end, and he was drowsily glad — glad to be falling as all they with wings must finally fall, after a brief lifetime of wild, sweet flight, dropping contentedly to rest. dmund Hamilton, —E “He That Hath Wings”

Top inset: Though, as a friend of Wallace Wood, Gil Kane would seem a natural contributor, the artist never had work published in the early comics prozine witzend, yet Woody did include, in the first issue [Summer ’66], G.K.’s fanciful self-portrait and text description containing vague allusions to future, innovative projects.

Above: No subject was apparently more appealing to the artist than the legend of King Arthur, given the number of attempts made to do his version.

Whether Excalibur! (with John Jakes), The Dragon King pitch to DC, or the rumored “knights on motorcycles” concept mentioned by Jim Woodring, Kane just kept swinging. What this Arthurian page, contributed

by Joe Murray and containing mutant steeds is all about, remains a quandary to us!

75

REFERENCES

93. comiczine-fa.com/interviews/gil-kane 146. Ibid.

41. Ibid.

94. Ibid.

42. Making It, Norman Podhoretz, 1967, 147. Ibid.

Random House 95. Roy Thomas, interview with author, 148. Marv Wolfman, email interview with 1. “Marvel’s ‘Amazing-Man,’” Jon B. 43. Selective service data derived from Nov. 27, 2015 author, Oct. 30, 2015 Cooke, Comic Book Artist Vol. 1, #2, ancestry.com 96. The Comics Journal #186 149. “Award-Winning Wilton Artist Summer 1998 44. The Comics Journal #186 97. Russ Heath, interview with author, Lectures About Comic Books,” Bill 2. A ccording to Elaine Kane, interview 45. Selective service data Oct. 24, 2015 McDonald, The Bridgeport Post, with author, Oct. 12, 2015 46. The Comics Journal #186 98. The Comics Journal #186 April 29, 1976 3. A l Jaffee, interview with author, Oct. 47. Kane/Pearle engagement notice, The 99. Joe Staton, interview with author, 150. Comic Book Artist #2 18, 2015 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Oct. 14, 1951 Mar. 14, 2015 151. The Art of the Comic Book 4. A lfred Kazin, A Walker in the City, 1951.

48. The Comics Journal #91 100. The Comics Journal #186 152. “Star Hawks,” Ron Goulart, Strip 5. J im Woodring, interview with author, 49. The Comics Journal #226 101. “Still Chaykin After All These Years,” News #1, Summer 1978 Oct. 22, 2015 Jon B. Cooke, CBA V. 2, #5, Dec. 2004 153. space1970.blogspot.com/2011/08/ 6. “Gil Kane on Jack Kirby,” Jon B. Cooke, 50. “Sheldon Mayer, Wizard of the Golden Age,” TCJ #148, Feb. 1992 102. Kenneth Landgraf, email interview goulart-kanes-star-hawks-1977.html The Jack Kirby Collector #21, Oct. 1998 51. The Comics Journal #186 with author, May 22, 205 154. Ernie Colón, email to author, Nov. 7. N orman Podhoretz, interview with 52. Jules Feiffer, interview with author, 103. Gil Kane’s Savage #1 12, 2015 author, Nov. 23, 2015 Oct. 22, 2015 104. The Comics Journal #187 155. Harry Harrison interview, Bill Spicer 8. h ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histo53. Who’s Who of American Comic 105. Gil Kane’s Savage #1 and Pete Serniuk, Graphic Story ry_of_the_Jews_in_Latvia Books, Vol. 2, J. Bails & H. Ware, 1974 106. Comic Book Artist #5 World #15, Summer 1973 9. S cott Kane, interview with author, Oct. 54. Gil Kane: Art and Interviews, Daniel 107. Ibid.

156. The Bridgeport Post, April 29, 1976 13, 2015 108. Ibid.

Herman, 2002, Hermes Press 157. Ibid.

10. New York Jews and the Great Depres55. www.nytimes.com/movies/per109. Gil Kane: Art and Interviews 158. The Comics Journal #187 sion: Uncertain Promise, Beth S. son/40124/Gil-Lamb/biography 110. The Golden Age of Comic Fandom, 159. Ibid.

