The Man Called Borth

Part one of CBC’s deep look into the life and work of the best cartoonist you never heard of

by JON B. COOKE

looking every one of his 85 years of age, wearing silver-rimmed glasses, a gray mustache, and a smile.

This page: Above is Frank Borth’s splash panel from Feature Comics #57 [June 1942]. Inset right is Frank during Ye Ed’s 2003 visit holding framed Police Comics #18 [Apr. 1943] splash page. Below, Frank self-caricature from Treasure Chest Vol. 18 #20 [#346, June ’63].

I honestly couldn’t tell you why. Since the mid-1970s, a few years after the last issue of the title was published, I have had a considerable fascination with Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact after stumbling upon a back issue of the Catholic comic book title. Maybe it was the kitsch factor of such earnestly religious content that initially captivated, despite viewing it with a somewhat cynical, then mildly agnostic hindsight. But, in those days, when I was exposed to the artwork of Crumb, Corben, and Moebius, a big factor was the cartooning therein of one Frank Mellors Borth which just knocked my socks off. Maybe the artist — who, at the time, unbeknown to me, had a comics career stretching back to the Golden Age — didn’t necessarily possess an artistic talent equal to those giants, but his was certainly one which needed to be reckoned with.

So, while I can’t recall how I got his phone number, I had a lovely conversation with the man and followed up with a letter sent to his post office box in Montauk, New York, in the final days of spring 2003. I was writing to confirm my coming visit to interview him about his nicely rendered work for Ohio-based Geo. A. Pflaum, Publisher, Inc. Frank’s positive reply, dated June 19, 2003, enthused, “I am really appreciative of the fact that you are more interested in my 23 years of publication in Treasure Chest. I know that it has a very low collector’s value interest because it was sold by subscription only to students attending Catholic schools. Ipso facto, it wasn’t a real comic book.”

As the crow flies, my abode was a mere 35 miles away from the Borth homestead situated in the tony Long Island neighborhood of East Hampton. But the journey by car and ferry boat from my southern Rhode Island town was 121 miles — a whopping 250 miles if I declined to pay for the pricey Cross Sound Ferry tickets! — and Frank kindly prepared for me hand annotated maps and succinct directions to his dwelling near the beach, which he and wife Bobbie had built on land purchased in 1949 for some ridiculously small price.*

Thus, on Tuesday, July 8th, a brilliant and sun-splashed summer’s day, I arrived at 6 Birch Drive, following Frank’s final instruction to “park in the double driveway and beep horn — welcome!” Out from the front door came the six-foot tall artist,

*My not always accurate memory has Frank saying they purchased the lot in ’49 for $400, where the Borths’ modest cottage (with adjoining studio) was constructed and where, by the time of my 2003 visit, they would be surrounded by multi-millionaires’ chichi Hampton estates.

Under impossibly blue skies, we greeted one another and stood, side by side, on the Borth lawn, both enjoying the gentle ocean breeze, and the cartoonist spoke about his longtime attachment to the area and I asked if he got along with his decidedly more affluent neighbors. Frank confessed the only complaint he had was every Saturday morning, when his neighbor from across the street, a fashion designer by the name of Ralph Lauren, would have his fabled collection of Lamborghinis taken out of the garage to have their engines run. The noise of multiple revving sports cars, a little-realized downside of living among the super-rich, could be annoying, he explained.

Frank told me he was associated for a time with Funnies, Inc., so I switched on my mini-cassette recorder and started peppering him with names while we were still in his yard. Joe Gill? No. The Glanzman brothers, Lew or Sam Glanzman? Nope. “How about Bill Everett, the guy who created Sub-Mariner?” I ask. He replies, “Oh, yeah, I bumped into him,” but then Frank corrected me. “See, I never worked for these guys,” he said. “I didn’t have a desk there, so if I went in to deliver work, I got my paycheck… and next assignment (you would hope).”

Did Frank have his art table in his apartment? “Yeah,” came the reply. “It was just a drawing table. So there were people that I met [in comics], but when you don’t have any working relationship with them, it’s hard to remember.” But one he recalled vividly was his best friend from art school, Reed Crandall.

Crandall The Great

One year older than Frank, Indiana-born though Kansas-raised Crandall was among the truly finest artists of the Golden Age, best known for his Blackhawk work at Quality in the ’40s; exemplary art within EC Comics’ horror and crime titles of the ’50s; and, by the ’60s, his lush, illustrious story pages gracing the horror and war stories appearing in Warren Publications. During his later years, Reed also contributed to Treasure Chest, introduced to the editor by his pal Frank, returning a favor from years earlier. Through the decades, the two remained in and out of contact.

Frank shared, “Actually, when he first came to New York, Reed worked for Eisner and Iger, but then they split up. He would so laid back that he didn’t care, he could sit in a room that was all kinds of chaos [at “Busy” Arnold’s Quality Comics office] and so forth… and he would just sit there and draw. He would draw with a pencil in one hand and an eraser in the other, and he was constantly molding his drawing. That’s why it was so three-dimensional. And he knew his anatomy. We did have a good instruction in anatomy, we had a whole skeleton to refer to.”

Then I asked how he and Reed met. “He had originally won a scholarship because his art teacher back in Wichita had sent in samples of his artwork to the Cleveland School of Art and asked if they had any [opening],” Frank said. “His father was still living at that time and Reed got the scholarship, went to the school of art in one year before I did. I didn’t go in until 1937, ’36. So he was originally in the class before me, but in the spring of the first year, he got word that his father died, so he had to leave to go home for the funeral, and it was too late to go back. So he skipped the second year. (I don’t know whether it was finances or what.) But the scholarship was still available. He had [the scholarship] for four years. So he came back and rejoined. I was in my freshman year during the year he was out, and then the next year, all of a sudden, there’s this stranger, but he knew all the upperclassmen.” With a laugh, Frank added, “They were all glad to see him.”

This page: These splash pages are from (clockwise from top left) Police Comics #17 [Mar. 1943]; Police Comics #18 [Apr. 1943]; and Feature Comics #57 [June 1942].