Jack Kirby Collector #25 Preview

Fully Authorized

By The Kirby Estate

A 100-PAGE ISSUE SPOTLIGHTING SIMO N & KIRBY!

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ISSUE #25, AUG. 1999

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Feature-Length Interview with

Joe Simon As he discusses the S&K Shop

Jack Kirby Talks about his Golden Age work With Joe Simon

Interview with

John Severin The Unpublished

Boy Explorers The Story Behind

Mainline Comics Special Art & Features:

Stuntman Sandman Captain America Kid Gangs Unpublished Art including published pages Befo re They Were Inked, And Much Mo re!!

1999 Eisner Awards Nominee for “Best Comics-Related Publication”

Captain America, Red Skull TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

And o thers

Issue #25 Contents Jack Kirby in the Golden Age .............4 (a revealing interview with the King) Sandman in All-Star Comics .............1 2 (S&K’s rare stories in the Justice Society) The Mystery of Jon Henri .................1 5 (who drew those masked men?)

Prof. Reinstein, I Presume?...............1 6 (of Eugenics and super-heroes) Classic Kirby Text Illustrations..........1 9 (some little-known spot illos) The Best of S&K’s Golden Age..........2 1 (war, romance, red underwear, and werewolves!)

Just For Laughs .................................2 7 (the humorous side of Joe and Jack) S&K’s Swipe File ...............................2 8 (we caught them red-handed!)

John Severin Interview .....................30 (John tells us why “They were aces!”)

Joe Simon Interview .........................3 3 (he’s more than your average Joe) Centerfold: Captain America.............5 0 (the oldest surviving S&K original art?)

Sid Jacobson on Simon & Kirby .......5 2 (Captain 3-D’s editor speaks) Simon & Kirby and the Kid Gang ....5 4 (an overview of S&K’s kid groups) Re-Examining the Boy Explorers ......6 1 (a fresh look, plus an unfinished story!)

The Edge of the World .....................7 2 (a complete 1946 Boy Explorers story) The Mainline Comics Story..............8 6 (an initial examination of S&K’s shortlived self-publishing company) Classifieds.........................................9 6 Collector Comments.........................9 7

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ISSUE #25, AUG. 1999

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THE ONLY ’ ZINE AUTHORIZED BY THE KIRBY ESTATE

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Front cover inks: Dan Adkins Back cover inks: John Severin Cover color: Tom Ziuko Photocopies of Jack’s uninked pencils from published comics are reproduced here courtesy of the Kirby Estate, which has our thanks for their continued support.

Our sincere thanks to Joe Simon for his cooperation and assistance with this issue!

COPYRIGHTS: Boy Commandos (Brooklyn, Andre, Tex, Percy, Jan, Alfy, Rip Carter), Demon, Guardian, Jed, Jim Harper, Losers, Mister Miracle, Newsboy Legion (Gabby, Scrapper, Tommy, Big Words, Flippa Dippa), Orion, Sandman, Sandy, Starman, The Mist TM & © DC Comics, Inc. • Bucky, Captain America, Dr. Strange, Falcon, Ikaris, “Man From the Wrong Time Track”, Man-Thing, Red Skull, Silver Surfer, Sis-Neg, Sleepy Eyes, “Speed Will Be My Bride”, Thing, Vision, Yellow Claw TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • All the 1930s and ’40s early drawings are © Jack Kirby. • All Joe Simon solo drawings , The Fly, Private Strong, Silver Spider © Joe Simon. • Boy Explorers (Commodore Sindbad, Gadget, Mr. Zero, Smiley, Gashouse), Boys’ Ranch (Dandy, Wabash, Angel, Clay Duncan), Bullseye, Captain 3-D Tigra, Don Daring, Fighting American, Foxhole, In Love, Inky, Invisible Irving, Jack McGregor’s Bluff, Nancy Hale, Night Fighter, Panda, Police Trap, Round Robin, Speedboy, Stuntman, Vagabond Prince, Young Brides, Young Love, Young Romance © Joe Simon & Jack Kirby. • Headline Comics, Justice Traps the Guilty © Prize Publications. • Champ Comics, Champion Comics, Front-Page Comics, Speed Comics © Harvey Publications. • Crime SuspenStories © EC Comics. • Popeye © King Features. • The Duel © Gilberton Publications. • Cockeyed © Whitestone Publications. • Real Clue Crime Stories © Hillman Periodicals. • Green Hornet © The Green Hornet. • Sick Magazine © Headline Publications. • Blue Bolt, Green Sorceress © Novelty Press. • Blue Beetle © Fox Publications. • Crazy, Man, Crazy, From Here To Insanity, I Love You © Charlton Publications.

In 1977, Steve Robertson bought this unused cover for Justice Traps the Guilty #1 from Jack. Jack felt bad that it wasn’t finished, and offered to finish it up. Steve declined, since he wanted to preserve it as it was, so Jack sold it for the princely sum of $20! Jack signed and dated it 1977, but then changed the date to ’57, saying, “That’s when I did this!” (It should’ve been ’47!)

The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 6, No. 25, Aug. 1999. Published bi-monthly by & © TwoMorrows Publishing, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-833-8092. John Morrow, Editor. Pamela Morrow, Asst. Editor. Jon B. Cooke, Assoc. Editor. Single issues: $5.95 ($7.00 Canada, $9.00 elsewhere).

Six-issue subscriptions: $24.00 US, $32.00 Canada and Mexico, $44.00 outside North America. First printing. All characters are trademarks of their respective companies. All artwork is © Jack Kirby unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © the respective authors. PRINTED IN CANADA.

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Jack Kirby In The Golden Age Interviewed by James Van Hise, and originally published in Golden Age of Comics #6, November 1983. © James Van Hise. (Our thanks to James for permission to reprint the text of this interview.)

JAMES VAN HISE: Before you worked in comic books, some of your earliest work was doing newspaper strips, wasn’t it?

of course, nobody knew anything about.

VAN HISE: Did you have a special liking for the Solar Legion? Because in the late Thirties you’d revive it whenever you had a new forum.

KIRBY: Yes I did, because first of all, The Solar Legion involved a lot of characters. I grew up among a lot of people and being born in New York’s lower East Side, which was a crowded section, there were people everywhere—and so I think it was natural for me to think in terms of groups, and of course I’d be included somewhere. My recollections of different types of people would be reflected in different themes in the comic strips. So if I did The Solar Legion, I might include different types of people that I knew. They’d have that kind of temperament.

Some of them would be cool. Some of them would be hot-tempered, and they’d be people in conflict and people who’d (above, below, help each other.

JACK KIRBY: I did work for a small syndicate which had about four hundred papers called the Lincoln Newspaper Features Syndicate. I did a variety of work there and I was grateful for that because it prepared me for doing a variety of comics.

I did editorial cartoons. I did a cartoon called Your Health Comes First where I gave ordinary prescriptions, and I did comic strips.

and following pages) Early Kirby pencil drawings, circa the 1930s.

VAN HISE: This is where you used different styles drawn under different names?

KIRBY: No, the styles looked different because the theme was different, but actually I didn’t disguise my style, I just changed the name on the strip. One strip would be done by Jack Curtiss and another strip would be done under another name. That gave the syndicate the aura of having a larger staff.

VAN HISE: How much of your own writing were you doing then?

KIRBY: All of it.

I’ve always done my own writing.

VAN HISE: What were the big influences on your work at the time? The adventure strips? The pulps?

KIRBY: The adventure strips were only just beginning at the time.

Dick Tracy was, of course, the first real adventure strip, and Buck Rogers was one of the early ones. So having been an admirer of that type of thing, I felt that I’d like to do that as well. I picked themes along those lines, but I did them with a sciencefiction flavor which most of the others didn’t have. I would do a story about an airplane which went back into time....