Wenger, 1999, Syracuse Univ. Press Bill Schelly, 1999, Hamster Press 160. News item, TCJ #74, Aug. 1982 11. Brownsville: The Birth, Development, 56. Kane/Pearle engagement notice 111. “A/E Interview: Gil Kane,” John 161. “Little Big Hero,” J. Collier, Amazing and Passing of a Jewish Community 57. Social security data derived from ancestry.com Benson, Alter Ego Vol. 1, #10, 1969 Heroes #28, Aug. 1, 1983 in New York, Alter F. Landesman, 1989, 58. “I Didn’t Want to Know [What 112. The Comics Journal #186 162. “With Talos Aforethought,” Joey Bloch Publishing Other Companies Were Doing]!,” Jim 113. Alter Ego #10 Cavalieri, Talos of the Wilderness 12. https://archive.org/details/ArthurKleiAmash, Alter Ego #56, Feb. 2006 114. The Comics Journal #78 Sea #1, 1987 n12october2011YiddishBookCenter 59. The Comics Journal #186 115. The Comics Journal #186 163. Jan Strnad, email to author, Dec. 13. Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential 116. The Comics Journal #38 19, 2015 Artist, directed by Andrew D. Cooke, 60. www.reuben.org/awards 61. The 1980 National Cartoonists Society 117. The Art of the Comic Book, Robert C. 164. The Comics Journal #226 2011 [film documentary] Album, Museum of Cartoon Art, 1980 Harvey, 1996, Univ. Press of Miss.

165. Amazing Heroes #28 14. The Jack Kirby Collector #21 62. Comics: Between the Panels, Steve 118. The Comics Journal #186 166. Ibid.

15. “An Interview with Gil Kane,” Gary Duin and Mike Richardson, 1998, Dark 119. Ibid.

167. Ibid.

Groth, The Comics Journal #38, Feb. Horse Comics 120. Introduction, Marvel Masterworks: 168. The Comics Journal #226 1978 Captain Marvel V. 2, 2007, Marvel 63. Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential 169. The Comics Journal #186 16. “The Shape of Art,” Gary Groth, Gil Artist 121. Ibid.

170. Ibid.

Kane, and Robert Crumb, The Comics 64. comiczine-fa.com/interviews/gil-kane 122. The Comics Journal #186 171. The Comics Journal #226 Journal #113, Dec. 1986 65. The Comics Journal #186 123. Comic Book Artist #2 172. The Comics Journal #222 17. “Gil Kane,” Gary Groth, The Comics 66. Ibid.

124. “John Romita,” Robert J. McKinnon, 173. Ibid.

Journal #186, Apr. 1996 The Comics Journal #222, April 2000 174. “When the Lobster Whistles on the 67. “The Man Who Knew Too Much: 18. The Jack Kirby Collector #21 Remembering Gil Kane,” Gary Groth, 125. Comic Book Artist #2 Hill,” Gary Groth, The Comics Journal 19. Ibid.

The Comics Journal #222, Apr. 2000 126. Ibid. #165, Dec. 1993 20. “Kane and Chaykin,” Gil Kane and 127. Ibid.

175. Ibid.

Howard Chaykin, The Comics Journal 68. The Comics Journal #186 69. Ibid.

128. Ibid.

176. “Inking the Universe,” Steven Regi#91, July 1984 129. Ibid. na, www.theswervemagazine.com/ 21. Allen Bellman, interview with author, 70. The Silver Age of Comic Book Art, Arlen Schumer, 2003, Collectors Press 130. Ibid.

Joe_Rubinstein.html Oct. 20, 2015 71. comiczine-fa.com/interviews/gil-kane 131. Ibid.

177. Tim Burgard, email to author, Oct. 22. The Jack Kirby Collector #21 132. The Comics Journal #226 30, 2015 23. ”School’s Alumni and Staff Feel Its Art 72. Ibid.

