The Art of George Tuska

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TwoMorrows.Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. (& LEGO! ) TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

THE ART OF

Dewey Cassell with Aaron Sultan and Mike Gartland

TwoMorrows Publishing Raleigh, North Carolina

THE ART OF GEORGE TUSKA Edited by Dewey Cassell with Aaron Sultan and Mike Gartland Designed by Scott Saavedra Proofreading by Eric Nolen-Weathington and John Morrow

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, North Carolina 27614 phone 919-449-0344 www.twomorrows.com • e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com First Printing • February 2005 • Printed in Canada Remastered Digital Edition • October 2015 ISBN: 1-893905-40-3

Trademarks & Copyrights All artwork or other trademarked material herein is printed in these pages with the consent of the copyright holder and/or for journalistic, educational and historical purposes with no infringement intended or implied. Angel, Avengers, Baron Zemo, Beast, Black Bolt, Black Goliath, Black Knight, Black Terror, Black Widow, Captain America, Champions, Cyclops, Angel, Daredevil, Dr. Doom, Dr. Octopus, Dr. Strange, Electro, Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider, Gladiator, Goliath, Green Goblin, Gunhawk, Hawkeye, Hercules, Hulk, Human Torch, Iceman, Invisible Girl, Iron Man, J. Jonah Jameson, Ka-Zar, Kid Colt, Kingpin, Lizard, Luke Cage, Magneto, Mandarin, Marvel Girl, Mr. Fantastic, Mysterio, Nick Fury, Owl, Professor Xavier, Quicksilver, Red Skull, Sandman, Scarlet Witch, Shanna the She-Devil, Spider-Man, Stiltman, Sub-Mariner, Thing, Thor, Tony Stark, Two-Gun Kid, Vision, Vulture, Wasp, X-Men TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • Aquaman, Batman, Black Canary, Captain Marvel, Deadman, Flash, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Justice League, Kid Flash, Legion of Super-Heroes, Lightning Lad, Lilith, Lois Lane, Mal, Phantom Lady, Robin, Solomon Grundy, Speedy, Superboy, Superman, Teen Titans, Uncle Sam, Wonder Girl, Wonder Woman, World’s Greatest Superheroes TM & © DC Comics. • WildC.A.T.s TM & © Jim Lee/Wildstorm. • The Shadow TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./Conde Nast Publishing. • Planet of the Apes TM & © APJAC Productions & 20th Century Fox. • He-Man, Masters of the Universe TM &© Filmation. • Dynamo, Lightning, Menthor, Noman, Raven, THUNDER Agents TM & © John Carbonaro. • Tarzan TM & © ERB Inc. • Buck Rogers TM & © Dille Family Trust. • Vampirella TM & © Harris Comics. • Doc Strange, Enchanted Dagger, Gay Desperado, Glory Forbes, Hooks Devlin, Ka'a'nga, Mob Buster Robinson, Pirana, Scorchy Smith, Shark Brodie, Spike Marlin, Spyman, Zanzibar the Magician TM & © the respective copyright holder. This entire book is © TwoMorrows Publishing and Dewey Cassell, and may not be reprinted or retransmitted without written permission of the copyright holders.

Dedication This book is lovingly dedicated to my wife and parents. Through the years, they have each, in turn, been unconditionally supportive of me and my somewhat unconventional hobbies, for which I am eternally grateful.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Origins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 George . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Dorothy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 Marriage and Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 The Golden Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 Eisner-Iger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 Will Eisner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22 Nick Cardy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24 Harry “A” Chesler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 Fiction House . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29 Jim Mooney . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31 World War II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32 Standard / Better . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33 Lev Gleason . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 Marvel Comics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 Timely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 John Romita . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 The House of Ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 John Romita Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 Captain America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45 Roy Thomas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 The X-Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 The Incredible Hulk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54 Marie Severin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55 Daredevil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56 Gene Colan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57 The Invincible Iron Man . . . . . . . . . . .60 Roy Thomas Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62 Gene Colan Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63 Mike Esposito . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64 Bob Layton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67 Sub-Mariner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70 Jim Mooney Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71 Luke Cage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72 Spider-Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73 John Romita Part III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73 Roy Thomas Part III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74 Heroes and Villains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76 The Magazines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77 Mike Esposito Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77 Roy Thomas Part IV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .78 Sketchagraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79 DC Comics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81 Paul Levitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .82 Romance Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .84 Challengers of the Unknown . . . . . . .85 Teen Titans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .86 Nick Cardy Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87 The Legion of Super-Heroes . . . . . . . .88 Justice League of America . . . . . . . . . .89 Masters of the Universe . . . . . . . . . . . .90 Green Lantern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .91 Horror Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .93

The Other Guys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .94 Simon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .95 Joe Simon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .95 Archie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97 Dell / Gold Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97 Harvey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .98 Tower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .98 Warren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99 The Strips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101 Scorchy Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .102 Buck Rogers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .103 The World’s Greatest Superheroes . . .105 Paul Levitz Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105 “Retirement” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .108 Fan Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .109 Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .109 Nick Cardy Part III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110 WildStorm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110 Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111 Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .113 Afterword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119 Index of Tuska Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .120 BONUS: Inking Tuska . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126 BONUS: 1997 Interview . . . . . . . . . . . .131

NEW!

Digital Edition Exclusives On Pages 126 & 131

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Putting together a volume of this magnitude is a collaborative effort. I am very grateful to the following people for their invaluable assistance in making this a fitting tribute to George and his work: Aaron Sultan was responsible for most of the editing of the book, as well as providing some great commissions and conducting the interview with John Romita.

He also served as a tremendous source of encouragement and support.

Mike Gartland is a long-time friend of the Tuskas who provided copies of numerous commissions and published art. He also did the Tower interview with George and helped provide insight into the early Marvel years.

Another friend of the Tuskas is Len Fausto, who shed light on some of George’s contributions to the Golden Age and provided copies of wonderful commissions. John Coates has also been a friend of George and Dorothy for years and provided some rare artwork.

John is the author of The Art of Nick Cardy and published his own tribute to George in Comic Book Artist Bullpen. Tim Cole is a big Iron Man fan and provided some gorgeous Iron Man pages. Tuska fan Greg Gross provided several commissions and recreations. Eric Schumacher came through in a pinch with restorations of classic Golden Age art and Ed Wong provided some sketchagraphs from his collection. David 4

Armstrong provided scans of vintage artwork and pieces from the AACC dinner.

Russ Garwood provided proofs of Superman strips. Interlac helped with Legion research. Adam Tyner provided background on the He-Man characters.

Mark Haspel assisted with a couple of thorny Tuska art questions. Heritage provided a couple of the art images. And finally, Scott Saavedra did an exceptional job putting the book together.

Will Eisner, Jim Mooney, Nick Cardy, Marie Severin, John Romita, Gene Colan, Joe Simon, Mike Esposito, Bob Layton, Paul Levitz, Roy Thomas and Stan Lee each made unique and critical contributions to the book. It quite literally could not have been done without them. Most of the interviews were conducted over the telephone and they copyedited the transcripts. The interviews with Paul Levitz, Bob Layton, and Joe Simon were conducted via email. Thanks to Adam Philips and Jim Simon for their assistance with the email interviews. The interview with George was done in person.

While it is an oft-debated topic, for the purposes of this book, the “Golden Age” of comics refers to roughly the late 1930s until the early 1950s. The “Silver Age” refers to approximately the mid1950s until the early 1970s. George was artistically active during both of these time periods.

Let me also apologize at the outset for any errors of fact or omission. Rest assured that every effort was made to ensure that the material presented herein was as comprehensive and accurate as possible, but unlike so many of the characters George was famous for drawing, we are only human. Several errors have been corrected with this digital edition.

FOREWORD A Few Words About George Tuska Man, I’m really juiced because I was asked to write this brief intro about my good ol’ friend George Tuska. I just hope I won’t sound too much like the frenetic fan of his that I really am.

Y’see, even before I met the titanic Mr. Tuska I was one of his biggest boosters.

Month after month I looked forward to his incredible artwork in mags like “Crime Does Not Pay” and the many other titles produced by Lev Gleason. Publications which always featured stories magnificently illustrated by Jolly George.

You can imagine my elation years ago when I actually twisted George’s arm enough to get him to agree to draw for our company. (Of course, twisting his arm wasn’t that easy ’cause the guy was built like Thor! Come to think of it, he looked like him, too!) Maybe that’s the reason his drawings were so powerful— he himself was one buff dude.

Now, you’re probably wondering what’s the big deal with G.T.’s artwork?

Hey, glad you asked. George is one of the handful of artists in the biz who had mastered the art of drawing amazingly lifelike, believable people and things. He simply couldn’t draw anything wrong. If he drew a car, you could almost smell the leather upholstery. If he drew a gun, you could almost feel the cold, cruel metal. And his characters—wow! Each one looked like he came right off a movie screen, furnished to us by central casting. You could swear you knew them from somewhere. Everything he drew looked so totally real that you didn’t feel you were reading fiction when you were immersed in one of his strips. You accepted everything that happened, hook, line and sinker.

Okay, let’s talk about style. Some of today’s comic books remind you of some of today’s automobiles; they all look pretty much alike. So many of today’s artists draw men, women, weapons and action scenes in a similar manner. You’ve gotta

really look twice to figure out who drew what.

That was never the case with George, He had one of the main things that artists strive for—his own distinctive, unmistakable style. The instant you saw a Tuska illo you knew it was a Tuska illo. Nobody else could position, interpret, lay out and draw figures and objects, or ink them, like George could.

I really should have hated the guy. He could not only draw like a house on fire, but he played golf the same way. Back in the golden days when I lived on Long Island and used to linger on the links, George and I would often play a few rounds of golf. Well, I use the word “play” advisedly. It was play for him but torture for me. I don’t wanna give you the wrong idea, but even if I cheated I couldn’t have beaten him!

Well, that’s the George Tuska I remember. A wonderful artist, a great guy and a terrific friend. I’d better stop now before you decide to canonize him!

Excelsior!

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PREFACE I first met George and Dorothy Tuska some six years ago at the Heroes Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. They had driven down for the show, traditionally held on Father’s Day weekend, from their home in New Jersey. The first thing that struck me about George was the long line of people, young and old, waiting to get a sketch from him. He was rendering virtually any character you could imagine, most without any reference.

Dorothy, Dewey and George

The second thing that struck me, and continues to amaze me even today, is the degree of creativity that George brings to every piece of art that he creates. Now in his eighties, George’s artwork is every bit as dynamic and expressive, if not more so, as it was when he began drawing professinally over sixty years ago. Although George will tell you that artwork was something he did to make a living for his family, it is also clearly something he loves to do and into which he pours his heart and soul.

In researching this book, I was continually astounded at how prolific George was during his career. He made

significant contributions to almost every major studio and publisher of the Golden Age. Having spent years with both Marvel and DC, it is not an exaggeration to say that George has illustrated virtually every key character in the Silver Age. That doesn’t even include his long tenure on various daily newspaper strips. He is best known, of course, for his contribution to Iron Man, where he was the predominate artist for the first hundred issues of his solo title, literally defining the character for a generation of youngsters.

As I have become better acquainted with George and Dorothy over the years, I have come to appreciate George’s gentle nature and the loving way in which Dorothy looks after him. They are truly two of the most warm and caring people you could ever hope to meet. I am tremendously indebted to them for the time and effort they put into making this book a reality. Thanks, too, to the multitude of creators who conceded to interviews and the fans who contributed personal anecdotes and artwork. This book has been a labor of love and I can only hope that this legacy to George does justice to the tremendous contribution he has made to the field of comic art and his legion of fans.

Dewey Cassell 6

ORIGINS

Classic portrait of George Tuska

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George and Dorothy Tuska are classic examples of what Tom Brokaw has called “The Greatest Generation.” Children of immigrants and humble beginnings, both George and Dorothy overcame adversity to achieve the American dream—a steady income, a comfortable home and a loving family.

George George Tuska as a young boy George Tuska is a gentle giant. At his peak, George was 6 feet 2 inches tall. He lost his father at an early age and the strength his mother showed was an inspiration to her son. He is quiet and pensive and universally well liked. He is a family man who was fortunate enough to be able to do something he loved for a living.

George started drawing eighty years ago and he is still drawing, some say better than ever. We talked with George about his background and family and foray in the field of comic art: Cassell: What is your full name? When and where were you born?

In time, they moved to Connecticut. Once she was in Hartford, she bought property.

When I was a kid, my mother worked for an electrical company. She had some relatives in Patterson, New Jersey and we went to visit one time. While my mother was in Patterson, she looked around and decided to set up a restaurant. She did her own cooking and all that. She was a good cook. I used to make out the menus.

There were two shifts in the restaurant.

She would get as much sleep as she could, get up early in the morning for the first shift, take a nap before the next shift, and stayed until about ten o’clock at night.

There was a silk factory nearby. There was no other restaurant there. All these people, when they were able to get out or have time off, they would come over.

Cassell: What about your father?

Tuska: George Tuska. I was born in Hartford, Connecticut on April 26, 1916.

Cassell: What was your mother’s name?

Tuska: Anna Onisko. She was eighteen years old when she emigrated from Russia to New York City, where she met my father.

Peter and George Tuska on the beach in Miami

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Tuska: My father was from Russia, too.

His name was Harry. In Hartford, he was a foreman at an automobile tire company.

He passed away when I was fourteen. He had bleeding ulcers. That’s where I got them. Fortunately, the kids don’t have it.

My mother later remarried.

Cassell: And what about your brother and sister?

Tuska: My brother was Peter and my sister was Mary. My brother was oldest and my sister was in between; I am the youngest.

They were born in New York. Mary had a son. Afterwards, the doctor warned her not to have any more children, but somehow, it happened and she didn’t make it— the child and my sister. She passed away.

We were very close. She lived here in Jersey. We lost touch with my nephew— never heard from him.

Cassell: How did you get interested in art?

Tuska: My first interest in art was looking at my brother’s pulp magazine illustrations. Then when I was about eight years old, I had an appendix operation in the hospital, and after the operation, when I was able to walk around, an elderly patient called me over. He was in bed. He showed me how to draw Uncle Sam, cowboys and Indians. That was popular in those days. I was fascinated with the way he penciled them. He gave the drawings to me. As soon as I got out of the hospital,

I went home and went to the kitchen table and started drawing.

Cassell: Was anyone else in the family artistic?

Tuska: No. I was the only artist.

Cassell: Did your mother ever discourage you from drawing?

Tuska: Never. Whatever I did, my mother loved me.

She didn’t tell me, “Do this, do that.” I was free. Of course, she was strict, a very strict person. I felt close to her.

When George was young, he would travel with his mother to a farm ten miles north of Hartford, where they would pick tobacco. It was a thin, fine leaf, used for the outside wrapping on cigars. What

Preliminary sketch of a cowboy by Tuska

Hand studies

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George remembers most is that hours of picking left your fingers black with tar.

As a kid, growing up in Connecticut, George and his friends would find old, rusty milk cans by the side of the road.

They would get a lump of seltzer from the drug store and drop it in the can along with a little water. They’d put the lid back on the milk can and punch a hole in it.

Then they would prop it up against a log, aim it out into a field, and wait while gas built up inside the can. Then they would light a match at the hole and the milk can would shoot across the field like a rocket.

together and see what looks good. If it looked okay, I would make a three-dimensional drawing on paper. It was fun, but it was not what I wanted to do.

As his love of art grew, George decided he wanted to become an illustrator. When he reached the age of 18, he went to the National Academy of Design at 104th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in New York City. His artistic style was influenced by illustrators Harold Von Schmidt, Dean Cornwell, and Thomas Lovell, as well as comic artists Lou Fine, Hal Foster and Alex Raymond.

Cassell:How did you get into art school?

Cassell: When did you move down into New York City?

Tuska once attended art school with Jack Kirby

Tuska: I was about seventeen and moved into the city with my cousin Annie. That’s where I met the two fellas, Stan and Sigi, my best friends down there. It was pretty rough after the farm. Not much you could do, just go to the movie or something like that.

To relieve their boredom, George and his two friends would play handball, go camping and swimming. They once swam Cold Springs Harbor on Long Island. It was about five miles out and George admits they had a tough time making it back.

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Tuska: A friend invited me to work out with him, lifting weights in a gym. I exercised for five hours. The next day, I couldn’t get out of bed. The same fellow and I dropped in to visit a sculptor on one of the west 70s streets overlooking Central Park. I never got to know his name, but he knew I was interested in art and he recommended me for the National Academy of Design.

Cassell: What did you want to do when you got out of art school?

Tuska: I wanted to do illustration. The magazines were full of all kinds of illustrations. I used to cut them out and save them. “I’m going to paint something like that some day.” I still have them in a file and I haven’t done them yet.

Cassell: When you were going to school at the National Academy of Design, were there any other artists going to school there that you worked with later on?

Cassell: What was your first art job?

Tuska: Just before the National Academy, I went to a small art school on the downtown East side—I forget the name of it. I wasn’t there too long. That’s where I met Jack Kirby. I had lunch together with Jack.

He was from Brooklyn.

Tuska: My first job was something of art, but not much. It was the designing of women’s jewelry, costume jewelry. They asked me to take ideas and put them on paper. In their storeroom drawers were all kinds of ornaments. They told me to use them whenever I wanted to, put them

As a young man, George was tall, goodlooking and well-built. He had blonde hair and stood over six feet, with muscles bulging from weight-lifting. While going to school, George lived on the third floor of a building and he typically worked out

at least once a week. When he finished his workout, he would drop the free weights and it would shake the pool hall on the floor below. Three inebriated fellows once came upstairs to complain, but after taking one look at George, they turned around and ran downstairs. After two years of this regimen, George was all muscle. The National Academy of Design, like most art schools, used live, nude models in the instructional process. At the Academy, it was apparently not at all unusual to find these ladies crowded around George’s drawing table, vying for his affection. This may provide some explanation as to why George is so adept at drawing the female form.

There is a common misperception regarding what caused George to have difficulty hearing. It has frequently been suggested that George was injured in a training accident during World War II. His wife, Dorothy, sets the record straight:

Cassell: So when did George first start having hearing problems?

Dorothy: He was eight or nine years old and must have had Scarlet Fever. His mother said he had a very high fever. And one ear had nerve damage.

Nothing held him back, though. He pursued with a passion everything he did, including his wife-to-be.

Dorothy It is said that behind every great man is a great woman and never would that be more true than with George Tuska. George’s wife, Dorothy, is sweet and charming and not only was she very supportive of his long career in comic art, but she is the driving force behind his convention appearances and commission drawings.

We talked with Dorothy about her “origins”:

And then we moved out to Queens, New York when I was young and that’s where I grew up.

Cassell: What were your parents’ names?

Dorothy: Mildred and John Herdman. I had very good parents. My dad was born in Puerto Rico and my mother was born here. My dad was a British subject. His mother came from Spain and his father was British and both of them ended up in Puerto Rico and Dad was born there. He was one of ten children. My great-grandfather owned a sugar plantation.

Cassell: How did your parents meet?

Dorothy: My dad came over here when he was 18 and he worked and brought the rest of his family to New York. And then he met my mother. She was of Italian descent. They were young when they got married. He was 21 and my mother was the same age. My parents were Catholic.

George’s family was Russian Orthodox.

Cassell: What did your father do for a living?

Preliminary sketch of a female figure Dorothy: He worked as an office manager for the National City Bank of New York.

Cassell: And you have one brother.

Is he older or younger than you?

Dorothy: My brother John is younger. He’ll tell you that he’s much younger, but he’s only a year and a half younger. He was in the Navy. He moved to California when he was 17 years old and he stayed there and raised

Dorothy as a young lady Cassell: What is your full name? When and where were you born?

Dorothy: Before I got married, it was Dorothy Isabel Herdman. I was born on June 2, 1924 in east New York—Brooklyn.

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his family there. He’s still there. We used to go out every year to visit him, but it’s gotten a little tough now with the airplane. We tied it in twice, though, with the San Diego convention. That helped.

But otherwise, George has no family. Both his parents died and his sister and brother died. No nephews, no nieces, no uncles, no aunts. I don’t have that many cousins either, but I have lots of friends. And we have each other.

Cassell: You mentioned that when you were growing up, you had some health problems?

George and Dorothy at the beach

George and Dorothy at the Hotel Victoria in New York

Dorothy: Yes, I was sickly as a child. I had a blood disease. I was in a New York hospital for tests and they found out that it had something to do with my spleen and by removing my spleen, everything was fine. Unfortunately, my children inherited it—my son and my oldest daughter. And two of my grandchildren have it. So they had their spleen removed before they reached the age where they would have any problems.

Cassell: When you were growing up, what kind of things did you like to do for fun?

Did you ever read comic books?

Dorothy: No, I had no interest in comic books. Neither did my brother. We used to see them, but we had no interest at all.

I’d go to dances, the normal teenage things. But in those days, it was good teenage things, not the way it is now.

Cassell: Were you working when you met George?

Dorothy: I was working at the time as a secretary for the American Chicle Company. They made Chiclets and Dentyne.

That was in Long Island City. I had a job first when I got out of high school. I got a job in New York City on Sixth Avenue as a secretary for Wellwood ribbon company.

It was a small company. And then I applied at American Chicle Company because that was closer to home and I worked there maybe four or five years.

After we got married, I worked for three more months and then I quit.

Cassell: So what do you like to do today for fun?

Dorothy: I work for Kimbell Hospital—I donate my time. I love playing duplicate bridge. I love playing golf. I keep myself active.

Fate brought Dorothy together with the man of her dreams at the YWCA.

Marriage and Family In 1947, Dorothy and her close friend Irene went to a dance at the YWCA on 53rd Street and Lexington Avenue in New York. As fate would have it, George and his friend Fred Fredericks came to the same dance. Being short of cash, though, George and his friend had learned to stretch a buck. When you paid for admission to the dance, they stamped the back of your hand. The young men figured out that if one of them paid for admission, they could moisten the back of their hand and effectively transfer the stamp to a friend. (Rumor has it that on that fateful night, George was not the paying half of this thrifty twosome.) Having enjoyed the dance, George and his friend were waiting outside when Dorothy and Irene left. The

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boys asked the girls if they would like to get something to eat. And so their first “date” was over hamburgers.

Cassell: You mentioned that when you met at the YWCA dance, you gave George your address and he came to visit you?

Dorothy: Yes, he did. He lived in New York City and he drove to my house in Queens.

I gave him the directions. He didn’t write them down, but he remembered. I was very surprised when he showed up on my doorstep. He said he would be there Saturday night, the first time, and there he was. I hoped it was love at first sight.

Cassell: And when were you married?

Dorothy: February 8, 1948. I met him at the end of August and we were married in February in Queens, New York. The love of my life. I was old—23. Everybody was married at that time. Fred Fredericks was George’s best man.

There was snow on the ground when they got married. George hated black shoes, but he had to wear them for the wedding, so he bought a cheap pair. On the way down to Florida for their honeymoon, they stopped to help out a lady whose car had broken down. As he was walking to her car, the black on his shoes came off in the snow.

Cassell: So after you got married, you lived with your parents for a while?

We loved it.

I had three children— two girls and a boy.

The kids loved it.

And we were there for 33 years.

Cassell: Was this in Hicksville?

Dorothy: Yes, it was in Hicksville.

And then the kids got married and Bobby went off to the city and then we moved down here.

Thirty-three years in the house and now eighteen years here. We didn’t realize we were going to be here this long. We figured, well, it’s just a stepping-stone. If we don’t like it, we’ll leave. George didn’t want to move down here because it was all old people. I think he was the oldest one here. But we really enjoy it.

Wedding photo of George, Dorothy and family

Cassell: Your son Bob told me he was born in 1956. When were the girls born?

Dorothy: Barbara was born in 1949.

Kathy was born in 1954. Barbara married young. Her husband was a policeman and then he was an FBI man and now he owns his own company. Their daughter got married last year. And my other daughter

George handles the feeding chores

Dorothy: They had made an apartment downstairs in their home and we lived downstairs. It was a one bedroom—two rooms. We lived there about a year and a half. My daughter was born there. George had a little room that he used as a studio.

When I would go through there, it would sometimes be thick with a cloud of smoke while he was working. As George says, “Everybody was smoking back then.”

Then we moved to Garden Hills. That’s in Queens. We had a lovely apartment. We lived there about a year and then we went out looking on Long Island. Long Island then was potato fields. We went out looking for a house and for $25 down, we bought a $14,000 house. We moved in there and it was a very, very happy house.

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Kathy married a civil engineer and they have three girls. And my son Bobby is a swinging bachelor. But they’re all good. I didn’t have any trouble with the kids growing up.

Cassell: So, who was the disciplinarian in the family —you or George?

George with the girls all dressed up

George strikes a dashing pose in between rounds of golf

Dorothy: I think mostly me. George is very mild, very warm. He got along with the kids more than I did because, as you said, I was the disciplinarian. But my dad was, so when you know what is right and what is wrong, you try to instill that into the kids and fortunately, I think we did a good job. My grandchildren are good, too. I have five grandchildren. I have nothing to complain about.

As much as we revere the artwork today, for George, like most of his peers, comic art was a job. It was a means of putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their heads. Dorothy tells with pride and thankfulness that during his entire working career, George only missed two weeks of work. While working on the Buck Rogers strip, George had to be hospitalized for a bleeding ulcer for two weeks, during which time they had to pay someone else to do the strip so they could meet the deadline. It was a tough time for them, but they managed to get through it.

George was fortunate in that he always had work, unlike some of his peers.

George also loves to play golf. So much so, that he would go to great lengths to get out on the fairway:

Dorothy: Although he was up early every day to start work, George sometimes worked all night to make the deadlines. Bobby used to hear him drawing. And then he would go play golf.

George: Well, I had to get some exercise. Sometimes, 14

when I do something strenuous like playing golf, when I come home, I never lay down like I’m tired. I go right to work.

Somehow, I work better that way. It refreshes my circulation. One time, on a Friday night, we went out as a group. Saturday, I was supposed to play golf, early in the morning. About 3:00 a.m., I said to Dot, “Let’s go home. I have to get some sleep so I can get ready for Saturday golf.”

She takes her time. She’s dancing with everybody. I gave up. We went home at 4:00 in the morning. We get home. We’re all dressed up. Fifteen minutes later, the phone rings, “Aren’t you going to pick us up?” I got up early Friday morning, worked, we went out, came home late, played golf, I came home from golf and I cut the lawn. Boy, I was something. I thought I was Superman.

Growing up in the Tuska household provided some unique experiences. Their oldest daughter, Barbara, was five years old when the Tuskas went to Stan Lee’s house in Woodmere for dinner. Barbara had a wonderful time playing with Stan’s daughter. When their son Bob was young, his bedroom also served as George’s studio. He remembers with fond humor the sounds and smells of his father at work.

The India ink was pungent. And there was one point in time in which George was using a wash on a special type of paper that gave off the smell of rotten eggs. We had the opportunity to talk to Bob about his childhood:

Cassell: What was it like growing up with George Tuska as a father?

Bob Tuska: Well, he worked at home a lot.

His studio was my bedroom. As I was growing up, he had a lot of deadlines, so he would work late, sometimes all through the night. He would make breakfast in the morning for my sisters and I, right before we went to school.

Cassell: Was your Mom working at the time?

Bob Tuska: Yeah, she would pick up parttime jobs in stores that she liked to shop in.

Cassell: When George was doing the artwork, did you enjoy having an opportunity to see the stuff evolve as he was developing it?

Bob Tuska: Well, you know, to me watching him do that, it was a job. It was like any father going to his job. It wasn’t like the fans look at it now. My view was that it was his work and it was very mundane.

It wasn’t anything special, even though he was an artist and it was very different than what a lot of my friends’ parents did.

Cassell: Wouldn’t working at home have been somewhat unusual at that time?

Bob Tuska: You know, maybe at that time it was unusual, but in those circumstances, it wasn’t unusual for us. It was kind of normal for us and people didn’t question that. He would go into the city sometimes when I was younger to wherever he was working, but mostly he was at home. He liked it at home better, the convenience of having everything there and he was comfortable and he didn’t have to do that drive.

Cassell: So your father sometimes stayed up late or worked through the night to meet a deadline?

Bob Tuska: Yes, in part to make his deadline and in part to make his tee time. You see, at that time, to play golf at the local course you had to line up at 3:30 in the morning to get a tee time and then return a few hours later to begin the round. For my father, there was no greater motivation.

Cassell: Did he ever get copies of the comics back in the mail?

Bob Tuska: Yeah, we would get comics in the mail.

When I was growing up, my father used comics as reference.

He would pick out the ones that he liked for material that he would use in his comics. So I grew up with that outlook on comics, never as a collectible item. You know, growing up I had everything. I had Fantastic Four #1. Everything was coming in the mail and it was all free.

Cassell: So when you were a kid, did you ever see the finished product of what he worked on?

Bob Tuska: All I would see was just the pencils going out, and his penciling was so tight. And then, of course, he would get the comics back and he would comment on the inking.

George and the kids play with train

Cassell: Was he sometimes unhappy with the way a particular inker would do the job?

Bob Tuska: There were some inkers that he didn’t like as well. He would try to see if he could match up another inker to his work, but unfortunately, it was under the control of Marvel or whatever comic company was involved, whom they paired him up with. He didn’t have much control in that. The end result was the end result.

Cassell: Did you ever bring kids over to the house to show them the stuff your Dad was working on?

Christmas card illustrated by Bob Tuska

Bob Tuska: Yeah, kids would come by.

Some kids would really get excited just to come by and take a look and see something created. It was completely different than other kids’ parents. My father was at home drawing comic books. It was kind of cool to have that. But after a while, that novelty kind of wore off. I had a lot of good friends

Bob Tuska and parents

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and, after a while, that was the norm.

Cassell: With your Dad having to meet deadlines and sometimes working on a book like Iron Man that is coming out month after month, did you have the opportunity to take vacations?

Tuska inked Kirby on “Captain America” in Tales to Astonish in 1965

Bob Tuska: No, we didn’t go on many vacations.

And really I had no interest in going away as a kid. I had a lot of friends in the neighborhood. It was a great time to grow up in that area because I had so many friends around. So really going away was like leaving all my friends. I guess my father’s work might have hindered that, but I don’t know if it really did. My mother would ask us “Do you want to go away?” and we would be like “No.” We really didn’t care.

Cassell: Did you ever go to the beach?

Preliminary penciled figures in action

Bob Tuska: Hicksville is in the middle of Long Island, so you have beach only twenty minutes away. We grew up on the beach. My mother would take us down to the beach a lot. When I was a teenager, I would take the bus down to the beach.

The convenience of living on Long Island was great for that.

Cassell: Did you ever have an opportunity to meet any of your Dad’s contemporaries?

Bob Tuska: You know, when I was young, I’m sure they came over and I’m sure I met them, but I really didn’t pay any attention to them. They were just peers of my father. I’ve met Stan Lee, but I don’t remember where. I think my father might have brought me into the city and I met him. As far as other artists, I’m sure I met them but I couldn’t remember whom. My interest was just to go and play with my friends.

Cassell: It sounds like your father is a big fan of Stan Lee. Bob Tuska: Yeah, he really liked Stan Lee. They had a good rapport and Stan was a stand-up man. He would help my father out as far as work and making him feel comfortable with the company. And he enjoyed my father’s work. I think the warmth that Stan portrayed towards my father really bonded them, made it easier for him to do the work.

Cassell: So were there any of your father’s comics that you particularly enjoyed reading as a kid?

Bob Tuska: No, I would know the comics before they came out. It’s funny, but I really wouldn’t look at his work that much.

At the time I was growing up, for me I think it was John Buscema that was the big artist. And then I strayed and I was involved in more European art and got away from the American artists.

Cassell: I take it that growing up in this environment inspired you to go into art as well?

Bob Tuska: Yeah, it did. What my father taught me was to pay attention to things, detail. He is very detail-oriented and very exact. So I took that into art school and continued with that. It’s not only the

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Bob and his sisters grew up with Iron Man

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drawing aspect, art really takes on your whole persona. You look, you listen, you observe things differently. So, it was a great learning experience.

Cassell: Where did you go to art school?

The Tuskas and Lees at the 1997 San Diego Comic-Con

Bob Tuska: I went to Farmingdale University, out on Long Island, for advertising. I would commute from Hicksville to Farmingdale.

There I learned airbrushing, photo retouching, and got involved with a painter teacher there. And then I went to Parsons in New York City and took up illustration.

Cassell: Is that where you had some classes with John Romita, Jr.?

Painting by Bob Tuska

Bob Tuska: No, that was at Farmingdale. John Romita was in advertising.

And actually, I think after the two years of that school, he went directly into Marvel. I went in also, but I just didn’t like it. In the beginning, you’re the gopher. You’re really starting at the bottom. And John was there for many years. He would occasionally help out with covers or do things and slowly built up to where he is now. I guess I was too impatient for that.

Cassell: So you actually worked at Marvel for a while?

George, Barbara, Dorothy, Bob, and Kathy in front of the Tuska home in New Jersey

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Bob Tuska: No, I didn’t work. I went in and I interviewed with Marie and they wanted me to do more drawings and to come back and continue, but I went in another direction and got more involved in painting and surrealism and more of the artistic art scene in the city at that time, in the late Seventies and early Eighties, which in the East Village was very alive.

Cassell: I understand from your Mom that today you do murals?

Bob Tuska: Right. Now I do residential and commercial murals, mostly scenery, landscaping. And on the side I still do drawings for children’s books that I hope to get published. So I’m out there trying to get that going also. But the murals for the residentials are fun. I get sent all over the country through designers to do these jobs.

Cassell: Is there anything in particular that you would want people to know about your father, for posterity?

