Jack Kirby Collector #84 by TwoMorrows Publishing

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JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR EIGHTY-FOUR

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RetroFan: The Pop Culture You Grew Up With! Remember when Saturday morning television was our domain, and ours alone? When tattoos came from bubble gum packs, Slurpees came in superhero cups, and TV heroes taught us to be nice to each other? If you love Pop Culture of the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, TwoMorrows’ new magazine is just for you! Editor MICHAEL EURY (author of numerous books on pop culture, former editor for DC Comics and Dark Horse Comics, and editor of TwoMorrows’ Eisner Award-winning BACK ISSUE magazine for comic book fans) has assembled an unbeatable roster of regular and rotating Celebrity Columnists to cover the pop culture you grew up with: • ANDY MANGELS (best-selling sci-fi author and award-winning pop culture historian) • ERNEST FARINO (Emmy Award-winning visual effects designer, animator, and director) • SCOTT SHAW! (acclaimed cartoonist, animator, Emmy Award-winning storyboard artist, and historian) • WILL MURRAY (pulp adventure novelist and pop culture historian) • SCOTT SAAVEDRA (graphic designer, cartoonist, and COMIC BOOK HEAVEN creator) • MARK VOGER (renowned pop culture newspaper columnist and book author), and others!

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Meet JULIE NEWMAR, the purr-fect Catwoman! Plus: ASTRO BOY, TARZAN Saturday morning cartoons, the true history of PEBBLES CEREAL, TV’s THE UNTOUCHABLES and SEARCH, the MONKEEMOBILE, SOVIET EXPO ’77, and more fun, fab features! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Surf’s up as SIXTIES BEACH MOVIES make a RetroFan splash! Plus: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, ZORRO’s Saturday morning cartoon, TV’s THE WILD, WILD WEST, CARtoons and other drag-mags, VALSPEAK, and more fun, fab features! Like, totally! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Meet the stars behind the Black Lagoon: RICOU BROWNING, BEN CHAPMAN, JULIE ADAMS, and LORI NELSON! Plus SHADOW CHASERS, featuring show creator KENNETH JOHNSON. Also: THE BEATLES’ YELLOW SUBMARINE, FLASH GORDON cartoons, TV’s cult classic THE PRISONER and kid’s show ZOOM, COLORFORMS, M&Ms, and more fun, fab features! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Interviews with Lost in Space’s ANGELA CARTWRIGHT and BILL MUMY, and Land of the Lost’s WESLEY EURE! Revisit Leave It to Beaver with JERRY MATHERS, TONY DOW, and KEN OSMOND! Plus: UNDERDOG, Rankin-Bass’ stop-motion classic THE LITTLE DRUMMER BOY, Christmas gifts you didn’t want, the CABBAGE PATCH KIDS fad, and more! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Meet Mission: Impossible’s LYNDA DAY GEORGE in an exclusive interview! Celebrate Rambo’s 50th birthday with his creator, novelist DAVID MORRELL! Plus: TV faves WKRP IN CINCINNATI and SPACE: 1999, Fleisher’s and Filmation’s SUPERMAN cartoons, commercial jingles, JERRY LEWIS and BOB HOPE comic books, and more fun, fab features! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

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Dark Shadows’ Angelique, LARA PARKER, sinks her fangs into an exclusive interview. Plus: Rankin-Bass’ Mad Monster Party, Aurora Monster model kits, a chat with Aurora painter JAMES BAMA, George of the Jungle, The Haunting, Jawsmania, Drak Pack, TV dads’ jobs, and more fun, fab features! Featuring columns by FARINO, MANGELS, MURRAY, SAAVEDRA, SHAW, and MICHAEL EURY.

Our BARBARA EDEN interview will keep you forever dreaming of Jeannie! Plus: The Invaders, the BILLIE JEAN KING/BOBBY RIGGS tennis battle of the sexes, HANNABARBERA’s Saturday morning super-heroes of the Sixties, THE MONSTER TIMES fanzine, and more fun, fab features! Featuring ERNEST FARINO, ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW!, and MICHAEL EURY.