133. Comic Book Artist #2.

178. Cover jacket blurb, The Ring of Emphasis is Neglected,” Mira Tweti, 73. Ibid.

74. The Comics Journal #186 134. The Comics Journal #222 Nibelung, 1992, DC Comics The New York Times, Dec. 5, 2001 75. Howard Chaykin, interview with 135. Introduction, Leigh Brackett, Fifty 179. Ibid.

24. The Comics Journal #91 author, Oct. 23, 2015 Years of Wonder, The Best of Ed180. The Comics Journal #186 25. The New York Times, Dec. 5, 2001 76. The Comics Journal #186 mond Hamilton, 1976, Ballantine 181. Ibid.

26. The Comics Journal #91 77. 1980 Nat. Cartoonists Society Album 136. “He That Hath Wings,” Edmond 182. Ibid.

27. 1940 U.S. Federal Census records 78. The Comics Journal #186 Hamilton, Weird Tales Vol. 32, No. 1, 183. “Dan’s Dogma,” Shaun McLaughlin, retrieved via ancestry.com 79. Ibid.

July 1938, Popular Fiction Edge #1, July 1994 28. The Comics Journal #91 80. The Silver Age of Comic Book Art 137. comiczine-fa.com/interviews/gil184. Steven Grant, message via Facebook 29. “The Artistry Behind the ‘Superhekane 81. “Gil Kane: Man of Action,” Jon B. to author, Dec. 3, 2015 roes,’” John Sargent, May 12, 1981, 138. Klaus Janson, interview with author, 185. “Blood & Thunder,” The Comics Cooke, CBA Vol. 1, #5, Summer 1999 The Norwalk Hour 82. The Jack Kirby Collector Dec. 6, 2015 Journal #189, Aug. 1996 30. www.ushmm.org/wic/en/article.

83. Neal Adams, interview with author, 139. Tom Durwood, email interview with 186. The Comics Journal #222 php?Moduleld=10005463 Dec. 9, 2015 author, Oct. 11, 2015 187. Ibid.

31. www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ 84. “Gil Kane, Part II,” Gary Groth, The 140. “The Richard Corben Interview,” 188. “Remembering Gil,” Roy Thomas, ghettos/riga.html Comics Journal #187, May 1996 Brad Balfour, Heavy Metal Vo. 5, #4, Alter Ego Vol. 3, #4, Spring 2000 32. The Comics Journal #186 July 1981 189. “He lit Green Lantern’s light,” James 33. “It’s Easy to Love Ava Gardner,” Gary 85. Comic Book Artist #2 86. The Comics Journal #186 141. Richard Corben, email to author, Dec. M. Pethokoukis, U.S. News & World Groth, TCJ #226, Aug. 2000 87. “Kane on Savage,” G. Groth & M. Ca15, 2015 Report, Vol. 128, #6, Feb. 14, 2000 34. Social security data derived from tron, Gil Kane’s Savage #1, Mar. 1982 142. “Creating the Graphic Novel,” Phil 190. The Comics Journal #38 ancestry.com 88. The Comics Journal #186 Seuling, Mediascene #16, Nov.–Dec. 191. The Comics Journal #226 35. The Comics Journal #186 89. Gil Kane’s Savage #1 1975 192. The Comics Journal #187 36. Ibid.

90. “Archie Goodwin,” Steve Ringgen143. Mediascene #16 193. The Art of the Comic Book 37. Ibid. berg, TCJ #78, Dec. 1982 144. Richard Corben, email to author, 194. The Silver Age of Comic Book Art 38. Ibid.

91. Gil Kane’s Savage #1 Dec. 16, 2015 39. Ibid.

92. rehtwogunraconteur.com/2013/07/ 145. The Comics Journal #186 40. Ibid.

76

#11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

one last thing

What Gil Kane Taught Me Learning from this intense investigation into the life and times of the great artist I’ve just got off the phone from a long chat with Gary Groth. The Fantagraphics publisher was kind enough — on a Sunday no less! — to go over this massive essay about his best friend’s life and times, correcting errors and clarifying stuff that might be hazy. One thing Gary wanted to make clear was the chronology and location of when and where he began, back in the late ’70s, to telephone his new acquaintance, Gil Kane. That would be, Gary corrected, before he moved to Connecticut, at a time when still living in Maryland. And he wanted me to know, emphasizing more than once, that he called Gil not to talk, but to listen.