VAN HISE: That was the Solar Legion, wasn’t it?

KIRBY: Oh yes. I had an atomic cannon which was fairy tale stuff at that time. This was a time when there weren’t even jets. No one could even conceive of jets, so if you did an atomic cannon you were sort of an avant garde, far-out type of writer.

I began doing things that people would speculate about, but which, 4

Early comic strip attempt by Kirby (signed “Jack Curtiss”), done in 1931 at age 14.

When I got into comic books I began needing people like Joe Simon, and finally Joe and I got together to do Captain America. We were both professionals and we were both capable of writing the stuff, but Joe did most of the business. He was a big guy, six foot three, very impressive, and he had college experience which I didn’t have— but I had a unique storytelling ability, so although he was quite capable of doing so, he never had to write the stories. I’d write the stories on Captain America or whatever we’d be working on and Joe did business with the publisher because he could meet the publisher on an equal footing. I was younger and I was the kid with the turtleneck sweater who was always working.

VAN HISE: What was the actual breakdown of work between you and Joe Simon on Captain America as far as penciling, inking, etc.?

KIRBY: Well, I did most of it and Joe did some of it, but I did most of it because I had the time. I was constantly working. Joe had duties as an editor and he might be an editor in the publishing house and he’d be having contacts with the publisher that I didn’t.

VAN HISE: Stan Lee was at Timely already by then, wasn’t he?

KIRBY: Yes, he was a young boy then and he was a member of the publisher’s family so he got a job there. I don’t know what his duties were but from time to time he’d come into the office and play a flute or the clarinet while he was working and that was the extent of it.

VAN HISE: So Joe Simon edited Captain America himself?

KIRBY: Joe Simon edited all the [Timely] books. It wasn’t called Marvel yet at that time, but the publisher was the same.

At any rate, we left [Timely] and we

Newsboy Legion page from Star-Spangled Comics #19 (April 1943).

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went to DC where we did “The Boy Commandos,” “Sandman,” and “Manhunter” and created the kinds of things that DC wanted. After we created those features we were drafted. Joe went into the Coast Guard and I went into the Army.

VAN HISE: Where did some of the other early characters come from, like the Black Owl and Cyclone Burke?

KIRBY: The Black Owl and Cyclone Burke were mine. Like I said, I was constantly at work and I created what was real. Creating characters is the kind of atmosphere in which I was raised, so whatever I created was accepted and it sold very well.

You’ll find that I was forever writing and drawing; that I had no other duties, and I’m still doing it. That’s my forté. I was never an editor, but I was a publisher with Joe Simon. Joe and I published a few magazines together under the name of Mainline Publications, so we knew each other a long time. Our partnership went on over a period of years.

VAN HISE: What was it like working in comics in the Golden Age as compared to what it is today?

KIRBY: Everybody tried to help each other. All the fellows had a good working relationship, but there was a rigid caste system between the editors and the fellows who turn the magazines out, and the publisher. There was no such thing as an artist or a writer dealing with the publisher. The structure was rigid. That’s why I say that Joe was valuable in his respect because he was able to deal with the publishers. We were the first team to get a percentage.

VAN HISE: On which books were those?

Detail panel from Fighting American #1 (April 1954), before the strip went to broad humor.

KIRBY: When we worked for Kressler [Crestwood?–Ed.] Publications, we got a percentage, but up until that time nobody had been able to break that rigid structure between the artist, the writer, and the publisher. It wasn’t like legitimate publishing where you make a deal. It was a loose arrangement where we could leave anyone.

VAN HISE: What titles were those percentages on?

KIRBY: Black Magic, Justice Traps The Guilty, and others. This was during the years of EC in the early Fifties. EC was doing extremely well; they had a talented bunch and Joe and I worked extra hard to put out the types of magazines that could keep up with them, and we did. We worked very hard and turned out some terrific stuff. We had wonderful stories.

VAN HISE: Did you ever consider doing anything for EC?

Another early Kirby drawing from the 1930s, showing Jack’s early propensity for humorous work.

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KIRBY: No. Joe and I had gotten into the habit of working with each other and somehow we just didn’t consider taking off individually and working anywhere.

It was like a habit, you know? That’s the way we operated and wherever we operated we made a lot of money for the publishers. All of our books sold well over six hundred

S&K’s Sandman in All-Star Comics

by John Fallon any of the Kirby stories that have been touched upon by the contributing writers to TJKC have dealt with the impact and legacy of his art. One of the least noted features that Jack contributed to over the course of his career is Simon & Kirby’s work on the Justice Society of America. During the first 12 issues of All-Star Comics which featured the JSA, Sandman’s involvement was little more than a story that was drawn to tie the other features of the overall storyline together. When Joe and Jack got ahold of Sandman beginning in issue #14, Sandman’s overall tone changed drastically.

Here now, we see Simon & Kirby’s contribution to Sandman and the JSA.

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All Star #14: “Food For Starving Patriots” JSA opening plot: During a regularly scheduled meeting of the JSA, Hawkman brings to the table that “the liberty loving peoples of Europe must be fed.” The problem with this mission is that it must be done without the enemy’s knowledge.

With the assignments being made, our heroes embark on their missions. Drawing Greece as his assignment, Sandman’s chapter begins.

Sandman plot: Having the same effect on the Germans as he does on criminals, our chapter opens to see the Golden Gladiator battling the German Captain in charge of an area of Greece.

When he awakes, he is informed that a troop train has been destroyed and they believe that Sandman is responsible. We next see Sandman and Sandy leading a group of guerrillas as they destroy yet another troop train. After talking with the leader of the guerrillas, Sandman comes to the conclusion that Hitler is setting the scene to take over the oil fields of Iran by way of Turkey.

With a plan in mind, Sandman and Sandy storm Gestapo headquarters and convince the Gestapo commander that they have become friends with Hitler. At Sandman’s request, the Commander sends the following message from the Propaganda Broadcasting office via short wave: “The Nazis do not plan to invade Turkey! Be sure and tell it to Sweeney!” With the Allies informed, they set into motion plans that will stop Hitler in his tracks. Meanwhile, Sandman and Sandy pay their final call on the Germans in Greece and give them a strong reminder to stop breaking into the Greek homes and stealing their food. The last panel shows Hitler eating a bowl of rice while knowing that the peoples of the oppressed lands are now eating steak.

Splash page from the Sandman story in All-Star Comics #15.

them with their boyfriend’s costumes. Informing the girlfriends that the individual cases that the JSA members are working on are in reality caused by one man, they quickly depart to capture that man: Brainwave.

Sandman plot: In the letter that Sandman sent to Wonder Woman the stage is set for the opening with the patented nightmare sequence found in many of his Adventure Comics tales. We see wealthy businessman Stanley Cord dreaming of being manhandled by Sandman and Sandy. When he awakes, Cord is greeted by a phony Sandman who threatens to reveal Cord’s shady business dealings to the police if he doesn’t give him money. The next victim that night turns out to be Wesley Dodds, who sends “Sandman” packing. After the bogus Sandman

All Star #15: “The Man Who Created Images” JSA opening plot: As Wonder Woman opens letters addressed to her from her fellow JSA members, they all tell her that they can’t come to the meeting because they are working on cases. Not to waste an opportunity, Wonder Woman quickly contacts the girlfriends of the JSA and outfits 12

Englishman Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, coined the term Eugenics (from a Greek stem meaning ‘good in birth’) in 1883. He concluded in his studies that natural ability, intelligence, and talent were bestowed by heredity. “Could not,” he pondered, “the undesirables be got rid of and the desirables multiplied?” He saw the encouragement of good marriages as the best way of accomplishing this end.