Interview with Bond Girl and Hammer Films actress CAROLINE MUNRO! Plus: WACKY PACKAGES, COURAGEOUS CAT AND MINUTE MOUSE, FILMATION’S GHOSTBUSTERS vs. the REAL GHOSTBUSTERS, Bandai’s rare PRO WRESTLER ERASERS, behind the scenes of Sixties movies, WATERGATE at Fifty, Go-Go Dancing, a visit to the Red Skelton Museum, and more fun, fab features!

MAD’s maddest artist, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, is profiled! Plus: TV’s Route 66 and an interview with star GEORGE MAHARIS, MOE HOWARD’s final years, singer B. J. THOMAS in one of his final interviews, LONE RANGER cartoons, G.I. JOE, and more! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

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Contents

THE

STEVE SHERMAN TRIBUTE ISSUE! OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 JACK FAQs Mark Evanier’s August 6, 2020 conversation with Steve Sherman. . . 4

ISSUE #84, SUMMER 2022

C o l l e c t o r

TRIBUTES Neal Kirby. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Lisa Kirby. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Mark Badger. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Greg Williams. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Bruce Simon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Diana Mercer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Glen David Gold. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 FOUNDATIONS More unseen Link Thorne. . . . . . . . 40 INNERVIEW Steven Brower interviews Steve. . . 48 KIRBY OBSCURA Before Groot was cute . . . . . . . . . . 50 MOB MENTALITY Steve speaks out about Kirby’s In The Days Of The Mob. . . . . . . . . 52 KIRBY KINETICS Up on the roofs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY Crazy Quilt patchwork design. . . . . 66 GALLERY: STEVE’S JOBS. . . . . . . . 68 COLLECTOR COMMENTS. . . . . . . . 78 Front cover inks: D. BRUCE BERRY Front cover colors: TOM ZIUKO COPYRIGHTS: Avengers, Black Bolt, Black Panther, Bucky, Captain America, Crystal, Dr. Doom, Dr. Strange, Fantastic Four, Galactus, Groot, Hulk, Human Torch, Invisible Girl, Journey Into Mystery, Lockjaw, Mr. Fantastic, Orogo, Red Skull, SpiderMan, Starhawk, Sub-Mariner, Tales to Astonish, The Martian, Thing, Thor TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • Ben Boxer, Boy Commandos, Country Boy, Crazy Quilt, Demon, Flower/Spirit, Green Arrow, Guardian, In The Days Of The Mob, Jimmy Olsen, Kamandi, Kobra, Lois Lane, Losers, Manhunter, Newsboy Legion, OMAC, Orion, Rodney Rumpkin, Sandman, Sandy, Spirit World, Strange Adventures, Supergirl, Superman, Warden Frye, World’s Greatest SuperHeroes TM & © DC Comics • Star Wars TM & © Lucasfilm • Lone Ranger and Tonto, Incredible Hulk TV show © Universal Pictures • Truck Shackley & the Texas Critters TM & © Krofft Entertainment • Boy Explorers, Link Thorne, Stuntman TM & © Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Estates • King Kobra © Jack Kirby & Steve Sherman • Beardsley Bullfeather, Captain Glory, Captain Victory, GODS plates, Jupiter Plaque, Kirby Unleashed, Silver Star, Uncle Carmine’s Fat City Comix TM & © Jack Kirby Estate • The Fly TM & © Joe Simon Estate • Savage Humor © The Print Mint • The Curse of Frankenstein © Hammer Films • Spats and Splats © Barry Siegel • Conan TM & © Conan Properties International, LLC. • Tarzan TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. • Pee-Wee’s Playhouse TM & © Shout! Factory • O.G. Readmore TM © ABC Television • Beakman’s World, Men In Black TM & © Columbia Pictures • Happy © Bacchus Films • Star Trek TM & © Paramount Pictures

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[above] Jack drew this sketch inside Steve Sherman’s copy of Origins of Marvel Comics.