I know exactly what Gary means. For me, it was in the late ’90s, when I was in my Providence advertising agency working on Comic Book Artist magazine over the weekend. I would call up the artist and I would listen. In just listening, I was regaled with stories of romantic times, of a young Eli Katz bounding through rafters in hood and cape, of jaunty Stan Lee in jodhpurs strutting about the Timely Bullpen, of coquettes and cocktails with suave Jim Warren in the swinging ’60s, of worshiping the heroic ideal and an endless quest for personal excellence. And though I knew I wasn’t the only one whom he called “my boy,” during those Saturday mornings, when I had the septuagenarian raconteur all to myself, and with pride and affection in my heart, I was his boy (for, at least, the duration of the call).

Long before I loved the man, I loved his work. I was downright passionate about it. Even during those walks back home up Robinson Street in the early ’70s, after my brother and I left Healy’s news store, when the Southwick brothers would pshaw the artist’s trope of “nostril upshots,” I would stand my ground and be firm in my resolve about the excellence of Gil Kane. In those salad days of my early teens, while his peers Kirby, Kubert, Windsor-Smith, Wrightson, and Adams were doing among the best comic book work ever, Kane matched their every effort with panache, sheer, infectious exuberance, and vibrant enthusiasm. Simply put, for this young reader, Gil Kane kicked ass.

Over the years, when I would wander in and out of fandom, if there was a new Kane comic book on the stands, it would be mine.

But a transformative moment occurred back in 1996, when I became more an admirer of the mind of the man than fan of his art. It was upon opening The Comics Journal #186 and, staying up Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

all night, I was transfixed reading Gary’s colossal interview with the artist, an amazing artifact about not only the life an influential and vitally engaged creator, but also a learned, knowing, and gossipy history of this field I love so much. Like I said, it was transformative, enough so that when the opportunity to join up with TwoMorrows and help chronicle that history, I was greatly influenced by Kane’s erudite, informative, sometimes vexing, and terrifically engaging elocution that wafted off the pages of TCJ #186 (well quoted herein!).

Yet despite being a lifelong Kane aficionado, it wasn’t until I devoted these past few months of intensive research and interviewing, a thorough effort that started in late September and ending only now, on the winter solstice, when I began to finally appreciate the lesson Gil Kane’s life imparts.

I am staggered by the man’s raw ambition, his ability to self-invent, re-invent, and constantly refine. If you knew him, you knew Gil was his own harshest critic, yet he wasn’t despondent over limitations, but challenged instead. Rarely satisfied, his desire was to always get better. He met failure with unfailing tenacity to try something different. His Name is… Savage is quashed?

Let’s move on to Blackmark. Time and time again, Gil Kane met adversity with assiduity, a man driven for achievement.

Honestly, as late as August, I had conceived of this issue as a by-the-numbers tribute: I would organize a bunch of his peers to write appreciations, interview some family and friends, scrounge for some artwork, and cobble together an adequate, efficient memorial. But then I remembered one Saturday morning call in 1999, when, upon hearing I was designing a book devoted to his bête noire, Carmine Infantino, Gil suggested, in an atypically shy way, that I should do a book on his career. (I can still hear that ever-so slight, almost embarrassed lilt in his voice.)

Boy, did I spark to that idea! As I had designed Rouge Enfant’s volume as horizontal, I’d make Kane’s tome vertical!

But my friend was sick and he soon passed away. I always regretted not doing that book. I wanted to have him give me an approving look, to be pleased, to say, “Good job, my boy. Good job.” So I put my all into this one. I hope Elaine approves. Gary, also. I hope everyone does. I know I’ve done my very best, and Gilbert Eli Kane deserves nothing less.

I still want to do that book. Wouldn’t a tall book be awesome? — JBC.

Above: Akin, perhaps, to the unpublished Centipede material found in CBC #2’s Joe Kubert tribute issue, Gil Kane would’ve done the art chores on the proposed series Asteroids, also based on an Atari video game.