Bob Tuska: He was a loving and caring father. He had a great sense of humor that would carry over into everything he did, to the people that he knew, to the things he would do outside of comics. He has a great rapport. He’s very warm and giving.

It just made life better growing up to have such a great set of parents.

Having a loving and supportive family is critical to being successful in your career.

George was fortunate to have that support in his parents, wife and children. And from the beginning, George made his mark on the growing comic book industry.

THE GOLDEN AGE

One of his earliest contributions to the Golden Age was Shark Brodie 19

Chronicling the complete output of George Tuska during the Golden Age is a challenge, for several reasons. One, of course, is the understandable difficulty of recollecting precisely what transpired almost sixty years ago. You’ll note, too, that the recollections of George and his peers sometimes differ. For my part, I can rarely recall what I had

“Spike Marlin” page from Speed Comics

for lunch the previous day. Even more difficult, though, is discerning all of the contributions of this prolific artist. At the same time that studios were producing artwork for various publishers, the publishers themselves sometimes contracted

with freelance artists directly. For example, Tuska provided artwork to Fawcett both through the Chesler studio as well as freelance. While not representing a precise chronology, hopefully this account illustrates the depth and breadth of his contribution to the Golden Age of comics.

In the early days of comic books, when they transitioned from reprints of newspaper strips to original stories, several studios were founded that specialized in producing finished comic book artwork—penciled, inked and lettered. Publishers would contract with these studios to buy complete stories for publication in their comic books. A studio artist might work on a story for Fawcett one day and a story for Street & Smith the next day. Some studios, like the one run by Harry “A” Chesler, also published their own comic books. Like many artists who got their start in the era that would become known as “The Golden Age,” George Tuska began his comic book career at perhaps the most famous studio of them all—the one run by Will Eisner and Jerry Iger.

Eisner-Iger In 1936, Will Eisner invested $15 and formed a partnership with Jerry Iger. Eisner was the creative force behind the team. Iger was the businessman. The idea was to have an in-shop staff to create new comic book stories, start to finish.

Eisner is quoted as having said that the shop ran like a “Roman galley.” The studio produced comics for a variety of publishers, including Fox, Fiction House, Harvey and Quality Comics. After splitting with Iger, Eisner would go on to create the 20

character for which he is probably best known—the Spirit. We talked with George about working at the Eisner-Iger studio:

Cassell: How did you get started with Will Eisner?

Tuska: I went to art school at the same time I was doing costume jewelry design.

I put in an application with a professional agency in New York City. I told them I could do cartooning, drawing. A week later, I got a call from Eisner-Iger, asking me to submit some samples. I brought the samples to Eisner. He said, “That’s pretty good, but we don’t do that stuff.”

He showed me a comic book and said, “This is what we want.” I asked, “Is it okay for me to try it?” “Sure” he said, “Go ahead.” I went home and made a page—a whole story on one page. When I brought it back, he bought it for $5. He said, “We’d like to have you work for us.” That’s how I got started. That was my first professional work. I gave up the school. They kept me pretty busy, day and night. Iger would give me something to take home, besides the office work, to bring back tomorrow. I made $10 per week.

Cassell: How was Will Eisner to work with?

Tuska: We both were equal, in a way— common sense and all that, you know. I got along mostly with Eisner, being that Iger was the boss. Eisner was the editor and art director. I liked him. We talked about a lot of things, Eisner and I. I would go into his office and talk about a story—“Shark Brodie” or “Spike Marlin” or something like that. And he would give me ideas and I would give him some ideas and he would say, “That’s pretty

good.” He would leave it up to me to write a story and he would check it out, see what could be corrected or see if I could add more. It went along for quite a while working like that. It was good working with him. I didn’t mind so much the hard work. I was glad to be doing something I had looked forward to for so long, illustration or something in the art form.

“Zanzibar the Magician” from Mystery Men Comics

Cassell: So you actually wrote your own scripts at Eisner-Iger?

Tuska: “Shark Brodie,” “Zanzibar the Magician.” It was half and half. I plotted the story with Eisner. As time went by, Iger kept coming in and watching everything that was going on. I didn’t mind that much. In the very beginning it was Bob Powell, Lou Fine, and Eisner had his brother and then it was Eisner and Iger.

It was a small place on 42nd and 3rd Avenue. Later, it expanded. We moved

Panels from Science Comics #1

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Will Eisner

up to 44th Street and 3rd Avenue. And we got more fellas—Charles Sultan, John Celardo, Nick Cardy, Toni Blum and some others. An artist would have three or four stories to do a month. Small stories— four pages, five pages, something like that. All of us had that. Nothing too popular like we have today. Then, somebody gets up and leaves. He has about five stories. Iger would take the stories and give them out to each one of us. It’s more for me, it’s more for this guy, it’s more for that guy, to get done each month. Then another guy quits. Same thing again—Iger doles out this one, this one, this one. He would come by and want me to do it faster. Deadlines were everything with him. Finally, I had it. I went with the fellas out to lunch. After

lunch, I was standing there and the fellas looked around and said, “Are you coming up?” And I said, “Yeah, I’ll be right up.” I never came back.

Cassell: So that was the last time you worked for Eisner?

Tuska: After Chesler, I worked for Eisner alone. Eisner had a studio of his own in Tudor City. That’s where I did “Uncle Sam” and some other things. I also penciled The Spirit.

George has said that one of his fondest memories of the early days was discussing story lines and ideas for characters with Will Eisner when he first started drawing.

Will Eisner “Shark Brodie” splash page

Will Eisner is an icon in the field of comic art. He defied the odds and numerous skeptics to help found an enduring medium that has brought joy to young and old alike. Just prior to his death, we talked with Will about the “Golden Age” and Tuska: Cassell: Do you recall when George first came to work for you?

Eisner: He came to work for me in 1936, 1937 in the Eisner-Iger Studios. I was the owner of the company and George came to work as a member of the staff. We had a writer on staff and she would write the scripts, as I remember it. Now, this was a long time ago. You’ve got to understand. My memory is burdened by years and years of distance. I haven’t seen or talked to George in many years.

Cassell: He is doing great. He is 88 now. He plays golf a couple of times a month.

Eisner: Oh, he was a magnificently structured human being. He was the handsomest guy in the shop. (laughter) Cassell: How did you find George to work with?

Eisner: Oh, a wonderful guy. Very, very eager to please. Easy to work with. He understood what I wanted him to do and he did it well. He was good. A good man. I enjoyed working with him. He was an easy man to work with in the shop. He was very cooperative.

Cassell: I noticed he did a lot of different kinds of strips for you.

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Eisner: He had a very attractive style. His style was clean, as I remember it. Simple, not too heavily shaded. And it accommodated color very easily. In those days, color was applied on overlays, so the artwork had to be simple, clean and be able to entrap the colors.

Cassell: You mentioned that there was someone doing a lot of the writing, did the artists tend to pencil and ink their own work?

Eisner: George did. George penciled and inked his own work, as I remember it. The script was given to him by a writer. We had two people on staff who were writing. One was Toni Blum and the other was Bill Bossert, who was both a cartoonist and writer. Generally, the way the Eisner-Iger shop worked was that I would design the character and then the artist would follow up on it. So George would have a character pretty well organized and designed before he started.

And he would start and carry it out. And he did it well.

Cassell: Can you describe what the Eisner-Iger studio was like? Were they all sitting around in one room?

Eisner: Yeah, it was all in one room. The layout was pretty much like a classroom. The drawing boards were arranged so that each guy had a drawing board and a taboret. It was arranged in rows, exactly like a classroom.

Cassell: George ultimately left the studio and went to work for Harry Chesler for a while and then came back to work for you, right?

“Mob Buster Robinson” from Wonderworld Comics

Eisner: He did. If I remember, a lot of guys would go to Harry Chesler’s and work.

I left Eisner-Iger in 1939. I sold my partnership to Iger. At that time, I think Tuska remained in the shop when I left. So, I lost touch with him after that.

Cassell: Did you set up a studio in Tudor City?

Eisner: Yes, when I left Eisner-Iger, three artists agreed to come with me: Bob Powell, Chuck Mazoujian, and Lou Fine. We opened a studio in Tudor City. And then Nick Viscardi came along, and then Dave Berg and Chuck Cuidera.

Cassell: It sounds, at least for those of us looking back on it now, as if that must have been an exciting time to be involved in comics.

Eisner: Well, you know, everybody refers to the period as the Golden Era. For me, it was the Leaden Era. Everybody was working hard. Most of the guys in the shop were working to just make some money so they could go uptown. Chuck Mazoujian was the first guy to leave and he went uptown to become an art director and illustrator and a good painter. Then Lou Fine left to go uptown. Uptown meant going to a major advertising agency. I was the only one that really believed it would be my life’s work. I couldn’t blame them because everybody in the whole of art regarded comics as junk. You didn’t want to be working in a junk medium. But I felt it had potential, so I wanted to stay with it. I told them all I was going to stay with it the rest of my life.

Cassell: Well, you certainly did. And you were right, too. It had tremendous potential.

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Eisner: It’s good to be right. (laughter) Cassell: Is there anything else you would like to share about George?

Eisner: Everybody in the shop liked him. He was a really nice, nice guy. Very handsome young man. Tall, blond, good looking. Everybody was in awe of him, physically anyway. As far as I know, he kept pretty much to himself. He didn’t socialize very much, as I remember it now.

Cassell: He speaks very highly of you as well, Mr. Eisner.

Eisner: That’s wonderful. I’m glad to hear that. I liked him, too, and I admire him.

I think he’s come a long way. I’m glad somebody is doing a piece on him because I think he deserves the attention.

Rare picture of George at rest

Nick Cardy A lot of the legends of the Golden and Silver Age got their start with Eisner and Iger, including Nick Cardy (born Nick Viscardi.) Nick and George would join forces in later years at DC Comics, doing Teen Titans. Nick talks here about the early days.

Cassell: Where did you meet George?

Cardy: As I got out of high school, I was an apprentice in an advertising agency.

Someone recommended the comic book place of Eisner and Iger. I showed my comic samples to Will Eisner hoping for a job. While he was looking at them, I saw his artists working at drawing tables. That’s when I first saw George Tuska, Lou Fine and others. I got a job working for Jerry Iger, Eisner’s partner.

Cassell: You later worked for Will Eisner?

Nick Cardy

Cardy: Yeah, Will Eisner had an office in Tudor City. It was a two-room apartment.

That is when I worked there. I was doing Lady Luck. This was about 1940 or late 1939 or something like that. And I was in the outer room. I was right near the door that went into Will Eisner’s room. There was Bob Powell, sitting in back of me with his desk. And then Charlie Cuidera came in, who did “Blackhawk.” And some other guy that did the lettering. Every now and then a few writers would pop in.

And then there was Al Plastino.

Cassell: I know in the early days at Eisner-Iger and Fiction House, you were working together, but I realize that later most folks were working out of their homes.

Cardy: In the early days, we went in and we were getting a salary. I think with Iger’s, I was getting $18 a week. When I went in with Iger, he showed me all these fellas with their drawing tables. George may tell you—it probably happened to him, too. Iger told me, “Look, we’re expecting taborets.” You know what taborets are? The little place next to your desk where you put your inks and your water bottle and all that. It has a little drawer that you put your stuff in. Well, he says, “We’re expecting taborets pretty soon, but in the meanwhile, you go to the grocery store and get yourself an orange crate.” Well, the orange crate was about 29 inches high and it had two very thin, very cheap board slats and a little board in the center. It was about twelve inches on either side and they used to pack oranges in those.

And it was pine. If you left it out, it would warp. So, I went and got one of those orange crates. And after I was there a while, I saw the other artists that were there

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before me that had orange crates and there was ink dripping down the sides that had caked on, so I know they had it a long time. I never got a taboret.

Then when I went to Lady Luck, I got $25 a week. A lot of comic artists were very eager to become illustrators or become artists. They weren’t seasoned.

So they went there. They had every talent and they did comic books and they learned from each other.

They didn’t care that we were like the equipment of the sweat shops. The guys didn’t mind it because they were drawing and getting paid. This was shortly after the Depression, you know? Just before World War II. The guys were enthusiastic.

Cassell: Jim Mooney mentioned your name when he was talking about Fiction House. Were you and Mooney and George all there at the same time?

Cardy: I came back to Fiction House after the war. I was making samples as an illustrator to get away from the comics, but I had to eat, so I did some work for Fiction House. Guys were always moving around.

Fox Victor Fox, former DC accountant, was one of the first publishers to attempt to capitalize on the success of Superman. His initial effort, Wonder Man, landed him in court with the head of DC, Harry Donnenfeld, because of its blantant similarities to the Man of Steel. Fox lost the case, but went on to launch several successful titles, including Mystery Men Comics, which featured the Blue Beetle. Fox acquired much of his material from the Eisner-Iger studio. Tuska contributed to several titles that were published by Fox, including Wonderworld Comics and Mystery Men Comics, illustrating characters that included Zanzibar the Magician, Wing Turner and Cosmic Carson.

Action sequence from “Shark Brodie” (above), and Mystery Men Comics #6 (below)

Cassell: When you were working for Eisner and Iger, some of the stories you were doing—like “Cosmic Carson” and “Zanzibar the Magician”—were being published by Victor Fox. Did you ever meet Fox or the other publishers?

Tuska: No. Some did work for Fox. Some did work for Arnold. I had nothing to do with those fellows. Just Eisner and Iger.

Quality Another publisher who weighed into the growing comic book industry was Everett “Busy” Arnold. Arnold started a company in the late Thirties called “Quality Comics Group” which produced a number of titles including National Comics, Uncle Sam Quarterly, and Police Comics, the latter of which introduced one of the most 25

famous Quality characters, Plastic Man, created by Jack Cole. Quality also published Military Comics, which starred Blackhawk.

Tuska: When I worked for Eisner and Iger, they were providing art to Arnold.

They gave me a cover to ink. I don’t know who penciled it. I didn’t like the cover. I erased it. (laughter) I drew my own cover. Boy, it raised hell.

Recent photo of George with Creig Flessel

Cassell: Did they publish it, though?

Tuska: I don’t know what happened to it.

Arnold didn’t like it. He liked it the way it was.

In the days of Eisner-Iger, Uncle Sam was a superhero

Tuska returned to Eisner briefly, after he parted company with Jerry Iger, and did some freelance work. Tuska drew the characters Uncle Sam, Kid Dixon and others for Quality books.

George also ghosted a couple of issues of The Spirit, Eisner’s syndicated strip.

(Ghosting, for those unfamiliar with the term, refers to the circumstances in which one artist fills in for another artist, un-credited and often mimicking the other artist’s style.)

Harry “A” Chesler When he left Eisner & Iger, Tuska went to work for Harry “A” Chesler. Chesler had started up a studio in the late 1930s and his staff of 26

artists and writers were producing material for Fawcett, Fox, Street & Smith and others.

It was in the Chesler studios that classic Golden Age heroes like Daredevil, Bulletman, Major Victory, Captain Marvel, Jr., and Doc Savage were created. Chesler also published his own titles, including Dynamic, Punch, Red Seal, Scoop, Spotlight and Yankee Comics. The stable of Chesler artists and writers fluctuated, but at one time or another included such legendary creators as Otto Binder, Rafael Astarita, Carl Burgos, Lou Fine, Creig Flessel, Gil Fox, Tom Gill, Irwin Hasen, Roy Krenkel, Joe Kubert, Ruben Moreira, Al Plastino, and Mac Raboy.

Chesler was a snappy dresser and his wardrobe typically included a derby hat and a cigar. His offices were plush.

He was also accustomed to getting his way. Chesler reportedly gave himself the middle initial “A” because he thought it made his name sound more distinguished. George talked about working with Harry Chesler: Cassell: How did you come to work for Chesler?

Tuska: After I left Eisner-Iger, I was on the loose. I was painting and fooling around. I wasn’t looking for comic book work or anything. I didn’t think much of comics. I thought it would last two or three years—a fad. About two weeks later, I happened to go to a cafeteria on 23rd Street. I saw two fellas that I worked with at Eisner and Iger: Charlie Sultan and Dave Glaser. I was surprised to see them. Sultan asked me, “What are you doing?” I said, “Not that much.” He said, “There’s a guy across the street. We’re supposed to see him. He’s looking for artists. His name is Harry Chesler.” I thought, “I’ll go up and talk to him.” The three of us went up. Sultan introduced me to Chesler. We shook hands and all that. Chesler had a cigar in his mouth.

He gave me a page and a script, one of their stories. He said, “Let me see what you can do.” This was a Friday. I couldn’t draw. The night before, I had been out with the fellas. I had a hangover. I told Sultan, “I can’t do anything.” Sultan told Chesler about it. Chesler came over to me and said, “Take your time. You’ve got the whole weekend. Go home, draw something on the page and you bring it to me Monday.” That’s what I did. I forgot what it was, but I brought it in. He

liked it. He hired me. I got pretty settled with Chesler.

Cassell: Did Chesler provide the art direction?

Tuska: No. Chesler didn’t know anything about art. He was in the furniture business before he went into comics. He sold furniture. He did alright with comics.

Bought a lot of property in Jersey. Made his own lake.

Cassell: When did you work with Chesler?

Tuska: 1939, 1940. Chesler paid $22 a week. Within six months, I was getting $42. Chesler’s paper was rough, a rough finish. When I started work with Eisner and Iger, it was smooth. So, working with Chesler, I said, “I don’t care for the rough surface. I’m not used to it. I’ll go to the art store nearby and pick up some paper.”

Sure enough, Chesler called the guy at the art store and they didn’t charge me anything. I came back and worked on smooth paper again.

Cassell: What other artists did you work with at Chesler’s?

Tuska: Joey Cavallo, Al Plastino, Charlie Sultan, Ruben Moreira, Mac Raboy.

Chesler had a house with some property up in Succasanna, New Jersey. He invited Plastino and I to stay over a weekend.

Chesler was a deer hunter, so I bought a shotgun. Plastino had a shotgun. We went up there. The deer hunters had a nice system. Two trucks of hunters. They drive up the street. A wooded area. One truck stops and the guys get out. One guy there, another fifty yards, another guy there, another fifty yards, another guy. Six or seven guys in a row. Then the truck with the other guys would go way out, three miles out, and those fellas would get out and spread out about the same distance as these fellas. But those fellas would come in and make all kinds of noise and we would keep quiet on this side and wait for the deer to come to us. I didn’t see any deer, but I saw a lot of shooting. “Boom, boom, boom.” (laughter) I don’t know who shot the deer or what. About a month later, Chesler had Plastino and I and some other fellas come up for a venison dinner at a clubhouse, where the hunters hang out. We went up there. Never had venison before. It’s like roast beef, thin sliced. It was good, damn

good. Finally, after dinner was over, Plastino and I decided to walk around with a shotgun. It was wonderful farm land, majestic. We were trying to find something to shoot. We went by a big bush and a bunch of rabbits came out of the bush. We were shooting like crazy.

Made big holes in the ground. Finally, one rabbit got a limp. Plastino and I had an argument. He said, “That’s the rabbit I shot.” “No, I shot that.” (laughter) Plastino put the rabbit in his bag. I don’t know what happened to it. I became friends with Chesler’s son, Jay. We used to play golf together. Jay had a position writing stories about outdoor sports—fishing and hunting. He worked somewhere on 42nd Street. Jay, Chesler’s son, never killed any

Punch Comics featured a character with the unlikely name of the Gay Desperado

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him to wait. He would only be a few minutes. However, there were some impatient people on the floor below who were pressing the buzzer to summon the elevator. The boy decided to go ahead and pick them up, rather than wait on Chesler. The boy closed the inner elevator door, but didn’t close the outer door on the fourth floor. As the elevator descended, Chesler rounded the corner and stepped off into empty space. Fortunately, he grabbed the elevator cable or he would have fallen into the shaft.”

The “Story” But the most famous story about the Chesler studios didn’t involve Chesler at all, but rather George Tuska and Rafael Astarita. Ask any contemporary of Tuska’s and they can relate some version of the story. Presented here is a hybrid of recollections from Jim Mooney and Nick Cardy: Mooney: George and Astarita were the two larger guys. They were both over six feet. We used to refer to George as “Ka’a’nga embodied.” He was very big.

Both of these guys I think at the time were into body training, weight lifting and so on. They got into a fight there one time.

It was quite spectacular. I think George came out on top, the winner. There was a little bit of animosity there and it boiled over.

“Enchanted Dagger” regularly appeared in Chesler’s own comic titles.

animals. He was against all that. He wrote about it, but he wouldn’t do it.

George also recalled this story about Chesler:

“Chesler had his office on the fourth floor of a building on 23rd Street between 6th and 7th Avenue. He came into the building one day to make a quick stop by the office. In those days, elevators had an operator who would take you from one floor to another. The elevator operator in this building was a young boy. The boy took Chesler up to the fourth floor and as he stepped off the elevator, Chesler told 28

Cardy: George was working at his table and there was a guy, he was a musclefreak, shadow-boxing and challenging people. George was sitting there, doing his work, and he comes up to George.

George says, “Don’t bother me,” very quietly. So the guy kept doing it. Finally, he got to the point, the story goes, where George rinsed his brush, he put it down on the table—he wanted to punch this guy, but he didn’t want his brush to go bad, so he rinsed it out and put it on his table—and then he got up from the table and punched this guy and he knocked a couple of tables over going backwards and then George came back and he wiped his brush and dipped it in ink and started working again.

George provided his perspective: Cassell: I have to ask you about this story about you and Rafael Astarita.

Tuska: You know, I’m really sorry about what happened. Very, very sorry. Astarita was a nice guy. In the beginning, he was a wise guy, but later on after it happened, we became friends. Joey Cavallo worked for Harry Chesler. It happened at Harry Chesler’s. Astarita was punching Joe. I was doing my work and I told him, “Pick on somebody your own size.” He came over and wanted to fight. I knocked him out. Well, not knocked him out, but he went over a desk. If it wasn’t for Joey Cavallo, I wouldn’t have said anything to anybody, but once that happened, no matter where I went, I heard, “Hey, I heard you POW!” Afterwards I felt bad. Nobody knows where he is. It’s all my fault. I’m ashamed.

Cassell: Actually, Astarita did very well as an artist.

Tuska: When I went to Stan Lee at Marvel, I was talking to John Verpoorten—he took care of our work, nice guy, big hulk. Right before that, Gil Kane came up and said, “POW!, how did you do that?” Geez, I didn’t know what to say. I talked to John and told him, “Try to get them to shut their mouths, huh? I don’t want that.” I felt lousy about it.

Cassell: Well, I guess why people remember is because it’s so out of character.

What made this story so noteworthy, of course, is that George really is a nice guy.

In fact, that is the most common thing said about him by his peers and fans alike.

Street & Smith Francis Scott Street and Francis Shubael Smith bought The New York Weekly Dispatch in 1855, starting a publishing empire that would last for over a century.

They were best known for their pulp magazines, the most famous of which was The Shadow. The Shadow stories were written

by Walter Gibson under the penname Maxwell Grant. In 1940, Street & Smith launched Shadow Comics, with Shadow stories written by Gibson as well as backup stories featuring other characters like the Hooded Wasp. Comic book covers were frequently recycled from the pulps and studios like Chesler routinely provided the interior artwork. Tuska contributed to several issues of Shadow Comics.

Fawcett Probably the most famous character Tuska worked on at Chesler was Captain Marvel. Fawcett had farmed out some of their work to Chesler, and George illustrated the second issue of Captain Marvel Adventures, which was Fawcett’s best selling title. The Captain Marvel pages do not have the same look as Tuska’s other Golden Age art because Fawcett requested that the drawing style match that of Whiz Comics as closely as possible.

Tuska later went on to do some freelance work directly for Fawcett.

George was about 25 at the time he met Fawcett art director Al Allard. George illustrated several more Captain Marvel stories as well as the “Golden Arrow.”

“Captain Marvel” splash page from the second issue of Captain Marvel Adventures

Fiction House Fiction House first began producing comic books in 1938. After relying on the Eisner-Iger studio for artwork for a couple of years, Fiction House president Thurman Scott decided to form his own creative team, which included legendary artists like Jim Mooney, Nick Cardy, Graham Ingels, and George Tuska. Fiction House was best known for producing “good-girl” art.

Regardless of the genre— war, jungle or western— Fiction House comics typically featured some well-endowed young lady on the cover.

It was at Fiction House that George honed his talent for drawing beautiful women, including Camilla in Jungle Comics, Glory Forbes in Rangers Comics and Jane Martin in Wings Comics. While working at Fiction House, George also

The Big Red Cheese

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exchange pleasantries and then get about their business. But come the hour of noon….

Cassell: How long did you work at Fiction House?

Tuska: About six years. When I left Chesler, I went with Fiction House. It was next door to that stupid church across the street. Come noontime, the bell rang “Bong!” twelve times. I couldn’t work after that. I don’t know what it was. I tried, but I couldn’t. You know, for about a whole week with that church, I couldn’t go back to work after lunch. Half a block up, the Modern Museum of Art was showing Douglas Fairbanks films for twenty-nine cents. I didn’t go back to work. That’s when I asked the editor if I could work freelance. He said, “Yeah, go ahead.” He gave me a story and said, “Take your time.” He was nice about it. Then I got serious, when I started doing it all at home. I got more done. I concentrated more. Anytime I wanted reference, I would get in the car and go to the library and it’s right there, which I couldn’t do from 9 to 5. It helped a lot. I got more pages a day done. From 9 to 5, you don’t worry about anything.

The Shadow as envisioned by Tuska

Ka’a’nga appeared in Jungle Comics

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illustrated stories for Fight Comics and Planet Comics with characters like Hooks Devlin, U.S. Rangers and Reef Ryan. Planet Comics laid the groundwork for the science-fiction comics that emerged from publishers like EC and DC during the following decade. George would later return to the science-fiction genre with the Buck Rogers newspaper strip.

The Fiction House offices were on 53rd Street at 5th Avenue.

While under contract, George worked in the Fiction House “bullpen” with a dozen or so of his peers. It was at Fiction House that George met a young Murphy Anderson and, at his request, helped him to develop a style similar to Lou Fine. When George came into the office in the morning, it would be quiet and the fellow artists would

Cassell: So when you were working in the office, they paid you by the week. When you were doing freelance, they paid you by the page?

Tuska: Yeah, by the page.

Cassell: You mentioned the editor at Fiction House. Who was that?

Tuska: Jack Burns. Before that, it was a fella by the name of Joe Cunningham.

Cassell: Is that where you met Mike Peppe?

Tuska: Yeah, that’s right, I did. Mike was an inker. He was a good inker. He inked a lot of Alex Toth stuff.

Cassell: Who were some of the other artists at Fiction House?

Tuska: Astarita, Lee Elias, Fran Harper— she was pretty good, Ruben Moreira, Artie Saaf.

Cassell: While working at Fiction House, you got drafted into the service, right?

Tuska: Yeah. When I went into the service, I was with Fiction House. And after I was discharged, I went back to Fiction House.

When George returned to Fiction House after the war, he found it was not the same. For one thing, Fiction House, like a lot of other employers, brought more women into the workforce during the war to maintain production. Before long, he felt the itch to try something different.

Jim Mooney One of George’s peers at Fiction House was Jim Mooney, who later enjoyed his own prolific career with both DC and Marvel. We talked to Jim about the early days, working with George at Fiction House.

Cassell: So how did you first meet George?

Mooney: I worked at Fiction House for a long while and that is where I met George Tuska. At that time, George Tuska was working there, I was working there, Ruben Moreira whom you may have heard of was working there, Graham Ingles—Ghastly Graham Ingles, Nick Viscardi, Lee Elias. I’m sure these names must ring a bell somewhere. Anyway, that was when I first actually met George.

We got to know each other pretty well.

Cassell: What do you remember about George?

“Glory Forbes” page from Rangers Comics

Mooney: George was a phenomenon. In the early days, everybody was scooting around trying to get work. There were a hell of a lot of comic book houses then, or people that were putting comic books out, and we were all scurrying around trying to get this, that and another thing. George was always there first. It was amazing. And then later on, he settled down at Fiction House and I settled down there, too. I signed a one-year contract with them. I got to know George a little more than I would ordinarily because he was working there and I was working there.

Cassell: When you and George were working at Fiction House, did everybody pencil and ink their own stuff?

Mooney: Usually, unless it was a deadline problem.

Cassell: Did you work in the office together?

Jim Mooney with Tuska and Joan Lee

Mooney: Yes, this was on staff. The first time I ever worked in my life on staff and the last time I ever will in my life.

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Cassell: Why is that?

Mooney: Oh, I hated being tied down. I got a regular salary. I got a bonus. I got all the good things. But I lost a sense of freedom. You had to be at work in the morning. Quit at a certain time. It had certain advantages. Of course, my wife thought it was the greatest thing that ever happened because I wasn’t hanging around the house at all hours doing things when I felt like doing them.

But after that I veered off in various other places and then a few years later I latched onto DC when they needed somebody on Batman.

Lasted there for 20 years.

Recent photo of Murphy Anderson with DC compatriots Julie Schwartz, Tuska and Joe Giella

World War II In the midst of the “Golden Age,” the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II. The demand for servicemen was so great that the military not only accepted boys younger than 18, but they ultimately conscripted men who were well into their forties. While working at Fiction House, George, like a lot of his peers, was drafted into the Army.

Cassell: When were you drafted into the Army?

Tuska: 1942, I think. You know, there’s no way of testing at the draft board. My left ear was bad.

Cassell: So what did you do in the Army?

Tuska: I drew and enlarged artillery plans for officers. I worked at headquarters. I was a First Class Private.

Cassell: Where were you stationed?

“Hooks Devlin” page from Fight Comics 32

Tuska: I was stationed at the 100th Division at Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina.

It was good. I drove a Jeep all over the place. You know, sometimes, I would get busy with the plans and I was not able to be at the mess hall while all the fellas were eating. I had to get special permission to get in after that. Geez, they would bring out pork chops and I was all alone.

“U.S. Rangers” panel from Rangers Comics

Cassell: How long were you in the service?

Tuska: Almost a year. The sergeant came over and said, “@*&%!” I said, “What’s the matter?” “They’re going to take you out.”

I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “You’re going home.” I didn’t want to show him that I was happy. I said, “Really? Awww.”

Cassell: They didn’t want you to go?

Tuska: No. Because I was drawing pictures for them.

Cassell: What kind of pictures?

Tuska: (George just smiles and laughs)

George used to feel bad watching the guys dragging back in after a march, dogged tired, while he had been inside working.

George wasn’t in any action and he was honorably discharged. Unfortunately, no photographs and few drawings from his service during World War II still exist. But all was not in vain. Later in his career, George would have an opportunity to illustrate war comics for several publishers, bringing to bear his knowledge of artillery learned drawing plans during the war.

Standard / Better Ned Pines started Standard Publishing in 1932 after graduating college, and he made a name for himself publishing pulp magazines. One of his editors was none other

than Mort Weisinger, who would later become a fixture at DC Comics. Standard—which also published under the imprints of Better and Nedor—produced its first comic book in 1939. Best Comics #1 was an oversized magazine that had to be read sideways. It was not well received. Pines abandoned the experiment and switched to a standard comic format with Thrilling Comics, the first issue of which featured a character called “Doc Strange,” of no relation to the Sorcerer Supreme that would later bear his name. Strange was a hit and was followed in subsequent Standard comics by heroes with names like the “Black Terror” and “Fighting Yank.”

George recalls his relatively brief tenure with Standard:

Cassell: How did you get on at Standard?

Circa 1950s painting of a soldier

by Tuska

Tuska: Mike Peppe was working at Standard. Mike told me I ought to come over.

I had a space at Standard. I was there a very short while.

Cassell: So you worked under contract with Standard?

Tuska: No contracts.

Cassell: But you got paid a salary?

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Tuska: Yeah.

While at Standard, Tuska contributed to mainstay books like Thrilling Comics, as well as short run titles like Mel Allen Sports Comics.

Lev Gleason

The original Doc Strange from Thrilling Comics

The only solo appearance of Kid Terror

Leverett Gleason got his start as the advertising manager for Eastern Color Printing in Waterbury, Connecticut. It was a sales manager for Eastern Color, Harry Wildenberg, who is credited with having created the first comic book in its modern format. Wildenberg packaged reprints of Sunday newspaper strips into a sixty-four

page comic book that was initially sold to companies to use as advertising premiums. When the United Features Syndicate decided to publish its own comic books, instead of just selling reprint rights to other publishers, they hired Gleason to edit their first comic book, Tip Top Comics. Gleason went on to publish his own comics, beginning in 1939. Gleason published titles like Silver Streak Comics, Daredevil Comics, and Boy Comics, but he is best known for a comic book entitled Crime Does Not Pay. Crime comics had their origins in the pulps and magazines like True Detective that provided graphic true accounts of vicious criminals. Comic book publishers were looking for ways to break out of the mold and they turned to a genre that had already proven successful in print. Their insight proved prophetic and in just a few years, the number of crime comics increased exponentially. The best of these, by far, was Crime Does Not Pay. Crime Does Not Pay was edited by Bob Wood and Charles Biro. Wood and Biro originally met while working for Harry “A” Chesler. Biro illustrated most of the covers for Crime Does Not Pay and was the creative force behind its success. When George started on Crime Does Not Pay, he was doing backup stories, but he soon took over the lead spot, illustrating gritty, realistic features narrated by the pale host of the book, Mr. Crime. Crime Does Not Pay (and the dozens of imitators that followed) focused on violent criminals and the lawmen that hunted them down. While the stories depicted gangsters leading exciting lives, surrounded by fast cars and sexy women, they were ultimately punished for their crimes, often meeting a grisly end.