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The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 29, No. 84, Summer 2022. Published quarterly (you betcha!) by and © TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. 919-449-0344. John Morrow, Editor/Publisher. Single issues: $15 postpaid US ($19 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $49 Economy US, $72 International, $19 Digital. Editorial package © TwoMorrows Publishing, a division of TwoMorrows Inc. All characters are trademarks of their respective companies. All Kirby artwork is © Jack Kirby Estate unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © the respective authors. Views expressed here are those of the respective authors, and not necessarily those of TwoMorrows Publishing or the Jack Kirby Estate. First printing. PRINTED IN CHINA. ISSN 1932-6912

Opening Shot

In Praise of Steve

aitaminnit! Isn’t this magazine supposed to be about Jack Kirby, not one of his assistants? Funny you should ask... First of all, considering Steve Sherman to be “one of Jack’s assistants” is like considering Volodymyr Zelenskyy to be an actor who once played the part of a Ukrainian politician. Steve was a highly accomplished creative professional in his own right, as you’ll see here. Even if he had never been involved in helping Jack produce such beloved comics titles as New Gods, Forever People, Jimmy Olsen, Mister Miracle, In The Days Of The Mob, Spirit World, The Demon, Kamandi, OMAC, Sandman, Atlas, Manhunter, Dingbats of Danger Street, Justice Inc., Richard Dragon, Our Fighting Forces, Kobra, Silver Star, Captain Victory, and the Kirby Unleashed and GODS portfolios— well, that’s enough right there to warrant an issue celebrating his life and achievements just within the comic book realm. Steve left comics and Jack’s employ in the mid-1970s to pursue a different creative outlet, but one that was intrinsically intertwined with the storytelling mastery he saw in Jack’s

by editor John Morrow

work. As he did so many others, Kirby inspired Steve to go out and excel in areas seemingly unrelated to comics. Instead of using a pencil and 2-ply Bristol board, Steve told his stories through puppetry. He gave my wife Pam and me a tour of his and Greg Williams’ Puppet Studio in Hollywood, during our first official summer exhibiting at the San Diego Comic-Con (1995). I’ll admit that I wasn’t expecting much from a “puppet studio”; I’d yet to fully understand just what that medium encompassed. But I was floored by the amazing creations he showed us that day, and I’m just now understanding the full scope of Steve’s work—much of which I’d seen and enjoyed, but never realized he was involved with. To wit: I used to watch the Barbara Mandrell Show, but had no idea Steve was crouched under its stage, working puppets for the trucker/musicians in most episodes. Same with seeing Chairry and Pterri on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse back in the day, or those creepy but funny little worm dudes in Men In Black—it never dawned on me that Jack’s former assistant was involved in bringing them to life. And I’ve experienced Muppet*Vision 3D countless times with my kids at a Disney theme park, never thinking to look for Steve’s imprint during the pre-show and actual attraction. In hindsight, puppetry seems to have been the perfect calling for Steve. He liked remaining behind-the-scenes, taking it all in, and quietly doing his amazing work without having the spotlight shine too brightly on him. Steve’s biography at the Puppet Studio website tells us he was up against Linda Ronstadt for an Emmy Award in 1989, for his work on Krofft Entertainment’s D.C. Follies. His modesty may well have tempered any disappointment he felt when Ronstadt won, since that meant he wouldn’t have to be center-stage accepting the award. Steve didn’t just work for Jack for a couple of years, and then move on. He stayed intimately involved with the Kirbys, through his deep friendship with Jack’s son Neal, and the close ties he formed with a circle of friends that originated in the Los Angeles Comic Book Club in 1969. After all his years in the entertainment industry, he came full-circle, back to “working” with Kirby through volunteering for the Jack Kirby Museum, and helping this publication promote Jack and his legacy. Nearly every year from 1995–2019 at Comic-Con: International, I enjoyed a delightful visit with Steve. Usually, he’d have brother Gary in tow, and then after Gary’s passing, it was his lovely wife Diana who accompanied him. She was always patient while we got caught up and talked comics—but even more so during our 2