Unused cover courtesy of Tom Ziuko. Left: Cartoonist Rick Parker renders Gil Kane in mid-soliloquy.

Inset left: Courtesy of Kirk Dilbeck, it’s Blackmark.

Below: Ye Ed’s one Gil Kane commission, the cover of CBA V1 #2 [Sum. ’98].

77

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(192-page paperback with COLOR) $21.95 (Digital Edition) $9.95

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

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

TwoMorrows now offers Digital Editions of Jon B. Cooke’s COMIC BOOK ARTIST Vol. 2 (the “Top Shelf” issues)

TwoMorrows.

A New Day For Comics Fans!

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #9 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #10

JOE STATON on his comics career (from E-MAN, to co-creating The Huntress, and his current stint on the Dick Tracy comic strip), plus we showcase the lost treasure GODS OF MOUNT OLYMPUS drawn by Joe! Plus, Part One of our interview with the late STAN GOLDBERG, JOHN WORKMAN’s Mighty Aphrodite, GEORGE KHOURY talks with artist LEILA LEIZ, plus HEMBECK and more!

The Broadway sci-fi epic WARP examined!

Interviews with art director NEAL ADAMS, director STUART (Reanimator) GORDON, playwright LENNY KLEINFELD, stage manager DAVID GORDON, and a look at Warp’s 1980s FIRST COMICS series! Plus: an interview with PETER (Hate!) BAGGE, P.C. HAMERLINCK on Captain Marvel’s 75th birthday, CORY SEDLMEIER discusses the revival of Miracleman, and more!

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

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

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614 USA 919-449-0344 E-mail:

store@twomorrows.com

Order at twomorrows.com

creator’s creators

Mister Smentek’s Trek CBC proofreader and contributor Rob Smentek recalls a life rich in comic books Somewhere in a photo box, there’s a picture of me in my playpen sleeping soundly next to a Famous First Edition of All Star Comics #3. I think that pretty much sums up my relationship with comics.

Comic books have been virtually omnipresent for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is being taken over the bridge to Philadelphia to visit a genuine comic store in order to get the infamous Marvel Super Special featuring KISS. Unfortunately, the mag was sold out, but I managed to score some cool super-hero swag, which appeased this disappointed pre-schooler.

For most people, New Jersey is a punchline. But I gotta tell you, as a young comic fan growing up in the ’70s and ’80s, South Jersey was a hotbed for the burgeoning direct market.

Within a 10-minute drive from my suburban home, you could find a number of exceptional comic stores. There was Eldorado Comics, in Cherry Hill; Heroes World, in the Echelon Mall; Cosmic Comics, in Berlin; and of course the Fat Jack’s Comicrypt empire, which spanned across two states and multiple locations (later they even employed me). I’ve recently met folks who still don’t have a comic shop in their area.

And I haven’t even mentioned the neighborhood shops, like Eckerd Drugs and Dolan’s Card Shop, whose spinner racks offered a decent

Hardboiled proofreader and tough-guy CBC contributor Rob Smentek and his two crime-fightin’ kids, Jake (left) and Lillian, in a pic from a few years back.

stock of Marvels and DCs. How could I not become a four-color fiend with all these dealers eager to satisfy my fix?

Now, I have to admit, despite years of reading, hoarding, and absorbing these four-color treasures, I hesitate to call myself a “comic book collector.” It’s more accurate to say that I am a comic reader, although a voracious one.

I’ve never been too interested in the whole bags, boards, and longboxes aspect of the hobby; for me, it’s always been about story. I remember begging and pleading for the obscene amount of $4.50 for a copy of X-Men #137 in 1982, only to read that sucker until the cover literally fell off (current value in NM: $100).

The comics are still as ubiquitous as ever.

Trade paperbacks can be found in virtually every room of the house (sorry, honey), and now I get to take my kids to the comic stores.