Crime Does Not Pay was the most successful crime comic book, with over a million copies published a month at its height of popularity (which was more than Superman). George (and Dorothy) shared these recollections of working for Gleason: Cassell: How did you get involved with doing Crime Does Not Pay? Tuska: I brought samples to Bob Wood. I left the samples there and he said they would let me know. Then, sometime later, he called me and I went up there. He had a script for Crime Does Not Pay. He said, “What do you think of the script?” It was supposed to be a true story, with real gangsters. They had Bob Burnstein writing.

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He was a good writer. We got along together pretty good.

Cassell: Did you enjoy the crime comics?

Tuska: Yeah. And the comics did very well. It was a best seller.

Cassell: What was it like working for Lev Gleason?

Tuska: When I worked for Lev Gleason, I was good there. I mean, I did very well.

They liked me and everything. I met Dorothy when I was working for Charlie Biro. Then the time came that people said, “Comics are bad for kids.” You probably read about that. That politician.

Cassell: Estes Kefauver.

Tuska: That was all for Lev Gleason.

Cassell: How long did you work for Lev Gleason?

Tuska: Several years.

Cassell: Do you remember any stories from doing Crime Does Not Pay? Tuska: Bob Wood, he was the art director, and Charlie Biro, he was the editor. Bob and I were very close. I had fun up there with them. At Christmas they would give you some kind of present. Biro would give you a box with three bottles of whiskey or something.

Cassell: Did you do the pencil and inking, too?

Tuska: Yes, I did the inking most of the time. I worked with Dan Barry and some other fellows. Norman Maurer did the kid stuff. He married the Stooges’ daughter, Moe’s daughter. I think he had something to do with the Stooges’ movies.

work and never even went over to look at him draw. Bobby slept in the room where George worked, so he was there constantly.

He would draw his own comic books when he was about 8 or 10. We just found out recently that he and his friend would go over and put dots on dresses and things like that and George didn’t know they would do that.

Original artwork from Crime Does Not Pay

Cassell: Did you ever entertain the idea of working for Bill Gaines at EC Comics?

Tuska: No, I don’t think so. I don’t think I ever met him. I always had work, so I didn’t need it.

Cassell: Did your kids ever read crime comics?

Dorothy: No. The girls were never interested in comics. They would pass Daddy’s

In the wake of World War II, the United States would be gripped in a paranoid frenzy of extreme conservatism that would lead to the likes of the infamous anti-Communist hearings of Senator McCarthy. In the early 1950s, this prevailing mindset would turn its grim eye toward comics in the form of a book entitled Seduction of the Innocent written by 35

Splash page from Crime Does Not Pay # 50

Crime and Horror comics on trial

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Dr. Frederick Wertham and subsequent Congressional hearings led by Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver.

The premise was that comic books, especially crime and horror comics depicting graphic scenes of violence, were leading to the corruption of America’s youth. No amount of persuasion from saner minds, including E.C. Comics publisher Bill Gaines whose best-selling books like Tales from the Crypt were at the center of the controversy, was able to change the outcome of the proceedings.

The creators whose work was cited in the Kefauver hearings as an example of overtly violent comics included such legendary artists as Jack Davis, Johnny Craig, Graham Ingels… and George Tuska. Although George illustrated other comics for Lev Gleason, he remains best known for his landmark contributions to Crime Does Not Pay. In his book Great American Comic Books, Ron Goulart refers to Tuska as “the premiere crime comic artist.” Pete Morisi, an artist perhaps best known for his creation of Peter Cannon—Thunderbolt, was reportedly once advised by an editor to emulate Tuska’s style. George exhibited a genuine talent for illustrating realistic, compelling characters in crime comics.

Such ghastly pictures coming from this gentle, unassuming artist is a twist of irony in itself.

The ultimate result of the witch-hunt

by Wertham and Kefauver was the establishment of the Comics Code and the rapid departure of crime and horror comics from store shelves. This censorship had a profound impact on the comic book industry and the artists and writers who depended on it for their livelihood. (It did not, however, appear to have any appreciable impact on the corruption of America’s youth.) However, the artistic and commercial success of Crime Does Not Pay earned George a lasting reputation that enabled him to land on his feet.

MARVEL COMICS

Tales of Suspense commission

by Tuska in ink and wash

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Timely

Sketch of Timely publisher Martin Goodman

The Atlas logo appeared on the cover of early Timely comics

Tuska illustration from one of Goodman’s men’s magazines

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The origins of Marvel Comics lie with a company called Timely. Timely Comics was run by Martin Goodman, who also owned his own distribution company, Atlas Magazines. Timely was founded in 1939 and they were not unlike their many competitors at the time. If one company put out a comic book that proved successful, then every other company would put out a book with a similar character, hoping to capitalize on the craze. (This practice is still in vogue today with television networks.) The production process resembled a factory. The emphasis was frequently on quantity, rather than quality. At its peak, Timely was publishing some 75 titles a month.

There were certainly exceptions. The premiere issue of Marvel Comics included the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner, as well as Ka-Zar. In 1941, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created Captain America and Bucky. These characters enjoyed tremendous popularity during World War II, fueled by growing patriotism, as they battled against Hitler, the Axis powers and the fictional Red Skull.

George started doing freelance work for Timely Comics in the late Forties.

While drawing for Timely, George worked on a variety of books, especially westerns. With titles like Arizona Kid, Black Rider, Gunhawk, Gunsmoke Western, Kid Colt Outlaw, Red Warrior, Tex Morgan, Texas Kid, Two-Gun Kid, Western Outlaws, and Wild Western, the comics conjured up exciting images of the old west. Owing in part to the enduring popularity of Tarzan, jungle comics were also abundant and George contributed to titles like Jungle Action, Jungle Tales, and Lorna the Jungle Girl.

War comics remained a fairly strong seller, too, due in part to U.S. involvement in Korea. George illustrated Battle and

Marines in Battle. George typically inked his own pencils at Timely.

At one point toward the mid-1950s, Goodman was persuaded that it would be more economical to farm out the distribution of his publications and so he closed the doors of Atlas and signed on with American News Company.

Timing, as they say, is everything and Goodman had the misfortune to sign with ANC just before they folded.

Goodman scrambled to find a new distributor. Within about a month, he was able to strike a deal with Independent News Company, but it came with a price.

IND was also the distributor for DC (and owned by them) and they did not want to create undue competition, so they limited Goodman to 8 comic titles a month. Goodman had been running the “factory” full-steam to not only produce 75 titles a month, but to create a backlog of stories in reserve. With the new limit on distribution, Goodman found his revenue stream dramatically reduced and more than enough inventory. So, he let most of the staff go, with the exception of editor Stan Lee. Former Timely staffers grimace at this recollection, often referred to as “the purge.” Among those adversely affected was George Tuska. While working for Timely, George had formed a close friendship with Stan Lee, which would serve him well a decade later when George returned to the company, now called Marvel Comics. For the time being, though, George’s destiny lie in the funny pages.

John Romita Long-time Marvel Comics artist and Art Director John Romita, Sr., best known for his definitive work on Spider-Man, shared with us some of his recollections of Tuska and Timely. Aaron Sultan conducted the interview with John Romita.

Gunslingers in action in this “Gunhawk” splash page

Sultan: Do you remember when you were first exposed to George Tuska’s work?

Romita: Yeah. I even remember the name of the feature. It was a strip called “Shark Brodie.” I can still see the splash theme with a guy—a sailor—with bellbottoms, wearing a T-shirt, overlooking a bay. When you’re ten years old and you’re reading comics, most of the stuff was so primitive that when you saw something with a little bit of quality, it immediately popped up and made itself noticeable. I immediately responded. The same response I had when Kirby’s Captain America came out, about the same time.

Sultan: Did you know that it was George Tuska at the time or did you just know it was a good artist?

Romita: I don’t know if I saw it signed or I came to know it as the issues came by or I may have seen his name later on. Or two years later I might have seen his name on something and recognized the style. All I remember is that I was aware of it. So I would follow “Shark Brodie,” even if I didn’t know the name of the artist.

John Romita

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Sultan: Once you became aware of George, were there other things of his you followed as you got older?

Romita: Oh, yeah, whenever I got a chance. I think I saw some westerns by him. This was the late Thirties and early Forties, when I was ten years old, eleven years old. I remember there was a lot of crime stuff. And there were certainly a few super-heroes still around. I know Batman was gathering steam. For some reason, I gravitated toward Lev Gleason’s books. I used to love Lev Gleason.

The Lev Gleason Daredevil was my favorite character.

Sultan: So clearly you associated Tuska with Lev Gleason.

Romita: I think so. Surely he worked for other people because later on I found out that he worked for everybody that he had time to work for. I think he was in demand. He was way ahead of most of the guys in the business, at least in my judgment.

Sultan: Then you got into comics in 1951?

Splash page from Wild Western

Romita: Actually, I really did my first story for Stan in 1949. I was doing these three-page stories—horror stories and mystery stories and westerns and sometimes a romance. I did a Famous Funnies story mid-way through 1949. It was a romance story, which was terrible.

Sultan: Once you became a professional working for Stan, when did you meet Tuska?

Splash page to Tuska story

Romita: I worked up at Timely about a year without him knowing me. I was ghosting somebody else’s artwork. And then when I got drafted, I happened to be stationed in New York Harbor. I went uptown in my uniform and got some work from Stan for weekends. And in that period, I used to go into the bullpen occasionally to make corrections on my stories. One time, I saw a stat of a Tuska page. I think it was a sword and sorcery kind of thing or just knights in armor. I could see it was a George Tuska job and it was inked with this juicy brush line and I salvaged this full-page photostat. I think it was 10" x 12" or something. I tacked it up to my drawing table and I had it on my drawing table for years. It was a great example of a very free brush style that was very appealing to me. And I worked that way for a couple of years after that.

Sultan: So that particular page was an inspiration to you?

Romita: Oh, it was so free and so juicy— what I call juicy, with nice blacks and beautiful folds and drapery. Everything was so beautiful that it just knocked my socks off. To me, it was a blueprint of

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how to do a professional page of comics. Before that, I used to just guess.

Sultan: What else about Tuska’s style did you like?

Romita: Well, the fact that it was a very discernable style. I used to consider myself sort of a homogenized kind of artist. I could change styles. I didn’t think I had a style of my own. I didn’t think anybody would recognize it. But anybody whose work I recognized, I envied them. When I started in the business, guys like Don Heck and Tuska and of course Kirby and Gene Colan—who was doing war stories at that time—every one of them had such a distinctive style. I always thought of myself as more of a commercial artist like the toothpaste ads we used to have in the Sunday comics. I always felt like I was doing toothpaste ads and these guys were doing serious drama.

Sultan: You know your fans think differently.

Joe and Betty Sinnott from recent convention appearance

Romita: Later on, I settled down, but during that period I was sure that guys like Don Heck and Tuska were head and heels above me.

Sultan: Were you in your twenties then when you met Tuska?

Romita: Yeah, I was probably between twenty and twenty-five. Actually, he probably just came in and smiled at us, because I would only be up there to deliver work and he probably passed me in the waiting room. We used to wait like longshoremen waiting for a job. He probably went by and smiled at all of us. And sometimes I didn’t even know who they were. I’m sure Maneely went by and Russ Heath and other guys went by and I didn’t recognize them. The only guys I knew were people like Jack Abel, Davey Berg and guys like that. We used to all wait for scripts.

The House of Ideas George always had great admiration for Stan Lee. He felt like Stan was as much a friend as a writer or editor or boss. George returned to the fold in the Sixties and Stan was pleased to get him back. Stan assisted George with his acclimation to the new “House of Ideas” by demonstrating various poses to describe the kind of action that he was looking for. George and Dorothy talked about how things worked at Marvel:

Cassell: How did you end up full-time back at Marvel?

Tuska: When Buck Rogers was finished, I called Stan and he said, “Come on up.”

Cassell: Did you enjoy working with Stan?

Tuska: Yes. He was very inspirational.

Cassell: Did you ever turn down any stories that they wanted to give you?

Tuska: No, I took whatever they gave me.

One time at Marvel, someone wrote a synopsis of—I forgot who the hell it was—and the synopsis was only half a page. I don’t know who wrote it.

Verpoorten gave it to me. I looked at it and there were no heroes in it, but it was somebody popular. I think I had twelve pages to do from a half page synopsis. I got home and I made my own story. I really did. It was nothing in the synopsis.

Stan loved it.

Stan “The Man” Lee

Cassell: Did you do any other writing at Marvel or DC? Big John Verpoorten Tuska: No, but at times, when it came to synopses, I would put a little writing—a few words—off to the side of the art page to describe the meaning of each panel.

Cassell: Generally speaking, did you prefer penciling or inking?

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Tuska: I like pencils. I don’t care much for inking. I haven’t got that freedom like I have with pencils. I’m worried if it’s going to come out okay. I’m never satisfied with my inking—thin line, thick line—but I keep trying.

Cassell: When you did the pencils and somebody else inked, did you have a favorite inker?

Frank Giacoia was another favorite inker of George’s

Tuska: Some. Mike Esposito, Joe Sinnott, and Frank Giacoia. I know that when it comes to penciling, I don’t put certain blacks in my pencils that I should. I seemed to have a habit of the way I was penciling. Mike would add a little black here and there, which helped. I think Sinnott was the same way, too.

Cassell: When you used to bring work into Marvel or DC, did you ever stay there and correct anything?

Tuska: Once in a while. Not much, very small things. One panel, maybe two panels.

Kirby was that way, too, at DC. He would correct his stuff. I was talking to him one time while he was doing it. He was telling me about his daughter.

Self-portrait by John Romita

Cassell: Did they go through every panel, every page while you were there?

Tuska: Yes, they did, to see if it was okay.

With Stan Lee there, he would say, “What’s this?” He would go from page to page to see what was going on.

Cassell: Was it usually Stan that looked it over?

Tuska: Yeah, but sometimes Stan was not there. I don’t know about the other artists, but when I would bring something in, he would correct it. Other times, I would bring it in and he would say, “That’s good.”

Cassell: When you turned in a story, did you get paid on the spot?

Tuska: When I turned in a story, they would give you a voucher. If you brought it in by Friday, you could get a check.

After Friday, you had to wait a little longer.

They had some kind of system.

Cassell: How much did you get paid?

Tuska: Working for Marvel and DC, I got paid $45 - $55 per page for pencils—no inking.

John Romita Part II In his interview, John Romita went on to talk with Aaron Sultan about the early days at Marvel Comics: Sultan: Did you have an opportunity to interact with George when he came back to Marvel?

Romita: When I was up there full-time at Marvel, from 1966 on, whenever he would come in, I would shake hands with him and we would have had a few minutes to talk, things like that. Stan used to take the big artists out to lunch and the rest of us flunkies used to just sit there and work.

Sultan: So by the late Sixties, there was a nucleus of staff people at Marvel?

Sol Brodsky

Romita: Oh yeah, we had a full house then. We were lucky. We had a little office space given to us by the magazine company. Goodman’s main business was selling men’s magazines and we were sort of shunted into the leftover space. We were like stepchildren.

Sultan: Stan, I assume, was coming in the office?

Romita: Stan was a full-timer when I started. But almost immediately, he started working three days a week. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, he would work from

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home and write. Sol Brodsky used to load him up on Monday night and tell him he had to write three or four stories on Tuesday and wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. But he was editing full-time. It was funny. When he used to work at home, his neighborhood was in the residential section of Hewlett, and we used to scare the local residents by driving up at 2:00 in the morning and going into his driveway and dropping packages off. I would drop pages off or Gene Colan would drop pages off. Sometimes, we would meet each other at 3:00 in the morning at Stan’s house. Whenever you finished the work, you would deliver it, hoping he would get time the next day to write it. So we were always in touch with Stan every day. Even when he was at his home writing, he would call and have instructions for me. It was a very crazy, fluid time.

Larry Lieber

Sultan: Way before fax machines.

Romita: Well, there weren’t any fax machines. The only thing we had was what they called a thermofax machine, which was very strange. It was on a very bad tissue paper kind of thing and a very obscure image. But we were desperate and it was the only way to make copies. The problem was that you had to put your artwork through a roller. The actual artwork had to roll through. I remember Larry Leiber was making a copy of one of Jack Kirby’s pages on the thermofax machine and it got stuck and the page burned in half. Larry almost had a heart attack because Stan would have killed him if he’d ever known it. Larry spent the rest of the day tracing down the page on a fresh piece of board so the inker could work from it. One of the scariest times Larry ever had.

Sultan: As you stated, Tuska was doing X-Men for a while and he was inking Gene Colan on Daredevil and he had done some Tales of Suspense books.

Romita: He was so versatile. He could do everything. When Stan knew that a guy could do anything, he used him in every possible, conceivable way. George was a helluva artist and very versatile and very fast. He was a consummate pro. Once you got into Stan’s stable like that, he used you every which way possible. It’s a wonder he didn’t do more. I think George worked for somebody else for a while.

He was too fast to wait around for work. He was in demand. Otherwise, he probably would have done more for Stan.

Sultan: George had an incredible run on Iron Man. Do you remember anything about it?

Kid Colt

Romita: He was as good as anybody could be. There was nothing he couldn’t do.

He could do beautiful women. He could do action. He could do drama. He was very good. I don’t have to tell you how great he was.

Sultan: When you were Art Director, do you remember anything about George and Iron Man? Romita: Well, I never had to tell him a thing. Stan used to deal with the artists. My art directorship was strictly doing corrections and training young artists. But with the older guys, I had very little to say and I wouldn’t say a thing against guys like that. I would never be able to find faults. Stan would come to me and say John Buscema’s cover isn’t as strong as he would like. “What can we do with it?” Sometimes I would do a new cover. Sometimes I would do a figure over. Even with Neal Adams. Neal did some sensational stuff, but there was always something that Stan was disturbed about. And Neal used to go crazy. He’d come in and find me doing his covers over. Imagine—here I am doing Neal Adams’ covers over or John Buscema’s covers. I idolized the guys, you know? It had nothing to do with drawing. It had strictly to do with poster quality or exposition of the characters or whether they caught the moment he wanted. That kind of 43

stuff. When the other editors took over, after Stan was not editing every book, the other editors would give a goofy idea to an artist like John or George and they would have to come and say, “You shouldn’t have done it that way” to the young editor. So they would jazz up the cover by adding something to it. And as far as inking, when George would ink somebody, that wasn’t any kind of a demotion. What that was, if the penciler turned in a story that was a little weak, Stan would go to somebody like George or me to punch it up. Like, Mooney was a helluva penciler, but Mooney was such a good doctor on weak pencils. He could jazz up weak pencils with a nice gutsy line and George could certainly do the same thing. What happened is sometimes guys would do breakdowns.

Rough layouts, very rough because they were in a hurry. I did it.

Joe Sinnott many times just took my blue pencils and ran with them and finished them and polished them up. Guys like Joe Sinnott and George and myself could take somebody’s pencils and turn them into something a lot better than they were originally.

That’s why he would call on people like George all the time when he had a weak pencil. God forbid you let Stan know you could work with bad pencils. Then you were doomed. George was lucky.

It was a good thing he was such a good penciler because he would have ended up just inking, at least for Stan.

Tuska demonstrating his versatility on the X-Men

Sultan: You can tell Stan was pulling him in a lot of directions. His resumé—it was Hulk and it was Luke Cage. He was all over the place.

Romita: Well, you can imagine. The guy who was doing Luke Cage was not a polished comic book artist. I think his name was Billy Graham. He was a little bit ragged, not very polished. And guys like George would turn it into gems. So what could you do? That’s the way Stan was. If you had a good storyteller, but the guy was a little bit lackluster in pencils, he could take a guy like me and George and ink it. A lot of times, I corrected pencils only because they were not strong enough. I did the corrections, so while I was correcting them, I might as well ink it. So George did the same thing. If he were in the office full time, he would have really pulled his hair out.

Sultan: It’s interesting, when you look at George’s work on Iron Man, he could draw some beautiful women. You’re probably known as the greatest illustrator of women in Marvel history, but any recollection of the way Tuska drew women?

Two of Tuska’s best-known characters—Luke Cage and Iron Man—come face to face

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Romita: Oh, God, yes. Well, I’ll tell you, the way I drew women was based on people like Caniff and George Tuska and John Buscema.

Basically, I saw what they were doing. Actually, it all goes back to a guy named Andrew Loomis. When I was in high school, everybody got a copy of this book called Figure Drawing For All Its Worth and he did the most beautiful women in the world. A lot of comic artists latched onto all those features and those tricks. I think George probably saw it before I did. Between Bridgeman’s Anatomy and Andrew Loomis’ Figure Drawing For All Its Worth, almost all the people coming into comics in the Forties and Fifties were influenced by Loomis and whoever their favorite artist was, like Alex Raymond or Milton Caniff for me. I drew women exactly the way Caniff did. And then I put my own ink style on it. But basically, I was drawing what Tuska had done when I was ten years old. I

saw the shapes he used and the stuff Carmine Infantino used. I just used it, whatever tricks they used. Simplify the outline. Carmine once told me just keep the silhouette very simple, don’t make it ugly. Keep it graceful. And that was Jack Kirby’s trick. If you look at Jack Kirby’s stuff, his silhouettes are cardboard cutouts.

But inside is all the power in the world. The simplicity of the outline makes the backgrounds easier. So I learned from everybody. From the time I was ten years old, I was learning how to draw comics. I used to draw comics everywhere when I was a kid, based on Joe Shuster and Jack Kirby and Alex Raymond and George Tuska.

Over his long tenure with Marvel Comics, George illustrated virtually every major inhabitant of the “Marvel Universe.” In the following pages, we review the main characters he drew, the contributions he made, and hear from his colleagues.

Captain America Much in the same way that Steve Rogers’ career as Captain America was reborn when he was discovered frozen in ice by the Avengers, so the career of George Tuska took on new life when he came back to work for Marvel Comics in the late 1960s. George had made a very meaningful contribution to the Golden Age of comics, but the Silver Age would prove to be his most historic, and prolific, period of artistic endeavor.

George’s return to Marvel was actually a gradual one. In 1964, Tuska penciled and inked a backstory for one issue of Tales of Suspense that featured the Watcher, the enigmatic character who would later become a regular companion feature in the Silver Surfer.

Stan Lee and the gang were riding high on the success of their new line of superheroes, among them a revitalized Captain America who had joined the ranks of the Avengers to once again battle the evil that threatened this country and the world. In 1965, Tuska stepped in to ink the pencils of the legendary Jack Kirby, who had defined the Golden and Silver Age incarnations of Captain America.

Tuska inked five issues of Tales of Suspense, wherein Cap faced off against the Nazi minions of the Red Skull. In these issues, Kirby and Tuska introduced us to the robots of the Red Skull, called the Sleepers, for the very first time.

Several years later, Tuska inked Kirby again in an “album issue” of Captain America, where Cap and Bucky’s past

adventures were related by Tony Stark through a series of flashbacks. The story featured some of the classic Golden Age villains as well as a retelling of the return of Captain America from issue #4 of the Avengers. Tuska returned to the book, then called Captain America and the Falcon, in the late 1970s to pencil yet another recap of the career of Steve Rogers and origin of Captain America.

In 2001, the American Association of Comicbook Collectors (AACC) honored George Tuska for his contribution to the legacy of Captain America. The ninth annual awards dinner was held on July 21 in the Manchester Room of the Hyatt Regency San Diego.

Among the other honorees were John Romita, Sr. and Gene Colan, both of whom also had memorable stints on Captain America. Also in attendance at the dinner were Carmine Infantino, Irwin Donnenfeld, Ramona Fradon, Sam Glanzman, Don Rosa, Julie Schwartz, Marie Severin and John Buscema, in what would be one of his last public appearances before his death. AACC Vice President and Dinner Chairman David Armstrong said “We are honored to have such great artists as our guests… all three guests were active in the Golden Age as well and, together, represent more than 150 years of work in the comic book business.” After George and Dorothy went up on stage to receive the Hall of Fame Award, Julie Schwartz got up from his table and helped

Tuska inks Jack Kirby’s pencils on Captain America

Stan welcomes George back in this caption from the Tales of Suspense Watcher story

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George down from the dias. Julie chided him, “I’m older than you are.”

We asked George about Captain America, Jack Kirby, and receiving recognition from the AACC: Cassell: When you inked Jack Kirby on Captain America, did you ink his pencils directly or were you working from a photostat?

Tuska: Directly. Kirby’s work was penciled and that’s what I inked. He did real rough figures. With me, when it comes to figures, I still do good figures, but I don’t concentrate much on backgrounds. But I really like backgrounds.

Whenever I see photographs in magazines that give me ideas for backgrounds, I try to cut them out. I’m still searching for something different. Not what the comic books have today. I want something of my own, something different.

Cassell: Was it easy to follow Jack’s pencils?

Tuska: Oh, yeah. He was clear. His pencils were very clear.

Cassell: In 2001, you went to San Diego to get the Hall of Fame Award, particularly because of your work on Captain America. You and John Romita and Gene Colan.

Tuska: Yeah. I did a Captain America commission and they put it up for auction. In fact, I did two of them.

Preliminary sketch of Captain America and the Red Skull

Cassell: How did you feel about being recognized for your work at that awards dinner? Did you enjoy that?

George: (George grimaces) I didn’t want to get up and make a speech. I didn’t care much for it for some reason— I don’t know what it was. I tried to have a good time.

Dorothy: He’s very humble.

The Avengers

A classic scene re-envisioned by Tuska 46

It was somehow fitting that since George had an opportunity to work on Captain America, that he also got a shot at the Avengers. To capitalize on their existing stable of heroes (and recognizing the success of their Direct Competitor’s Justice League), Marvel launched the Avengers in 1963. The initial team consisted of the Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, Ant Man and the Wasp, but the roster would change regularly over the years.

George joined the Marvel Bullpen on a full time basis in 1967, following the demise of Buck Rogers. One of his first assignments was to ink John Buscema’s pencils on several Avengers stories, including a cross-over with the X-Men and the second appearance of the Masters of Evil with Ultron. George also penciled and inked the issue that introduced the new Black Knight. In the Seventies, George took over the penciling for several issues that included the origin of the Vision and recruitment of the Beast. George also contributed to several Avengers covers.

George shared some thoughts on illustrating the Avengers: Cassell: How did you feel about drawing superhero teams, like the Avengers or the Justice League? You didn’t get paid any more to draw a team than you did to draw one person.

Tuska: I enjoyed doing that. I didn’t mind.

When I draw one person, alone, I’ve got to have something around why he’s there— what’s in the background—to make a story about.

Cassell: Did you have a favorite Avengers character?

Tuska: Somebody told me that I originated the Black Knight. I couldn’t say how or why because I never kept track of who drew characters before me. I heard that I didn’t make him with a beard and Buscema made him with a beard.

Cassell: He did go back and forth. I guess he shaved sometimes.

George also had the distinction of illustrating an issue of Marvel Premiere that featured another Avenger, Hercules.

Roy Thomas The Avengers stories that George inked in the Sixties were written by Roy Thomas. We had the pleasure of talking with Roy about George and the halcyon days of Marvel Comics. Given the variety of different books that Roy wrote as well as his stint as editor, we could have probably placed this interview anywhere in the book, but you’ll find that at the end of the interview, he tells a great Tuska Avengers story.

Splash page from Marvel Premiere featuring Hercules

Cassell: When did you first become aware of George’s work? Did you ever read any of his older stuff or the comic strips?

Thomas: I didn’t really ever see his Buck Rogers, that I remember, although I was aware that he was doing it. I know I was aware of George Tuska as a major crime artist. I had seen a few of his stories. I knew him by his reputation as one of the best artists for Biro.

Cassell: So when did you first meet George?

Thomas: I started at Marvel in the middle of 1965. He came in to work for Marvel in the late Sixties. He was up there and I met him. I don’t recall the occasion exactly, but Stan must have introduced me to him.

Cassell: When you were working with George at Marvel, you worked with him both as a writer and editor. How did you find him to work with?

Thomas: Because he was very dependable, you didn’t have to talk to him very often. I never really had to have a conversation with him about any of his work because first, he was a good artist, and secondly, Stan had kind of indoctrinated him. By the time I took over as editor, he knew the ropes. We kept him very busy all that time, as long as he wanted to be.

God of Thunder and Avenger Thor

Cassell: So what do you think of George’s art style?

Thomas: I’ve always liked it very much. It’s not a flashy art style. It’s very recognizable, especially the secondary characters—the thugs and so forth. He sort of had his own amalgamation of the kind of Jack Kirby, John Buscema, John Romita style 47

that Stan wanted and that I was carrying on for the most part. I was looking for other styles here and there, but for the main books, I was very happy to continue the list that they had for the preceding several years. George had that down pat by then. He wasn’t a flashy, innovative kind of artist. He just told really good stories and he told them very well with good figures and good art. It was just a very basic kind of style. Basic and yet with individualistic touches, so that whenever you looked at a couple of pages, it wouldn’t be long, no matter who inked it, before you realized that it was a George Tuska page. There would be something in the faces, poses or whatever that would tell you that it was George’s work.

Cassell: One of the things I have discovered in doing the research for the book is that us fans of Marvel had this image of the bullpen as all these guys sitting around one room, but it is apparent that a lot of the guys worked from home.

Roy Thomas

Preliminary sketch of Avengers commission

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Thomas: Most of them did. John Romita worked in the office after he came back in 1965. And a few other people were there off and on. Bill Everett had a staff job, although it was partly production and partly artwork. Marie Severin was on staff in production and she did some of her drawing there. Herb Trimpe was drawing the Hulk while he was there. By the early 1970s at least, we had a handful of those artists in there, but everybody else just came in and dropped off their work. Maybe they came in for a day to do some corrections, or do something special or work on covers. First with Stan and then with me, I’d have somebody come in to do covers. But then often those covers were laid out either by Gil Kane or Marie Severin or somebody. And then they were just mailed to the artist who was going to do those, so George wouldn’t have to come in to work on a sketch generally speaking. He may have occasionally, but generally speaking he just got a sketch sent to him and he drew it from that. He didn’t always do the covers for his issues anyway. He would have been a good cover artist. We probably didn’t use him on as many covers as we could have.

Cassell: I noticed that compared to some of his contemporaries, George did a fairly small amount of covers for Marvel.

Thomas: Well, there were certain people that either Stan or I would want to be the cover artist or the people who did the layouts. George would have been somebody who would have done some of his own covers, but even then sometimes it was just easier to have Gil Kane or somebody do it. And George didn’t care. If he had expressed that he especially wanted to do them, we would probably have worked that out, but since he didn’t, we just took the path of least resistance and had somebody else do it.

Cassell: One of the things I wondered was if there was a difference in compensation? Did they get paid more for doing a panel page than a cover or vice versa?

Thomas: I don’t think so. I think it was the same rate most of the time. Maybe they upped it later. By the time I was dealing with it through the middle of 1974, I think it was the same. Of course, you’re only drawing one drawing instead of a bunch of pages, so it’s actually easier. That’s why Gil Kane liked to do so many covers. He’d do one big panel and he got paid for a whole page.

He preferred that to doing four, five, six, seven panels. Even if you got the same rate, it was like getting more.

Cassell: Other than Iron Man, George worked on a lot of different titles.

Thomas: He did several Avengers with me. Sometimes I felt like he wasn’t the ideal inker when Stan put him on John Buscema. I didn’t think that was the ideal combination. He did a good job of it. I just felt like with George, you’re better off having him pencil or do both pencils and inks, rather than having him ink other people for the most part. But there is an advantage to having an inker who can draw and George can certainly do that. You were just so grateful for people who were good and not a lot of trouble.

Sometimes, you end up remembering all of the colorful characters that drove you nutty with deadlines or fake excuses for not turning in work and those are the things you remember. And all the guys that plugged along and did their work and at the same time as George did, sold a fair amount of comic books, tend to sometimes just kind of be a little forgotten because they are not the prodigal son.

Tuska cover to Avengers # 48 introducing the new Black Knight

Cassell: He seemed to get moved around from one title to another.

Thomas: He did a few Sub-Mariners. I remember when he did Sub-Mariner, he came in between a couple of other artists and just did like a two-part story with 49

Gerry Conway and those two issues sold better than the ones before or after. He did the cover for one, if not both, of those, so I think that George was probably the factor that made the difference there. That was true with a lot of other things as well, but I remember those couple of Sub-Mariner issues in particular.

George was a kind of utility infielder, especially for the books that didn’t need a big cosmic scope. If you were looking for somebody to draw Galactus, Silver Surfer, interstellar adventure, George was probably not appropriate. He would have done a good enough job, but that wouldn’t have been his strong point. But if you were looking for a super-hero, the real world with real people around him, looking like a situation that could just about happen, that would be George’s strength. That meant that he could have done Spider-Man. It would have had its own look, but Spider-Man he could have done. Certainly, he did that with Iron Man, who didn’t have a lot of space adventures, things of that sort. Sub-Mariner, the Avengers, relatively earth-bound characters who were not having cosmic exploits.

Cassell: It’s kind of ironic that the Buck Rogers stuff he did for the newspaper strip was very space-oriented.

Avengers penciler John Buscema

Thomas: Yeah, but they had tamed him down a lot. I remember one of the things that George told Stan—I don’t think I was in the room at the time, but Stan repeated it right away and has said it many times since—was what Stan told him that he wanted when he came back to Marvel, which was this Kirby-esque action that he was looking for, was everything that the people at the Buck Rogers syndicate had drummed out of him for all those years. Tuska had to make a 180º change when he came back, but he made the change very quickly, so within a couple of issues he was doing the same kind of work that he did for the remainder of his tenure there. He caught on very quickly and held that note for several years and sold a lot of comics while doing it. And, of course, he later did some for DC as well.