[Originally published online on June 24, 2021] Today, part of the Kirby extended family, Steve Sherman, passed away in Los Angeles. Steve was my father’s assistant and collaborator in the late ’60s through the 1970s, and remained a close family friend until his passing. He was gentle, quiet and unassuming, but he loved to laugh. Steve was incredibly creative in his own right, as a writer, artist, photographer, organizer, and of all things, a puppeteer! Along with his partner Greg Williams, he created The Puppet Studio in North Hollywood, California in 1984, and did projects for Sid and Marty Krofft, Pee Wee’s Playhouse, ABC, and countless other commercials and projects. Steve also acted as a puppeteer in the movies Men in Black I and II, and Mighty Joe Young. I’m sure many of you have either met Steve, or at least heard him tell his stories of Kirby adventures during an San Diego Comic-Con Kirby panel discussion. I first met Steve in July 1970, upon graduating from college in New York and moving to California. We hit it off instantly as friends, probably because he laughed at every stupid joke I told. In 1971 we formed a little company called Communicators Unlimited, publishing Kirby Unleashed and Kirby’s Gods. I was the “business manager,” but Steve and Mark Evanier did the creative work putting it together. For those of you old enough to remember the process, Steve did the color separations for the cover by hand. Even when Steve’s “official collaboration” with my father ended in the late ’70s, he was still a common visitor to the Kirby household, and mine as well. He was best man at my marriage to Connie in 1992, and his younger brother Gary was our videographer, laughing through the whole process. Steve and Gary, who passed away in 2009, were as close as I’ve ever seen any two brothers. When Jillian was born, Steve became part of her life as well, and she always saw him more as an uncle rather than a family friend. Connie and Jillian loved him as I did, and we had him and his wife Diana over to our house many times for an anniversary dinner of Connie’s homemade lasagna. Steve was a remarkable man, who everyone who knew him loved, and unfortunately the past few years saw him in failing health. He was my best friend, and with the exception of different DNA, my brother. I, and my entire family, will miss him terribly, as will the whole comic book fan family. – Neal Kirby

[above] We have Steve, along with Mark Evanier and Neal Kirby, to thank for first unveiling the four astounding GODS images to Kirby fandom.

interview for this issue. Despite the personally difficult timing, Diana shared some wonderful memories, while fighting to hold back her tears. She still spoke about Steve in the present tense at times, as if he wasn’t actually gone—not that he is. With the creative and personal legacy he left us, that’ll never truly be the case. I hope this issue does justice to documenting his life, and how it all ties in with Jack Kirby, as we celebrate Steve with his friends and loved ones here. H [Thanks to Diana Mercer, Mark Evanier, Glen Gold, Bruce Simon, Greg Williams, and all of Steve’s other extended family and friends for providing touching memories and priceless artifacts from their collections.] [below, l to r] Steve while working with Jack circa 1973; at a 1980s convention with Jack, Mark Evanier, and Roz; and in Jack’s studio just after Kirby’s funeral in 1994, with Mark and Steve’s brother Gary Sherman.

Mark Evanier

JACK F.A.Q.s

A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby

[below] A photo from the filming of Spats And Splats, an 8mm silent comedy made by Barry Siegel, and starring LA Comic Book Club members. You can see the film here:

Mark Evanier’s conversation with Steve Sherman

https://youtu.be/ LXrYncpxIfI

Transcribed by Steven Tice Copy-edited by John Morrow and Mark Evanier

[left to right] Steve Sherman, Rob Solomon, Mark Evanier, Barry Siegel, Jules Kragen, Bruce Simon, Gary Lowenthal, and Sandy Friedlander. (Jules and Sandy were friends of Barry’s from school, and not members of the LA Comic Book Club.) Steve played the role of “Head Tough” and served as cameraman for the 1970 film. Mark Evanier was the hamburger-flipper.

was the vice president. Rob Solomon was the secretary or the treasurer. Mike Rotblatt was whichever one Rob wasn’t. We had a bunch of fun people in it— Bruce Schweiger, Steve Finkelstein, Bruce Simon, Barry Siegel—a lot of people, some of whom are still friends today, and some of whom haven’t spoken to each other for reasons that flowed from the comic club. One day this fellow named Steve Sherman joined the group, with his brother Gary. I don’t know how he joined or exactly when—we’ll get to that—but we became good friends. Shortly after that, Steve and I were both hired by a company named Marvelmania. We’ll tell you about that. That was around 1969, and some of you who sent money to Marvelmania are probably still waiting for your posters and decal sheets. Shortly after that, Steve and I were hired as the assistants to this man named Jack Kirby. Steve, like me, feels a great obligation to talk about our time with Jack because we were witnesses to a very important time in the life of a very important man in the comic book industry—probably the most brilliant guy who ever worked in the comic book industry, and certainly one of the people without whom there would not have been a comic book industry. So, I invited my friend Steve, who I’ve now known for over half a century, to join us here, and we’re going to talk about what it was like to hang around with Jack Kirby and work with him. Steve, come on in here now. Hello, my friend! How long have we known each other?