Can’t say I ever imagined a time where Ant-Man and Teen Titans would be a part of my kids’ pop culture universe. And I’ve been fortunate enough to have comics creep into my professional life, thanks to John Morrow and Ye Ed, Jon B. Cooke, who allow me to use my journalism background and mighty red pen for good instead of evil.

I think it’s fair to say that I still have comics in my playpen.

— Rob Smentek

coming attractions: cbc #12 in the spring Fourth World characters TM & © DC Comics. Cover art © Steve Rude and Howard Cruse respectively.

Next up? King Kirby and Howard Cruse!

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #12 features a look at the ’60s and ’70s work of the King of Comics, Jack Kirby, a follow-up to our feature on the man in CBC #1, all behind a magnificent Fourth World cover by Steve “The Dude” Rude! Also in this issue is an exhaustive and revealing interview with the pioneering cartoonist Howard Cruse, author of the critically acclaimed graphic novel Stuck Rubber Baby, creator of the comic strips Barefootz and Wendel, and the first editor of Gay Comix, the groundbreaking underground comix anthology.

From Stonewall to marriage equality, this is the definitive Cruse interview. Plus other stuff, hopefully long-promised material from our patient and forgiving contributors!

Full-color, 80 pages, $8.95 Comic Book Creator • Winter 2016 • #11

79

a picture is worth a thousand words

This is my original color guide for Gil Kane’s promotional poster art for the DC series Sword of the Atom (or, as the writer, Jan Strnad, put it, “Sort of the Atom — get it?”) — TZ

from the archives of Tom Ziuko 80

#11 • Winter 2016 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

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SPRING 2016

GET THE FEVER THIS JUNE: COMIC BOOK FEVER

GEORGE KHOURY (author of The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore and Kimota: The Miracleman Companion) presents a “love letter” to his personal golden age of comics, 1976-1986, covering all the things that made those comics great—the top artists, the coolest stories, and even the best ads! Remember the days when every comic book captured your imagination, and took you to new and exciting places? When you didn’t apologize for loving the comic books and creators that gave you bliss?

COMIC BOOK FEVER captures that timeless era, when comics offered all different genres to any kid with a pocketful of coins, at local establishments from 7-Elevens to your local drug store. Inside this full-color hardcover are new articles, interviews, and images about the people, places, characters, titles, moments, and good times that inspired and thrilled us in the Bronze Age: NEAL ADAMS, JOHN ROMITA, GEORGE PÉREZ, MARV WOLFMAN, ALAN MOORE, DENNY O’NEIL, JIM STARLIN, JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, THE HERNANDEZ BROTHERS, THE BUSCEMA BROTHERS, STAN LEE, JACK DAVIS, JACK KIRBY, KEVIN EASTMAN, CHRIS CLAREMONT, GERRY CONWAY, FRANK MILLER—and that’s just for starters. It covers the phenoms that delighted Baby Boomers, Generation X, and beyond: UNCANNY X-MEN, NEW TEEN TITANS, TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, LOVE AND ROCKETS, CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, SUPERMAN VS. SPIDER-MAN, ARCHIE COMICS, HARVEY COMICS, KISS, STAR WARS, ROM, HOSTESS CAKE ADS, GRIT(!), and other milestones! So take a trip back in time to re-experience those epic stories, and feel the heat of COMIC BOOK FEVER once again! With cover art and introduction by ALEX ROSS. (240-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $12.95 • ISBN: 9781605490632 • SHIPS JUNE 2016!

GO TO www.twomorrows.com FOR A FREE PREVIEW!

(112-page trade paperback) $17.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-066-3

AL PLASTINO: LAST SUPERMAN STANDING

With a comics career dating back to 1941, including inking early issues of Captain America, AL PLASTINO was one of the last surviving penciler/inkers of his era. Laboring uncredited on SUPERMAN for two decades (1948-1968), he co-created SUPERGIRL, BRAINIAC, and the LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES, drawing those characters’ first appearances, and illustrating the initial comics story to feature KRYPTONITE. He was called upon to help maintain the DC Comics house-style by redrawing other artists’ Superman heads, most notoriously on JACK KIRBY’S JIMMY OLSEN series, much to his chagrin. His career even included working on classic daily and Sunday newspaper strips like NANCY, JOE PALOOKA, BATMAN, and others.