Interest in eugenics grew when an obscure Austrian monk’s experiments in breeding peas became widely known. Another mystery of human heredity was seemingly revealed when Gregor Mendel discovered genetically-transmitted dominant and recessive traits. In the US, Charles Davenport established a center for research in human evolution at Cold Spring Harbor, NY. Davenport believed that socalled single-unit genes caused such traits as feeblemindedness and alcoholism. He thought that by keeping their carriers from reproducing the world could eradicate the problem. Advancing Galton’s theory, Davenport wished for human matings to be placed on the same plane as horse breeding. For prostitutes and their “innate eroticism,” as he called it, he advocated eugenic castrations.

Historian Daniel J. Kevles’ In the Name of Eugenics (1985) covered the various philosophies found in the nineteenth-century fervor surrounding the strange movement. The early eugenicists identified human worth with the qualities needed to pass through schools, universities, and professional training. They were not alone. On both sides of the Atlantic, people (in the ruling class) felt themselves and

A solo drawing of Captain America,

by Joe Simon.

Prof. Reinstein, I Presume?

Eugenics, Simon, and Kirby, by Jerry Boyd their children’s future to be threatened. Some of America’s WASP ascendancy felt the country was taking a wrong turn by admitting so many Italians, Poles, etc. In Britain, members of the upper class felt they would be swamped and overly-taxed by the overbreeding of the lower orders. The ‘superior’ man had to assert himself while there still was time! He would have to establish new laws and re-invent himself— through science if necessary.

aptain America Comics #1: Two men step into a room of astonishinglysophisticated scientific machinery. The room is partitioned off by plate-glass windows behind which an eager group of intelligence agents and scientists shuffle anxiously in their seats while waiting to view “the fruits of their experiment.” The two men standing before them do not introduce themselves to their audience. One man is short, stocky, and his dark, long hair is streaked with white. He addresses the small crowd and his frail young charge, gently reassuring the volunteer and explaining his serum’s effects to the stunned onlookers as it takes hold. The Army-rejected volunteer literally grows before their eyes. His arms and shoulders grow heavy and thicken.

Power surges through his growing muscles and his intelligence is immediately heightened. Somewhat taken aback himself by his success, the scientist recovers enough to issue a godlike “Behold! The crowning achievement of all my years of hard work!” Now he names his “Adam.”

“We shall call you Captain America, son! Because, like you, America shall gain the strength and the will to safeguard our shores!”

Whether the then-new team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby knew it or not, the very pivotal character of Prof. Reinstein was more than just a throwaway catalyst for a new character’s origin. He was actually part of a socio-scientific movement that had taken root prior in the consciousness of many nations.

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The Reign of the Supermen Some people have said that truly great creators have the gift of prophecy. I wonder if Siegel and Shuster had heard that when they were shopping the incredible concept of a character with supernatural abilities about. (Professors Reinstein and Horton were just around the corner.

Joe Simon’s Red Raven is trained and made into a super-being by an advanced race of winged beings in Red Raven #1. Billy Batson, a superior boy, is selected by Shazam to hold superior powers. And it went on.)

Shortly before comics exploded with a reign of their supermen, Aldous Huxley, in his 1932 novel Brave New World, imagined future childbirth as a very systematic process in which state-sponsored brainwashing would create a better social efficiency. (Huxley’s sociopolitical statement was obvious: If the government didn’t control the eugenics business, then a laissez-faire eugenics would emerge from the millions of parents making free choices and things might go crazy.) Huxley’s scenario made some sense then. Some American states were forcibly sterilizing the “feebleminded,” and Adolf Hitler had praised these policies in his book, Mein Kampf.

(Hitler actually followed a list of distinguished individuals who gave eugenics their support: Darwin, Teddy Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, Alexander Graham Bell, the young Winston Churchill, and Calvin Coolidge, who declared during his vice-presidency that “Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races.”)

In the littered minds of the Nazi hierarchy, eugenics became a cause célèbre. The people they deemed ‘inferior’ became answerable to state policy and part of an intolerable situation the Nazis felt “raciallybound” to correct. They killed or jailed them. The mentally retarded

The Roots of Eugenics In centuries past, the ‘national or tribal superman’ began with an almost-mythical notion of what the superior man was all about. In almost all instances, he was highly intelligent, innately noble, articulate, loyal, and heroic. Physically, he was tall, lean, sinewy, possessed of animal-like quickness, and always superb in face and physique.

The Germans had Siegfried, the ancient Israelites had King David and Samson, the English held Galahad and King Arthur in high esteem, and there were enough warriors, braves, shoguns, and others (real or imagined) for all the peoples in the world. “But how to increase the numbers of superior individuals?”, some came to ask.

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were sent away to special facilities to be put to death. Many of the parents Goering, Himmler, and Hitler would’ve victimized embraced their new country and so did their children. Boys by the names of Eisner, Kane, Siegel, Shuster, Simon, and Kirby created “All-American heroes” named Colt, Wayne, Kent, and Rogers (among others).

While Hitler was imagining his army of blond super-soldiers conquering the world, Jack and Joe embodied all Americans into one Private Steve Rogers as created, not by a mandated sociopolitical doctrine, but by a brilliant (Jewish?) European immigrant doctor who had embraced democratic freedoms and felt a need to contribute to his adopted land.

Steve Rogers took over the new Avengers and moved into the moreestablished Iron Man’s book, Tales of Suspense. The Marvel Comics Group hung in there with him and he began to grow on the readership again, thanks to the House of Ideas’ policy of getting their characters noticed in as many of their titles as possible. Cap showed up in the FF, X-Men, Spider-Man, and Sgt. Fury. The icing on the cake was Fantasy Masterpieces, which introduced younger Marvelites to Cap and Bucky’s Golden Age exploits by Simon & Kirby. (Someone at Marvel may have been nursing a grudge against Joe because the credits were never present on the reprinted stories.)

To young comic enthusiasts of my generation, the Forties represented a vague notion of what WWII was all about, Three Stooges and Little Rascals comedies, and Universal horror movies that came on TV Saturday afternoons. Cap was the tie-in; the great legacy that linked the early days of graphic excitement to the present. The stories also showed the crude, yet passionate energy of Jack Kirby. This was where the genius began. Though FM was an all-reprint book, the stunning new cover art by Kirby and Giacoia, the comic relief of the blustering Sgt. Duffy, the tough Betty Ross, and the plucky heroism of Bucky Barnes made the title a must-have. Two years after the shield-slinger’s return, he was in complete acceptance by fandom and the earlier successes of Simon & Kirby were largely responsible.

The old origin expanded during the Kirby-Lee years. The Red Skull even explained his beginnings to his captured nemesis on one occasion. “Super-heroes with super-problems” took over slowly from the old stern-jawed, ridiculously capable crimebusters of yore. Cap was among them, looking within and often. Stan renamed the good doctor “Erskine” for the ’60s. Doc didn’t get the introspection treatment but he got more lines and Cap finally got his powers outlined in a short but exciting novel from Bantam Books.

Dr. Erskine was a

“Captain America represents us and he’ll fight for us. He’ll put his body across the line for us and the other super-heroes are the same way. They see us in a protective attitude because it’s an unfair situation between us and super-heroes, so in all fairness super-heroes have to come to our aid because we’re the underdog and we can’t possibly fight in their league. But in this fantasy, they represent us. They’re us. They do the things that we feel that we’d like to do.”

Jack Kirby, 1983

Cap & His Doctor Golden Age characters always retain a certain charm. They’re always ready for anything as soon as they put on their outfits. S&K’s Manhunter, Rip Kirby, Sandman, Stuntman, and Captain America are all from the same mold. Stern-jawed, powerful, righteous in judgment, confident, they all have great deductive reasoning (making them fabulous detectives) and incredible fighting skills. (No one shows frail, unfit-for-duty Steve Rogers how to throw a punch but seconds after he receives that serum, he’s knocking out an armed spy.)