Cassell: Most of the artists I talked to preferred the “Marvel style” of working as opposed to the DC style where they had the entire script. As a writer, did you have a preference?

Cover to Sub-Mariner #41 by Tuska

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Thomas: Of course, I wrote very few straight scripts. I wrote the first couple I did for Charlton and what I submitted to DC that I was given an advance on that was never published, and I’ve done a few since then, especially adaptations. But 90 plus percent of my work has been done that way so I obviously favor it. I could do it the other way, but I never really did. I avoided it if I ever could. I made sure when I went to DC that I was still able to work that way.

Some editors wanted people to work full script, but they were having me come over because of my success at Marvel as a writer, so they should have me work the same way. Otherwise, they’re not going to get what they paid for. So, I liked working that way. Some of the artists didn’t like working that way at first. They may forget that now, but a lot of them kind of resisted the idea. They thought it was a nutty way to work. Then, after they tried it for a little bit, they would hate it if someone gave them a full script because they would feel it was too constraining, but at first it was a little like working without a net. Some of them weren’t as wild about it because it put more storytelling on them. It made them sort of

co-writers in a way—unpaid co-writers, but I don’t think most people were worried about that. It was just the idea of the extra thinking they had to do.

Cassell: From a logistical standpoint, the plot would go to the artist and the artist would pencil it out and then send it back to Marvel. At what point would the writer then put in the dialogue?

Thomas: At that point. Tuska would send it in to Marvel. Occasionally, they would want him to send it directly to the writer, depending on the schedule.

That’s when the writer would write it and indicate the captions and balloons, right on the original art or later on photostats. In the old days, we did it directly on the original art. Then it would go to the letterer.

Cassell: So it got lettered before it got inked?

Thomas: Yeah, generally speaking. Increasingly, as time went on, they ended up having stuff sent directly to the inker and then they would put the balloons on.

They do that more now. I know I’m doing Dracula with Dick Giordano and he’s doing finished penciling and inking before I write it and then the balloons will be pasted on. But that’s not the way we did it then. The story was plotted, then it was penciled, then it was written, then it was lettered, then it was inked, then it was proofed and then it was printed.

Cassell: Are there any other stories or recollections about Tuska that you would want to share?

The Fantastic Four take on the Avengers in a snowball fight

Thomas: I always remember that during the period 1967, early 1968 I guess it was, when he did one of his Avengers, I had the original art at home—not the whole book, but a lot of it. I lived in an apartment in Brooklyn with a friend and, for about a month, in my room and area of the apartment I had a young ocelot, which was probably illegal actually, but the building didn’t know I had this thing. It really was cool. But I remember it used to prowl around my room at night and kind of terrify me. It never did get tame at all, which is why I eventually took it to somebody else who wanted it more than I did. But I remember it was prowling around the room one night. I got up the next morning and it had urinated on at least part of the splash page of one of the Avengers pencils. I came into the office and mentioned it to Archie Goodwin, who wasn’t the editor then but he was writing for the company at that time, and I said, “My ocelot did this.” He just looked at it and shook his head and said, “Everybody’s an art critic.” Nothing against George.

It could have been anybody’s page. But I always remembered that it was a Tuska page for some reason. (laughter) It was always a pleasant experience dealing with him.

Cassell: Anything else you would like to add?

Archie Goodwin Thomas: Stan was a big Tuska fan. He was thrilled when Tuska came back because he had liked those Biro books and Tuska was one of the main artists for the Biro books like Crime Does Not Pay back in the Fifties. Stan thought he could bring, as he did, that same kind of soap opera element that he brought to the scripts by Charlie Biro and his people back in the Fifties. That was one of George’s strengths there.

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Cover recreation from issue # 39

by Tuska.

The X-Men

George illustrates the classic horror character and X-Men villain

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When Marvel Comics first introduced the X-Men in the 1960s, the response from readers was somewhat lukewarm. Most of the new Silver Age Marvel characters became heroes by virtue of some type of accident. The Fantastic Four were exposed to cosmic rays during their space flight. Doctor Banner was bathed in gamma rays during a bomb test.

Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider. By contrast, the X-Men developed their powers as teenagers as a result of a genetic mutation. On the one hand, the idea of a teenager feeling different from everyone around them was a familiar and compelling idea to young readers.

On the other hand, it wasn’t acne or changing voices that the XMen were dealing with—it was sprouting wings and shooting optic blasts from their eyes.

As the X-Men struggled somewhat to find their audience, the comic book went through a series of different artists. Jack Kirby was the one to initially define the characters and some of their most enduring foes, including Magneto and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Other artists took over the penciling chores from Jack and illustrated “the most unusual fighting team of all time” for a couple of years, including Don Heck and Werner Roth.

Then starting with issue # 39, George Tuska would take a turn at illustrating the troublesome teens. Among George’s contributions to the X-Men are a well-known cover, a little-known backup story and a best-forgotten villain.

The cover to issue # 39 is one of the best-known X-Men covers of the early years. It features all five X-Men, larger than life, charging out at the reader in their new costumes. The cover bears little resemblance to the story inside the issue, but it has the visual appeal of a pin-up.

There were even Marvel Value Stamps of Cyclops and Marvel Girl based on the images from this cover. (Marvel Value Stamps ran in Marvel Comics during the mid-1970s, designed to be clipped out of the comic book and collected.) George penciled and inked the cover in 1967, right after joining the Marvel Bullpen on a fulltime basis.

We asked George about working on the X-Men: Cassell: When you started working on the X-Men, did they give you a comic book to see how to draw it?

Tuska: Yeah, they would give me reference.

In the beginning, I was wondering, “Who is Cyclops? Is he a big monster or something?” But he isn’t, he’s a regular guy. To do a story about the X-Men, they would give me reference and from that I would copy the uniforms mostly. Even now, if I haven’t done something for a long time, I will forget about a character and I would need reference again. I have been doing Iron Man for a long time and so I really don’t need to have reference because I know it. You know, there are so many heroes….

Cassell: And you’ve drawn almost all of them. I can see how it would be hard to keep track. How did you get your synopses from Marvel?

Tuska: When I would bring in my work, they would give me another story. As soon as I finished, they would give me another one.

Cassell: When you did the cover for X-Men #39, was it meant to be a poster or did you do the artwork just for the cover?

Tuska: It was just a cover.

Cassell: When you were working on the X-Men years ago, did having teenagers affect the way you drew the X-Men? Tuska: That’s an interesting question, but I don’t think so.

George illustrated the lead stories in the next three issues of the X-Men and did the covers for two of them. In issue # 40, the merry mutants squared off against none other than… the Frankenstein monster. Professor Xavier tried to provide some logical explanation for this unlikely occurrence, but the Frankenstein story probably did nothing to boost X-Men credibility or readership. It was indicative, however, of a lack of certainty at the time on the part of Marvel regarding what to do with the X-Men. This story was awarded the “Mopee” award by Andrew Smith (Captain Comics) in Comic Buyer’s Guide as an example of one of the worst comic villains.

Appearing as backup stories in the comic book were the origins of each of the X-Men. George was tasked with illustrating the origin of the second X-Man, Bobby Drake, ultimately known as Iceman. The Iceman origin was a three-part story, written by Gary Friedrich, that began in issue # 44 of the X-Men and concluded two issues later.

The origin story was well rendered and told the compelling tale of a naïve Drake coming to grips with how the public at large would react to his newly manifested powers and eventually taking his place alongside Cyclops as a student of the Professor and costumed crime fighter.

George concluded his contribution to mutant lore with a little-known three-part story featuring the Angel.

The X-Men finished their initial run with issue #66 and subsequent issues of the comic book featured reprints of previous issues, until the legendary rebirth of the homosuperior super-hero team in Giant Size X-Men #1. The original X-Men made guest appearances in a variety of other comic book titles, which have been thoroughly chronicled by Andrew Smith (Captain Comics) in Comics Buyers Guide. The Angel story is noteworthy not only because it was a new story devoted entirely to one of the X-Men, but also because it was relegated to a backup feature, split across two different books, one of which was a reprint book. The Angel story, which was written by DC legend Jerry Seigel and inked by Dick Ayers, appeared in Ka-Zar issues #2 and #3 and concluded in issue #30 of Marvel Tales. The story features the death of the father of Warren Worthington III and includes a guest appearance by the Angel’s girlfriend, Candy Summers. The secret identity of the Angel is exposed during the story, but the

Angel solo story written by DC legend Jerry Siegel

Commission given to the author’s son encouraging him to draw 53

Illustration of the merry mutants commissioned for the author’s Christmas card (color by Tom Ziuko)

Caricature of the Hulk by Marie Severin

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villain called “The Dazzler” (who has a surprising identity of his own) meets an untimely end, thereby preserving Warren’s privacy.

George provided a distinctive chapter in the history of the uncanny X-Men. The foundation he laid would be expanded upon by Neal Adams and later by Dave Cockrum in developing what is today one of the most popular and widely recognized super-hero teams.

issues, Marvel cancelled The Incredible Hulk and for some time, he only appeared as a guest star in other books. Then Marvel decided to make the Hulk a companion feature to Giant Man in the split book entitled Tales to Astonish.

“Split books,” for the uninitiated, is the term used to refer to a single comic book with two distinct recurring characters in two distinct stories. The split books in the 1960s included Tales to Astonish (which featured the Hulk and Giant Man—later replaced by the Sub-Mariner), Tales of Suspense (Iron Man and Captain America) and Strange Tales (Doctor Strange and Nick Fury). At a time when their publishing output was limited, split books enabled Marvel to do more with less. Later split books included Amazing Adventures, Astonishing Tales and finally Marvel Presents.

When George returned to Marvel, his first few assignments were mostly inking other artists. It was just happenstance that Tuska’s return coincided with Marvel’s decision to give each of the characters in the split books their own titles. So it was that George came to ink Marie Severin’s pencils on The Incredible Hulk issue #102.

This was a landmark issue for a character that would go on to become one of Marvel’s most well known properties. The story in issue #102 includes a re-telling of the origin of the Hulk.

In addition to issue #102, Tuska also inked Marie’s pencils on issues #105 and #106 as the green goliath took on the “Missing Link” and the Communists (who were still very much a threat in the 1960s.)

Then in the late 1970s, George came back to The Incredible Hulk in issue #218 to pencil a story featuring another gammaradiated character, Doc Samson, fighting against the Rhino. We asked George (and Dorothy) about “Mirthful” Marie: Cassell: Did you enjoy working with Marie Severin?

The Incredible Hulk

George: I would see her in the office. I find Marie Severin knows her comics very well. She’s very good. She knows what’s what and who’s who.

Bruce Banner and his alter ego got off to a rather inauspicious start in 1962. Unlike his predecessor, the Fantastic Four, which opened to rave reviews, the Jade Giant was not exactly an overnight success. After six

Dorothy: When George used to go up to Stan’s office, Marie was there. I know she always used to answer the phone and she was always so friendly. When we see her, she loved George. She got along with him very well. She’s a wonderful person.

Marie Severin Marie Severin worked with virtually all of the Marvel artists during the Silver Age, including George Tuska. We asked Marie about George and working at Marvel during its heyday.

Cassell: How did you get to know George Tuska?

Severin: I got to know him pretty recently at the first San Diego Con he went to, he and his wife, because he knew nothing about how to do things at the convention.

What to sell stuff for—originals, old art, etc. He has a wonderful reputation. He’s always been a gentleman. I know he’s hard of hearing, which is a shame. You miss so much when that happens to you. It is a lonely life. George is lucky with a wonderful wife.

Marie and George at a comic convention

Cassell: Unfortunately, he typically declines the opportunity to do any kind of panels at conventions because of that.

Severin: Sure. It’s terrible. He is a nice guy. And his wife, I don’t know whether she knows anything about the business, but she’s very attentive to him, thank goodness. It’s a very hard thing to live with. I am familiar with deafness. A good friend of mine is a teacher for deaf children. It is interesting, deaf children are prone to good artwork.

Cassell: That’s amazing. So, when George came back to Marvel in the late 1960s, one of the first things they had him do was to ink your pencils on the Hulk book ….

Severin: (laughter) I don’t remember that. Isn’t that funny? I’d have to look in the reprints. We didn’t discuss it or anything. You know, in my time, I didn’t know where stuff was going. Who was lettering or anything, unless I was involved in sending Xeroxes to somebody or making corrections on the artwork or changing the inker’s name on the credits when it switched to somebody else. I wasn’t in on the decision-making.

Cassell: Do you have any idea why they decided to give the Hulk his own book with issue #102?

Severin: The phenomena of Marvel must have been taking off at that time. But George was so good on Iron Man, too. I liked it.

Severin and Tuska retell the origin of the Hulk

Cassell: He had about a ten-year run on Iron Man. Severin: “The proof is in the pudding.”

Cassell: So, did you ever see George in the office?

Severin: Oh, sure. When he would come in, I just thought he was shy. I had no idea he couldn’t hear. Nobody ever told me. He was very, very nice and I liked him. In those days, you didn’t have much time and most of the guys wouldn’t say, “Let’s go to lunch” to a gal that they usually just say hello to. That’s when you really got to talk to guys, if they had the time. But a lot of freelancers would come in, dump the work, talk to Stan, go over a story, talk to an editor or whatever they had to do and then they got going or they had a couple of guys that they knew and they would go to lunch. It wasn’t a community affair like it turned into in the Eighties and Nineties, when editors were fans, like Marv Wolfman and Jim Shooter.

Self-portrait of Marie Severin

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Cassell: When you were doing production type stuff and corrections, do you recall having to do much correction work on Iron Man? Severin: No. I had to do a lot of touch up stuff on artwork—not mistakes, but little things—but I don’t remember a major problem with his work at all. He had a great line. Nice pen line, pencil line. And good action.

The only time, if anything would have happened with George’s work, was sometimes the editor might want to change something. That would happen with just about anybody. Stan would sometimes say, “Oh, I want to change this because next issue it’s going to be a story on the subway, so let’s take that panel out about the subway and switch this or change this around, so he’s going to New York instead of Chicago.” You might change a panel or shift a sign in a panel or something like that. Minor things. Stan, in the early days, had a hand in a lot of it, but as things got bigger and bigger and bigger, he needed help and that’s why he got in Roy. Roy was top notch and Stan needed help with somebody who could dive in. No, George was not a problem. He could draw and he’s a storyteller and he was very efficient.

Cassell: One of the books you were famous for was Not Brand Ecch. Have you ever seen George’s humorous interpretation of the Marvel characters?

Recreation of cover from Iron Man #9 featuring the Jade Giant

Severin: I love his style. It is a shame we can’t see him doing more humor. His stuff is snappy, stylish and fun to look at. Top notch cartooning.

Tuska went on to illustrate the Hulk in several other books, including the Defenders and a guest appearance in Iron Man.

Daredevil

Detail from Defenders #57 56

Matt Murdock was still a boy when he had the misfortune of coming face to face, literally, with a drum of radioactive material (the bane of so many Silver Age super-heroes) while trying to save a blind man from an oncoming truck.

Murdock lost his sight, but gained heightened senses of hearing, smell and touch, as well as a sort-of radar sense that enabled him to distinguish people and objects. Murdock studied to be an attorney, but when his father was murdered, he trained in acrobatics and adopted a costume that was designed to strike fear into his enemies, while exhibiting none himself.

Daredevil first appeared in 1964, illustrated by Bill Everett. John Romita was later tasked with penciling Mr. Murdock

as his first assignment at Marvel. Over the years, a number of other artists tried their hand at the “Man Without Fear,” including Wally Wood and George Tuska.

Tuska penciled a couple of issues of Daredevil, which featured guest-shots by Sub-Mariner and Black Panther, as well as the villain known as the Owl. He also

inked the cover of an issue that featured favorite Daredevil gal-pal Black Widow.

There is some speculation that George’s contribution to Daredevil may actually have begun as early as issue #14. Several panels in the later pages of the story appear to have a Tuska influence.

Gene Colan Perhaps Tuska’s most important contribution to Daredevil, though, was in 1968 when he inked Gene Colan’s pencils in issue #39. No one artist is more closely affiliated with Silver Age Daredevil than Gene Colan. We had the opportunity to talk with Gene about his long run on Daredevil and his recollections of Tuska.

Cassell: Do I understand correctly that you started at Fiction House?

Colan: Yes, just prior to going into the service. Around 1942, 1943. It was a summer position that I had and my actual first professional job that I ever had.

Cassell: And was George there at the time?

Colan: He would come in and out. He wasn’t working there. I was on staff. That was in the Fifties, right off Fifth Avenue. It was a very small place and there were quite a few people in there. George would come in and out of the studio there.

That’s how I got to see his work. I was so impressed with it. I was just a very young guy at the time, barely out of my teens. That was the beginning.

Gene Colan

Cassell: What was it like working at Fiction House? I’ve heard some of those places were sweat shops.

Colan: Yeah, right. There were a couple of women there that were artists and the others were men, young guys like myself and Murphy Anderson. We both started almost together, at the same time. And it was a hot summer job. They had no air conditioning. There was just a big fan in there. To me, it was great because I got to get started and see what the industry was really like. It wasn’t anything like some of the studios at Marvel or DC, with air conditioning and beautiful offices. It was sort of a hole in the wall, that’s all it was.

Cassell: So when did you first become aware of George’s work? Did you read any of the early comics he did or the newspaper strips?

Colan: Not newspaper strips, but comic books. That’s where I saw his work. I think I saw some of the originals that came in. He was there at Fiction House, along with a fella called Lee Elias. Lee Elias drew very much like Milton Caniff. You could almost not tell the difference between the two artists. But George had a style all of his own and it was beautiful work. I mean, I would just stare aghast at it. It was quite something to look at. He was a real pro and I had not reached that status yet, looking at the beautiful work that he did. George was one of Stan’s favorites, of course. Everything that George ever did for Marvel and Stan Lee, he did so well. Stan always would hold his work up as the criteria of how he wanted the other artists to draw. His books sold well.

Could this be early DD art by Tuska?

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Cassell: So how did you come to work for Marvel?

Colan: When I got out of the service, which was about 1946, the first thing I did was to look for a position at one of the big companies. I always wanted to work for DC, but they were very difficult to get into, so I tried Stan Lee and Marvel. They were called Timely Comics then. They worked in the Empire State Building. Also, I approached this position in the summer and it was wonderful. The whole place was air conditioned, big offices, very impressive. That’s how I got to work with Stan. Stan could see something in my work that no one else could see. Thank God for me. That’s what really got me started, Stan’s faith in my ability. Although it wasn’t completely there at the time, I was too young and had a lot to learn. Syd Shores was on board at that time. He showed me a lot of stuff. And George would come in and out of there also. Evidently, he was freelancing around at the time. I don’t remember him holding a position anywhere.

Cassell: Well, you’re right. By the time he left Fiction House, he was pretty much just freelancing.

Daredevil commission art in ink and wash together with preliminary drawings

Colan: And so good at what he did. Then he started working for Stan and did all kinds of stuff for Stan. I always felt like he looked like one of his characters, one of the super-heroes. He looked like one of these very muscular Norwegian type of blond guys, like he was out of a fitness book. He was a big guy, big build, and he looked like a Viking, just like a Viking.

Cassell: So did you ever run into each other at Timely?

Colan: I mostly remember his artwork. George did a lot of westerns that I remember. When I’d seen him, I would recognize him right away from Fiction House. He was a very sweet fellow, just amiable, willing to help anyone that needed some advice. He was always there to be helpful. Very nice guy, a really nice fellow.

Cassell: So were you adversely affected when things fell apart at Timely?

Colan: Oh, sure I was. I was out. I couldn’t get any work from Stan. I don’t know where George was at the time. I don’t think he ever had any real trouble.

Cassell: That was about the time George picked up the Scorchy Smith newspaper strip.

Colan: Oh, well, then he did good. That was about 1958, 1959, when the whole thing fell apart. There were distribution problems, there was the Comic Book Code that the publications had to face, and they really kept after us. Stan was barely making

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out. He was working out of a closet with Jack Kirby. They were holding down all the books together. But I couldn’t get any work out of Stan. I had to go out into the field and just do the best I could.

Cassell: And then you returned to Marvel in the Sixties?

Colan: Yes. I started out with, I think, Fawcett Publications. I did Ben Casey. And then things started to hum along for me. Then I gradually got back in with Stan again. Then, Martin Goodman owned Marvel. He was the sole owner of Marvel Comics. He eventually sold it and you know the story from there. A lot of companies have purchased it. It’s worth a fortune today.

Cassell: One popular character that you worked on, and George did too, was Daredevil. Did you enjoy doing Daredevil?

Daredevil in action in the splash page to issue #145

Colan: Loved it. The fact that somebody like that could not see, but could do all of those fantastic things. John Romita did it before I did it. He must have done it for a year or two and then I came along in the early Sixties and I did it. And then I stayed with it. I always wanted to stay with a character that I could work with, continually work with and keep improving on it. The only way you can improve on the drawing and the character itself is being with it all the time. It was a helluva life though, you know, spending all day at the board, into the wee hours of the morning. It was very difficult, but that’s how it was.

Cassell: You worked under the “Marvel style” with synopses and at one point you probably worked under a full script. Did you have a preference?

Colan: I would prefer to not have a full script. My imagination could really run wild then. In the beginning when Stan and Jack were holding down the fort by themselves, in order for him to turn out all those titles, Stan would have to write them. So, what he would have some of the artists do, that could do it, and I was one of them fortunately, he would give them the go ahead to just fill in the blank spaces. Within five minutes, he would tell me the synopsis, and I would tape record it on the phone. I lived in New Jersey then. I didn’t go into the City, so I

Daredevil sketch by Tuska

Tuska inks Colan pencils in Daredevil # 39

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would talk to Stan for a few minutes and he would tell me the beginning, the middle and the end and just a few paragraphs would give me an idea what the story was about and he said, “Now, you fill in the rest.” I had to do 18, maybe 20, pages from that.

And very often, my pacing was off. You know what I mean? Anything that caught my interest, I would spend maybe a little too much time on it and then the rest of the story would go to pot. I’d be jammed up in the end and not able to really finish it off properly. So, I ran into some trouble with it. When the film Bullitt came out, I was so impressed with the car chase scene that I was itching to do something like it. In one of the books, an opportunity came along. I don’t even remember which character it was. I don’t think it was Daredevil. But there was an opportunity to do that and I must have taken up about seven pages of automobile chases that Stan really got quite angry at. He said, “You could have told it in two panels. What did you do? You took up seven pages.” Which meant that the rest of the story was squeezed in. But it got a lot of notoriety from the fans. The fans wrote in and they loved it. And so in spite of the way he felt, it seemed to pay off, just that one time.

Commission of Daredevil and villains

Cassell: Anything else about George that you would like to add?

Colan: George is a sweet fellow. I saw him at San Diego about two years ago and I spoke to him then.

Big guy. He’s doing just great. I met his wife. What a sweet lady she is. He’s easy to talk to. Anybody could go up and talk to him. He’s so wonderful.

What a person. In this business, you don’t meet many people like that. George is special, that I can say.

The Invincible Iron Man

Splash page from Iron Man #17 60

Comics are often a reflection of the time period in which they were created. Such was the case with the origin of Iron Man. In the early 1960s, the future resounded with a growing threat in Vietnam and the past echoed with the exploits of the likes of Howard Hughes. Stan Lee combined these elements to create Tony Stark. Stark was a millionaire scientist who had developed tiny transistors for military weaponry. On a visit to Vietnam to oversee their use in action, he stumbled into a booby trap and was injured. Captured by the enemy, forced to work on a new weapon for them, and facing imminent death from the wounds to his heart, Stark created an iron suit that would sustain his life and give him the power to fight back. So was born Iron Man. Iron Man began in 1963 in the pages of Tales of Suspense. The following year, he would begin to share the

book with Captain America. He finally got his own solo title in 1968. And then with issue #5, George Tuska began a long association with Tony Stark. No character is George Tuska more closely identified with than Iron Man. George was the predominate artist for Ol’ Shellhead for over ten years. George talks a little about his relationship with the Golden Avenger:

did it. I didn’t question it. I had Iron Man all those years, a long time.

Cassell: How did you get involved with Iron Man?

Cassell: Did you like having something steady to do?

Tuska: I went to Marvel. About the first thing I did was Captain America. And then I was doing something else, but not for long. Then, I got a script for Iron Man. I worked on that. I didn’t ask Stan or anybody for what I wanted to do. I took what they gave me. But somehow, I got another script for Iron Man. He must have liked it, the way I

Tuska: Oh, yeah, I enjoyed doing Iron Man. Because you get in the mood with it, when you keep doing it all the time. It’s not monotonous because

Cassell: What do you think the fans liked about Iron Man? Tuska: I don’t know. When I go to the conventions and I sketch Iron Man or do drawings of Iron Man for the fans, they say they like him very much.

Cover to Iron Man #5, the first issue by George Tuska

Recreation of cover to Iron Man #19

Iron Man and George’s favorite villain, Doctor Doom

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the stories are different, with different characters.

Cassell: When you drew Iron Man, it almost looked like his iron mask had expressions. Iron Man could smile or he could frown.

Tuska: When I draw Iron Man, I don’t like to make it metallic, like a robot. I put a little human form in it. Add a little touch to the armor, sometimes laugh, sometimes sigh.

Cassell: Who was your favorite Iron Man villain?

Recreation of the cover of Iron Man #15

by Tuska

Tuska: In the beginning, it was Mandarin, but now I think the most attractive is Doctor Doom, the most unique. Doctor Doom, of all the characters, stands out as the meanest. Of course, now and then Iron Man fights Spider-Man or someone, two of the main characters that they put together. But then, somehow later on they get friendly again, after they were mad at each other.

Cassell: There was a time when Marie Severin was designing a lot of the covers for Marvel. Were you doing any of the Iron Man covers at that time?

Tuska: I didn’t do too many covers. Not with Marvel. Buscema or somebody else usually got to do them. Some other magazines, years ago, I’ve done covers for.

Cassell: Would you like to have done more covers?

Tuska: Covers are good. Because later on, when you put them on sale, it’s more money than page by page. Splashes are good, too. My granddaughter has a lot of my splash pages.

For a broader perspective into Tuska and his long tenure on Iron Man, we talked to several of his former colleagues, including Marvel editor and writer Roy Thomas, Iron Man inker Mike Esposito, Tales of Suspense penciler Gene Colan, and the other artist most closely associated with Iron Man, Bob Layton.

Roy Thomas Part II As we continue the interview with Roy Thomas, the former Marvel editor shares some insight into Tuska and Iron Man: Cassell: George worked on Iron Man for almost ten years. What do you think was the appeal of the character?

Splash page from Iron Man #10 62

Thomas: Well, I don’t have the sales figures after the mid-1970s or so—but generally speaking Iron Man was not really one of Marvel’s biggest characters. He was reasonably popular, but there were times when he would come close to being knocked down to bi-monthly, which would indicate that he wasn’t that popular.

Actually, the most popular time we had, I think, with Iron Man during the Sixties and Seventies was probably when George was drawing him. As I’ve said many times in many places, during the period from the late Sixties through the early Seventies when I was the most heavily involved, George Tuska and John Romita were the two artists, who more than anybody—especially after Jack left around 1970 and the next few years—they were the two artists that virtually everything they did sold. And of course, quite often they were doing the covers for what sold. They both had the kind of clear, simple storytelling that attracted readers. Some other artists with maybe flashier styles might sell okay, but they didn’t attract the overall readership. Good artists, like a Steranko or Neal Adams, would do very nice covers, very nice work, but it wasn’t money in the bank like it was having Romita or Tuska do a book.

Cassell: Although he had been doing some utility work, when it came to Iron Man, George ended up staying on there for a long time.

Thomas: It was okay under Johnny Craig, but it was really when Tuska came in that the book got much more solid in terms of sales.

It never was a huge seller, but it was a good solid book after a while.

Cassell: When it came to assigning inkers, he worked with Mike Esposito quite a lot, but there were a number of other inkers who worked in there as well. How did you figure out who to give the pencils to?

Thomas: Well, I don’t recall thinking about it too much, but I do have the feeling Stan probably said something like this—or if he didn’t he was thinking it—that because George’s style was so strong and straightforward and because it was such finished penciling, I think he felt you could give it to almost anybody who was a professional inker and it would come out looking just about the same. If they just followed the pencil well, it would end up looking like Tuska. Sure, a Tom Palmer or somebody would have doodled around with it a little bit. Some would do it better and some would do it worse, and George of course inked some of his own work, too. But it would always end up looking like Tuska. Some artists can really be helped or hurt a lot by inking. I don’t think George was one of those. A bad inker would have hurt him, of course, and a really good inker might add somewhat to a quality that was not in his style and it might look nice, but basically most people just made it look like Tuska. Stan liked that just fine. The readers liked that just fine, so that’s what they did.

Iron Man #18 page 12

Gene Colan Part II Gene Colan is known for his long runs with several Marvel characters, among them Iron Man in Tales of Suspense. Continuing the interview with Gene Colan, we talked to him about his stint with Tony Stark: Cassell: One of the characters that you drew that you have in common with George, although you didn’t do it at the same time, was Iron Man. You drew it before George did.

Colan: I don’t know whether it was before or after, but somewhere in there I was doing not only “Iron Man,” but Daredevil, too, I think, and “Sub-Mariner,” and some Captain America. I liked to do “Iron Man.” It was a challenge because his face mask was supposedly iron, yet I tried to introduce some expressions in it. You can’t move iron around like that. I fantasized it a bit and was able to capture a couple of expressions that would indicate how the character was feeling. That was my beginning with “Iron Man.” I did it for quite a few years. I enjoyed it very much. They were all pretty much the same. The fight scenes were always choreographed in pretty much the same manner. It was very hard to come up with different ways to show a fight. We all did our best, but we had a great time doing it. George certainly did his part with it.

Gene Colan self-portrait

Cassell: So what do you think made “Iron Man” popular?

Colan: It just caught the imagination of the readers, I guess. There was something about him that they liked. These were pretty new super-heroes at the time, so they sort of bought into it. Daredevil was doing well also and all the rest of them.

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Mike Esposito During his tenure on Iron Man, the inker George worked with most often was Mike Esposito. Esposito was a long-time inker with Marvel that embellished the work of artists like Jack Kirby, John Romita and Ross Andru. We talked with Mike about comics, Marvel and Tuska.

Cassell: You mentioned that before you were a colleague of George’s, you were a fan.

Esposito: I was a big fan of his when I was about twelve, thirteen, fourteen, I guess.

With the Crime and Punishment, Crime Does Not Pay magazines—Lev Gleason.

I was buying those books a lot, more than the DC books. For some reason, I was attracted to that stuff more than the super-heroes, as a kid. Maybe because they were real stories and I loved the way he drew those characters. They were like a caricature of the real gangsters, unbelievable to my eyes, in that stage of my life. I loved the faces of his—their teeth and the kind of garb they would wear, their clothing. As a young fella, fourteen years old, I tried to draw like him.

Cassell: So that was an inspiration for you, then, in terms of getting into art?

Splash page from Iron Man #66

Esposito: Definitely. I used to always want to emulate his look. Part of it had to do with the fact that he didn’t overwork.

It was simplistic, the backgrounds and so on. The character was the whole thing.

The facial expressions, the character, the suits, the clothes they wore. And the background, it wasn’t like guys like Fred Kida and so on who would go into the picture more. With Ross Andru—I worked with Ross—the background became eighty percent of the picture. I found it easier on my eye to be able to emulate Tuska because he didn’t overwork in that area, which would have been a hell of a lot of work when you’re twelve or thirteen years old to imitate all that stuff. That probably had a lot to do with it. But when he went on to other things, I followed his career.

Never thought I’d meet him. But I did meet him in 1964, 1965 up at Marvel Comics when he came into the office. He looked good. As a matter of fact, up at Marvel Comics, when he came into John Verpoorten’s office, and I came in and saw him, he was very handsome. Blond guy. Very erect. Stan said something like, “Boy, I’d love to look like him when I’m his age.” Stan was about my age, maybe three years older.

Cassell: So when did you first start working for Marvel?

Mike Esposito

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Esposito: I started with Timely Comics, before it was Marvel in 1948, 1949. That’s where I met Stan Lee. I was working at Lev Gleason first. I was so happy to be working with Lev Gleason because that’s where Tuska was a star in the younger years. I was

doing Crime and Punishment magazine. Fred Kida was up there. I was there for a while and then I shopped around. Went to school first, naturally, and then went up to Timely Comics. They had like a factory set up.

And Stan Lee interviewed me and said “Okay, you can start here as a penciler.” So my job was to pencil so many pages a week for my salary, about a page a day of pencils. And the inkers used to do a page a day.

But I wasn’t an inker then, I was a penciler. All the guys were up there— Mike Sekowsky, John Buscema, Gene Colan. We were all in the same room.

We were all penciling. Gene Colan was 21. I was 21. Boy, that was a long time ago. When I first worked for Lev Gleason in 1949, he had a similar setup. It didn’t last long and they had to let me go. I guess he heard about Stan’s setup and figured they could hire pencilers and hire inkers and hire letterers, but they had to pay their salary every week. And when you slowed down on production, you still paid the salary. It was easier for Timely because they were putting out forty, fifty books a month. They would just stockpile the books. They had their own distribution—it was Atlas distribution and the publisher kept turning them out. A lot of the artists were doing nothing—sitting around smoking cigarettes. They gave me a hot foot one day. I’ll never forget it. Stan had an intercom system.