With a Foreword by PAUL LEVITZ, this book (by EDDY ZENO, author of CURT SWAN: A LIFE IN COMICS) was completed just weeks before Al’s recent passing. In these pages, the artist remembers both his struggles and triumphs in the world of comics, cartooning and beyond. A near-century of insights shared

by Al, his family, and contemporaries ALLEN BELLMAN, NICK CARDY, JOE GIELLA, AND CARMINE INFANTINO—along with successors JON BOGDANOVE, JERRY ORDWAY, AND MARK WAID—paint a layered portrait of Plastino’s life and career. And a wealth of illustrations show just how influential a figure he is in the history of comics.

TwoMorrows. A New Day For Comics Fans!

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

All characters TM & © their respective owners.

THIS APRIL

Urgent Message For TwoMorrows Fans!

DON’T MISS YOUR FAVORITE MAGS!

Starting this month, all our new magazines will be listed in the COMICS section (ie. front half) of Diamond Comic Distributors’ PREVIEWS catalog with our books (instead of in the “Magazine” section as in the past). Look for the TWOMORROWS PUBLISHING section, alphabetically under the letter “T”—now with everything in one place, for easy ordering through your local comics shop.

BACK ISSUE #87

ALTER EGO #138

ALTER EGO #139

ALTER EGO #140

ALTER EGO #141

Science-fiction great (and erstwhile comics writer) HARLAN ELLISON talks about Captain Marvel and The Monster Society of Evil! Also, Captain Marvel artist/ co-creator C.C. BECK writes about the infamous Superman-Captain Marvel lawsuit of the 1940s and ‘50s in a double-size FCA section! Plus two titanic tributes to Golden Age artist FRED KIDA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

JIM AMASH interviews ROY THOMAS about his 1990s work on Conan, the stillborn Marvel/Excelsior line launched by STAN LEE, writing for Cross Plains, Topps, DC, and others! Art by KAYANAN, BUSCEMA, MAROTO, GIORDANO, ST. AUBIN, DITKO, SIMONSON, MIGNOLA, LARK, secrets of Dr. Strange’s sorcerous “177A Bleecker Street” address, and more! Cover

by RAFAEL KAYANAN!

Golden Age great IRWIN HASEN spotlight, adapted from DAN MAKARA’s film documentary on Hasen, the 1940s artist of the Justice Society, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Wildcat, Holyoke’s Cat-Man, and numerous other classic heroes—and, for 30 years, the artist of the famous DONDI newspaper strip! Bonus art by his buddies JOE KUBERT, ALEX TOTH, CARMINE INFANTINO, and SHELLY MAYER!

From Detroit to Deathlok, we cover the career of artist RICH BUCKLER: Fantastic Four, The Avengers, Black Panther, Ka-Zar, Dracula, Morbius, a zillion Marvel covers— Batman, Hawkman, and other DC stars— Creepy and Eerie horror—and that’s just in the first half of the 1970s! Plus Mr. Monster, BILL SCHELLY, FCA, and comics expert HAMES WARE on fabulous Golden Age artist RAFAEL ASTARITA!

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

(100 FULL-COLOR pages) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Now shipping!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships May 2016

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships July 2016

BACK ISSUE #88

BACK ISSUE #89

KIRBY COLLECTOR #66

KIRBY COLLECTOR #67

“Comics Magazines of the ’70s and ’80s!”

From Savage Tales to Epic Illustrated, KIRBY’s “Speak-Out Series,” EISNER’s Spirit magazine, Unpublished PAUL GULACY, MICHAEL USLAN on the Shadow magazine you didn’t see, plus B&Ws from Atlas/Seaboard, Charlton, Skywald, and Warren. Featuring work by NEAL ADAMS, JOHN BOLTON, ARCHIE GOODWIN, DOUG MOENCH, EARL NOREM, ROY THOMAS, and more. Cover by GRAY MORROW!