Cap instantly becomes a fighting machine.

Jim Harper, the Golden Guardian, never got close to a “magic elixir” in his origin but it’s tough to see Cap and him not fighting to a draw. They’re from the same mold. It was a great mold, though, and the team’s success reflected it.

S&K’s characters (just like Batman, Dr. Fate, the Destroyer, and all the others) were never introspective. (That idea would come with a guy named Lee some two decades later.) Evil was present and they had to defeat it. “Safeguarding America’s shores” was how Reinstein put it and Winghead and his masked kid ally never veered from that purpose.

Timely’s unwillingness to make the hot, young team a more profitable deal sent them over to National, and Cap—under Al Avison, Syd Shores, Don Rico, Stan, and others—continued to do well. The stories were still entertaining but it was clear that Jack and Joe’s followers were working from their blueprint. Cap continued to make short, stirring (Simon-like) speeches just before he and Bucky lowered the boom on their enemies. In a well-executed tale by Stan Lee and Al Avison (Captain America Comics #16) in which Cap and Bucky had been beaten, humiliated, and tortured(!) by the Red Skull, Cap declared near the story’s end (in a reference to Pearl Harbor), “I’m just like my country, Skull... I won’t be caught napping again!”

The fast-producing team of Simon & Kirby (Jack estimated that sometimes they turned out as much as 6-10 finished pages in a day) were charting out new territories over at DC and the people ghosting their strips followed their unique brand of storytelling in much the same way Timely did.

Despite ol’ Winghead’s popularity (and the legion of other super-patriots he inspired), he became just another crimebuster at the war’s end.

Revived by Kirby and Lee in ’64, the starspangled Avenger wasn’t altogether popular at first.

Older comics fans were thrilled by his return but younger readers felt the old boy just gummed up the Avengers. Complaints continued to mount when

Captain America by Kirby.

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War & Romance & Red Underwear & Werewolves!

I Presenting the Best of S&K’s Golden Age, by R. J. Vitone

what to expect.

(I “won” a Superman #2 by bid once, and spent long hours on the phone trying to explain to the mope I got it from that it was Superman ANNUAL #2!)

As a result, I almost never saw any of that early Kirby work in Crash, Mystery Men, and Science Comics. By the time these books were referenced, I was really unwilling to shell out over $100 each for only a random cover or a 5-page story. Blue Bolt, from Novelty (a company that bought work from Bill Everett and Carl Burgos), was another case. It was fairly easy to pick up the first ten issues in a short time at low prices.

When I got them all, I looked them over, then got rid of them!

Looking at them now, they show a wide range of the style—the first collaboration, a melding of different art and storytelling. Crude, rough at first, then a sure, steady progression. By issue #7, you could have slapped little wings on Blue Bolt’s head and given him a shield, because the art looked just like the early Cap strip; but back then, I was disappointed by the short stories in each issue, and the Flash Gordon look. I never did warm up to the thing.

n 1972, my new wife asked me why I was wasting $20 of my/our hard-earned money on a copy of Captain America #6. I tried to explain that even though I had taken the mature step of matrimony, the kid in me still screamed out to collect Golden Age comics—especially Kirby comics. She just didn’t understand.

Five years later, when she left me, she still didn’t get it; but I had built up a nice collection by then to keep me warm. (No real comfort, believe me.) Depressed, I quit my job, and went into partnership in a comic book store, one of the first in the city. I figured, what the hell, waste a couple of years, maybe pick up a few neat Kirby books, then move on to real life.

Now, over 20 years later, it’s me that finally understands! I’ve spent half of my adult life collecting Kirby comics, and I’ve seen, held, traded, owned, and sold just about everything that Jack ever did. Was I surprised to find out that this is unusual! Many times, I’d mention a favorite story to other fans, and get blank “You’ve seen that?” stares in return. Slowly, I came to realize how lucky I was. Owning a comics store had landed me in just the right place at just the right time to feed my Kirby collecting impulses. At our stores in the late ’70s/early ’80s, people actually brought in old comics from the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s for us to buy. One of the best was over 100 DCs from 1935 to 1941, including all of the most legendary key issues you could name! Great, right? Except the art teacher we bought them from had years ago razored out every page that had any animal on it! (Of course I didn’t want any of ’em... no Kirby... ‘DUH’!)

There was not much of an organized fandom in those days, so conventions were usually badlyorganized flea markets. Price guides were used more for reference than to price (“What!? $5 for an FF #1—Are you insane?!”). Once I decided I was stuck as a full-time comics retailer, I made up a list of Golden Age books I “needed” and started looking.

By networking, bidding, advertising, trading, and Blue Bolt #3, the cover that started it all. sometimes begging, I did amass most of what I felt I wanted, even though I had to trade some of the books I had acquired in order to get others I’d never seen.

We’re looking at over two decades of searching, and the accumulation of more than just books. A lot of knowledge came as well. So as a service to any of you collectors out there, here’s the benefit of my experience: An overview of each Golden Age title—with highlights, low points, and other info you may find interesting.

BEST EARLY COVER: Champion #10, (shown above) hands down. Nice example of what the Golden Age was. Try and find one, though.

BEST BLUE BOLT COVER: #3. An easy choice, since Novelty’s editors featured their long-forgotten stars on most of the run. I’ll argue with anyone that this is a Kirby layout, or at least Kirby inks over Simon art!

THE ONE BLUE BOLT TO OWN: #6. Nice blend of art and action, classic Jack touches, and a weird, positively creepy big-headed villain.

Pops up in the Comic Buyer’s Guide sometimes.

BEST “I KNOW SHE’S GREEN, BUT WHAT AN OUTFIT” COSTUME: The Green Sorceress! (shown below)

Blue Bolt and the Early Partnership Period Oddball early super-hero comics rarely turned up where I could see them, and I hated to buy a comic through the mail without knowing 21

AVOID AT ANY COST (EXCEPT FREE): Blue Bolt #1 and 2. Very, very bad. No Kirby in #1.

HARDEST MARVEL MYSTERY WITH S&K ART TO FIND: These days, all of ’em! Back in the “old days,” #12 and #13 almost never The Vision, from Marvel Mystery #13. were offered for sale, and #17 (with an epic Torch/Subby team-up) was superscarce. I actually found a copy of #19 in an attic!

From a sheer collecting point of view, these early books are frustrating; not enough material to justify the cost and time to track them down. Unless you’re extremely anal about this stuff, be content with reprints, or find low-grade copies!

The Timely Years A fun period! Collecting Timelys was a happy job for me. Usually, I’d discount-buy a group of ten or so from a dealer, then trade off ones I didn’t care for to another dealer. I got to see dozens of Golden Age comics this way, and stubbornly hung onto many Kirbys. As time passed, I found it harder to justify paying higher prices. Once, I passed on a VF copy of Cap #1 priced at $200, because my wife was staring at me. I was content with a coverless copy until the late, great Phil Seuling wheedled me into buying a high grade one for more than $2000, and I finally had to let go of that one too! Now, the prices are prohibitive (“Hmmmm. Let’s see. Buy an All-Winners #1 or a new car...”), and even if you have the money to spend, just try to find some of this stuff! Whoever’s got ’em is holding on to them, folks; and the few people who want to sell them only know three words: “Over Guide” and “Auction.” Anyway, here’s what I found out:

BEST TIMELY WAR-THEME COVER: Captain America #1 and #2— Hitler, Nazis, and guns!

BEST CAP COVER: #6. My first Golden Age Cap! BEST CAP STORY: “The Phantom Hound Of Cardiff Moor” (Cap #10).