He could hear what was going on and he heard me yelling and screaming at these guys because they gave me a hot foot. I was a kid, you know. I was like the new guy and they were teasing me. So Stan calls me in the office and wants to know what the hell is going on. It wasn’t long after that that I was the first to go. Maybe it had something to do with that. Then Stan and I became very close later, when they made their comeback in 1964, 1965.

Tales of Suspense #9 cover as envisioned by Tuska

Cassell: Do you recall the circumstances under which you and George began to work together?

Esposito: There were these contracts we had with Marvel where you had to produce so many pages a month for so much money. You were obligated to do those pages. It tied you up. You couldn’t freelance. You were exclusive. What happened was I was doing Spider-Man with John Romita. Whatever came along, they just rolled it out to you, stockpiled you. I did so much work. One of the things they came up with was Iron Man. At the time, it was George, but I don’t know who was inking. It might have been Paul Reinman. There were a lot of guys who were not doing that much work for the company, but they would put them on different books. Jack Abel inked a couple when it was a split book. When it became its own book, I got involved with Iron Man. That’s when I was doing it with George Tuska. I did a lot. I think we did a hundred issues.

Cassell: You worked together for almost ten years.

Esposito: Yeah, we did a lot of books together. I thought it was great.

They moved the guys around, but when Iron Man would come up to do, they would give it to Tuska and Esposito. I was Mickey Demeo earlier, but I became Mike Esposito—my own name—when I decided I didn’t need to worry about DC Comics. I was exclusive when I first went to Marvel. When I was doing the “Hulk” with Jack Kirby, I said to Stan, “I can’t work for you on a steady basis.” Jack would do very light breakdowns. He did so much work for the company, they’d have four different guys working with him that would finish his stuff and ink it after he did the layouts. So Stan said, “If you do this, use a pen name.” They were all doing it. Adam Austin was Gil Kane. Frankie Ray was Frank Giacoia. So I said, “Okay, call me Mickey Demeo.” It was a name I had in the 1950s when I was doing horror stories—“Mr. Mystery,” published in Get Lost—and I didn’t want certain guys in the business to know who I was.

Mickey Demeo was a relative’s name up in Boston. So he used it and it caught on.

Preliminary sketch of Tony Stark holding Iron Man helmet

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Fans loved it. Stan said to me one day, “I got a letter from a fan in England who said ‘I know who Mickey Demeo is.

He’s Mike Esposito. I can tell by the way he does ears.’” I almost fell on the floor laughing.

What I did I don’t know, but I did it no matter who penciled it, I did the ears that way. They weren’t Mickey Mouse ears, they were real ears.

Capturing the imagination of readers

Cassell: So what do you think the appeal was of Iron Man? You and George made a great team.

Esposito: When guys like Layton took it over, they made it look more like iron.

When we did it, George had a certain style, a certain look, and I didn’t change the look. I learned something when I was inking with Ross —make it look like your pencils, not my inks. I kept it as close to the pencils as I could do. When I do recreations today, I try to keep it line for line.

Cassell: How did George compare with the other pencilers you worked with?

Esposito: I loved it because he was as clean as can be. He didn’t make me have to worry about adding something that wasn’t there. It was all there.

Classic Iron Man action by Tuska and Esposito

Cassell: When you were working with George, did you exchange the artwork through the mail?

Esposito: No, because I worked in the office. A lot of time, I was in the office every day. For about a year and a half I took on a staff job. I had gone bankrupt with Ross publishing Up Your Nose and Out Your Ear and so Roy said “Do you want a staff job?” It paid $75 a week, but you got all the freelance with it. At one time, I was making $1200 a week because of all the freelance.

That’s when I quit the staff job. I had more freelance than I could handle going into the office every day. So I went back to complete freelance. I was like a machine at that point, turning them out.

Cassell: You also did a story with George for Tower Comics—a Dynamo story. He was one of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Did you do much work at Tower?

Esposito: I did it because Gil Kane had an account there. Gil Kane came to my house. I was living in Hollow Beach, Queens. He came to my house and sat in the kitchen. He said, “Mike, I’ve got some work for you, if you’d like to do it. It’s for Tower.” Wally Wood was working for them also. He paid me out of his pocket. They didn’t even know I did it. He had a deal—he was getting $40 a page and he paid me $10,

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but I didn’t argue because he paid me out of his pocket. It was his account. Yeah, I remember doing that. Also, we did the Planet of the Apes, George and I did.

Cassell: Were there any times that you and George interacted outside of work?

Esposito: I met him a couple of times and told him how I felt. He and his wife were at a dinner on Long Island for the Berndt Toast Club. His wife was next to him. I walked over and told him that he was the reason I was in the business and how much I loved his stuff. His eyes were twinkling. I’ll never forget it. His wife said, “See, how much they really love you.”

Bob Layton

Esposito ears

One of the artists who picked up the mantle of Iron Man from Tuska and carried it to new heights was Bob Layton. As you read in this interview, there is more than one connection between Tuska, Layton and Iron Man. Cassell: When did you first become aware of George’s work?

Layton: Like many fans of my particular era, I became aware of George Tuska through his work on Iron Man. Cassell: When did you first meet George?

Layton: Strangely enough, I sort of owe my career at Marvel to George. (More on that later) Actually, I never met George during my tenure at Marvel. It wasn’t until many years later. As I recall, Dick Giordano introduced me to George, and his charming wife Dorothy, at a convention back in 2002. I recall being very sheepish and apologetic at the time because the one and only assignment I ever had with George was very early in my career and it was an atrocious inking job on an issue of Iron Man. I remember apologizing profusely for a transgression I had committed two decades earlier while shaking his hand. Actually—it was pretty funny.

Bob Layton

Iron Man study by Tuska

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Thank goodness he was very gracious about the whole thing. My wife was really taken by the Tuskas and Jill and Dorothy arranged a swap—a Tuska Iron Man drawing for Jill in exchange for a bag of Florida oranges.

Cassell: What do you think of George’s art style?

Layton: If I understand the question correctly, you’re asking me what I think of superior, consistent draftsmanship and excellent storytelling? To tell the truth, I think George is one of the mainstay Marvel creators that doesn’t get enough credit for his contributions to that era. I think part of that is due to George’s genuine humble nature. He strikes me as someone who is uncomfortable “tooting his own horn.” George Tuska should be acknowledged as one of the professionals that helped make Marvel into the success it is today.

Cassell: How did you come to work for Marvel?

Recreation of cover of Iron Man #18 by Tuska

Splash page from Iron Man #19 by Tuska

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Layton: That’s a funny story. I was already getting work at DC at that time (1976). In the meantime, I continued to do background work for Woody (Wally Wood) and would occasionally deliver pages for him when I made a trip into NYC from Connecticut.

One day, I was in the Marvel office, handing in Woody’s pages to Big John [Verpoorten] in the production dept. So, I used the opportunity to show my samples around while I had ‘my foot in the door’.

When I passed the Art Director’s office, I heard John Romita on the phone, frantically trying to find someone to ink a desperately late issue of Iron Man (issue #91). Like an idiot, I stuck my head in his doorway and said I could get the job done in the four or five days that was left on the schedule. It was an utter fabrication… but I really wanted to work for Marvel Comics! Johnny gave me the pages and said, “Show me what you can do, Kiddo.” Panicking, I ran down Madison Ave. to Continuity Associates, where a lot of my fledgling contemporaries worked as assistants for Dick Giordano & Neal Adams. (At that time, the gang was comprised of Terry Austin, Bob Wiacek, Joe Rubinstein, Bob McLeod, Joe Brosowski, Carl Potts and a host of others) To my relief, they all pitched in on the inking and we finished the entire book in less than four days. (Side note: Twenty-some years later, as I stated earlier, I finally met George and apologized profusely for wrecking his beautiful pencils on that job.) Once I turned the job in, I never heard from anyone from Marvel for weeks. I was sure that I had permanently destroyed any chance of ever getting work there again. Then, about a month after the Tuska job, a package arrives on my doorstep. I opened it and found an entire issue of pencils on the Champions.

I presumed that it was sent to me in error, so I called

the Marvel offices to see where they want me to forward the material. But my utter amazement, Romita tells me that I’m the new regular inker on the book. So, in a fashion, I owe my career at Marvel to George Tuska.

Cassell: How did you get involved with Iron Man? Layton: I worked at Marvel for about a year after the Tuska Iron Man job and the short inking stint on the Champions. Then, I signed an exclusive deal with DC Comics—after they made me ‘an offer I couldn’t refuse’. However—it turned out to be a very stormy environment at DC and I wanted out after about a year. Just before my contract expired at DC, David Michelinie and I (we had first formed our partnership at DC, working together on Star Hunters and Claw—the Unconquered) had agreed to leave the company for greener pastures. We both sensed the impending ‘Implosion’ and didn’t want to wind-up as a casualty of it. Together, we went to Marvel and interviewed to work as a team there. We were given a choice of several lower-end books to work on and I jumped out of my seat when I realized that Iron Man was one of them. That was the one book in the entire industry that I wanted to do more than any other. David was unfamiliar with the character but immediately sensed my passion for it. David’s lack of familiarity with Iron Man mythology proved to be a tremendous asset—translating into a genuinely fresh approach to the character.

Iron Man #91

Cassell: Were there any elements of George’s version of Iron Man that you incorporated into your own interpretation?

Layton: The truth of the matter is— there have been a lot of great Iron Man artists but I think George Tuska has to rank high up there near the top. Unfortunately, I don’t think that George got an abundance of great scripts, especially towards the end of his run on the book. When David and I first took over the series, I thought we were going to get Tuska as our penciller—so I looked at the situation as an opportunity to redeem myself for the awful job I did on Iron Man #91. As it turned out, we got a fledgling newcomer by the name of John Romita Jr. But, as you’re aware, that worked out to be a good thing. I have to say that George’s influence on Iron Man was present in those days. I think we incorporated many of George’s straightforward storytelling techniques in those early issues. In fact, it was always my desire to get George to do a few fill-ins on Iron Man, but he was never available when JR Jr. needed a break. Look—I felt fortunate to have a chance to work with guys like Romita and Tuska. They both laid the foundations of Iron Man visually.

At the end of the day, it’s an honor to have been counted among them as a significant Iron Man illustrator.

Cassell: What do you think made the Iron Man character so popular?

Layton: Character… character… and character! As I’ve stated in previous interviews, the elements that make a good Iron Man story are the conflicts that create change in Tony Stark. Not unlike his armor, Tony is always a work in progress, constantly adapting to challenges that life throws at him while trying to control the inner demons that sometimes push him down unexpected roads. Tony has an obsessive/compulsive

Layton inks Tuska pencils in Iron Man #91

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personality—that is his Kryptonite. That’s what made the “Demon in a Bottle” storyline work in Iron Man. The Armor Wars saga was a prime example of the compulsion that drives him to endanger everything he’s built in order to do (what he believes to be) the ‘right thing’. And that translated into one of our most popular runs in the Iron Man series. Also, it was the supporting characters. They exist to ground the reader in a sense of reality. Through their eyes, we witness and react in a believable manner. That’s why David and I designed an entirely new cast of supporting characters when we came onto the series, like Mrs. Arbogast, Bethany Cabe and Rhodey. For example, David and I created Jim Rhodes in order to ground Tony Stark’s fantastic exploits in some degree of reality. We realized early on that a “best friend”(on equal footing with Tony) was something the character had been sorely lacking throughout its run.

Cassell: Who was your favorite Iron Man villain?

Layton: From my run on Iron Man? Justin Hammer— without a doubt. And on George’s run, I’d have to say it was the Mandarin.

Cassell: Do you have anything else about George that you would like to share?

Iron Man commission with friends and foes by Tuska

Layton: No—other than it’s important that we recognize creators like George Tuska for their significant contributions to the comics industry. George was among those who helped to lay the foundation of the current comics industry and we should always show the appropriate respect. One of my pet peeves about the comics business is its total lack of respect for the ones who helped to shape the industry. We tend to sweep our elder statesmen under the carpet, instead of holding them in the high regard that they’ve earned through their dedication and hard work.

Every artist would like to leave behind a legacy for which they would be well remembered, but not all have the opportunity. From that fateful day when he received that first Iron Man script, Tuska brought a strength and humanity to the character that resonated with fans and earned him a place in comic book history.

Sub-Mariner The Sub-Mariner, like Captain America, had his origins in the Golden Age with Timely.

And much like Cap, Subby was resurrected in the Silver Age for a whole new generation.

This time, it wasn’t the Nazis that Namor was fighting, but the “surface dwellers” who destroyed his undersea home. Sub-Mariner served alternately as both hero and villain, 70

depending on the circumstances. The Fantastic Four were a particular thorn in his side, given his unrequited love for Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman, and his open animosity toward Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, whose Golden Age namesake had been both friend and foe to the Sub-Mariner in years past.

Sub-Mariner began his Silver Age run in the pages of Tales to Astonish, taking over the half of the book once occupied by Giant Man. Namor and Bruce Banner shared the split book until the end of its run, when each was given his own title.

Many artists penned the tales of the undersea monarch, including Bill Everett, Marie Severin, and George Tuska. George penciled five issues of Subby’s adventures, including guest appearances by SpiderMan and Doctor Strange. He also penciled the cover to issue # 41.

Jim Mooney Part II One of the artists closely associated with the Silver Age Sub-Mariner is Jim Mooney. The interview with Jim continues with discussion regarding Marvel, Tuska and the Sub-Mariner: Cassell: When did you first start working for Marvel?

Mooney: I had been working for DC for about 20 years and they decided that they no longer needed my services after that time. One of my good friends, Stan Lee, mentioned “Well, we need somebody to help out on Spider-Man with John Romita.”

And so I gave it a try and was there for quite a few years and did many other books, too.

Self-portrait of Jim Mooney

Cassell: So Spider-Man was the first thing you did for Marvel?

Mooney: No, actually, before Marvel was doing Spider-Man, I worked with Stan Lee on the funny animals comics—Terrytoons and so on—way back in the Forties, before World War II. We worked together on several different books. That was early on and from there I went to other things.

Cassell: At Marvel, you and George ended up working on several different comics together. You did an issue of Daredevil together, and several issues of Iron Man, and the Sub-Mariner. Did you enjoy working with George?

Mooney: Yeah, I liked George’s stuff. I always did. Years and years ago, I was doing a freelance job for somebody and I remember knowing that George was very, very fast and I couldn’t meet the deadline. It was Ace Magazines I was working for at the time and I had taken on more work than I could handle and I came to George and I said, “George, can you finish this thing up for me because I’m going to be in trouble if I can’t turn it in on time?” And he finished the thing up for me and I paid him full rate for it just to get me off the hook. I remember that quite well. He did a beautiful job. Did it fast. This was when I was working freelance for Ace Magazines doing “Lash Lightning,” “Magnum and Davy,” and that stuff. Ace Magazines was also a pulp magazine publisher. They published comics for a while and that was when this ensued.

Sub-Mariner by Tuska and Mooney

Cassell: I noticed that when you were working on Sub-Mariner, it looked like you worked with a variety of different pencilers. One issue it would be penciled by Marie Severin and the next issue would be by George and the next issue would be

by Don Heck and the next issue would be by Win Mortimer. You were doing all the inking. Do you have any idea why they didn’t just give it to one penciler?

Mooney: I don’t know why. I assume they used me as the inker to try to get some consistency with the variety of pencils I was working with. You know, to try to make it look somewhat similar. But I don’t think that was even a concern at that time. I don’t think the reader’s reactions to the strip, as far as the artwork, was that much of a concern to them. I think it was just a matter of expediency in getting the book out. Or maybe they were just trying to keep some people busy that needed work at the time. Any number of reasons could have been responsible for that.

Cassell: Are there any things that maybe I should have asked you about George that I didn’t think to?

Mooney: Well, I think I’ve covered quite a few of them incidentally. I see George occasionally. I don’t go to many of the conventions any more because I’m not able to.

Tuska sketch of Namor, Monarch of the Seas

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I can still sit down and draw, but I can’t walk too well. So consequently, we drive to the Orlando convention, which is only a couple of hours from where I live and I see George at that convention quite often.

Tuska also illustrated a couple of issues of Super Villain Team-Up, wherein Sub-Mariner teamed up with Doctor Doom.

Luke Cage

Splash from first issue of Hero for Hire

Christmas commission with Luke Cage and Black Goliath

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During the Golden Age, the profile of the average comic book reader was pre-teen, white, male. In the wake of the heightened social consciousness of the 1960s, comic book publishers recognized a need to reach out to a broader audience. Having launched a strong African-American character, the Black Panther, in the pages of the Fantastic Four, Marvel decided it was time to take it a step further. Thus was born Luke Cage, the first African-American hero to star in his own book. Unlike the Black Panther, however, who was the reigning king of Wakanda, Cage came from more humble beginnings, reflective of the times.

The origin story of “Lucas” began with him imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. Dr. Noah Burstein believed in his innocence and offered him parole in exchange for his participation in a hazardous experiment. A racist guard tampered with the experiment and as a result, Lucas gained superstrength and nearinvulnerability. He escaped from prison and made his way to New York City, where he adopted the name Luke Cage, an amalgamation of his given name and his wrongful incarceration. He found he could make a living as a mercenary and became a “Hero for Hire.”

The Luke Cage stories, written by Archie Goodwin, typically pitted him against

villains who threatened to undermine the social fabric of our society. George Tuska was picked to pencil this landmark comic book, with the artwork to be inked by up and coming AfricanAmerican artist Billy Graham. With issue #17, Cage took on the professional name “Power Man” and the title of the comic book changed as well. Tuska continued to pencil the book regularly over the next four years, relieved occasionally by Graham (who also illustrated many of the covers) and another African-American artist named Ron Wilson. Cage ultimately teamed up with Danny Rand, the Iron Fist, in a title that ran for another eight years.

Cage continues to be a mainstay of the Marvel Universe and plans are underway for a feature film.

We talked to George briefly about working on this historic book: Cassell: Luke Cage was the first AfricanAmerican character to get his own comic book—Hero for Hire. I think you and John Romita designed the character.

How did you get involved with Hero for Hire?

Tuska: They gave me a synopsis. It was good. I did one. It came out good. I don’t know how the heck we came up with the costume. I remember he had a chain across, boots, a blouse, a headband.

Black Goliath With the success of Luke Cage, Marvel decided to try their luck again. Tuska was tapped once more to launch a new title featuring an African-American character—Black Goliath—which was created by writer Tony Isabella. Black Goliath was first introduced in a guest appearance with Luke Cage in 1975.

The character was very similar to the Avenger who bore basically the same name. Bill Foster, a biochemist working for Henry Pym, acquires a formula that allows him to grow and become stronger at will. Perhaps because of the

lack of originality, Black Goliath never really gained a foothold and the title was canceled after five issues. Nonetheless, Tuska did an admirable job of illustrating this short-lived super-hero.

Many of the African-American characters in the Marvel Universe were more enduring, including Luke Cage, the Falcon and the Black Panther. Ironically, Tuska penciled and/or inked many issues of the Avengers, including the first full issue in which the Black Panther appeared as one of the assembled.

Spider-Man When you think of George Tuska, a lot of different super-heroes come to mind. Spider-Man isn’t typically one of them. But George has more connections to the wall-crawling web-swinger than you might think. And not just guest appearances in the other books George drew. In the interview with Aaron Sultan, John Romita tells the story best:

John Romita Part III Sultan: You had mentioned that around 1968, George had been considered to pencil Spider-Man. Can you tell us about that?

Romita: Well, I don’t know exactly when it was. Stan was always trying to find a way to give me time to work on other books, like Captain America and sometimes when the romance books started. He always had some scheme for me. He wished I had four arms and two heads, you know? So what he did was, he used to try out people like Don Heck and Dick Ayers and then one time he tried out George Tuska. Tuska had been doing X-Men, I think. Or maybe before he did X-Men, I’m not sure. But Stan and I plotted a story and he had me call up the Tuska household and give the plot verbally over the phone to George’s wife. I think Stan had told him to do a thumbnail version of it. You know, a small copy of it. George did a very comprehensive pencil job—he even put blacks in it—on 6" x 9" or 8" x 10" paper and brought it in. Stan looked it over. It was beautifully drawn, but for some reason, he didn’t think it looked like a Spider-Man story, so he rejected it. The tragedy of my life is that I put it in my files—either that or maybe you guys can ask Mrs. Tuska if maybe I put it in an envelope

Shades of what might have been

Tuska does Spider-Man and villains Not Brand Ecch-style

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and sent it back to George. It would be wonderful to know if that stuff still exists. Maybe she still has it in her files.

More likely, I’m stupid enough to have put it in my files and lost track of it. I want to kill myself every time I do that stuff. Just think about it, having a full Spider-Man story by Tuska. I mean, they’d blow it up now and print it.

Sultan: Do you have any recollection of what the story was about?

Romita: No, but I remember the splash. A guy in an overcoat on a dark, stormy night. I swear, I don’t remember anything else about it. I was always so swamped in those days, people used to stop by in the office to talk to me and sometimes I’d be so swamped that I would barely be able to answer them and then I would regret it. John Buscema was in or George Tuska was in or Steve Ditko was in and I wanted to go to lunch and I never made time for it. To this day, I regret every one of those misses. I was always so busy, I barely remembered where I put things.

That’s why Virginia came into the office—to help me out.

I was so badly organized. That’s how she got into Marvel, by just coming in to straighten out my files and she never left. They stole her from me immediately.

Sultan: Did you embellish the Tuska Spider-Man story as far as any inking or did you just show it to Stan as is?

Hostess advertisement featuring Spider-Man

Romita: Well, Stan got it and he looked it over and he was going to write it, you know. In fact, that’s what it was. I think he wanted something to write as a fill-in in case I got pushed off Spider-Man for an emergency. Because at the time, I was doing toy designs, and character creations and a lot of times, he would tell me to drop everything and just do covers for a week. I would lose all sorts of time on my Spider-Man schedule, so he was always looking for some kind of hedge, protection. It was terrible. I never knew which way was up, most of the time.

Sultan: Stan had written at one time that he had once considered George for Spider-Man. Was this the same situation here?

Romita: I have no idea. He may have considered George before I even got there.

Because when I got there, he and Ditko were so at odds with each other because of disagreements on the plots that I think he was looking for a guy to fall back to in case Ditko left, from the time I got there in July of 1965. I realized that from hindsight because I didn’t know anything about it until Sol told me that he and Ditko didn’t get along.

Roy Thomas Part III In his interview, Roy Thomas shared some of his thoughts on the “lost” Tuska Spider-Man story: Cassell: We talked with John Romita the other day and John told us about how Stan Lee at one time was looking for some options to backup Romita in the event he got 74

drawn off into something else for a while. He had Tuska do thumbnail pencils of a Spider-Man story. Do you recall anything about that?

Spider-Man newspaper strip ghosted

by Tuska

Thomas: Not really, but it makes sense. George is somebody he would have gone to. He had the kind of storytelling in general that Stan liked and Stan, I’m sure, would have thought of him as a possibility for spelling Romita. He had Ross Andru do a story at that time, but he wasn’t happy with it, so he put it in another comic instead of Spider-Man. He tried out different people at different times. Some of them worked out okay, like Buscema, but Buscema hated doing it, so he got off as soon as he could. Gil Kane liked doing it reasonably well. Mainly, he liked the idea of doing an important book for Marvel. George would have been willing to do it. I don’t think it would have made that much difference to him one way or another, but he would have been happy to do it if Stan wanted him to do it. Was that book ever published?

Cassell: No, it was not. In fact, Romita isn’t sure where the art is anymore.

Thomas: I don’t know. It may just be that Stan felt that it wasn’t really quite what he was looking for, but then again he would have said the same thing at various periods about the work of Andru and Kane who became the regular artists. He only had two artists that he was ever really perfectly satisfied with—Ditko and Romita—when it came to Spider-Man.

In 1976, George finally got some solo Spider-Man artwork published, in the form of an advertisement for Hostess. If you were reading comics at the time, you remember the ads. In what amounted to a one-page story, various superheroes would foil the plans of an assortment of bad guys, aided or rewarded in some fashion by Hostess Twinkies and Cup Cakes. The ads were a little corny, but the artwork was typically well done.

That’s not the limit of George’s association with Spider-Man, though. For two weeks in the summer of 1978, George ghosted the art for the Amazing Spider-Man newspaper strip. Although the only signature in the panel is that of Stan Lee, if you look closely—at the hands for example— you can discern that distinctive Tuska look.

We asked George about his brush with Spider-Man:

Spider-Man and the Green Goblin by Tuska

Cassell: John Romita said that you were always in demand.

Tuska: John used to work in the office at Marvel and I would talk to him. While I was talking, he would be working on Spider-Man comic books.

Cassell: John told us this story that one time Stan was looking for someone to backup Romita and that Stan had you pencil a Spider-Man story?

Tuska: I did the Spider-Man strip for Stan.

For two weeks. Now, it’s Larry Lieber, his brother. Then, one time, Stan Lee wanted me to do the Spider-Man comic. Stan 75

gave me a whole bunch of comic books of Spider-Man. He wanted me to think about it. It didn’t work out.

Heroes and Villains George Tuska did a lot of “utility” work for Marvel, filling in wherever he was needed. As a result, George has made some brief, but noteworthy, contributions to a variety of Marvel titles, illustrating some classic heroes and villains. George commented on his versatility: Cassell: If you were doing a new character, how did you know how to draw it?

Black Widow Tuska: Usually, I copied the muscles and the body and then I put the armor on it or whatever costume, depending on what kind of hero or villain it was. Like Doctor Doom. There’s not much muscle or anything of his own that you can see, but somehow the figure moves like a human being.

Cassell: You drew almost every major character for Marvel. You were all over the place.

Tuska: Yeah, I know, that’s why I’m famous. (laughter)

Doctor Strange

Commission of Doctor Strange

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Stephen Strange was a gifted, but arrogant, surgeon whose hands were injured in an accident.

Seeking a cure that would enable him to resume his career, he sought out the Ancient One in Tibet, who taught him instead to become the Master of the Mystic Arts. The good doctor got his start in the pages of the split book, Strange Tales, but went on to earn a solo title that enjoyed a good run. He remains a mainstay of the Marvel Universe and was even the subject of a mediocre made-for-TV movie starring Peter Horton. Tuska only illustrated one issue of Strange Tales,

which was later reprinted in Giant-Size Doctor Strange.

Doctor Doom Victor Von Doom may have damaged his face during a laboratory experiment, but the damage to his psyche was far more severe. Doom clothed himself in armor, armed himself with sophisticated weapons and set about to wreak havoc on anyone who stood in his way, especially his arch-nemesis Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic. Doom first appeared in the pages of Fantastic Four, but he later received solo coverage as one half of the split book Astonishing Tales. He also partnered with the Sub-Mariner for a couple of years in the pages of Super-Villain Team-Up. Tuska penciled a couple of issues of each title.

Shanna the She-Devil Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, was an enduring (and visually endearing) character during the Golden Age. In 1972, Marvel decided to launch a similar character called Shanna the She-Devil. Given his prior association with Fiction House, it is clear why they chose George Tuska to illustrate the first issue of Shanna. To add to its appeal, Jim Steranko did the cover artwork. Alas, in spite of the talent rendering her adventures, her series proved to be short-lived, cancelled after only five issues.

Ghost Rider One of the Champions, Ghost Rider, has actually been moderately successful in his own titles. Ghost Rider was initially designed to capitalize on the success of popular stunt driver Evel Knievel. The original story featured Johnny Blaze, a stunt cyclist who had the gift (or perhaps a curse) to transform into the flaming Ghost Rider, a transformation he ultimately controlled at will. Although a bizarre premise, the character has endured through the years. A Ghost Rider feature film is under development. Tuska illustrated a handful of Ghost Rider issues during the third year of its initial run.

The Champions Arguably the most bizarre super-hero team that Marvel ever conceived, second

only perhaps to the Defenders, was a short-lived group called “The Champions.”

The Champions were comprised of Hercules, Black Widow, and Ghost Rider, as well as ex-X-Men Angel and Iceman. Having found it difficult to hold down solo books of their own, this motley crew banded together for 17 issues. Tuska penciled five of them, the most noteworthy of which were the origin of the Black Widow in issue #7 and a battle with the Sentinels in the last issue, which was inked by John Byrne, who would go on to have a distinguished run illustrating the merry mutants.

The Defenders What do you get when you cross the Hulk, Doctor Strange and Sub-Mariner? It sounds like either the makings of a World Wrestling Federation grudge match or refugees from the Island of Misfit Toys.

But this unlikely combination of “heroes” became a very successful team that lasted almost fourteen years. Like many such teams, their roster would change over time, but the Defenders developed a loyal following of fans. George Tuska penciled only one issue of the Defenders.

The Magazines

Johnny Blaze transforms into Ghost Rider

In addition to his work in color comic books, George also illustrated several stories that were published in Marvel’s line of black-and-white magazines in the 1970s.

Tuska contributed to Tales of the Zombie, Monsters Unleashed, and the final issue of Dracula. He also illustrated the first six issues of the Planet of the Apes magazine, which featured an adaptation of the original film.

Mike Esposito Part II Mike Esposito, who teamed with George on Iron Man, also inked George’s pencils on the Planet of the Apes. Here is Mike’s recollection of the experience: Cassell: The Planet of the Apes story was targeted at a black-and-white magazine, right?

Esposito: It was. I loved doing that. I did a wash, you know, with gray markers to give it tone. Black and white and gray. I thought it came out good. We were doing it before Ploog took it over.

We did the actual story—the movie adaptation. All I can say about that is that it was a nice experience to do that with him.

Cassell: So how did you prepare for doing the Planet of the Apes? Did you get to see a screening of the film or did you work from stills?

Movie adaptation of Planet of the Apes 77

Esposito: George worked from stills. I had nothing to do with that part. It was written by—the guy was later very famous for his adaptation of the X-Men—Chris Claremont. He was a young guy, a proofreader.

Roy Thomas Part IV As part of his interview, Roy Thomas expands on the story about George and the Planet of the Apes:

Gerry Conway

Cassell: I read an article somewhere—I think it was by Gerry Conway—where he was talking about preparing for some movie adaptation. In this case, I think it was the Sinbad one. Gerry said they actually got to see a screening of the movie.

Thomas: I think so. I think I went to that.

Cassell: Was that common when it came to doing adaptations?

Thomas: Well, if the movie was about ready to go. When I started on Star Wars, it wasn’t filmed, so I never did see it until I had done almost the entire six issues or close to it. If the movie was ready and you had time to see it, they would show it to you because they wanted you to know what you were doing and everything could help. Quite often, you had to work with stills. In some cases, we did get to see it. I remember we also, Gerry and I and our wives, went to another screening later somebody had for another movie, but it was a really awful horror movie and the guy hadn’t seen it himself and he kind of apologized for trying to get us to do it, and we weren’t about to anyway.

Cassell: What about the Planet of the Apes?

Worlds Unknown cover to movie adaptation of Sinbad

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Thomas: In this case, the story is tied to George’s strengths. We assigned him to be the Planet of the Apes artist. We knew he would tell a great, simple story. His work tends to sell and he seemed like a good choice for Planet of the Apes, adapting the first movie and the first book. But we were told by the lawyers at Twentieth Century Fox that we couldn’t have a likeness of Charlton Heston. Since it wasn’t tied into current publicity for the film—the movie had been out several years before and now it was a series—Heston was known for being litigious or at least his bookkeepers or accountants would pore over the records to see what money was owed him. They didn’t want to have to give him money and have a lot of trouble with him over the Planet of the Apes adaptation, so we had to draw the hero to not look like Charlton Heston. Well, George did that. He just made a handsome looking guy, but it didn’t look like Heston. When the stuff came back inked, it looked the same. We got ready to send it out and then we had a problem because Twentieth Century Fox was very slow about responding. Our deadline for the printer was coming up and they hadn’t responded to okay the pages yet. So I was told, “Contact the lawyer and do what the lawyer tells you to do.” So I called Marvel’s attorney and spoke to him and he said, “Well, everything should be okay. Just go ahead and send it out. When you’ve got to, when it gets to be the eleventh hour and you feel like you’ve got to send it, send it.” So I did. Well, a couple of days later somebody gets this call from Twentieth Century Fox and they’re very upset.

They finally did get around to looking at the art they had had for a couple of weeks and they said that the hero looked too much like Charlton Heston in some places

Tuska lets loose a werewolf in Monsters Unleashed

and we had to change him. You know, you can’t argue. If somebody says it looks like Charlton Heston and they’re worried he’s gonna sue, you can’t say “no” because they just weren’t going to give the approval. I tried to argue with them and didn’t get anywhere, so what we had to do was, for the entire sixteen-page signature in the first issue of the black-and-white Planet of the Apes magazine, totally have all the heads redrawn so that they were quite different and looked even less like him.

But it wasn’t because of anything George had done wrong. He just happened to draw a handsome hero they decided looked like Heston, maybe in two shots or something. But it cost Marvel a pretty penny, a few thousand dollars probably and a lot of problems, to get that change made. I had that signature for a long time and I think I finally tossed it or gave it to somebody. It was pretty rare, because basically those were all destroyed, but I salvaged one.

George Tuska autograph card from Marvel Silver Age set The Tuska Planet of the Apes story was later colored and reprinted in the Adventures on the Planet of the Apes comic book.

Sketchagraphs Trading card companies have for years included, as part of their sets, special “chase” cards that were distributed in limited quantities to encourage buyers to purchase multiple packs (or entire boxes).

Cards autographed by celebrities are a common type of chase card. In the late Nineties, Marvel Comics extended the idea to include individually illustrated sketch cards or “sketchagraphs.”