Conducted online on August 6, 2020

[Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, panels such as this one were featured online rather than in-person at conventions. You can view the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5f19VvIApE]

MARK EVANIER: Greetings! My name is Mark Evanier, and I am very pleased to have this guest on here today. In the late Sixties, around ’66 and ’67—there are fistfights still going on over what year it was—we started a club in Los Angeles called, brilliantly, the Los Angeles Comic Book Club. It met every Saturday at Palms Recreation Center, which is still over there on Overland Avenue in West LA, and I was the president of it. Rob Gluckson

STEVE SHERMAN: At least fifty years, probably 51, maybe even more. MARK: Do you remember when you first came to the comic book club? STEVE: Oh, sure, sure, sure. It all came about because Gary Owens did that show on Channel 13 about comic books, the history of comics. [My brother] Gary and I saw that and they showed Hollywood. They showed where the bookstores were. So, we said, “Oh, let’s go down there and take a look.” So we went, and we went into Bond Street Books, and they had Guts [#5 from 1969 shown above], the fanzine that the Glucksons put out. And there was a little ad that said, “Saturdays we meet at the Palms Recreation, blah, blah.” We lived in West LA, so we said, “Let’s go.” One Saturday afternoon 4

we went there, and it was just amazing. [Mark laughs] I liken it to— not having been in a fraternity, this was our fraternity, because I still know most of these people fifty years later. We had a blast. We really did. When you think about it, how much fun we had—I mean, we made movies, we had the Evening of Imagination before there were comic-cons. We insulted each other. We made fun of each other. [both laugh] And, of course, we read comics. I even remember the first time Sergio Aragonés showed up. He showed up at the Palms Recreation Center, and we were like, “Wow! Sergio Aragonés! What a great guy!”

hobby, and it wasn’t one of those, “Hey, look how much these old comics are worth” shows, and there was a minimum of “pow/bam/zap” or whatever. People are still looking for a copy of that—it’s a lost special. Gary [right] spent years calling KCOP saying, “Search the warehouse. You must have a copy of that someplace. It seems to be lost.” STEVE: Warehouse? I don’t think KCOP had a warehouse! [laughs] MARK: I think KCOP was a warehouse, or is one now. So, Steve and his brother Gary showed up at the meeting, and we met every Saturday in the afternoon and we played games. We used to play a version of Jeopardy that I designed which was like Jeopardy with comic book characters and comic book subjects. You know, it was like, “I’ll take Jack Kirby Inkers for twenty.” Things like that.

MARK: How many people do you remember were in that club meeting that day? STEVE: Maybe twenty, I would think? MARK: I thought it was more like forty. STEVE: Maybe forty. It’s hard to remember.

STEVE: SMASH.

MARK: Sergio remembers it being, like, five or six people, which I’m telling him, “No, it wasn’t.” We had a decent turnout for him that day. He was our first, and I think only, real guest speaker.

MARK: We also called the group SMASH, which stood for Society for Magazine Appreciators of Super Heroes, and I think I may have come up with that—

STEVE: I think so. But there were five people crowded around him, so that’s probably what he remembers.

STEVE: Probably. MARK: —in my stupider moments. The club was a lot of fun for a couple of years there. And there were no comic-cons. There were very few comic-cons anywhere then, but none in California. This is pre-San Diego Con.

MARK: Let me clarify here for people what Steve was probably talking about. Gary Owens, the great disc jockey, personality, did a show on Channel 13, KCOP local here, about comic book collecting. It was a special they did one evening, and it was a local station, but it somehow made us feel empowered because it was talking about our

STEVE: No. I think the only one was the science-fiction con in Santa Monica, which was the first one I went to. MARK: That was the Westercon. The Westercon was at the Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica in 1969, and that’s where some of our members of the club met Jack Kirby, who had come down. Jack and Roz had just moved to southern California. They were living in Irvine at the time in a home, which was their temporary lodging until they could find a house to buy. Jack wanted to meet the local comic fans, and this was the closest he could come to a convention. And he and Roz showed up there, paid admission, walked in, and some of our officers who were at the club—I think Rob Solomon and Mike Rotblatt and Bruce Schweiger and such—met him there and said, “Oh, Mr. Kirby! Would you come speak at one of our club meetings?” And he said, “Sure.” He never did, but he said, “Sure. Why don’t you guys come down to our house in Irvine one of these days?” That’s how I wound up going down to see Jack Kirby. I

[left] A sketch Jack did for Gary Owens. Non-locals probably know Gary best as the announcer with his hand over his ear on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. [above] The ad that ran in TV Guide for Gary’s TV special on comics, courtesy of Mark Evanier. Sadly, no video copy of the show has yet been found.