I’m a Sherlock Holmes fan, and this “old dark house” murder mystery really hooks me. RUNNER UP: “Return of the Red Skull” (Cap #3).

The Skull at his vile worst!

OBVIOUS KEYS TO FIND IN A BASEMENT: Cap #1, All-Winners #1 and Marvel Mystery #13 (first Vision).

THE ONLY CAP STORY THAT MAY NEVER BE REPRINTED: AllWinners #2. Issued months after the team left Timely for DC, this is the last Golden Age Cap strip. And all I’ll say is this: Captain America, the “symbol of liberty” has some harsh things to say to the natives of a Pacific island! This book turns up often, isn’t super-expensive, and is worth a look.

ONLY COVER ON MARVEL MYSTERY: #12, of The Angel, no less.

MOST OBSCURE TIMELY COVER: USA Comics #1 (Aug. ’41). A Schomberg-style horror as a wizened Nazi ghoul pours molten metal over a General. Never saw it, never knew of it!

BEST TIMELY VILLAIN: C’mon, you know—The Red Skull!

MOST OVER-ROMANTICIZED: Red Raven #1. For years, one of the rarest key issues. A nice cover and two leftover Kirby stories just ain’t worth it.

DID YOU KNOW...?: Cap #4 has a Cap/Bucky pin-up on the back cover.

HARDEST CAP ISSUE TO FIND: Always had trouble finding a decent copy of #4, and #7 remains scarce. #3, 5, and 8 used to be common.

THE “IS THAT ALL?” COMIC: Young Allies #1—a cover and a few splashes! I paid $5 for a coverless copy in 1982 and felt cheated. By the way, Jack’s original unused cover was terrific.

“HEY! THAT LOOKS LIKE JACK ART!”: Splash page in a Cap #11 story.

THE ONE ISSUE OF CAP TO OWN: If you’re pinned down, and want only one, go with #7—great art, the Red Skull and the Black Toad, topped off by a nice Kirby cover.

The team’s Timely period fascinated me ever since I first got a copy of Jules Feiffer’s The Great Comic Book Heroes in 1965. This was the first time I’d ever seen the Golden Age Cap origin story, and felt the simple uncomplicated fun that ran through it. Kirby’s 1941 art struck me as especially powerful.

As I grew older and collected more issues, I came to realize how simple and formulaic those books were— but that remains part of the charm!

(It may seem funny to you, but reprints of Golden Age books just do not carry the “feel” of age and wonder with them.) As far as I was concerned, there was no other Golden Age stuff for me to collect... but:

BEST VISION STRIP IN MARVEL MYSTERY: #16. Dinosaurs, dynamite, and nice if not top Kirby art. One of the best Vision stories, although my personal favorite is their final one, where the devil shows up! (MM #27)

The DC War Years It wouldn’t be a Golden Age Timely book without killer zombies, like these from the Cap story in All-Winners #1.

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Who could have guessed how much high quality material would roll off the line after the move to

They Were Aces!

John Severin interviewed—by mail—by Jim Amash THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: When did you first become aware of Simon & Kirby’s comic book work? Did they influence you in any way?

JOHN SEVERIN: One of the first, or in this case two of the first comic artists I heard of when I got into the business were Simon & Kirby. I was a late bloomer in comics—it wasn’t till late ’47 that I entered the field and there seemed to be a hundred aces who I was encouraged to emulate, to swipe from or at the very least admire for their work. Simon & Kirby were two of the more outstanding aces of that group.

TJKC: How did you get work at Crestwood and Prize?

JOHN: There were quite a number of publishers in New York at that time, albeit their production was small. In those days the prospective artist lugged his portfolio of samples from company to company looking for work. One of the publishers I encountered during this routine was Crestwood—and there I met the two stars of comics, Simon & Kirby.

TJKC: Was Will Elder working with you from the beginning or did he come aboard later?

Who was the editor and what was your first work there?

JOHN: We—Bill Elder and I were partners at that time—were lucky enough to be given a script for one of the crime comics. The story was about two children—a young girl and her brother who murdered their mean stepfather.

Soon we were doing westerns for Crestwood’s sister company, Prize Western—“The Black Bull” and “The Lazo Kid” were two of the series we did before the editor, Nevin Fidler, spoke to me about a new character they were creating called “American Eagle.” I agreed to take it on and that ended our work with Simon & Kirby. They had been very helpful with their constructive criticism to two novices in the business.

TJKC: Who do you recall being at Prize at the time?

JOHN: M.R. Reese was the Head Honcho—Joe and Jack took care of the crime and romance books. After Nevin Fidler left, Joe Genalo took over; and of course Ben Oda was there, lettering away to beat the band. Marv Stein was there mostly doing work under Jack and Joe’s wing.

TJKC: Did you ever socialize with Joe & Jack?

JOHN: Even though I no longer worked directly with Simon & Kirby, our relationship was always friendly.

TJKC: Who wrote the American Eagle stories?

JOHN: They started out with Jay Alexander, but when I began packaging the Eagle, I got Colin Dawkins to come in with me. We would work out the storyline together and at times collaborated on the final script.

TJKC: Did you do much work on the romance books?

JOHN: As to the romance stories for S&K, my mind is a blank. I don’t remember whether or not I ever did any for Crestwood.

(these pages) Severin inks over Kirby pencils, from Yellow Claw #4.

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TJKC: Why did you quit working for Prize and/ or Simon & Kirby?

JOHN: The work I was receiving from EC caused

More Than Your Average Joe Excerpts from Joe Simon’s panels at the 1998 Comicon International: San Diego Transcribed by Glen Musial, and edited by John Morrow (The following are combined excerpts from last year’s Joe Simon Panel and the Kirby Tribute Panel at Comicon International. Both panels were moderated by Mark Evanier.)

MARK EVANIER: We are delighted to have Joe Simon at the convention this year. When I first met Jack, I started asking questions about Joe Simon. At that time, I didn’t know much about Joe—other than he was the other name on all those comics I loved. And the very first thing Jack said to me about Joe was, “Joe could do everything! Joe could write ’em, he could pencil ’em, he could ink ’em, he could letter ’em.” But the thing that he was most impressed about with Joe was that Joe could do the best covers—either he could draw them or he could just lay them out—and Jack felt that was what sold all those books—that the covers were the best-designed covers. That Simon & Kirby had a reputation for the best covers in the business and that Joe deserved 90% of the credit for the covers, even if he didn’t do the finished art. It was his sense of design, his layout that made those books sell—and Jack enormously respected Joe through the years.

Now, as we all know Jack was not the greatest interview in the world and once or twice when he was interviewed people would get him mad—y’know you could push his hot buttons occasionally and make him mad about something; and sometimes he didn’t know the value of what he was getting mad at. He gave some quoted interviews where he said some things about Joe that he regretted; and he said to me—one of the last times I saw him—that he wanted to call Joe and apologize to him or interview someplace else and make up for it. He passed away before that could happen. A couple of days after Jack passed away, I was with Roz and she asked me to please try to tidy up a couple of those little things that had not been done before Jack passed away—a couple of legal matters and a couple of things— outreach to people that I’m in touch with. I got in touch with Joe and it was really one of the most wonderful things in my life to know this man. There are a few people in this world that we treasure their friendship, and we treasure the fact that somebody that has that kind of talent and influence in the business is your friend. And the more I learn about what Joe did for Jack in his career, the more I learn about what he did for Jack during all the years they were together; when, later on, Joe protected the rights to a lot of things that Simon & Kirby co-owned, he gave Jack his share—things a lot of people wouldn’t touch at the time. He voluntarily took the expense and the trouble to legally protect those things. I just—that’s why I really love this man. I want to tell you all that I am happier to have Joe Simon here than anybody who could be here this year except for Roz. Thank you, Joe! (applause) Joe, I know this is a tough question—can you remember the first time you met Jack?