Sketchagraphs were included in a variety of different card sets, including the Marvel Silver Age set issued by Fleer/Skybox in 1998.

The Marvel Silver Age set focused on the Marvel art and artists from the “Silver Age of Comics.” A number of Silver Age artists were approached to draw the sketchagraphs, including Dick Ayers, Marie Severin, John Buscema, Sal Buscema, Joe Sinnott, Gene Colan, Tom Palmer, John Romita, and George Tuska. Each of the artists committed to illustrating a certain number of cards, although the number differed by artist. Stan Lee was drafted to illustrate (yes, illustrate) 100 Spider-Man cards as well. In addition, each of these Silver Age legends signed some number of autograph cards.

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We talked to George about his contributions to the Marvel Silver Age card set: Cassell: I read that you illustrated 700 sketchagraphs?

Tuska: Actually, it was 1000.

1000 sketchagraphs and 1000 autograph cards. I did the 1000 autograph cards all in one day. I wanted to see if I could do it, and I did.

The sketchagraphs took a while. I just paced myself.

We ran right up to the deadline, though. We had to drive down there to hand them in on the day they were due.

Cassell: Did they tell you what characters to draw?

Tuska: No, I picked them.

Cassell: How much did you get paid for doing the sketchagraphs?

Tuska: I think I got $2 each for the sketchagraph cards and $1 each for the autograph cards. I made $1000 in one day for the autograph cards.

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Cassell: You did a wonderful job on the sketchagraph cards. Each one seemed to have a unique pose and there was lots of action. Other artists didn’t seem to put that much effort into it.

Tuska: Well, thank you. I enjoyed it.

The chase cards from the Marvel Silver Age set have become highly prized collectibles. Autograph cards with George’s signature routinely fetch five to ten times what he made on them. Tuska sketchagraphs have been known to sell for between $65 and $150, depending on the character and the pose. Tuska did sketchagraphs featuring 15 different characters, including Black Panther, Captain America, Daredevil, Dr. Doom, Hawkeye, Hercules, Hulk, Iron Man, Luke Cage, Magneto, Mandarin, Spider-Man, Thing, Thor, and Tony Stark. Each box of 36 packs included one sketchagraph card and one autograph card, randomly inserted. Fleer/Skybox produced 10,000 boxes of Marvel Silver Age cards.

The Marvel Silver Age artists often retained any extra cards, leading to the availability of numerous “uncut” sketchagraph cards. Before they are cut down to the normal 2.5" x 3.5" card size, the sketchagraph cards measure 4.5" x 5.5".

There is no way of knowing how many uncut sketchagraphs George may have done, but several examples are included here.

DC COMICS

DC advertising art by Tuska for the World's Greatest Superheroes newspaper strip 81

Detective Comics was started by Harry Donnenfeld and Jack Liebowitz. In 1937, Donnenfeld and Liebowitz partnered with Major Wheeler-Nicholson, who owned National Allied Publications, and the following year they bought out his share in the company. Major WheelerNicholson had been the first to publish comic books with all new material. The resulting company was called National Comics (which would later be changed to National Periodical Publications.) However, then and now, the company would be best known as DC. In 1938, DC launched Action Comics. The first issue featured a story provided by M.C. Gaines at the McClure Syndicate that had previously been rejected by numerous publishers. The story introduced a superhero created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster called “Superman.” From there, DC went on to create icons in the comic book industry like Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash and many more. With the success of Superman, DC Comics set the stanThe DC character George illustrated most was Superman

Paul Levitz

dard for everyone else to follow and set in motion a revolution in entertainment.

During the Silver Age (and beyond), the DC approach to creating comics differed significantly from that of Marvel.

Each of the DC books was assigned an editor, who tightly controlled the content and format of the books. DC artists were given complete scripts to work from, explaining how to illustrate each panel, with little regard to continuity between the books.

DC saw tremendous growth during the Silver Age as well, but it was not until the end of the Silver Age that Tuska made a significant contribution to DC. George worked with some of the giants at DC, including Julie Schwartz, Carmine Infantino and Paul Levitz.

Paul Levitz Paul Levitz, now the President and Publisher of DC Comics, worked with George at DC as both writer and editor. We were fortunate to have the opportunity to interview Paul regarding DC and Tuska.

Cassell: When did you first become aware of George’s work? Did you ever read any of the early comics or newspaper strips he did?

Levitz: Probably when he was doing Iron Man for Marvel… I’m way too young to have read George’s early work in any medium.

Cassell: When did you first meet George?

Levitz: I think Vinnie Colletta recruited George to come over to DC in the midSeventies while Vinnie was Art Director here, and I met George during those discussions.

Cassell: You worked with George at DC as both a writer and editor. How did you find George to work with?

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Levitz: George was very professional, as was often the case with his generation. He’d take on any assignment and give it a solid effort.

Cassell: What do you think of George’s art style?

Levitz: Having had the chance to see more of George’s work in different media over the years, I think he’s at his best when dealing with people and their emotions—an artist whose “acting” is one of his great strengths.

Cassell: George worked on a lot of different comic books for DC, often for only a few issues. Do you know why that was?

Levitz: A lot of George’s work was pinch-hitting. Because he was so professional, and not as stylistically associated with particular characters as many of his contemporaries at DC, he’d take on odd assignments between the strip work.

Cassell: George worked from home. Was that typical of DC artists and writers at that time?

Levitz: Yup. Cassell: How did DC assign artists and writers to a story? Was it predetermined or based on who was available?

Levitz: Both. For the most part there were regular assignments for the various series, but as scheduling concerns arose a lot of pinch-hitting took place.

George came to DC after the height of Silver Age stability (e.g., Sekowsky doing 60+ JLAs in a row), but at a time when most of the titles held their talent for several years running. There were also titles (like DC Comics Presents) which never had permanent talent assignments, so they’d be assigned completely based on whose schedules were free.

We talked with George about working with DC Comics: Cassell: Did you like working from a full script or did you like the “Marvel style”?

Tuska: I liked the Marvel style. I got a synopsis from Marvel. The funny thing is, when I went to DC, being that I’m so used to the synopsis type, I asked Schwartz if I could have the synopsis format, but he didn’t do that. He gave me a description, panel by panel. Panel by panel, sometimes the panels don’t make sense, but I didn’t think I had the right or privilege to change it. I let it stay that way.

With the synopsis, you had some kind of freedom. You could place the panels where you want to draw and how you want to draw. In other words, instead of using the judgment of the writer, the artist could use his own judgment for what he wants to do.

Cassell: Otherwise, did DC work pretty much the same way as Marvel?

Tuska: At DC, at the time, Jeanette Kahn was there. It was the same things they were doing at Marvel, the characters. I enjoyed that.

Tuska sketch of the Scarlet Speedster

Classic Tuska explosion by Green Lantern

Cassell: What kind of reference did DC provide?

Tuska: Comic books.

Whatever reference DC had in certain books, certain magazines, they would give 83

without copying it anymore. I watch television sometimes, the way they shoot a bomb. I see the way the orange flame goes way up. Outside the orange flame, there are little black clouds of smoke.

Then I keep that in mind, the way to do that. Especially in color, it comes out better. It comes from my brain, down my arm, through my two fingers to the pencil.

Cassell: How many pages did you typically pencil in a day?

Tuska: Between 2 and 3 pages per day.

Cassell: How did you come to work on so many different characters?

Tuska: Each time I delivered my work to the office, they would give me another story to do. I never knew which character it was going to be.

In the following pages, we take a look at the genres and characters that exemplify the work George did for DC Comics. In the first section, we get some insight into how George came to work for DC.

Romance Stories

Ink and wash commission of Batman, Solomon Grundy and Wonder Woman

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Cassell: Where did you learn to draw things blowing up? You draw great explosions.

Nearly all of the great Silver Age artists at one time or another took their turn at romance stories. Comic book publishers have always strived to attract more young girls to their readership, but rarely has it lasted. However, a treasure trove of gorgeous artwork by the likes of Nick Cardy, Dick Giordano, Neal Adams, and George Tuska has survived.

DC produced some of the best romance comics of the late Sixties and early Seventies. George illustrated a number of romance stories for DC, exhibiting a great talent for drawing beautiful women.

Ironically, George hated drawing romance stories. So, how did he get roped into illustrating them? The story, according to George, goes like this:

Tuska: You get good ideas from other comic books. Sometimes, I don’t like all of them. You could give me ten comic books with explosions and I would pick only one. What looks good, the best I can, I would copy it. Sometimes, I do it from memory. Once I do it, I can keep doing it

“During the late Sixties, I was working freelance for Marvel. I was taking a completed story into the Marvel offices one day and Sol Brodsky didn’t have anything else for me to do at that time, so I asked him if I could take the artwork I had just

me the magazines to copy from. I didn’t keep any love comics. I hated them. I had a little trouble doing them in the beginning. Joe Orlando would come out. He would say, “Carmine wants you to make the girls’ legs slimmer.” (laughter)

finished over to DC Comics as a sample to see if I could get work there. He agreed and I called to make an appointment with Carmine Infantino. Infantino loved the art, which were action pages with lots of fight scenes. Infantino said ‘These are great. This is exactly what we need.’ So they hired me on the spot. And the first thing they put me on was… romance comics.”

Over the span of some three years, George contributed to DC romance titles including Falling in Love, Girls’ Love Stories, Girls’ Romances, and Heart Throbs. Not only did George do his fair share of romance stories, but his talent for illustrating the fairer sex could be found in his other comic stories as well.

When it comes to a source of inspiration for romance stories, for George it is clearly his wonderful wife, Dorothy. After 56 years of marriage, Dorothy remains the great source of strength behind George.

Her affection for him is readily apparent.

So we decided to ask Dorothy about her “romance story” with George.

Cassell: Rumor has it that when you first met George, he was sort of a looker?

Dorothy: Oh, God, he was a hunk. Yes. He used to lift weights. He really took care of himself. He was a great swimmer. Athletic. Yeah, he was quite a hunk.

Cassell: So what attracted you to George?

Dorothy: His kindness. At that time, his hearing wasn’t as bad. I didn’t realize that he couldn’t hear. He used to read lips very well. Very gentle person. Anything I wanted. He was a good man.

Cassell: So he took good care of you?

Dorothy: Yes, he did. I took good care of him, too.

Cassell: I was going to say, it looks to me like you take very good care of him.

Dorothy: I try to. Gotta keep him around to keep drawing.

Cassell: So, when you were first dating, was George a romantic guy?

Dorothy: Just down to earth, not romantic. I didn’t expect anything. We did things together, but not romantic, no.

He’s the way he is. It’s George.

Panels from Girls Romance #150

Cassell: So are you more of a romantic than George would be?

Dorothy: I would like to be, yes. But we accept what we get. He can be romantic.

He’ll come up to me and hug me and kiss me and all that. But he’s not very emotional. George is very inside himself.

I think that had a lot to do with him having ulcers.

Cassell: Well, he is truly a lucky guy to have you. Thank you, Dorothy.

Challengers of the Unknown The Challengers of the Unknown debuted in issue #6 of Showcase, illustrated by Jack Kirby. Ace Morgan, a pilot who served in the Korean War, was flying a plane with passengers Prof Haley, Red Ryan, and Rocky Davis to appear together on a television show entitled “Heroes.” Haley was a scientist specializing in oceanography. Ryan was a mountain climber and acrobat. Davis was an Olympic wrestling champion. While en route to their destination, the plane crashed, but the occupants miraculously survived.

Realizing they were now

Iron Man puts the squeeze on Dorothy

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Although it never appeared in print, here’s a look at a Tuska version of Deadman

living on “borrowed time,” the four adventurers banded together to form a team committed to helping others, no matter the risk.

The Challs (as they are affectionately called) first appeared in 1957, four years before the Fantastic Four.

While the Challengers didn’t have any super-powers, there were a number of similarities between the origins of the two teams, including the personalities of the team members, the circumstances of their fateful accident and their subsequent decision to devote their lives to altruistic pursuits.

Tuska illustrated several issues of the Challengers of the Unknown in their own title, beginning in 1970, and then returned to illustrate a couple of additional stories when the Challs resumed a decade later in Adventure Comics, including a

retelling of their origin. One of his bestknown Challengers stories was entitled “To Call a Deadman” and featured a guest appearance by Boston Brand, a.k.a.

Deadman. Arnold Drake created the character Deadman, but it was Neal Adams who really defined the distinctive appearance of the ethereal avenger. In the Challengers story, Adams gave Deadman the classic look from Strange Adventures.

The result is a hybrid of styles that works surprisingly well.

We asked George a couple of questions about the Challengers/ Deadman story: Cassell: When you did the Deadman issue of “Challengers of the Unknown,” did you pencil Deadman on the splash page or did Neal Adams do it?

Tuska: No. [Looking at the splash page] This is Neal Adams. That’s not mine.

Cassell: Apparently, you did the first half of the story and Neal Adams did the second half. The first half doesn’t have Deadman in it, except on the splash page.

Tuska: You know what I used to notice, when Adams worked for DC? He would do small sketches, very small sketches, and he would have it blown up. Right there in DC. That’s the way he worked.

The Challengers/Deadman story was reprinted in issue #230 of World’s Finest.

Teen Titans on the run in this splash page

Teen Titans The Teen Titans had their origins in the Brave and the Bold. The story began with Robin, Aqualad, Wonder Girl, and Kid Flash forging an alliance to battle evil, while still maintaining their sidekick status in their regular books. (Speedy, the young partner of the Green Arrow, later replaced Aqualad.) By 1970, though, DC Comics had also recognized the greater social consciousness of its readership and refocused many of its titles to capitalize on this previously ignored demographic. The most famous example of topical relevancy at DC was issue #76 of Green Lantern, written by Denny O’Neil and illustrated by Neal Adams, in which Oliver Queen as the

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Green Arrow forces Hal Jordan to confront the harsh realities of everyday life. But the Teen Titans also jumped on the bandwagon.

Writers like Steve Skeates and Bob Haney brought the plots and dialogue of the Titans into the groovy, tune-in, drop-out generation. The Titans began traveling around in a van reminiscent of Scooby-Doo’s Mystery Machine and teaming up with characters like Hawk and Dove, inspired by then-prevailing anti-war sentiment.

The artist most closely associated with the early Teen Titans is Nick Cardy. However, Cardy’s workload at DC had increased to the point where he needed some relief. (Over the course of his career, Cardy did some 500 covers for DC.) Longtime DC editor Dick Giordano drafted George Tuska to pencil the Titans and have Cardy do the inking, thus rekindling a relationship that dated back to the days at Fiction House.

Nick Cardy Part II

Self-portrait of Nick Cardy

Continuing our interview, we talked with Nick Cardy about his working relationship with George Tuska and the Teen Titans.

Cassell: You and George were both working on Teen Titans for a while and George was doing the penciling.

Cardy: Yes, but prior to that I had penciled and inked about 40 Aquaman issues when they asked me to do Teen Titans. After 30 or so issues of Teen Titans, they wanted me to start a new Bat Lash series. They then got someone else to do Aquaman. I was overloaded with work, so they had other artists pencil the

Teen Titans in action by Tuska and Cardy

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Teen Titans and I inked. I believe that George penciled three issues, Neal Adams (1), Gil Kane (1), Infantino (1) and others. I enjoyed inking George’s pencils. I always tried to pencil and ink my own work because when I used to pencil, people couldn’t follow it. I might make two or three lines for the leg or several lines and they didn’t know which line to follow. Sometimes, I would go in between the lines.

But at that time, these fellas penciled quite tightly. With George, I liked his work and put more into it. Neal Adams—I was in a rush and I didn’t do him justice. They were all different, but I always managed to make them my heroes, my heads. If they drew a woman, I would more or less change it to the way I drew the women or drew the boys.

Cassell: When you and George were working together, did you ever socialize outside of work?

Cardy: We never socialized because he lived way out on Long Island and he was married at that time, I think. And he knew someone in Jersey—Mike Peppe, another friend of mine. Mike Peppe and George were good friends. I only bumped into these fellas when I delivered a job to DC. It was just one of these things. You know a lot of artists, but you don’t socialize with them. I got to know Jim Mooney and George better at conventions than I did all my life.

Lightning Lad commission by Tuska George recalls Nick Cardy as well: Cassell: Did you like working with Nick Cardy?

Tuska: Yeah. Nick is friendly. I got along with him at Fiction House. The other thing I remember very well about Nick, I mentioned something at a convention when I met him again, that I remember him using a #6 brush. I watched how he did it over very faint pencils and the brush came out beautiful.

Cassell: Did he always talk a lot, even at Fiction House?

E. Nelson Bridwell

Tuska: Oh, yeah. He’s alright, though.

He’s okay.

One of the Tuska/Cardy collaborations on Teen Titans was later reprinted in an issue of Super-Team Family.

The Legion of Super-Heroes George is well known for his work on super-hero teams, but one of his lesserknown contributions w as made in illus88

trating a group of famous teenage dogooders from the future, the Legion of Super-Heroes. Over the years, Tuska contributed to some ten issues of one of the longest-running and most successful DC super-hero teams in comic book history.

By the late 1960s, DC Comics’ “Legion of Super-Heroes” was undergoing a period of change. Long-time Legion artist Curt Swan left Adventure Comics in 1968 to focus on Superman, citing the challenges in drawing so many super-heroes in one book. Win Mortimer picked up the illustration duties with issue #373 and would see the Legion through the end of its run in Adventure Comics and their subsequent stint as a backup story in Action Comics.

Mortimer did a very respectable job of rendering the Legion, but the departure of Swan resulted in a decline in sales, which was exacerbated when DC moved the Legion to Action Comics.

For several months after the last Action Comics story, new Legion stories did not appear in any DC comic book, although in issue #403 of Adventure Comics, they published illustrations of new Legion costumes suggested by fans.

This event foreshadowed a strong influence that fans would ultimately have on the fate of the Legion. Then in March 1971, the Legion was re-launched with a series of four backup stories in Superboy illustrated by George Tuska. Issue #172

featured a tale written by E. Nelson Bridwell entitled “Brotherly Hate” that has been reprinted numerous times because it features both a recap of the origin of Lightning Lad as well as a re-telling of the origin of the Legion itself. Tuska was often called upon to illustrate origin stories through the years and the Legion was no exception. In the five-page story, Lightning Lad and his sister Lightning Lass must battle their long-lost brother Lightning Lord, who in classic black sheep fashion has chosen the path of evil rather than good.

Subsequent stories featured Superboy engaged in a battle of wits against Legion nemesis Mordru and a villain who could duplicate the powers of the Invisible Kid. The next several issues of Superboy featured reprints of earlier Legion stories.

Then in issue #183, Cary Bates began a regular stint as “Legion” writer with a new story entitled “War of the Wraith-Mates.”

In his last “Legion” story of this era, Tuska used some of the new Legion costumes suggested by fans in Adventure Comics #403. In this issue, Karate Kid, Shadow Lass and Princess Projectra all sport stylish new duds. However, these costumes recommended by fans never caught on and Tuska was the only artist who ever used them in a story.

George commented on his involvement with the Legion: Cassell: Do you remember how you got involved working on the “Legion of Superheroes”?

Tuska: They just gave me a script.

Cassell: Did you like doing the “Legion”?

Tuska: I didn’t like to do those—the “Legion,” Teen Titans.

Cassell: Why not?

Tuska: They look like young kids, not strong or anything. Just high school kids.

They all have strange names like Lightning Lad. Each one has a name, but it’s not names like Iron Man or Batman. Seems like it’s for children. That’s the way I looked at it. Not powerful.

Tuska returned to the Legion for one issue of Superboy and the Legion of SuperHeroes in the late Seventies. He was also

called upon to help illustrate the composite cover of issue #300 of The Legion of Super-Heroes.

Each artist contributed a different character to the cover and George drew Star Boy. He even did an issue of World’s Finest that featured the Legion, as well as four consecutive issues of Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

George left a brief, but important, legacy in his work with the Legion of Super-Heroes. The work of George Tuska literally bridged the gap between the old and new Legion.

The four Tuska “Legion” stories from Superboy are included in volume 10 of the DC Legion Archives.

Superboy being tested by Mordru

Justice League of America During the Silver Age, DC Comics had two titles that they used regularly to try out new ideas. One of these comic books was Showcase, in which DC editor Julie Schwartz had launched new versions of the Flash and Green Lantern, updated from their Golden Age counterparts. Both characters had proved successful, earning their own solo titles. Building on that success, Schwartz decided to try it again. In issue # 28 of The Brave and the Bold, DC introduced the Justice League of America, based in part on the Golden Age Justice Society of America.

Members of the League initially included Flash and Green Lantern, as well as Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Superman, and the Martian Manhunter. (It was fortunate for us that when aliens came to Earth, they allied

Worlds Finest Legion art by Tuska

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Sketch of Gotham City’s finest

Sketch of Wonder Woman

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themselves with the United States.) Mike Sekowsky was the first to illustrate “The World’s Greatest Heroes,” but Dick Dillin was the JLA penciler for 120 issues. By the time Tuska got his turn at the League, the roster had changed several times.

New members included Firestorm, the Elongated Man and Vixen, although one of the JLA issues Tuska penciled also marked the return of the Martian Manhunter. Under Tuska’s tutelage, the most frequent villain was Amazo.

Through the years, the JLA has always been a showpiece for DC. The League has appeared in television cartoons (Super Friends and Justice League), toy lines, advertising, and even an unreleased made-for-TV live action movie. The JLA represents the breadth of characters in the DC Universe as a readily recognizable team. George produced a house ad for DC in the Eighties featuring the Justice League that boasted about the popularity of DC Comics at that time.

George also illustrated several members of the JLA in other titles, including Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, Black Canary and Superman. He even drew the Golden Age Flash in a retelling of his Secret Origins. But of all the DC characters, Tuska is probably best known for his renditions of Superman. He illustrated Superman in stories that appeared in Justice League of America, Action Comics, Superman Family, and World’s Finest, as well as the World’s Greatest Superheroes newspaper strip.

In the World’s Finest stories, Superman and his colleagues encountered the likes of Sinestro, Black Lightning and the Legion of Super-heroes. Guest character appearances included DC editor Julie Schwartz and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. George even penciled a tale about the private life of Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent, in Superman Family.

Masters of the Universe The origin of Masters of the Universe lies with the toy company Mattel. Rumor has it that Mattel was considering introducing a line of toys based on the Conan the Barbarian movie that was due to be released in 1982. When it became apparent, however, that the movie would be rated “R” because of its violent and sexual content, Mattel decided to change course. Thus was born He-Man. He-Man is the defender of Castle Grayskull, a place of mystical power in which dwells the Sorceress. He-Man’s alter ego is Adam, prince of Eternia, who transforms into the hero by thrusting his magic sword into the sky and shouting “By the power of Grayskull, I have the power!”

(Shades of Shazam.) The arch-nemesis of He-Man is a villain called Skeletor, who wants the power of Grayskull for his own evil agenda.

Over the years, there have been four different television cartoon series capitalizing on the success of He-Man. The first series of cartoons was developed by Filmation, who had produced the advertisements for the original toys. Each subsequent series has further developed the story and characters.

There have also been several comic book series based on the Masters of the Universe, including a set of mini-comics that were included with the toys. The original mini-comics were produced by DC Comics and illustrated by Mark Texiera. Subsequent mini-comics were produced by Mattel and featured the artwork of artists like Bruce Timm. DC also released a cross-over with Superman in DC Comics Presents and a subsequent three-issue mini-series beginning in late 1982 that featured the artwork of George Tuska and which laid down much of the He-Man canon. Other publishers would later produce comics based on Masters of the Universe, but the DC mini-series is widely regarded as the best and most successful of the comic book incarnations.

George penciled the covers and the interior pages for all three issues of the DC mini-series. Paul Kupperberg wrote the story and Alfredo Alcala, renowned fantasy illustrator, inked the first two issues of the mini-series. George has fond memo-

ries of the Masters of the Universe and enjoyed doing the books. Other publishers would later produce comics based on Masters of the Universe, including a Marvel adaptation of the motion picture that was penciled by George, but the DC miniseries is widely regarded as the best and most successful of the comic book incarnations.

Green Lantern As the story goes, a test pilot for Ferris Aviation named Hal Jordan was exercising a flight simulator when the cockpit tore away from its footing and soared out the open window, with Jordan in tow. Its destination turned out to be a crashed spacecraft with a dying alien pilot who sought out Jordan as the most worthy candidate to take possession of a ring of power from the planet Oa, thereby passing the mantle to a new Green Lantern.

The Emerald Gladiator was one of the legendary Golden Age comic book characters that were reborn in the Silver Age under the watchful care of DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz. The new Lantern began his reincarnation in issue # 22 of Showcase, but quickly earned his own title through the fantastic storytelling of John Broome and Gil Kane. As the book entered the 1970s, Jordan teamed up with Oliver Queen, the Silver Age incarnation of Green Arrow, and the stories took on a new social consciousness with the artistic gifts of Neal Adams.

Through the years, a number of other talented creators would take their turn at rendering Jordan and his peers in the Green Lantern Corps, including George Tuska. George penciled several Sunday strips where the Emerald Gladiator appeared alongside Superman that were

surreptitiously shelved, for reasons not fully understood.

George was charged with illustrating issue #s 166—170 of Green Lantern in the

He-Man comes face-to-face with Skeletor

Tuska art from Green Lantern # 168

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catches the eye of the Guardians of Oa, who decide that he exhibits qualities that would make him a good recruit to the ranks of the Green Lantern Corps. When the Guardians present him with the offer, his is tempted by the power of the ring, but is quickly put to the test when the Guardians task him with rescuing his most bitter enemy. In the spirit of the marvelous mantra “with great power comes GL rises to the challenge, leaving behind his dark past (and love interest) and becoming a protector of the universe.

It is not clear why the story never saw print. The story was fully penciled by George, who roughed in the dialogue as well. Some of the pages were even partially inked, but it was never finished. We briefly asked George about the GL “cat people” story: Cassell: When you were working for DC, you did a Green Lantern story with cat people that was never published. Do you know why?

Tuska: The one I penciled?

I don’t know what happened.

Anything that I did for DC, it was strictly from the script. It was not my idea or anything like that. When I did Superman for the newspaper, I did a few and they canceled it because of the story for some reason and they changed it into a different team and I had to redraw it.

Unpublished Tuska Green Lantern page

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1980s. In those issues, Hal Jordan faces an elaborate test by the Guardians of Oa. But Tuska also drew a tale of the Green Lantern Corps that featured the Guardians recruiting a new GL from among a race of… cat people. In this feline foray, we meet a band of space traveling marauders who ruthlessly raid their fellow cat people. In spite of their felonious ways, the leader of the pack

Cassell: When you had to redraw something, did they pay you any more?

Tuska: No, it was part of the job.

Oddly enough, this wasn’t the only time DC Comics would veto a Tuska Green Lantern story. The other notable occasion

was when Green Lantern was slated to appear along with his fellow Justice Leaguers in the early days of the World’s Greatest Superheroes newspaper comic strip. George penciled several strips where the Emerald Gladiator appeared alongside Superman, but they were surreptitiously shelved, for reasons not fully understood.

Horror Stories By the 1970s, bolstered by the success achieved by Warren Publishing, DC (and Marvel) decided that enough time had passed to attempt a resurrection of the horror comic book. Well respected for his previous work in crime comics, George was asked to contribute to newer titles like Ghosts, as well as old standbys like House of Mystery, The Unexpected, and House of Secrets. These books typically featured several unrelated stories by various artists, often mediated by some grisly host. While clearly tamer than their historical counterparts, they nonetheless made effective use of the classic ironic “twist ending.”

Sometimes, books like Brave and the Bold would include a one-page horror story as filler, and George illustrated several of those as well.

George talked about his work on horror stories for DC (and Marvel):

Unpublished World’s Greatest Superheroes strip with GL

Cassell: What did you think about the horror stories you worked on for DC and Marvel?

Tuska: One thing I don’t like is horror stories. I don’t care for those.

Cassell: You didn’t like doing horror stories?

Tuska: Somebody from New Jersey asked me to do a comic book once on horror stuff and I refused it.

Cassell: But you did quite a few.

Tuska: I did, but I didn’t enjoy it, though.

They make you feel eerie when you finish.

Cassell: So even drawing it makes you feel a little strange?

Tuska: Yeah. And when you draw girls, you’re happy. (laughter) Cassell: Well, that explains why so many of your comics have girls in them.

One-page horror story with a twist ending 93

THE OTHER GUYS

Tuska cover to 1950s horror magazine Weird Mysteries 94

Over the years, Tuska worked freelance for a number of other publishers, including Joe Simon, Harvey, Dell/Gold Key, Archie, Tower and Warren.

Here is a brief look at the “Other Guys.”

Simon One way to avoid the problems with the Comics Code was to switch to magazine format. Magazines were not subject to the restrictions of the Comics Code. One publisher who undertook this approach with horror comics in the late 1950s was Joe Simon. (The same Joe Simon who, years before, had teamed with Jack Kirby to create Captain America.) In 1959, two blackand-white magazines appeared, utilizing some of the same writers and artists that had made EC Comics so successful, including Joe Orlando and Al Williamson.

Weird Mysteries and Eerie Tales appeared on newsstands within six months of each other, featuring a scary host “Morgue’n the Morgue Keeper.” Weird Mysteries featured a beautiful painted cover by George Tuska and the magazine included three stories illustrated by George. Eerie Tales also featured a painted cover, as well as one story illustrated by George entitled “Gunk.” Weird Mysteries was published by Pastime Publications, under the direction of Joe Simon. Eerie Tales was published by Hastings Associates, using material apparently sold to them by Simon. Only one issue of each magazine was published, presumably due to a lack of sales, perhaps because it was too soon after the Kefauver

hearings. Nonetheless, they proved the efficacy of horror comics in a black-andwhite magazine format. For a detailed analysis of these predecessors to Warren, see the exceptional article “Horror’s Missing Link” by Michael T. Gilbert in issue # 31 of Alter Ego, available from TwoMorrows.

Simon had much better luck with another black and white magazine—Sick.

Bill Gaines had switched Mad from a comic book to a magazine in 1955 and its popularity had steadily risen. In 1958, Globe Communications began publishing its own humor magazine, Cracked, which remains the longest running competitor of Mad. Joe Simon weighed into the fray in 1960 with Sick magazine, which featured a “mascot” named Huckleberry Fink, who bore more than a passing resemblance to Alfred E. Neuman, and whose catch phrase was “Why try harder?” The magazine lasted until the late 1970s and featured artwork by artists Angelo Torres and Mort Drucker, as well as George Tuska.

Tuska didn’t do many humor stories during his professional career, although his work in Sick demonstrates that he clearly had a knack for it. Tuska drew stories for numerous issues of Sick, building a strong relationship with Simon that would later provide opportunities for additional artistic collaboration.

Splash page to “Gunk” story from Eerie Tales

Joe Simon We had the good fortune to communicate briefly via email with the legendary Joe Simon regarding his relationship with George Tuska. Joe was very complimentary about George:

Joe Simon

“George Tuska is one of my all-time favorites. George lived in Hicksville, Long Island and I lived in Woodbury, Long Island. George would come to my studio to pick up and deliver scripts. We worked together for many years. I am a big fan of George.”

We asked Joe a few questions about working with George: 95

Sick story pokes fun at super-hero fans Cassell: How did George get involved with Sick magazine?

Simon: George worked with me on any project that came up!

Cassell: How long did George work with you on Sick magazine?

Simon: At least 10 years!

Cassell: How did you find George to work with?

Simon: Scale of 1 to 10: 10, terrific. The best!

Morgue’n, Monster of Ceremoanies from Weird Mysteries

Cassell: The artwork and stories in the Harvey and Archie books were great. Why do you think they didn’t last longer?

Simon: We all rode the business according to sales trends…

Cassell: What would you want people to remember most about George?

Simon: He respected the media—He was professional, he made the scripts interesting, and his characters lived!

George talked about working with Joe Simon: Cassell: When did you first meet Joe Simon?

Tuska: He lived in Woodbury, nearby Hicksville. He was good to work with. A lawyer, who was our neighbor, said he met Joe Simon and Joe Simon had been telling him about me. After that, I think Joe called me one time and he told me how to get to his house, 96

that he would have some work for me. I did a cover, an oil painting for him. He liked it and wanted me to do another one. I was with Marvel I think or someone in comics. I told him, “Right now, I can’t do anything much.”

But every once in a while, I did some work for Joe. Joe came up with Sick magazine.

Cassell: You did beautiful work for Sick.

Tuska: Everything. Complete, borders and backgrounds, except the lettering.

The Man From UNCLE

Cassell: You worked on Sick magazine for a fairly long time. Did you enjoy working with Joe? Tuska: Joe was nice to work with. He’s alright.

Tuska contributed to The Adventures of the Fly and The Double Life of Private Strong, the latter of which was written and edited by Joe Simon. Archie Publications continues to publish comics about its namesake to this day.

Cassell: After Sick, you worked with Joe Simon on some stuff for Harvey and Archie.

Dell / Gold Key

Tuska: I remember that. He said to come up and visit him. I did some covers and some stories. Not too much for Archie.

Dell Publishing Company was named after George Delacorte. Early efforts by Delacorte laid the groundwork for the publishing of Famous Funnies, the very first comic book, printed by Eastern Color in 1934. Dell was the third company to publish comic books, behind Eastern Color and National Periodical Publications. Starting in the late 1930s, Western Printing and Lithography published comic books based on the characters of Walt Disney, Warner Brothers and others, under the Dell imprint. Dell weathered the controversy of the mid-Fifties well. In fact, Dell standards were more strict than the Comics Code. By the late 1950s, Dell was publishing more comic books than DC and Timely (Marvel) combined.