“Bronze Age Adaptations!” The Shadow, Korak: Son of Tarzan, Battlestar Galactica, The Black Hole, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Worlds Unknown, and Marvel’s 1980s movie adaptations. Plus: PAUL KUPPERBERG surveys prose adaptations of comics! With work by JACK KIRBY, DENNY O’NEIL, FRANK ROBBINS, MICHAEL W. KALUTA, FRANK THORNE, MICHAEL USLAN, and sporting an alternate Kaluta cover produced for DC’s Shadow series!

DOUBLE-TAKES ISSUE! Features oddities, coincidences, and reworkings by both Jack and Stan Lee: the Galactus Origin you didn’t see, Ditko’s vs. Kirby’s Spider-Man, how Lee and Kirby viewed “writing” differently, plus a rare KIRBY radio interview with Stan, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, unseen and unused pencil art from FANTASTIC FOUR, 2001, CAPTAIN VICTORY, BRUCE LEE, & more!

UP-CLOSE & PERSONAL! Kirby interviews you weren’t aware of, photos and recollections from fans who saw him in person, personal anecdotes from Jack’s fellow pros, LEE and KIRBY cameos in comics, MARK EVANIER and other regular columnists, and more! Don’t let the photo cover fool you; this issue is chockfull of rare Kirby pencil art, from Roz Kirby’s private sketchbook, and Jack’s most personal comics stories!

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

(84 FULL-COLOR pages) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships April 2016

(84 FULL-COLOR pages) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships June 2016

(100 FULL-COLOR pages) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Now shipping!

(100-page FULL-COLOR mag) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Ships Spring 2016 PRINTED IN CHINA

“Batman AND Superman!” Bronze Age World’s Finest, Super Sons, Batman/Superman Villain/Partner Swap, Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane go solo, Superman/Radio Shack giveaways, and JLA #200’s “A League Divided” (as a nod to Batman v. Superman)! Featuring work by BRIAN BOLLAND, RICH BUCKLER, GERRY CONWAY, JACK KIRBY, GEORGE PÉREZ, JIM STARLIN, and more. Cover by DICK GIORDANO!

TwoMorrows.

A New Day For Comics Fans!

FREE TWOMORROWS CATALOG

BRICKJOURNAL #39

DRAW! #31

DRAW! #32

Features all available back issues and books! Download the INTERACTIVE PDF DIGITAL EDITION (click on any item, and you’ll automatically be taken to its page on our website to order), or for a FREE PRINTED COPY, just call, e-mail, write us, or go online to request one, and we’ll mail it to you at no cost (customers outside the US pay a nominal shipping fee)!

LEGO DINOSAURS! Builder WILLIAM PUGH discusses building prehistoric creatures, a LEGO Jurassic World by DIEGO MAXIMINO PRIETO ALVAREZ, and dino bones by MATT SAILORS! Plus: Minifigure Customization by JARED K. BURKS, stepby-step "You Can Build It" instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, DIY Fan Art by BrickNerd TOMMY WILLIAMSON, MINDSTORMS robotics lessons, and more!

How-to demos & interviews with Philadelphia artists JG JONES (52, Final Crisis, Wanted, Batman and Robin) and KHOI PHAM (The Mighty Avengers, The Astonishing SpiderMan, The Mighty World of Marvel), JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews of art supplies, JERRY ORDWAY demos the “ORD-way” or drawing, and Comic Art Bootcamp by MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS! JG Jones cover! Mature readers only.

Super-star DC penciler HOWARD PORTER demos his creative process, and JAMAL IGLE discusses everything from storyboarding to penciling as he gives a breakdown of his working methods. Plus there’s Crusty Critic JAMAR NICHOLAS reviewing art supplies, JERRY ORDWAY showing the Ord-Way of doing comics, and Comic Art Bootcamp lessons with BRET BLEVINS and Draw! editor MIKE MANLEY! Mature readers only.

(36-page FULL-COLOR catalog) FREE (Interactive PDF Digital Edition) FREE

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships April 2016

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

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Spring 2016

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614 USA 919-449-0344 E-mail:

store@twomorrows.com

Order at twomorrows.com