Vagabond Prince page from Black Cat Comics #8 (Oct. ’47). Kirby supposedly penciled the odd-numbered pages of this story. (above) Joe Simon in 1998.

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JOE SIMON: It was at Fox Comics. I guess you all know about Victor Fox. He was a little chubby guy.

He was an accountant for DC Comics. He was doing the sales figures and he liked what he saw. So, he moved downstairs and started his own company called Fox Comics, Fox Publications, Fox Features Syndicate, Fox Radio, Fox this, Fox that—and he didn’t have a staff there, but Eisner and Iger were supplying art and editorial material. I happened to get a job; I went over to Fox and became editor there, which was just an impossible job, because as I said there were no artists, no writers, no editors, no

letterers—nothing there.

Everything came out of the Eisner and Iger shop.

Fox had a character called Wonder Man; he just took the DC character Superman and made him Wonder Man and took Batman and made him Bat-something. (laughter) He started, and he got bigger offices there in the same building— more impressive offices than DC. He was a very strange character. He had kind of a British accent; he was like 5'2"—told us he was a former ballroom dancer. He was very loud, menacing, and really a scary little guy. (laughter) He used to say, “I’m the King of the Comics. I’m the King of the Comics.

I’m the King of the Comics.” (laughter) We couldn’t stop him. So that’s the task I had when Kirby’s Blue Beetle strips, from a 1980s French reprint volume.

I went in to start that job. and me for like 15 years and I still don’t know if that was the original Anyway, they did have a bullpen there, doing corrections and Charles Nicholas. Anyway, that was the byline he used. whiting-out and pasting-up. They had Jack Kirby and a young guy Jack was getting $15 a week—he came from, we all came from named Charles Nicholas in the bullpen—that was the whole bullpen. very poor families—but I had a suit and Jack thought that was really They were doing a syndicate strip called Blue Beetle—I get Blue Beetle nice. (laughter) He’d never seen a comic book artist with a suit before. and Blue Bolt mixed up. (laughter) Anyway, Jack was doing the artwork The reason I had a suit was that my father was a tailor. Jack’s father on it and Charles Nicholas had the byline on it—I could never figure was a tailor too, but he made pants! (laughter) Anyway, I was doing that one out. There was another Charles Nicholas that worked for Jack freelance work and I had a little office in New York about ten blocks from DC’s and Fox’s offices, and I was working on Blue Bolt for Funnies, Incorporated. So, of course, I loved Jack’s work and the first time I saw it I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. He asked if we could do some freelance work together. I was delighted and I took him over to my little office. We worked from the second issue of Blue Bolt through many, many... 25 years? How long were we together?

MARK: About 25 years.

JOE: About 25 years and we were very happy together. We thought we did some great things. I know we had the best record of sales of anybody in the entire industry as far as having one hit after another. Many people had one hit and that was it. But we came up with so many of them, and we were very proud of that. After WWII, our families bought houses across the street from each other, and we brought in carpenters to build up the attic with slanted ceilings and made studios out of them, so we could walk across the street and go to work.

MARK: Victor Fox was supposedly not the most honest person at times. He had different people working for him under the name of “Mr. Roberts.”

JOE: I was “Mr. Roberts.” (laughter) MARK: Tell us about “Mr. Roberts.”

JOE: I think that I was the first “Mr. Roberts.” Actually, I was working at Marvel freelance and saw an ad in the paper that Victor Fox wanted an editor. At that time it was always good to have a steady job, y’know; it was after the Depression and things were not that great. And a freelance man, he’s working one week, he’s off the next week, and that’s

Early Kirby cartoon.

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when I met Jack.

Will Eisner and [Jerry] Iger were doing [Fox’s] work. He didn’t have a staff of artists up there. He told Will Eisner to copy Superman and they called him Wonder Man; and Donenfeld sued Victor Fox and he sued Will Eisner, and Will Eisner was asked to do a Bill Clinton thing—disguise the situation. (laughter) And Will got scared and he backed out. That’s when I took over.

MARK: What was the idea of “Mr. Roberts”? What was the concept of the fake name?

JOE: Victor Fox—the easy way for him to get Will Eisner’s staff over there [to work for him] was to just advertise in the papers: “Artist who did Wonder Man call Mr. Roberts at this number” at Fox’s office; and he didn’t want us to use our real names because, y’know, we could do the same thing Will Eisner did. We could take the characters and leave. So anyway, everybody who answered the ad had to be referred to a “Mr. Roberts” to be interviewed for the job.

MARK: It was a fake name?

JOE: Yeah, a fake name.

MARK: Wasn’t it also, if bill collectors came around they’d say, “Talk to Mr. Roberts”? (laughter) JOE: Thank God, the bill collectors didn’t come to me. He didn’t get a lot of people from the Eisner/ Iger studio because most of the names on those things were Will Eisner’s anyway and he had done most of the work himself. And [Eisner] was using fake names. So, nobody knows who was who.

MARK: Dick Briefer worked in there for a while, right?

JOE: Dick Briefer, Bob Powell, Jack Kirby before I knew him. A lot of guys got started there. Y’know, I think Eisner and Iger were still in their teens when they started that company; but we were all very young.

MARK: How much were they paying you? What was the pay like at Victor Fox’s company?

JOE: I think Eisner and Iger were charging $5 a page. So what we were paying was probably a little more than that; a couple of dollars more.

MARK: Bob Wood got too involved.

MARK: And one of the people that came in looking for work was Eddie Herron.

JOE: Bob Wood killed his girlfriend with an iron and wound up in prison for a long time. It was a pretty sordid experience for all of us.

JOE: Yes, Eddie Herron was a kid from West Virginia. He was, like, homeless, and he came up, he had a lot of samples. We had a lot of people coming up with other people’s samples. That went on through the years. That was a big problem. But Eddie’s samples weren’t that good.

He wanted to be a comic book artist and I went through them and I thought some of the writing was pretty inspired for comic books in those days; and I asked him if he would be a writer. At that time, there were very few writers in the business. If they did have them, they were mostly unknown, anonymous. So Eddie Herron became a writer and became one of the most prolific writers in the business. Eventually he wound up working on Captain Marvel. He became an editor there and main writer for Captain Marvel. And he wound up in later years with DC Comics. Eddie, Bob Wood, Dick Wood, and Ed Wood—no, not Ed Wood (laughter)—Dave Wood; the three brothers were the mainstay of the DC writing team. They were all involved too much in alcoholism.

MARK: How fast was Jack drawing in those days?

Bullseye #5 splash page.

JOE: Jack was as fast as he could be—Jack was very fast. At one time he said, “I’m going to pencil five pages today.” He’d pencil five pages and then he’d be out the rest of the week. (laughter) So it’s not the kind of question that I’d be interested in. (laughter) MARK: Everybody knew Simon & Kirby was the team that delivered hits. What was the reaction of other artists? Did you notice that other artists were imitating your work? Did you notice that you were setting a style for other people at other companies?

JOE: I was imitating everybody’s work. (laughter) I started off with Jack and I wound up with Jack. I was doing covers for Terry and the Pirates, Joe Palooka, almost all of them.

MARK: Were other companies making their books look like Simon & 35

Kirby’s?

JOE: No, they were all trying to copy the slick style at that time of DC Comics. As a matter of fact, when we were doing The Fly, they decided that our work was too rough for them and they wanted the DC type of work— very slick inking. That was a disaster for them because we were doing very well. That came later when everybody was trying, right up till now, to do the Kirby thing.

MARK: What was your favorite book that you did with Jack?

JOE: I think that the favorite book was Boys’ Ranch. It was a western.