In 1962, Dell and Western Printing parted company.

Western went on to publish comics under the Gold Key imprint. Dell focused on comic book tie-ins to movies and television shows. George Tuska contributed to a least two

Cassell: You and Joe must have had a good relationship. He kept coming back to you and giving you more work.

Tuska: Yeah. He had his own studio. Big house. Three stories. He had a swimming pool in the back.

Archie Archie Publications arose out of a company called MLJ. MLJ, named after the first initials of founders Morris Coyne, Louis Silverkleit, and John Goldwater, began publishing comics in 1939. MLJ introduced new characters in several titles, including Pep Comics, but not all of the stories involved super-heroes. Issue #22 of Pep, published in 1941, included a story about a teenager named Archie, illustrated by Bob Montana. Archie would prove to be the most successful property of MLJ—so much so that they changed the name of the company. In 1959, Archie Publications attempted to revive some of the MLJ super-heroes, including the Fly and the Shield, but they didn’t last long.

Spyman cover by Tuska

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books for Dell, including one issue of The Lieutenant and one issue of The Frogmen.

George also contributed to a couple of books for Gold Key. In particular, he illustrated an issue of The Man from UNCLE as well as an issue of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Harvey

Tuska Dynamo sketch

Tuska inks Gil Kane pencils on this “Menthor” story

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Harvey Publications was a family operation started by three brothers—Alfred, Leon and Robert. Ironically, Alfred apprenticed under Victor Fox, who had a reputation as a ruthless businessman. Harvey produced its first comic book in 1941. Pocket Comics was a 100 page publication in digest format that featured the Black Cat. Harvey, like a lot of publishers, also experimented with 3-D comics. When George worked for Eisner & Iger in the late Thirties and early Forties, he illustrated several stories that were published by Harvey in Speed Comics, including Spike Marlin, his first published work.

Harvey Publications is best known for titles like Sad Sack, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and Richie Rich, many of which they later licensed to great advantage. However, during the 1950s, Harvey actually produced more horror comics than EC. The horror books were frequently very graphic, but often humorous, with artwork by the likes of Bob Powell, Howard Nostrand, and Lee Elias.

In the Sixties, Harvey launched a new series of comic books targeted at the growing market, edited

by Joe Simon. The titles included Spyman, Jigsaw, Thrill-O-Rama, and Warfront, the latter being a resurrection of a book published in the Fifties.

These comics were typically short-lived, but noteworthy by virtue of their vibrant, dynamic covers drawn by Joe Simon, John Severin and George Tuska. Tuska also did the interior art for several issues.

Tower Tower Comics were published by Harry Shorten and edited by Wally Wood and Samm Schwartz. Writers for Tower included Wood, Dan Adkins, and Steve Skeates. Contributing artists included Wood, Adkins, Gil Kane, Mike Esposito, Mike Sekowsky, Reed Crandall, Dick Ayers, Steve Ditko, Joe Orlando and George Tuska. In the mid-to-late 1960s, George illustrated several T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents stories, including several humorous ones featuring the character “Weed.”

In 1986, George illustrated a set of ink and wash plates for a T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents portfolio published by S.Q. Productions.

The following are excerpts from an interview that was originally printed in issue #14 of Comic Book Artist magazine, available from TwoMorrows Publishing. Mike Gartland conducted the interview with George regarding Tower Comics.

Gartland: How did you get the Tower gig?

Tuska: I was freelancing work at that time while working on the syndicated Buck Rogers strip. I really don’t remember who told me about it.

Gartland: Did you deal with editor Samm Schwartz at all?

Tuska: His name rings a bell, but I don’t believe I ever met him.

Gartland: Do you know anything about the Tower Publishing background and why it decided to get into comics?

Tuska: I guess Tower was just jumping on the super-hero bandwagon, along with the other publishing houses that devoted some of their space to super-heroes at that same time.

Gartland: Did you visit Wally Wood’s studio with any frequency?

Tuska: Believe it or not, I never knew Wally Wood nor visited him.

Gartland: Did you consider Wally Wood a tragic figure?

Tuska: Tragic figure? I think that he felt he had to take his own life was a tragedy. He was a very talented man.

Gartland: Who wrote the stories you drew? Were the scripts Marvel-style or fully written?

Tuska: I don’t recall who wrote the stories.

I may have contributed some stuff, but without having the books to refer to, I couldn’t tell you. I think the stories were full scripts. I only remember working Marvel-method at Marvel. I liked the Marvel method because it allowed you more of a free rein to move the plot your own way.

Gartland: Favorite character?

Tuska: Didn’t really have a favorite character. They did remind me of the X-Men, though.

Gartland: Do you recall what your page rate was? How did it compare to Marvel at the time?

Tuska: I think it was something like $20 a page. Marvel was less.

Gartland: What did you think of the Tower material?

Tuska: Same as the Marvel stuff, superhero stuff, you know. The Tower stuff had a James Bond kind of touch to it, though.

Gartland: Do you think the Tower comics were developed to capitalize on Marvel’s success? As far as you recall, was the Batman craze in full swing when the books were coming out?

Tuska: At that time I really wasn’t fully into Marvel; that didn’t happen until the Buck Rogers strip was over. I remember when Batman was very popular, but I was just freelancing, doing pick-up work for places like Marvel and Tower at that time.

It didn’t occur to me that the TV show had any effect on all of comics. Some said it was bad for comics.

Gartland: Any memories of the Tower contributors?

Tuska: Esposito, Stone and Adkins I know from their inking stories I drew.

Warren

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents by Tuska

By the early 1970s, the fastest growing publisher of horror comics was Warren Publishing. Jim Warren had revitalized the horror comics industry in the mid-1960s with Creepy magazine, later joined by Eerie, Vampirella and a host of other publications. Warren, too, circumvented any potential problems with the Comics Code by publishing his horror stories in magazine format. Warren was able to attract the cream of the crop when it came to artists and writers, including some legends from the pre-Code years, and the by-product was high quality horror sto99

ries. The stable of regular Warren contributors included Bernie Wrightson, Frank Frazetta, Wally Wood, Ken Kelly and José Gonzalez. Given his long association with crime stories, it was perhaps inevitable that Tuska would eventually contribute to the Warren legacy, albeit only once.

According to The Warren Companion, available from TwoMorrows, George is credited with only one Warren story, a six-page tale called “A Vested Interest,” written by Ron Parker. It was published in 1966 in issue #8 of Creepy magazine (and later reprinted in issue #20).

We asked George about his work with Warren: Cassell: Did you enjoy doing a wash?

Tuska: Not for comic books, but for commissions. Warren goes for wash stuff.

Black-and-white. Inking, then wash. You had to have a lot of blacks to make it creepy.

Cassell: What about this story you did for Creepy. Isn’t this a wash?

Tuska: No, it’s CraftTint. It gives you different tones. It’s a cellophane. You cut it out and the back part is sticky and you stick it on. Wash would never come out clear, even. It’s a watercolor. I used CraftTint on Buck Rogers, too.

Tuska werewolf story from Creepy magazine

Cassell: Do you recall why you did this story for Warren? This is the only story you ever did for Jim Warren.

Tuska: No, I don’t remember how I got involved with it. I wasn’t there long—a very short time. But years ago, I worked at Eisner and Iger with Reed Crandall.

The Rest of the Story

Vampirella

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As difficult as it might be to believe, there is more to the story. George did freelance work for a number of other publishers during the Golden and Silver Age that are not included here, including St. John, Prize, Charlton, and Ace Magazines. In fact, there may be even more that are not documented. Often it was just one or two issues, but it is reflective of the depth and breadth of impact that George had on the field of comic art.

THE STRIPS

Sunday strip from World’s Greatest Superheroes

Unpublished World’s Greatest Superheroes Sunday strip 101

Comic strips have always been enormously popular, whether they were love stories, tales of adventure or political commentary. For an artist, comic strips were a source of steady income and a means of having your work seen and enjoyed by millions of readers who regularly read the newspaper, but might not have been caught dead Associated Press publicity for Tuska and Scorchy Smith

reading a comic book. George availed himself of the opportunity to work on a variety of comic strips, among them Scorchy Smith, Buck Rogers, and The

World’s Greatest Superheroes, as well as tryouts that were never published.

Scorchy Smith In March of 1930, the Associated Press launched a comic strip called Scorchy Smith. The lead character was patterned after Charles Lindbergh, who had completed his solo flight across the Atlantic three years earlier. Scorchy operated a plane for hire, which led him into a variety of adventures. Within a couple of years, the strip was running in 200 papers.

John Terry, whose brother founded the animation studio Terrytoons, was first to illustrate Scorchy Smith. Health problems forced Terry to withdraw in 1933 and the strip was taken over by Noel Sickles, who really brought the character into his own.

When Sickles left in 1936, the strip was illustrated by a series of artists including Bert Christman and Frank Robbins. Tuska took the lead on Scorchy in 1954, both writing and drawing the airman’s adventures. We asked George about working on Scorchy: Cassell: So how did you get the Scorchy Smith strip?

Tuska: Mike Peppe told me about Associated Press and Scorchy Smith. I brought some samples. Mike and I went up there.

The guy liked my work. And I worked freelance for Associated Press. We were living in Hicksville when I did Scorchy Smith.

Cassell: You wrote Scorchy Smith, too, right?

102

Tuska: When I did Scorchy Smith, it was my story. I completed the whole thing. I brought it in to the Associated Press.

There was a fella in there called Fleming.

He was an editor there. He did the lettering and inking, and I did the story.

George really liked working for the AP Syndicate, which treated him well. The strip lasted until 1961, but by then George had already moved onto greener pastures, or should we say starry skies?

Buck Rogers Anthony Rogers first appeared in the story “Armageddon 2419 A.D.” in the August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories magazine. The National Newspaper Syndicate asked the author, Philip Francis Nowlan, to adapt his story to a newspaper comic strip format, with Richard Calkins handling the artwork. The first Buck Rogers in the 25th Century strip appeared on January 7, 1929 and it ran consecutively for thirty eight years. At the peak of its popularity, Buck Rogers was published in over 400 newspapers.

The premise of the strip was that Rogers, a veteran of World War I, was trapped in a mine and exposed to a gas that placed him in a state of suspended animation for 500 years. He awoke to find that the Mongols were trying to take over the world and he joined the resistance with Wilma Deering as his co-pilot (and love interest) and Dr. Huer as his trusted advisor.

Both Nowlan and Calkin left the strip in the 1940s and Buck Rogers went through a series of various artists and writers. Finally, in 1959, while still working on Scorchy Smith, George was

offered the Buck Rogers strip. Buck Rogers was enjoying great popularity, so George took them up on their offer, leaving the Associated Press none too happy. George Tuska took over the Buck Rogers strip from Murphy Anderson, doing both the daily and weekly pages until the strip ended in 1967. Tuska illustrated stories written by such noted science-fiction writers as Fritz Leiber and Judith Merril.

Oddly, none of the stories he drew involved Wilma Deering, which was a disappointment to George, who says, “A hero's got to have a girl.”

As a member of the National Cartoonists Society, George was regularly invited to play in a celebrity golf tournament with the likes of Jackie Gleason. The tournament was held every year at Shawnee on the Delaware, a resort in the Poconos owned by Fred Waring. Waring was a renowned bandleader with a popular radio program. (He was also the inventor of the blender.) George, Mike Peppe, Al Plastino, and their wives were treated to a weekend of luxury.

George was a better than average golfer and he took home a second place trophy in the tournament one year, presented to him by Jackie Gleason himself.

George remembers the tournament with great fondness, recalling that Gleason was boisterous and larger than life, typically

Tuska Sunday strip of Buck Rogers

Original Buck Rogers artwork by Tuska

103

(Captain) Yeates, Fred Waring, Jackie Gleason, Al Plastino, George Tuska

Illustration from Newsday article

104

George and Dorothy Tuska with Mike and Fern Peppe and unidentifed fifth wheel at Shawnee on the Delaware

found with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

The popularity of the Buck Rogers strip and its striking similarity to the efforts of NASA led to some publicity. In May of 1962, George received a Western Union telegram from then Vice President of ABC News, James Hagerty, to appear on television with ABC News commentator Bill Shadel and “a panel of distinguished Americans in our New York studio” to witness the historic orbital flight of Lieutenant Commander Scott Carpenter.

In the telegram, Hagerty wrote, “As the artist of the Buck Rogers strip, the story lines of which are now becoming realities, we would be most happy if you could be our guest… We would be particularly delighted if you could arrange to bring with you a

selection of strip panels that now and in the past have been devoted specifically to space flight.” Sadly, his hearing difficulties prevented George from accepting the offer.

Then on June 3, 1965, while George was busy drawing Buck Rogers, Astronaut Edward H. White left his orbiting Gemini 4 capsule and walked in space. The irony in this historic event was not lost on Newsday, which conducted an interview with George about life imitating art, complete with an illustration by George of the historic space walk. In the article, Newsday reported that James McDivitt, Sr., father of the Gemini command pilot, recalled how he once discouraged his son from reading Buck Rogers comics. Asked to comment on the advances in the space race, George said “At the rate the U.S. and Russia are going, I may have a hard time keeping Buck ahead.”

Keeping ahead was indeed a challenge. George worked 12 weeks in advance on the Buck Rogers strip. If he got even three days behind in the schedule, the National Newspaper Syndicate would call him up and want to know where the art was. At one point, he got a week ahead, but they still persisted.

When the Syndicate called George up one day and said they were canceling the Buck Rogers strip, they said they were sorry, but George was glad it was over. He had gotten an ulcer from the stress. He didn’t want to quit, but he was glad to get back to comics. George later said, “I was sorry that I took Buck Rogers.”

Buck was not his only assignment from the Syndicate:

Cassell: Did you do anything else while you were doing Buck Rogers?

strip. Continuing the interview, Paul Levitz sheds some light on the origins of the strip and George’s involvement with it.

Tuska: The National Newspaper Syndicate in Chicago sent me Arnold Palmer golf instructions to do, so I did them while working on Buck Rogers. The Arnold Palmer golf instructions were published in the newspapers.

Paul Levitz Part II

For a while, George would focus on illustrating comic books, but he would eventually return to newspaper comic strips.

Cassell: How did the The World’s Greatest Superheroes newspaper strip get started?

The World’s Greatest Superheroes

Levitz: I’ve forgotten most of it now, but my foggy memory is that with the Spider-Man strip working, the Tribune syndicate felt there was room for another super-hero newspaper strip, and that the Superman movie made for a natural marketing lift to doing Superman and pals.

Julie Schwartz edited the initial strips, as the DC editor then most associated with the characters. Julie probably chose Marty Pasko as the writer and was involved (with Joe Orlando and Vinnie Colletta) in the selection of George to pencil the strip.

In 1978, George began penciling a new daily DC comic strip entitled The World’s Greatest Superheroes. The strip was written initially by Marty Pasko and later by Paul Levitz. It was typically inked by Vince Colletta. In the beginning, the strip featured the Justice League of America, but later it focused predominately on Superman and his supporting cast including Lois Lane, Perry White and Jimmy Olsen, as well as classic JLA villains like the Joker.

The premiere storyline from The World’s Greatest Superheroes featured Superman, the Flash, Wonder Woman and Aquaman in a fierce battle to save the world from the evil designs of immortal villain Vandal Savage. The initial three months set the tone for years to come in terms of pace and action.

For some time, Paul Levitz wrote the World’s Greatest Superheroes newspaper

Unpublished World’s Greatest Superheroes Sunday strip

Caricature of Marty Pasko

Cassell: Do you know what its total circulation was at its peak?

Levitz: Long forgotten, but high—at peak it was in newspapers in most major cities including New York.

Cassell: How did you come to take over the writing chores on the strip from Marty Pasko?

105

Unpublished World’s Greatest Superheroes Sunday strip with GL

Levitz: The editorial assignment moved from Julie to Joe Orlando, and Joe began to shift the approach to the strip. After a couple of storylines he and Marty agreed to part company, and I inherited the assignment. I wasn’t a strip writer previously, and I suspect it’s not a medium that my skills fit perfectly, but I was a longtime writer for Joe who was between major projects and when he offered the project, I took it on. I stayed with the strip about two years.

Cassell: Did you send complete scripts to George to work from?

Levitz: I think I produced a week or two at a shot, with “full script” in the comic book sense (art direction and dialogue done in the script before the artist received it) rather than producing a complete storyline.

Julie Schwartz

Cassell: When the strip first started, it included much of the Justice League, including Flash, Aquaman, Wonder Woman and even Batman. In later years, the strip seemed to focus solely on Superman and his supporting cast (Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, etc.) Why the move away from the JLA? Levitz: I think it was a syndicate decision, perhaps on the basis that a smaller cast would be easier to explain.

We also asked George about his work in comic strips and in particular, The World’s Greatest Superheroes:

106

Cassell: How did you get involved doing the Superman newspaper strip?

Tuska: Vince Colletta called me. He used to work for Marvel. I met him there,

but we never really talked about anything.

Next thing I know, I hear he is working for DC, as an art director. He called me and said, “How would you like to do a Superman strip?” I said, “I don’t know, it sounds pretty good.” He said, “It is a good strip. It’s very powerful. And we’ll pay you well.” I said, “I don’t know. I’ll find out how it’s going to be.” I spoke to Stan about it. Stan was friendly, but said, “Don’t. Give it up.” But somehow, I felt there was something there, so I accepted it. And I told Stan I was going to give it a try. Stan felt pretty bad. I worked there for quite a while, but I was getting different writers.

Cassell: Yeah. Marty Pasko wrote it for a while and Paul Levitz wrote it.

Tuska: After a while, it was the same old thing, like the movies or the comic books.

I told Paul Levitz about it and he said, “Hang on for a while.” I did, but later on it got to be the same thing and I said, “I would like to do comic books.” And he got me into comic books. They gave the Superman strip to somebody else afterwards, but I heard it didn’t last long.

Cassell: How long did you do Superman?

Tuska: Several years.

Cassell: You said that when you did Buck Rogers, you had to work twelve weeks in advance. When you were doing Superman, how many weeks in advance did you have to work?

Tuska: Twelve. That was the rule for all syndicated strips.

Cassell: Was it hard to keep up with the Superman strip?

Tuska: After you get further ahead, you can take it easy. Some of the strips that are realistic require a lot of work. It’s not like the comical ones that are very simple.

You can make those deadlines easy. Like Peanuts or something, very simple stuff.

Even if you’re late, you can keep on going.

With a strip—realistic things like Buck Rogers—they take time, backgrounds and all that, so you have to keep working. It depends on what kind of work you do.

Frank Robbins did Johnny Hazard. He dropped out and went to work on comic books. He did a lot of beautiful work, a lot of detail. You have to be there to keep it up.

Cassell: Did you prefer doing comic books or newspaper strips?

Lois was frequently getting into trouble around Superman

Unpublished World’s Greatest Superheroes Sunday strip

Tuska: To hell with the strips. I would never go back to it again. You’ve got to sit and work and work and work. If you had originated something, its your own, you can have somebody to help you or you can have somebody do it entirely for you and pay them a salary. Not like comic books.

They give you a story and the deadline is quite a ways away. You can take your time, do what you want to do, like painting. The funny thing with comics is, you work from panel to panel and you get into how the next panel is going to be. You look forward to all those things. From the time I started until now, it’s been a long time. But doing the comics, time goes by fast because you’re so absorbed in what you’re doing every day.

Tuska left the strip in 1982. That same year, the initial storyline of the strip featuring Vandal Savage was reprinted by TOR Books in 1982 in a paperback book entitled The World’s Greatest Superheroes Present Superman.

107

“RETIREMENT”

Icons of the Golden and Silver Age at Berndt Toast Gang luncheon

George displays a large cartoon board in his studio

108

To suggest that George has retired from comic art would be untrue. He may not be working against a deadline any more, but he still gets up every morning and spends time at his drawing table.

He enjoys painting and cartooning. Sometimes he illustrates something specific and other times it is more like doodling, but rarely does it involve super-heroes. He usually reserves his heroic efforts for commissions requested by fans.

Fan Mail George has received lots of fan mail over the years, which he has faithfully answered and kept. It has come from fans of all ages and as far away as Germany.

Sometimes, the letters are requests for commissions, but often they are simply heartfelt expressions of appreciation for the work George has done and what it has meant to them. Here are some excerpts from the letters George has received: “At this time of year it is natural to think of those who have touched our lives… Your work has meant a great deal to me, and I could not allow another year to end without my expressing my admiration and appreciation for all the good work you have given us over the years… your work (both new and old) still thrills and delights me, in a way that makes me feel like a kid again.”

“For many years I have been a fan of your art—especially the work on the Iron Man series… thank you for having been an inspiration throughout my life as an aspiring comic book illustrator.”

“I’m so happy to see that you are getting more attention and recognition for the work that you have done in comics.

You are one of the masters and truly deserve it.”

“Your dynamic style and incredible realism made the heroes ‘Super’! Personally, I find comics as a reward, which helped me learn to improve my reading skills, and expand my imagination. Thank you again, for bringing all the comic heroes to life!”

The recognition from fans is very much appreciated by George and Dorothy.

Fans wanting to correspond with George can contact the author or Mike Gartland for more information.

Then there are the conventions.

Conventions The credit for getting George (and Dorothy) started in attending comic book conventions goes to David Siegel. Siegel persuaded the Tuskas to come to the Comic-Con International in San Diego in 1997. The Comic-Con was planning to give George, along with Dick Ayers,

George sketching Iron Man for a fan

109

David Siegel

Bob Haney and Russ Heath, its famous Inkpot Award, bestowed upon selected recipients every year for lifetime achievement in comics and related areas.

Dorothy says, though, that when David first called, she hung up on him. “I thought he was a kook,” she recalls. They had never attended a major convention.

But David persisted and ultimately convinced George and Dorothy to make the trip from New Jersey to California and helped to make it a pleasant experience for them both. From then on, George became a regular convention guest at shows in Orlando, Charlotte, and many

more. George has enjoyed going to conventions, meeting with other artists and friends and hearing what his fans have to say.

Siegel has helped to locate numerous Golden Age artists and encouraged them to come to conventions to meet their fans.

In 2000, he also helped to bring about a historic gathering of Golden and Silver Age artists at a luncheon of the Berndt Toast Gang, the Long Island chapter of the National Cartoonists Society. Siegel has undertaken these efforts as a personal mission, at some expense to himself and without any compensation.

Nick Cardy Part III During our interview, Nick Cardy shared some great stories about George and comic book conventions:

Nick Cardy and George at a comic book convention

Cardy: One story that I could tell you about George is that while I was sitting at a convention next to him, he was hunched over his drawing board. He had his left hand on the side of the board, sort of supporting himself and he was drawing with his right hand. I couldn’t call him, I had to tap him on the shoulder or something to get his attention. Well, this time I tapped his hand and it was ice cold. I said, “Oh, my God, this guy’s dead.” It was ice cold. And then he turned around to me, with those blue eyes, and said, “What do you want?” What it was, we were sitting right under the air conditioning. His hand was open and it stayed in that position in the air conditioning and it made his hand ice cold. I thought he was dead. (laughter) We always had a nice time when we went to conventions and we chatted. I know George is a helluva nice guy whenever we met. He was always a gentleman. George Tuska and Jim Mooney are great guys and friends.

Cassell: When they go to conventions, Dorothy really encourages George to get him to draw.

Cardy: Yeah, I used to kid her. Sometimes, someone would come and they would talk to George. The people, they meet an artist for the first time and they want to talk. And she would say, “C’mon, George, you’ve got to finish this.” One time, she said that and I said, “Oh, boy, you’ve got the whip, huh?” and she said, “What are you talking about?” and I’d say, “You know.” And she said, “Oh, Nick, you’re awful.”

I’m only kidding her, you know. One time, people were coming up to him so much that she had him move to the corner of one of these tables so he could finish his work. And if anyone came around, she said, “George isn’t around.” My niece came to a convention one time with me and someone said, “Is Nick Cardy here?” She said, “No, he’s no longer here.” And the person said, “Oh, when did he pass away?”

I was in the men’s room.

WildStorm Among active professionals, one of George Tuska’s biggest fans is Scott Lobdell. Scott 110

is well known for his writing on books like the X-Men and Alpha Flight. In the late 1990s, Scott approached George about coming out of retirement to pencil a story for a comic book entitled WildC.A.T.S. Mosaic, published by WildStorm.

WildStorm Productions was started by artist Jim Lee in 1992. It was acquired by DC Comics in 1998 and continues to operate as an imprint of DC to this day.

The ten-page story entitled “Spartan” was written by Lobdell, penciled by George and inked by Scott Williams. It featured the android character Spartan in a storyline reminiscent of the Vision in the Avengers’ “Even an Android Can Cry.” Included in WildC.A.T.S. Mosaic was an “Ode to Tuska” in which Lobdell said, “To me, George Tuska is the Alfred Hitchcock of comic artists—the man who does the job so seamlessly and skillfully that all you have to do is sit back and be taken on the ride of your life. The man is a genius… a talent like George Tuska only comes around once.”

Today George and Dorothy currently live in a retirement community near the New Jersey shore. They moved there eighteen years ago from their home in Hicksville, at the same time as their close friends, Sally and Tom. Their friends’ son, Tom, was in elementary school with Barbara Tuska.

Tom is a big fan of George and the walls of his room are covered with drawings that George did for him over the years. George continues to play golf every couple of weeks and he loves to cook. His favorite food is Italian, especially spaghetti. The Tuskas remain close friends with Mike Peppe’s widow, Fern, and visit her every winter in Florida.

Today, George’s studio is in the spare bedroom of their home. His desk is adorned with memories, including a picture of Tuska with Stan Lee, the Hall of Fame award he received in San Diego, and a statue of Iron Man that was a gift from a fan. Next to the desk sits his drawing board and a taboret with his drawing implements. He is typically seated at the desk, working away, by 6:30 or 7:00 a.m. every morning. If he doesn’t have any commissions to work on, he may dabble in watercolors or doodle a bit for his friends Stan and Sigi, with whom he still corresponds. If he is working on a commission, he may be up until 11:00 p.m. or later putting the finishing touches on it.

In his studio, George has a dresser, the drawers of which are filled with stacks of old comic books. In his garage, there is a

filing cabinet crammed with file folders containing clippings from newspapers and magazines like National Geographic, carefully organized by topics including buildings, sports, animals, scenery, and people. The folders and drawers contain years of material, all of which have served as reference.

So, art collectors and fans wonder, what happened to all of the original published artwork George drew over the years? George and Dorothy provide the answer:

Tuska comes out of retirement to pencil the WildC.A.T.s

Tuska: We never thought comic books would become so popular. Otherwise, I 111

“If it doesn’t stop snowing, we’ll skip the back nine”

would have saved all the originals that were returned to me.

have comic books. If they see that, they’ll want to know how to get something like that.”

Dorothy: George drew so much and they would send him his originals back and they just piled up in the attic. It got to be so much of a problem that we finally threw most of them away.

Cassell: Any advice for aspiring artists?

As for the original published art that wasn’t thrown away: Painting by George Tuska Tuska: My granddaughter has my splash pages. Nice ones. Seven, eight years ago, she said she wanted something to remember me by. I put out the splash pages. She took them all. (laughter) Cassell: Well, I like her enthusiasm. You’ll just have to make more.

Tuska: My granddaughter lives by the Hudson River. She has an apartment. There’s a marina down below and you can see the skyline. I made a drawing of Spider-Man from the Empire State Building, swinging around. They put it up in the kitchen. I said, “Look, the people across the way might 112

Tuska: Find something you like and copy it. Copy everything—photos, artists, and whatever the story calls for.

Cassell: Is there anything else you want to share?

Tuska: I always had in mind to paint.

That’s why I went to school. It’s still in there. I haven’t painted in a long time. I wouldn’t know how, honestly, to get back to it right now. If you want to get into something again, it takes time.

Cassell: Anything you would like to say to your fans?

Tuska: Thank you for your loyalty. I appreciate all my fans and all the wonderful mail I get.

Cassell: That’s great. Well, thank you George, very much. I really appreciate it.

Tuska: Thank you.

GALLERY Here is a small sample of the numerous commission drawings and published art George has done over the years.

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents portfolio piece 113

Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

George renders Sub-Mariner and his DC counterpart Aquaman

Eskimos 114

Splash page from Shanna the She-Devil #1

Tarzan

Splash page from Iron Man #9

Prelims of cartoons Tuska did for friends 115

Original art from Captain Marvel Adventures

Captain America

Black Bolt

Tuska at his drawing board

116

Marvel Two-in-One #6 117

Splash page from Astonishing Tales #5

Panels from an unpublished tryout strip called “Sport's Page”

118

Iron Man commission art

AFTERWORD Since the print version of this book was published, George and a number of his colleagues that were interviewed for this book, including Will Eisner, Nick Cardy, Joe Simon, Jim Mooney, Gene Colan, and Mike Esposito, have all passed away. When George died, I wrote the following obituary in his honor: George Tuska, renowned Golden and Silver Age comic book artist, passed away on October 16, 2009. He was 93 years old.

George Tuska was born on April 26, 1916, the son of Russian immigrants. He attended the National Academy of Design and in 1939 went to work for Will Eisner in the studio he shared with Jerry Iger. Tuska later worked for Harry “A” Chesler, Fiction House and Standard Publishing. He was drafted into World War II and served in the 100th Division at Fort Jackson drawing artillery plans. Following the war, he achieved notoriety working for Lev Gleason illustrating Crime Does Not Pay, a true-crime comic book with a monthly circulation of over one million copies.

When the advent of the Comics Code brought an end to the violent comics of the fifties, George turned to newspaper comic strips, drawing first Scorchy Smith and later Buck Rogers. He also did some work for Tower Comics on the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Then, in the midsixties, Tuska went to work for Stan Lee and Marvel Comics, working on Captain America, the Hulk, and the X-Men, before taking over the reins of Iron Man. Tuska remained the primary artist on Iron Man for ten years, bringing to it the creative layouts and explosive action that defined the character for a generation. Also while at Marvel, George illustrated one of the first African American heroes, Luke Cage.

Tuska left Marvel in the late seventies to start The World’s Greatest Superheroes newspaper strip for DC Comics, which featured Superman and other heroes from the Justice League of America. George later drew comic book stories for DC, including Green Lantern, World’s Finest, and the Justice League of America. He

retired from professional work in the mideighties, but continued to draw up until his death, illustrating commission requests for fans from all over the world.

He got up every morning at 6:30 a.m. and would start drawing in his studio, bringing heroes to life in a way that only George could. He was a kind and gentle man, with a wry sense of humor and a remarkable imagination. He is survived by his wife of 61 years, Dorothy, and their three children, as well as grandchildren, greatgrandchildren, friends, and a legion of fans. Stan Lee wrote a letter that was read at Tuska’s funeral, which said, in part, “As a penciler, inker, and storyteller, George was absolutely peerless. He was an artist whose work influenced countless other artists, yet he was modest to a fault. He was a bright star in the comic book firmament and he left an indelible mark.”

Fans interested in learning more about George Tuska are encouraged to pick up a copy of issue #99 of Alter Ego magazine, which is dedicated to Tuska and features all-new articles about the man and his art.

Dewey Cassell

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INDEX OF TUSKA ART The following is an index of published artwork by George Tuska. It was compiled from several sources, but it remains a work in progress. For one thing, it does not include all of the newspaper strips or fanzines where Tuska artwork has appeared. In addition, every week I learn about additional comic books to which George contributed over the years. The list is organized by publisher (rather than studio). Additional details about many of these stories can be found in the Grand Comic-Book Database on the Internet at www.comics.org.