We still own the characters and Jack always said it was his favorite and I always said it was mine, but we have to wait until weapons come into vogue before we can do some serious licensing on it. Then there was Bullseye, and that was also a western.

We liked those two the best.

MARK: Let’s ask the audience what their favorite Simon & Kirby strips are.

AUDIENCE: Fighting American! Boy Commandos!

JOE: I like Boy Commandos, too. I don’t have any of those. I never saved any.

1950s cover art intended for Fighting American #8, and eventually used on Harvey’s 1966 Fighting American one-shot.

MARK: Let’s talk about Mort Meskin; one of the fastest artists you ever worked with, right?

JOE: Mort was in the bullpen with us. A lot of these people couldn’t work at home; they had to be around people. They had to be in a commercial studio to work, and Mort was one of them. Actually, Jack liked to work in a bullpen also, but he had his own place at home. This was after Captain America; we were doing Young Romance, Black Magic, the whole Prize line. Mort had his problems; he was sitting at his drawing table and there was this blank sheet of board in front of him, and he’s sitting there all day looking at the board and then he went home. We all went home. We came in the next day and Mort was sitting at the same blank board and he kept looking at it. And he did it for another day. And he came and asked for an advance. (laughter) So I said, “Mort, you haven’t done anything.” It wasn’t like we were no-profit publishers. We had to turn this stuff out; we had a huge line of stuff to turn out. He says, “Joe, I just can’t look at this board—I can’t get started.” So, I took out a pencil and I made some scribbles on the board and he went right ahead. Y’know, he got very enthusiastic. He was the fastest artist in the place. He’d do 2, 3 pages a day there and other guys were struggling at half a page; couldn’t stop him. And so, every day after that, whoever came in first, they’d scribble something on Mort’s blank page and he’d get through the day fine. (laughter)

JOE: Oh, one of the fastest, one of the best. Mort originally worked on Batman at DC. Mort had some emotional problems, and the last day that he worked for DC, before he came over to us, was the day that he picked up a ruler and brandished it as a sword and jumped on his drawing table and threatened everybody in the room. (laughter) MARK: And that’s how you got ’im. (laughter) JOE: And that’s how we got ’im. They had problems with him before, but that was the last charge. (laughter) MARK: Tell everyone about the blank paper.

Nancy Hale dishes out advice (fully-clothed) in Young Romance #18, by Kirby and Meskin.

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MARK: You remember the time he drew a nasty Nancy Hale story

Simon & Kirby and the Kid Gang

by Rich Morrissey

Simon & Kirby’s first kid gang originated as an offshoot of their first great success, Captain America. Although not the first patriotic hero (Editor’s Note: Way back in TJKC #7, we were only able to print a few in comic books (he had been preceded by The Shield at MLJ), he quickly excerpts from this article, due to our limited page count. We’re pleased to became the most popular, thanks to excellent scripting and Kirby’s finally have this opportunity to present a much lengthier version of it here.) dynamic penciling. From the very beginning Cap had a boy sidekick, hile Jack Kirby is known for more innovations in the field of comic Bucky Barnes. Possibly added as an afterthought, Bucky was admittedly books than any other individual who’s worked in the field to date, inspired by the success of Robin the Boy Wonder, “the character find his earliest original concept—in that it introduced an entire subof 1940” added to Batman’s adventures by creator/artist Bob Kane and genre to the field that became immensely popular—was what came to writer Bill Finger. Many other heroes had also followed Batman’s lead be called the “kid gang.” Features with multiple protagonists were hardly in taking on young sidekicks, a few (like Hourman with his “Minute Men new, but Jack Kirby—together with his partner Joe Simon—introduced of America”) taking on more than one before the end of 1940. But not a take on them that, like Kirby’s Marvel work with Stan Lee decades until 1941 would S&K’s definitive take on the concept make its debut. later, influenced most subsequent comics that even touched on the idea.

In Captain America #6 (August 1941), Cap and Bucky teamed up with some unidentified boys from Bucky’s class at school to battle the villainous Camera Fiend—who, in what seemed an unusual case of wish-fulfillment, proved to be the boys’ teacher in disguise! The story evidently impressed both the readers and the creators, because very soon after, Young Allies #1 (dated Summer 1941) appeared. Although not written or drawn by Simon & Kirby (it’s said to have been written by freelancer Otto Binder, with art by S&K assistant Al Avison), the two, as Marvel’s first editors, very likely were responsible for it, and supplied a series of splash pages for it. It carried the setup of the Camera Fiend story one step farther by teaming up Bucky with three specific other boys nicknamed Tubby, Knuckles, and Whitewash, also adding in Marvel’s other major boy sidekick of the time—The Human Torch’s young friend Toro. Avison, who also took over as artist on Captain America after Simon & Kirby left Marvel, continued to draw the Young Allies for a number of years.

In the meantime, the success of Captain America hadn’t gone unnoticed elsewhere, and in late 1941 DC introduced its own patriotic pair, created by the company’s own star writer, Superman creator Jerry Siegel. While company policy refused to allow a hero to make his debut in his own title as Captain America had done, DC came close by giving The Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy several stories in each issue of the similarly-named Star-Spangled Comics. Siegel’s own contribution to the concept seems to have been the idea that the boy (rich Sylvester Pemberton) would lead the team and the adult (chauffeur/ mechanic Pat Dugan) would be his sidekick.

Yet, although the stories featured a wide variety of unique villains like The Needle and some above-average writing, StarSpangled Comics didn’t really catch on— perhaps due to the less than stellar art of co-creator Hal Sherman.

So, with Star-Spangled Comics #7 (April 1942), the title character was relegated to a secondary slot while new characters were introduced. DC had reached the reasonable A page from Star-Spangled #19 (April 1943). The name “Gashouse” would be reused later in Boy Explorers. conclusion that the best way to duplicate 54

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the success of a Simon & Kirby feature was with Simon & Kirby themselves, recently lured to DC from Marvel.

“The Newsboy Legion, Starring The Guardian,” like “The Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy,” gave kids top billing over an adult super-hero, and the name might have been contributed by editor Mort Weisinger, who had always been fond of the word. (The Seven Soldiers of Victory, who starred in Leading Comics, were also known as the Law’s Legionnaires; many years later Weisinger would introduce the still-successful Legion of Super-Heroes.) But everything else in the feature was pure S&K. The Newsboy Legion wasn’t a group of middle-class kids like the Young Allies or the Minute Men of America, but a street gang of young orphans. Tommy, Gabby, Scrapper, and Big Words made what little money they had by selling newspapers, giving them their name, but they initially weren’t averse to augmenting their income by petty pilfering. The Guardian was literally just that: a young policeman named Jim Harper who had initially arrested the boys, but then saved them from reform school by getting himself appointed their legal guardian. At first the boys resented him, but, after Harper adopted the identity of a costumed hero to rescue them from hardened adult criminals, they became fonder of the cop, whom they didn’t know but frequently suspected to be the costumed Guardian.

To the best of my knowledge, this was the first instance of a hero whose identity was regularly suspected by his supporting cast: Lois Lane didn’t begin to regularly suspect Clark Kent of being Superman—also in comics edited by Mort Weisinger—until some years later.

The young protagonists, and the criminals and situations they faced, may well have been inspired by Page from Boy Commandos #3 (Summer 1943), “Cyril Thwaite Rides Again.”

S&K’s earlier work on the Young Allies, With the Newsboy Legion as its lead feature (where it would remain as well as by influences outside comics. The late E. Nelson Bridwell has until #65), Star-Spangled Comics became one of DC’s more successful cited the then-contemporary Dead End Kids movies as a major influence, titles. The team’s next DC project combined the theme of the Newsboy and MGM’s Our Gang comeLegion with the wartime action Simon & Kirby had so enjoyed in dies, with a cast averaging a Captain America, but that DC policy had refused to allow until the few years younger than the United States had formally entered World War II. The Boy Commandos Newsboys, were still successwere introduced in Detective Comics #64 (June 1942), and, like the ful—but they were also Newsboy Legion, featured four boys and an adult mentor battling the rooted in the reality of the forces of evil, this time the Nazi hordes overrunning Europe. In a twist streets on which Kirby had perhaps inspired by the Blackhawk series Will Eisner and Chuck Cuidera grown up, with the wise but had created for Quality Comics, each boy represented a different Allied friendly adult mentor, as country: Alfy, Jan, and Andre from England, Holland, and France Ray Wyman has noted in respectively, with a tough American kid known only as Brooklyn The Art of Jack Kirby, reflecting (closely resembling a slightly older Scrapper) being the most prominent. the lessons of Kirby’s own Officially the mascots of a Commando unit under the supervision of Hal Sherman’s Star-Spangled Kid. boyhood.

Captain Rip Carter, the boys saw more action than most adult soldiers, 55

Re-Examining The Boy Explorers TJKC reassembles some lost treasures, thanks to the help of Frank Johnson, Tom Morehouse, Peter Koch, Mike Gartland, Mark Pacella, Russ Garwood, and Larry Shell ay back in TJKC #7, we presented a feature on The Boy Explorers. To recap: the Boy Explorers are a ragtag group of orphans, rescued from an orphanage (run by Miss Prunella Axehandle!) by the kindly Commodore Sindbad. Sindbad is betrothed to Princess Latima, and since he’s not particularly interested in marrying her, his only way out is to recreate the seven tasks of Sindu San—and he drags the kids along with him! So ended Boy Explorers #1 (cover-dated May 1946).

The post-war comics glut resulted in more titles than rack space, and Boy Explorers was one of the casualties. A couple of unfinished stories existed when the book was cancelled in 1946, so we decided to do a little exploring ourselves, and track down as many of the missing pages as possible.

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The first unpublished story was probably entitled “Centropolis,” after the destination of the Explorers’ fourth task. Shown here is the complete final page of that story, and you can see the similarities to a couple of panels from the 14-page story “City At The Center Of The Earth” in Boy Commandos #29 (not “The Sunken World” in BC #23, as we erroneously reported in TJKC #7). A close inspection of Boy Commandos #29 reveals most of the story was reworked from the original Boy Explorers #3 “Centropolis” pages.

In addition to the identical characters of Captain Khredo, Feran, Alora, General Zort, and the Shark-Men, a telltale sign is the lettering; throughout the Boy Commandos version, character names have been relettered by a different letterer (you can spot extra space before and after words that have been replaced, such as when “Commodore Sindbad” is replaced with “Rip Carter”).

The splash and final pages are fullylettered in a different style, so it’s safe to assume this was originally a 14-page story (not a 13-pager as we first thought), and only the splash page is now unaccounted for.

Next up is “Gulliver,” the Explorers’ fifth task, where they have to recover a crystal ball from a band of Liliputians (à la Gulliver’s Travels). Of the nine unused pages known to exist, we had two from TJKC #7, leaving us seven “tasks” of our own to complete! We managed to track them down, so here are pages 2-10 for your enjoyment: This final “Centropolis” page and the splash page are the only ones not reworked for Boy Commandos #29.

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The Mainline Comics Story: An Initial Examination by and © Robert Lee Beerbohm f Joe Simon and Jack Kirby had not picked Leader News to be the comic book distributor for Mainline Comics—their ill-fated selfpublishing venture back in 1954—we might very well have witnessed them invent “The Mainline Age of Comics” by the time the 1960s Second Super-Heroic Revivals were in full sway. Mainline Comics most likely would have introduced us in some form to Challengers of the Unknown, The Fly and/or Spider-Man, The Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, quite possibly The X-Men, etc. Simon & Kirby would have owned whatever was created in the early ’60s, lock, stock, and barrel.

Think about it.

Leader News was also the distributor for Bill Gaines’ line of Entertaining (EC) Comics, and the self-publishing team of Ross Andru and Mike Esposito issued such titles as Mr. Mystery (1951-1954) and Mr. Universe under MR Publications, Get Lost! (Feb-July 1954) under MikeRoss Publications, and many other titles through a still littleunderstood quasi-partnership with Stanley Morse. As we shall see, the fate of Mainline and other small independent publishers being distributed through Leader News was forever intertwined with Gaines’ high media profile line of New Trend titles which centered on the horror, crime, suspense, war, science-fiction, and humor genres.

For more than a decade by 1953, the team of Simon & Kirby was

I

Splash panel from Bullseye #2 (Sept. 1954).

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synonymous with betterselling comic books— actually, the word “phenomenal” would be much more apropos—so much so that Simon & Kirby was the first creative team to have their byline printed on the cover of comic books as a specific selling tool.

Jack & Joe formed an equal partnership circa 1940, and for almost 20 years worked for many of the various comic book publishers, ofttimes creating some of that company’s star attractions before moving ever onwards to promised greener pastures. They broke into the comic book business through the sweat shops of Eisner and Iger, Lloyd Jacquet, etc. when a fully finished page brought a creator a mere $5 a page—if he was good.

From S&K, Martin Goodman got his top-selling title back in 1941, Captain America, followed a few months later with The Young Allies, among many other classic strips, which sold over a million an issue through all of World War Two. He would renege then—and again 25 years later—on royalty compensation promises made while the business was being built. Joe Simon told me, “Martin Goodman lied to us.

He cheated us.” (Martin’s relative Arthur Goodman said recently he now believes Simon & Kirby got a raw deal at Timely back then.)

Team Simon & Kirby soon thereafter went from Goodman to Liebowitz (following a very brief pit stop at MLJ, where Jack—sans Joe—basically drew just one cover) with the promise of huge royalties based on the number of copies sold increasing in the titles they contributed to.

They accomplished what they were anticipated to do: They spiked upwards nearly everything they touched. DC sold many millions of Boy Commandos, clearly demonstrating a noticeable sharp upwards rise on Detective Comics’ sales curve, prompting a breakaway title of its own dated Winter 1942. Joe told me, “All the service men were reading Boy Commandos. For a while, we were told by Jack Liebowitz that Boy Commandos was DC’s #1 book.”

In addition to Sandman and Manhunter in Adventure Comics, they did The Newsboy Legion in Star Spangled. While they were away for the war they got substantial royalties from DC/National.

The brash young team was easily

where the term “hot” was coined as far as a creator’s personal name stamp causing sales to go up— and they were very much in demand from nearly all the publishers they might want to work for.

(This was not a phenomena of the later era of the Direct Market.

S&K sold out far higher numbers consistently, even more so than Claremont and Byrne at the height of that shortlived team’s X-Men popularity and copy count salability, or the wunderkinden of the former Image Comics consortium in their pre-Image days at Marvel or DC—to give it an historical slant for you younger readers trying to comprehend the many myths of the comics business I have been seeking to unravel for several decades now.)

Flush from victory after World War Two, and able to command a substantial profitparticipation in their books (between 25% and 50%), the creative team of Simon & Kirby (above) Splash from Bullseye #4 (Jan. 1955). (below) basically created and then popularized the romance comics genre aimed at mainly female readers with titles such as My Date, Young Romance, and Young Love. Innumerable romance-oriented knock-off titles from all publishers became legion.

S&K’s supernatural entries were Black Magic and Mort Meskin’s brainchild, The Strange World of Your Dreams. The crime genre was covered by them in titles like Justice Traps the Guilty and Headline Comics.

The magic that was Simon & Kirby was making a lot of money for the

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lucky publishers working with them.

M. R. Reese, General Manager of Crestwood Publishing Co., Inc. wrote it thusly in the March 1952 issue of 87