LEGEND: P = PENCILS I = INKS B = BOTH

P/I/B

TITLE

ISSUES

YEAR(S)

Ace B

Super-Mystery Comics

5

1949

America's Best B

Apache Trail

2

1958

Archie B B B

Adventures of the Fly, The Blue Ribbon Comics Double Life of Private Strong, The

1 10 2

1959 1984 1959

Avon B B B

Blazing Sixguns Davy Crockett Molly O’Day

1

1952 1951 1945

Better/Standard/Nedor B Adventures Into Darkness B America’s Best Comics B Black Terror B Exciting Comics B Fantastic Worlds B Joe Yank B Mel Allen Sports Comics B My Real Love B New Romances B Out of the Shadows B Popular Romance B Real Life Comics B Thrilling Comics B Thrilling Romances B The Unseen

53 56-63,65-70 9 12

1952 1948-1949 1949 1949 1952 1952 1949 1952 1951-1954 1952 1949-1954 1951 1946-1949 1950 1954

Comix: A History of Comic Books In America

1

1971

Charlton P

Konga

12

1963

DC P P B B B B B P P P P B P

Action Comics Adventure Comics Digest Best of DC, The Brave and the Bold, The Challengers of the Unknown DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest DC Special Series DC Super-Stars Detective Comics Falling In Love Fury of Firestorm, The Ghosts Girls’ Love Stories

1972-1983 1982 1982-1985 1970 1970 1982 1979 1976 1979 1970 1983-1986 1971-1975 1969-1972

P B P P B P P P

Girls’ Romances Green Lantern Heart Throbs House of Mystery House of Secrets Infinity, Inc. Justice League of America Masters of the Universe

409,486,550 493,494 24,33,61 88,90 73-75 24 19 1 486,490 116-118 15,17,18,31,45 2-4,17,40 144,146,152,154156,158-160,165 147,150,154,157 166-168,170 128,129 207,293,294,316 86,90,95,104 11 153,228,241-243 1-3

Bonanza B

Girls Love #146

120

1

6 28,29 26,27 67 6 5 5 5 7,20 5

1970-1971 1983 1970-1971 1972-1983 1970-1973 1985 1978-1985 1982-1983

CHARACTER(S)

The Fly The Fly The Shield

Black Terror Black Terror

Phantom Detective, Doc Strange

Superman Challengers of Unknown Legion of Super-Heroes Challengers of the Unknown Legion of Super-Heroes Teen Titans Alfred Firestorm

Green Lantern

Infinity, Inc Justice League of America He-Man and the Masters of the Universe

P P B P P P P B P B P P

Mystery In Space Secret Origins Superboy Superboy & the Legion of SuperHeroes Superman Family Super-Team Family Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes Tales of the Unexpected Teen Titans Unexpected, The

P B

Weird War Tales Who’s Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe Witching Hour World’s Finest Comics

P

115,117 4,9 172,173,176,183 235,308

1981 1986 1971-1972 1978

203,207-209 7 314-317 34 27,31,33-39 117,118,120,121,123,12 4,127,129,132,134,136, 139,152,161,180,200 103,122 9,22

1980-1981 1976 1984 1959 1970-1972 1970-1980

Mr & Mrs Superman, Private Life of Clark Kent, Jimmy Olsen Teen Titans Legion of Super-Heroes

1981-1983 1985-1986

G.I. Robot

Firestorm Legion of Super-Heroes Legion of Super-Heroes

Teen Titans

1970 1975-1984

Young Romance

11,12 230,250,252,254,257,28 3,284,308 172

Dell P B

Frogmen, The Lieutenant, The

11 1

1965 1964

The Frogmen, Boy of the Pacific

Dynamic B B B B B B B

Bulls Eye Comics Dynamic Comics Punch Comics Red Seal Comics Scoop Comics Spotlight Comics Yankee Comics

11 3,9,10,11,12,16,19 1 14,15,17,21 8 1 1

1944 1942-1946 1941 1945-1947 1945 1944 1941

Lady Satan, Johnny Rebel

Eastern Color B

Famous Funnies

1959-1965

Buck Rogers

Eclipse B

Seduction of the Innocent

6

1986

Editoriale Como P

Capitan America

1976-1977

Powerman, Ghost, Campioni

B B B

Fantastici Quattro, I Incredibile Devil, L’ Mitico Thor, Il

1972-1976 1971-1975 1973-1978

Dottor Destino, Sub Mariner Devil, Iron Man I Vendicatori, Golia Nero

B

Uomo Ragno, L’

94,100-103,106-110, 113,115,116 44,45,102,103,127 36,124-126 57,58,61,62,65,66,145,1 63-166,177,178 184,185,205,211,214219,238,239,251,252, 254,255,258,259,262

1977-1980

Iron Man, Devil

Fawcett B B B B

Captain Marvel Adventures Captain Marvel, Jr. Master Comics Whiz Comics

2-4 10 12-19,21-23 23,76,77,155

1941 1943 1941-1942 1941-1953

Captain Marvel Captain Marvel, Jr. El Carim Dr. Voodoo, Golden Arrow

Fiction House B

Fight Comics

1-12,21,29,30,34

1940-1944

B

Jumbo Comics

15-17,22,25

1940-1941

B

Jungle Comics

1940-1945

B B B

Ka’a’nga Planet Comics Rangers Comics

5-14,36-39,44-49,51-55, 62,63,65 7 2,9,10,23-25,30,65 9,10,15-19,22,29

Shark Brodie, Chip Collins, Oran of the Jungle, Rip Carson, Hooks Devlin Wilton of the West, Inspector Dayton, ZX-5 Spies In Action, Tom, Dick, and Harry Ka’a’nga, Tabu, Simba, Camilla

1951 1940-1944 1943-1946

B B

Toyland Comics Wings Comics

3 1-8

1947 1940-1941

Fox B B

Blue Beetle Fantastic Comics

5 3-5,8

1940 1940

Challengers of the Unknown, Superman, Batman, Green Arrow and Black Canary, Black Lightning

1971

Masters of the Universe #1

Sky Chief, Hale the Magician Gay Desperado, Lucky Coyne Enchanted Dagger Black Dwarf Enchanted Dagger

El Carim from Master Comics #13

Jungle Girl (Fantomah) Planet Payson, Cosmo Corrigan, Reef Ryan, Star Pirate U. S. Rangers, Werewolf Hunter, Rocky Hall, Pvt. Elmer Pippin, Glory Forbes Greasemonkey Griffin, Jane Martin, Suicide Smith

Justice League of America #228

Zanzibar

121

B B B B B B B

Flame, The Green Mask, The Mystery Men Comics Red Dexter of Mars Samson Science Comics Wonderworld Comics

2,5,6 2,3 1-20,22,24,27 1 1 1-3 4-9,11

1940-1941 1940 1939-1941 1940 1940 1940 1939-1940

Wing Turner, Zanzibar the Magician Zanzibar, Gang-Buster Robinson Wing Turner, Zanzibar the Magician, D-13

Gold Key B B P

Man From UNCLE Mystery Comics Digest Voyage To The Bottom of The Sea

3 9 2

1965 1973 1965

Man From UNCLE

Harvey B B B B P B

Alarming Adventures All-New Short Story Comics Speed Comics Spyman Thrill-O-Rama Warfront

1 2 1-9 1 2 36,38

1962 1943 1939-1940 1966 1966 1965

Sick Eerie Tales, Weird Mysteries

14,41-43 1

1964 1959

Crime Detective Comics

1

1948

Image P

WildC.A.T.s Mosaic

1

1993

WildC.A.T.s

I.W. Publishing B B B

Danger Daring Adventures Wild Western Roundup

12,17 11,18 1

1964 1963-1964 1958

Gay Desperado, Lucky Coyne, Enchanted Dagger Yankee Boy, Mr. E, Atlas Man of Might Lone Vigilante

Hall of Fame Featuring the THUNDER Agents

1,2

1983

Menthor

Super Heroes Album Superboy Comic Superman Supacomic Tip Top Comic Monthly

11 103 163,164 86

1977 1976 1972 1972

Legion of Super-Heroes Teen Titans Legion of Super-Heroes Teen Titans

Batman: The Sunday Classics 1943-46

nn

1991

World’s Greatest Superheroes

Lev Gleason B B

Black Diamond Western Boy Comics

1949-1953 1946-1955

Red Fire Boy Comics Hero of the Month, Crimebuster, Rocky X

B B

Crime And Punishment Crime Does Not Pay

B B B

Desperado Lover’s Lane Tops

10,48 30,57,70,98,101,105, 113,115 28,30,51,64,70 22,48-52,56,57,60-64, 66-68,71,74, 99, 114,131 4 6 1

1-4, 7 1,2,12,15 1-6

1950 1952 1975-1976

48 7-9 10 6 27 5,6,8 47,48,51,54,106,107, 135,137-140,163,350

1952 1980 1951 1952 1953 1971 1967-1992

Wing Turner Cosmic Carson Mob-Buster Robinson, Tom Barry, K-51 Spies At War

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

Barry Kuda, Scarlet Nemesis and Black Orchid Spike Marlin Spyman Pirana

Thrill-O-Rama #2 Hewfred B B Hillman B

JC Comics P

Crime Does Not Pay #131

K.G. Murray B P B P Kitchen Sink P

Marvel P P P

Crime Does Not Pay #139

122

P P P B B P B

Adventures Into Terror Adventures Into Weird Worlds Adventures on the Planet of the Apes All-True Crime Amazing Adventures Amazing Detective Cases Arizona Kid Astonishing Astonishing Tales Avengers, The

1950-1955 1947-1954 1948 1950 1949

Planet of the Apes

X-Men

Dr. Doom, Brothers Link The Avengers

B B P P B B B P P P P P P P B P P P P P P I B B P I B

Battle Battleground Beware Black Goliath Black Rider Captain America Captain America Annual Captain Marvel Champions, The Creatures on the Loose Crime Can’t Win Crime Cases Comics Crime Exposed Crypt of Shadows Daredevil Daredevil Annual Defenders, The Dracula Lives Frontier Western Ghost Rider Giant-Size Doctor Strange Godzilla Gunhawk Gunsmoke Western Hero For Hire Incredible Hulk, The Iron Man

P B B B B B P P B B B B P B P P P P P P B B B B I P P B P P P P P P B B B B B P B B B B

Iron Man Annual Journey Into Mystery Journey Into Unknown Worlds Jungle Action Jungle Tales Justice Ka-Zar Kent Blake of the Secret Service Kid Colt Outlaw Lorna the Jungle Girl Man Comics Marines in Battle Marvel Chillers Marvel Masterworks Marvel Premiere Marvel Super-Heroes Marvel Tales Marvel Treasury Edition Marvel Triple Action Marvel Two-In-One Marvel’s Greatest Comics Masters of the Universe Menace Men’s Adventures Monsters on the Prowl Monsters Unleashed Monsters Unleashed Annual My Love My Own Romance Mystery Tales Mystic Outlaw Fighters Planet of the Apes Power Man Private Eye Quick Trigger Western Rawhide Kid Red Warrior Red Wolf Shanna the She-Devil Spaceman Space Squadron Spy Cases Spy Fighters

11,15,30,32 11,15,16 3,6 1-3 12,14,18-21 112,215 1,2 54 3,4,6,7,17 30-32 43 12 3,4 2 39,98,145 4 57 13 2 13,14,16 1 2 13 33,34 1-3,5,7-12 102,105,106,218 5-13,15-24,32,38-46, 48-54,57-61,63,72, 76, 78,79,86-92,95-106 4 11 14,38 2 2 41,48 2,3 8 16,24,34,35,56,63,156 6 1,2,14,23 15,20 7 14 26 19 30,114 8,13 40,43,46,47 6 24 1 1,2,5 24 10 3 1 17 10 10,12,14 15 1,2 1-6 17-20,24,26,28,29, 36,47 2,3 17 14,113 1,2 6 1 5 3 7 1,2

1952-1954 1957 1973 1976 1951-1954 1969-1977 1971-1972 1978 1976-1978 1974 1951 1949 1949 1973 1968-1977 1976 1978 1975 1956 1975-1976 1975 1977 1951 1956 1972-1973 1968-1977 1968-1977 1977 1953 1950-1952 1954 1954 1953-1954 1970-1971 1952 1951-1971 1954 1949-1952 1957 1976 1990 1975 1969 1951-1971 1975-1976 1978-1979 1974 1969 1987 1953 1953 1971 1973 1975 1970 1950 1950 1952 1951 1974-1975 1974-1977 1951 1957 1957-1973 1951 1973 1972 1954 1951 1951 1951

Black Goliath Two-Gun Kid Captain America and The Falcon Captain America Captain Marvel Champions Man-Wolf

Daredevil Daredevil Defenders, The Dracula Ghost Rider Doctor Strange Godzilla

Iron Man #6

Luke Cage Hulk Iron Man Iron Man

Man-Oo

Angel Black Rider, Kid Colt Greg Knight The U.S. Marine Corps Tigra Captain America Hercules Ka-Zar Angel Luke Cage Hero for Hire, Fantastic Four & Avengers Thing and Doctor Strange Tales of the Watcher The Motion Picture

Speed Carter, Spaceman

Planet of the Apes Luke Cage Power Man

Shanna the She-Devil Speed Carter, Spaceman

123

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #20

Gridiron action from Mel Allen Sports Comics

124

B P P P P B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B P B B B B B

Strange Tales Sub-Mariner Supernatural Thrillers Super-Villain Team-Up Suspense Tales of Justice Tales of Suspense Tales of the Zombie Tex Dawson, Gunslinger Tex Morgan Texas Kid Tower of Shadows Two-Gun Kid Vault of Evil War Action War Adventures Western Gunfighters Western Kid Western Outlaws Western Outlaws and Sheriffs Western Thrillers What If? Wild Western World of Fantasy Worlds Unknown X-Men Young Men

1,12,14,18,19,166 41,42,69-71 5-7 1,15 5,6,12,24 57 58,70-74 2 1 5 1,6 3 11,12,45,109 6 2,8 1 15 5 6,15 69-71 2 5 21,27,29,32,37 6 7,8 39-46,77,78,87-91 8,22,23

1951-1968 1971-1974 1973-1974 1975-1978 1950-1952 1955 1964-1966 1973 1973 1949 1951 1970 1953-1973 1974 1952 1952 1973 1972 1954-1955 1952 1954 1977 1952-1954 1957 1974 1967-1974 1951-1953

Dr. Strange Sub-Mariner The Living Mummy, Headless Horseman Sub-Mariner, Dr. Doom

Marvel Italia B

Marvel Special

4,14,15

1995-1998

Uomo Ghiaccio, X-Men, Vendicatori

Panic B

Panic

11

1966

Black Magic Justice Traps The Guilty

3,4 92

1958 1958

Hit Comics National Comics Smash Comics Uncle Sam Quarterly

3,6-8 1-9 14,17-22 3,4

1940-1941 1940-1941 1940-1942 1942

Rucker P

The Weekender

2

1946

Semic AS P

Gigant

2,4,5

1980-1982

St. John B B B B B B B B P P P

Amazing Ghost Stories Authentic Police Cases Crime Reporter Fightin’ Texan Fugitives From Justice Giant Comics Edition Nightmare The Hawk The Texan Weird Horrors Western Bandit Trails

16 1,8 2,3 16,17 3 6 1,13 1,9,12 1,2,7-9 1 1,3

1955 1948 1948 1952 1952 1948 1952-1954 1951-1954 1948-1950 1952 1949

Street and Smith B Bill Barnes Comics B Doc Savage Comics B Shadow Comics, The

2 4 10-12

1940 1940, 1941 1941

Mark Mallory Iron Munro

Tower B P B

2,3 1 1,7,8,10,13-19

1966-1967 1967 1965-1968

Agent Weed Menthor Menthor, THUNDER Agents, Raven, Weed, Dynamo

Prize B B Quality B B B B

Dynamo Dynamo, Man of High Camp T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents

Tales of the Watcher, Captain America

Tex Morgan

Black Rider

Captain America Arizona Kid, Two-Gun Kid Golden Voyage of Sinbad X-Men Rex Lane, Solver of the Supernatural

Tommy Tinkle, Lion Boy, Hercules Kid Dixon Archie O’Toole Uncle Sam

Justice League of America

Warren B

Creepy

8,20

1966

Yaffa P

Iron Man

2,6

1978-1981

Ziff-Davis B B

G.I.Joe Weird Thrillers

7,10 3,4

1950 1952

Iron Man

Index of Tuska Covers

Adventures into Terror #7

P/I/B

TITLE

ISSUES

YEAR(S)

Better/Standard P

Startling Comics

45

1957

DC P P P P

Falling In Love Girls’ Love Stories Heart Throbs Masters of the Universe

116,117 144,146 128 1-3

1970 1969 1970 1982-1983

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe

Dynamic B B B

Bulls Eye Comics Punch Comics Spotlight Comics

11 1 1

1944 1941 1944

Lady Satan, Johnny Rebel Sky Chief, Hale the Magician Black Dwarf

Fiction House B

Jungle Comics

13

1941

Fox B

Mystery Men Comics

6

1940

Wing Turner, Zanzibar the Magician

Harvey B P P

Spyman Thrill-O-Rama Warfront

1 2 38

1966 1966 1965

Spyman Pirana

Lev Gleason B

Crime Does Not Pay

129,130,131,135,139

1950-1954

Marvel B B I B

Adventures Into Terror Avengers, The Daredevil Iron Man

1950 1968 1973 1968-1975

P B B P P P B B B

Navy Combat Private Eye Space Squadron Sub-Mariner Supernatural Thrillers Suspense Tex Morgan Worlds Unknown X-Men

7 48,52,53 98 5-13,15,17-23, 41,42, 51,57,76 8,9 3 2-4 41 5 12 5 7 39-41,43,77,78,87,88, 91

Quality B

Uncle Sam Quarterly

3

1942

Uncle Sam

Yaffa P

Iron Man

2

1978-1981

Iron Man

1956 1951 1951 1971 1973 1950 1949 1974 1967-1974

CHARACTER(S)

Iron Man #17

The Avengers Daredevil Iron Man

Sub-Mariner The Living Mummy Tex Morgan Golden Voyage of Sinbad X-Men

125

INKING TUSKA Inkers generally come in one of two types—the inker who attempts to faithfully follow the rendering of the penciler, and the inker who imposes their own style over that of the penciler.

The former approach is not necessarily better, although the result will more closely reflect what the penciler intended.

The latter approach can also produce a favorable result that is a blending of the composition of the penciler with the style of the inker. In some cases, an inker was assigned a job precisely because they would exert their style.

Over the years, the pencils of George Tuska were inked by a variety of artists. On the pages that follow, you will see examples of both types of inkers. There is also an example of Tuska inking his own pencils—a situation most artists preferred if given a choice. That situation was definitely the exception, though, when it came to Tuska. Publishers typically preferred to have him do his usual tight penciling job and then hand the pages off to whatever inker was available. Even a weak or inexperienced inker could ink Tuska’s pencils, although the examples that follow are mostly veteran inkers.

(right) Dick Ayers inks Ayers used a fine line in inking this last page from the 1971 Angel backup story in Ka-Zar #3, allowing Tuska’s rendering to clearly shine through. (below) Vince Colletta inks Colletta has frequently been criticized for his inking of Kirby, but when it came to the World’s Greatest Superheroes strip, his inking over Tuska’s pencils reflects details that would not even have been visible when reproduced in the newspaper. This Christmas strip from 1981 is a good example.

126

NEW!

Digital Edition Exclusive

(upper left) Nick Cardy inks When Cardy got too busy, DC Comics switched him from penciling Teen Titans to inking the book over a variety of other pencilers. The theory was that Cardy’s inking would give the book a consistent look, but Tuska’s style is readily apparent in this 1971 page from issue #35. (above) Frank McLaughlin inks It seems DC Comics frequently used inkers to ensure a consistent style, as this 1978 page from Justice League of America illustrates, looking more like the inker McLaughlin than the penciler Tuska. That said, when Tuska returned to the book in the mid-1980s, his penciling was predominate. (left) John Tartaglione inks “Tartag” followed Tuska’s pencils closely in inking this 1968 splash page from the origin of Iceman in X-Men #46.

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(top left) Sal Trapani inks Although Tuska had penciled Superman in the World’s Greatest Superheroes newspaper strip, when he switched to penciling DC comics in 1983, inkers like Trapani exerted a more typical style for the Man of Steel, as seen here in issue #550 of Action Comics. (above) John Byrne inks Sometimes the combination of penciler and inker just doesn’t work well, as evident in this 1977 page from issue #11 of The Champions by Tuska and Byrne. Tuska is credited with “breakdowns” for this story, although his style is clearly apparent, especially in the bottom panel, but the end result is a peculiar combination of both talented artists. (left) Mike Esposito inks Some inkers just work better with some pencilers. Esposito was Tuska’s favorite inker, because the finished page looked like Tuska had envisioned it. This 1971 page from Iron Man #38 is a great example of Esposito inking Tuska.

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(above) Johnny Craig inks Tuska took over penciling Iron Man from Craig just a few issues earlier, so perhaps it is understandable that this 1968 finished page from issue #8 looks like a blend of the two styles—more detail and action from Tuska, but the clean lines of Craig. Many regard this as the ultimate Iron Man artistic combination. (top right) Virgil Redondo inks Redondo did a very detailed job inking Tuska’s pencils on this 1975 splash page from Dracula magazine and the wash accents the mood of the page without detracting from Tuska’s style. (right) Dan Adkins inks Adkins has a beautiful, clean artistic style, and it shows through in this 1968 Doctor Strange page from issue #166 of Strange Tales, where Adkins inks Tuska pencils.

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(above) Tuska inks Tuska This is an unpublished single panel daily from the World’s Greatest Superheroes newspaper strip, featuring a rare appearance of Green Lantern. For reasons lost to time, the editors chose to excise GL from this storyline, so this strip was never used, but Tuska inked it for his own edification.

The detail is extraordinary, down to the fine hairs on the arm of the character on the far right. When it comes to inking, there is some truth to the old adage, “If you want a job done right, do it yourself.” (left) Billy Graham inks Some of Graham’s inking over Tuska pencils is more balanced, as in the example from issue #17 of Power Man on page 44, but this 1973 splash page from Hero for Hire is mostly Graham. The pairing was deliberate, though, and Marvel must have liked the results because they worked together on a dozen Luke Cage stories.

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1997 INTERVIEW

NEW!

Digital Edition Exclusive

This is an interview that was done with George Tuska on July 20, 1997 at the San Diego Comic-Con, where he received the Inkpot Award. He was 81 years old at the time the interview was conducted. Permission was granted by Comic-Con International to transcribe the interview and excerpts were included in issue #99 of Alter Ego, but it has not previously been published in its entirety. The transcript has been edited for clarity. (Note that the timeframes George cites are not precisely accurate.) The interview started with George making some opening remarks.

Tuska: At the age of eight, I was in the hospital for an appendix operation. After the operation, I was able to walk around the hospital and an elderly person showed me how to draw Uncle Sam and cowboys and Indians. That was the start.

My first job in comics was with Eisner and Iger.

I got it through a professional agency. Eisner called for me to bring some samples. I did individual cartoons, funny characters, and I showed it to him, and he said, “That’s not the thing we do.” He showed me a comic book. I asked him if I could have another chance to do it.

He said, “Sure.” So I went home and I came back the following day with a completed story. I did the whole thing, backgrounds, lettering, panels. He liked it. It was a story about the mounted police capturing a

criminal. He bought it for five dollars and asked me if I wanted to work in the office.

I said, “That would be fine.” It was small.

Tuska commission drawing for a fan

131

Crime Does Not Pay #68

There were four fellas then—Bob Powell, Lou Fine, Will Eisner, and Will Eisner’s brother, and Jerry Iger. It was a nice bunch to start together with. Later on, as time went by, we moved from 42nd Street to 44th Street. They expanded and there were more artists and cartoonists. I was together mostly with Eisner. We were both talking about stories. There wasn’t much writing for artists then. I got along with Eisner. He told me, “Hit this guy and throw a bomb at this guy.” And I said, “Fine, I can do that.” I wrote all the story down. And I drew everything,

backgrounds. The pay wasn’t tremendous, but I didn’t mind anything. I was looking forward a lot to it. Most of all, Eisner was the one who really helped my work.

SDCC: Did he do the layouts or did you do the entire page?

Tuska: I did. The layouts, drawing, complete. But I didn’t do the lettering and inking. I made my own borders and how many panels per page. I would write the story first and from there drew one panel, two panels, three panels. I would follow all that up and then I would show it to Eisner, and he would say, “Well, this could be changed a little or that could be changed, but this is good.” It helped a lot. It built up my interest more. I would go back and do it over. I felt good about that.

SDCC: Tell me what you liked about Eisner.

Tuska: He had a lot of imagination. He was a producer and director and actor on paper. It was very good working together with him. I was 22 or 23. Eisner was about my age. I didn’t know much about Jerry [Iger].

SDCC: Iger was 12 years older.

Did you know any other artists?

Tuska: There were no other artists I knew, just the ones that were already in the office. Later on, I went from one office to another. I was quitting this and working for that, going to another office. The more I did that, the more I got to know more artists that way and they got to know me.

SDCC: Where did you go after Eisner and Iger?

Tuska: [After Eisner left] I quit because Iger had about, oh, ten artists. Each one had about five, six stories to do a month. The pages were not much per story— five, six, seven pages. If somebody dropped out, an artist dropped out, Iger couldn’t get another artist to replace him, so he took his work and distributed

132

it to the other artists, making more work for them to do that month. It kept on going.

Another artist dropped out and another artist, and the work got distributed. It was always, “Hurry up with the deadline.” They said you could take work home and work there. It was a little too much for me. One day, we all went out to lunch and I told them I had to see someone. I never went back to Eisner and Iger. From there, I didn’t do anything for two weeks. I just looked around. I went to a cafeteria on 23rd Street between 6th and 7th Avenue.

I met two fellas I worked with at Eisner and Iger, Charlie Sultan and Dave Glaser. We were glad to see each other.

He said, “Across the street is Harry ‘A’ Chesler. I called them and he said he needs artists. How about you coming up and I’ll introduce you?” I said, “Fine.” I went up there. It was on the fourth floor. And he introduced me to Chesler. I started working for Chesler in the studio. It was alright. I enjoyed working for Chesler.

There was no art director there, but it went well. They had a nice group of artists there. Charlie Sultan, Al Plastino, Joey Cavalo, Ruben Moreira. Ruben Moreira was more of a fine artist. He did Tarzan or something like that. Chesler was more like a father. He invited me and Al Plastino to his place in Secaucus, New Jersey. Al was doing the Superman newspaper [strip] then. We had a ball.

SDCC: How long did you work for him?

Tuska: About five years or so. Right around there. From there, Will Eisner separated from Iger and he had a studio in Tudor City on 42nd Street. I helped him with Uncle Sam, and other things. They were doing The Spirit. Once in a while, I would help him with The Spirit. I got

along together with Eisner again. It was kinda homey; it was nice.

Black Goliath #1 page 26

SDCC: How long did you do that?

Tuska: Not too long, two years or so. ’42 or ’43 I think. I don’t recall. After Eisner, I was working for Fiction House. A lot of the same artists were there. I was drafted.

I had a slight loss of hearing. I was in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for the Army.

133

anymore. The fellas were not around. It was mostly girls and older men. We used to kid around a lot, hold a conversation. It was different. It wasn’t the same. It didn’t feel right. I asked if I could work freelance. They said it was fine. It was a funny thing about working at home, with nobody around there.

I had to get used to it. It took me about a month or so. But somehow, working freelance, I had more privacy. I had references all around me. I was sort of contented by that. I was making more pages a day.

I enjoyed freelance very much.

SDCC: What kind of stories did you do at Fiction House?

Tuska: Sheena or something like that. I didn’t have a favorite story as I do now with Iron Man. They distributed one here and there. I can’t think of any others.

SDCC: When you finished a job, did you go into the office?

Thunder Agents Portfolio envelope

134

100th Division, artillery. They noticed my condition and they asked me to work in headquarters. It was big, all officers. They showed me a manual with guns. They asked me, out of this manual, to make large plans so the officers could show the other officers in the classroom how the bullet goes and drops over the mountain to where the enemy is hiding. It was good. I enjoyed it very much. I felt a little guilty about all of those other fellas coming back after a long day hiking, dead tired, and I’m driving in a Jeep. I felt really lousy about that.

Then they released me. I went back to Fiction House. It wasn’t the same

Tuska: When my work was completed, I would go in.

They would give me another script. And I would go to Florida. I would go in or mail it back. But still, it was not the same with the fellas not around.

SDCC: Where did you go after you left Fiction House?

Tuska: Standard Publications. Then I worked for Stan Lee. He was an editor then. It was called Timely Comics. It was in the Empire State Building. Stan hired me. I don’t recall what it was [for]. I don’t think it was anything big, but I kept working for him.

When comic book work got slack, somebody told me about Scorchy Smith at Associated Press. I went up there. They

didn’t like the person who was doing it. I showed them samples. I was accepted.

They asked me if I wanted to do the story[, too]. I said, “Great.” Two together, [writing and drawing,] like bread and butter.

Freelancing also, and other things every now and then.

About three or four years, somebody called up from Chicago and said, “I’m from the National Newspaper Syndicate.”

I didn’t know what it was [about]. They said, “We have here Buck Rogers.” Buck Rogers was more popular than Scorchy Smith. I said, “I don’t know.

I know the fella who is doing it. I wouldn’t like to take it out of his hands.” He said, “I tell you what. I’ll call you a week later and you let me know.

Otherwise, I might give it to somebody else.” I was in between. So, I accepted it. I worked at home quite a while for them. I was doing other small things for them also, like golf instructions.

The big missing thing on Buck Rogers when I was doing it was Wilma. She wasn’t there. Wilma has always been with Buck. I think a hero has to have a girl. Otherwise, I plugged away. Sometime later, I was called and told they were discontinuing Buck for some reason. I didn’t mind.

It was pretty rough, the schedule. I called Stan Lee at Marvel and he said, “Come on over.” At first, it was Captain America.

There is a difference working in comic books and newspapers. The newspaper is not very flashy stuff, but the comics, there is more action, more fighting, panel after panel. After so long away from comic books, I was stale. Stan called me into his office. He said, “You see this figure you drew? That’s not right.”

And showed me [with his fist through the air] “Pow!” He did bring up a lot and it was very interesting. I enjoyed it very much. Then I got into the swing of things.

I was doing quite a bit for him: Spider-

Man, Daredevil, Fantastic Four. But somehow, I kept getting stories of Iron Man. I got to like it. It became a [regular] series [for me]. And once in a while, I would be put on something else.

SDCC: When did you stop working for Marvel?

Tuska: Late Seventies or something.

Sometimes I think I made a mistake. Stan was there through everything. Somebody up at DC Comics asked me if I wanted to

do a DC comic for the newspaper. I didn’t know much of anyone there. I worked mostly at Marvel. I told Stan about it and he said, “You can’t do this to me.” He was upset. I said I would think about it and let

Avengers #135 splash

135

him know. I accepted it: Superman. I didn’t enjoy it at all. Vinny Colletta was the art director, but it didn’t matter. Then I decided not to do it anymore. I told them I would like to do comic books, whatever they had. After a while, I didn’t do much and I stopped.

er new character, and then back to what I did before. I went to another place and it was the same thing. I did Captain Marvel and then something else. It was back and forth, between different artists. I would say Iron Man. Something about Iron Man. SDCC: Tell me about your mother.

SDCC: Tell me about seeing Eisner again.

(these two pages) A pair of Tuska Iron Man commission drawings done for fans.

Tuska: After leaving Eisner, I thought he would not want to see me at all. But I saw him at a convention. We talked a lot. We were good together.

SDCC: Tell me about your favorite piece of work.

Tuska: Since I started comics, for Eisner and Iger, there was one story after another, different characters. Sometimes anoth-

136

Tuska: My mother was born in the Ukraine. She came to the United States in 1880. My brother and sister were born in New York. My mother moved to Hartford, Connecticut. I was born in Hartford.

April 26, 1916.

SDCC: What about Jack Kirby?

Tuska: The first time I met Jack Kirby was at an art school downtown in Manhattan.

He was doing comical pencils. He was very fast. I enjoyed watching him do it. A few years later, Jack worked for DC and I worked for Marvel. Later on, Jack came [back] to Marvel and I got to see him there. We talked a lot about things. I watched how he penciled. He was so fast. Just put it down like snapshots. He was good to get along together with. He was alright. We had lunch together.

He was from Brooklyn. I lived about that time uptown, West Side 200th Street. Before working for comics, I worked at the National Academy of Design art school. I did drawing for cosmetic bracelets, planning design. That was my first job. I don’t know if you could call it art or what, but it was not my thing.

I went to school to learn to paint, oils, and watercolors. My biggest desire was to become an illustrator. Back then, there were a lot of illustration artists and magazines, like the Argosy and Saturday Evening Post. But I got into comics and it was just about the same thing.

Later on, the illustrators disappeared because the magazines went away. I enjoyed working as a cartoonist. It was work, but nice.

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COMICS MAGAZINES FROM TWOMORROWS ™

A Tw o M o r r o w s P u b l i c a t i o n

No. 3, Fall 2013

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ALTER EGO

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JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR celebrates the life and career of the “King” of comics through interviews with Kirby and his contemporaries, feature articles, and rare & unseen Kirby artwork. Now full-color, the magazine showcases Kirby’s art even more dynamically. Edited by JOHN MORROW.

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AGE OF TV HEROES Examining the history of the live-action television adventures of everyone’s favorite comic book heroes, featuring the in-depth stories of the shows’ actors and behind-the-scenes players!

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TwoMorrows—A New Day For Comics Fandom!

TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 E-mail: store@twomorrowspubs.com • Visit us on the Web at www.twomorrows.com

The Art of George Tuska is a comprehensive look at the personal and professional life of this legendary comic book artist whose career spanned over fifty years. While best known for his work on Marvel Comics’ Iron Man, Tuska worked for every major comic book publisher, illustrating hundreds of stories.

The Art of George Tuska begins with his family and includes his early work with the Eisner-Iger studio, his service during World War II, and his involvement with the controversial crime comics of the 1950s. Much of the book is devoted to his tenure with both Marvel and DC Comics, including extensive coverage of his definitive work on Iron Man, as well as his contributions to the X-Men, Hulk, Daredevil, the Justice League, Teen Titans, and many more, including Spider-Man. Discussed at length are the newspaper strips he illustrated over the years, including Buck Rogers and the World’s Greatest Superheroes. Finally, the book reveals what Tuska has been up to since his retirement. A gallery of commission artwork by Tuska and an index of his extensive body of work are also included.

Each section of the book is filled with photographs and examples of stories he illustrated, as well as sketches and previously unpublished artwork. The book also includes interviews and anecdotes from Will Eisner, Jim Mooney, Nick Cardy, Marie Severin, John Romita, Gene Colan, Joe Simon, Mike Esposito, Bob Layton, Paul Levitz, Roy Thomas and a foreword by Stan Lee. Plus, the book contains the very personal and reflective words of Tuska himself regarding his family and his career in comic book art. The Art of George Tuska is a tribute to the tremendous influence Tuska has had on the comic book industry and his legion of fans.

$14.95 in the US TwoMorrows Publishing Raleigh, North Carolina

ISBN 1-893905-40-3 Front cover characters, Iron Man TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Teen Titans, Wonder Woman TM & © DC Comics.

Other characters TM & © their respective owners.