It was great. And then when we did the Toys for Tots thing, that really was something else. MARK: Yeah, the guy got the idea to promote his company somehow through Toys for Tots. STEVE: Because he was an ex-Marine, which I don’t know how this guy ever was a Marine, but okay. I mean, [gestures, laughs] he was about this tall and about this wide, you know? MARK: But he also discovered that he could call people and tell them he was working for the Toys for Tots campaign for the Marine Corps and ask them to donate things to him—which he used for his own benefit. People thought they were donating to Toys for Tots and they were really giving him stuff. STEVE: Yeah. You and I put that thing together from the seat of our pants at the Pan Pacific [Auditorium]. I mean, the Three Stooges showed up. Clayton Moore showed up as the Lone Ranger. Ruth Buzzi. And I think we were the only ones [who] CBS gave a print of A Charlie Brown Christmas, which you couldn’t see anyplace else, and we had a 16mm print of it that we showed. But remember, up until that point—not Baby Daphne, but who was the other one? MARK: Hobo Kelly [right]. STEVE: Hobo Kelly had the Toys for Tots thing. MARK: Hobo Kelly was a local kids show host in Los Angeles. She was on Channel 11, I think. STEVE: Nine. MARK: Nine, yeah. No, Baby Daphne was on nine. Hobo Kelly I think was on 11.

[above] Flyer for the Dec. 6–7, 1969 Pan Pacific event thrown together by Evanier and Sherman. An account of the event was presented in Marvelmania Monthly Magazine #1 (April 1970). [next page, top] Kirby’s poster for Toys for Tots. [next page, bottom] Jack appears at Hollywood’s Brown Derby restaurant for a Toys for Tots press event, with the three characters from his poster illo. Per Mark Evanier: “That Captain America costume was the one used in the Captain America movie serial in the Forties. They added the wings and cut holes for his ears, but it was really and truly the same costume, which happened to be in the giant warehouse of Western Costume, the big costume supplier in Hollywood back then.”

met Jack Kirby the second Tuesday of July, 1969. We went down there, and Jack recommended me to work at this company called Marvelmania that was in Los Angeles. It was not a part of Marvel. It was an outside company, if you can call it a company [Steve laughs], that licensed the rights to do mail order merchandise of Marvel comics. And can you imagine what that license would be worth today if he still had it? But the guy who ran it knew nothing about comics, knew nothing about honesty… STEVE: Nothing about marketing. Nothing about merchandising. Although I will say this: the posters were gorgeous. When it came to printing, he went all-out on that. But that was it. MARK: And that was about it, yeah. And how much did they not pay you for your services? When they went out of business, how much did they owe you? STEVE: Oh, geez. Well, I was not getting paid $2.50 an hour, so—but I was going to college at the time, so it was part-time. I’d come in after classes and do it. But yeah, nobody got paid. I mean, if we did get paid, it was every now and then I think we’d get a check, but other than that, it was always like, “Oh, once we’re on the way, guys, we’re going to really be something.” It was like, “Sure, sure.” But we were having fun! We were all there; you were doing a magazine. We were doing the photograph stuff with Bruce [Simon] as Doctor Doom. 6

STEVE: And 13, I think, at one point. MARK: Yeah. Hobo Kelly—the lady who played her— was married to the station manager. She was Sally Baker. Her husband was Walt Baker, and he was like the general manager of the station or something. STEVE: Yeah. But she got all pissed off that they had switched from her to the Marvel super-heroes as the Toys for Tots. She was not happy with that. I think she had her own parade or something after that. But that was fun. That was fun. MARK: Yeah. Now, Steve, we could fill hours with stories of working at Marvelmania, but the one thing I wanted to—I need a witness for this, and you’re my witness, okay? [Steve laughs] All right? I had told people that one of the 83 reasons that company went under is that the boss became enamored of the idea—and put all of his energy and money into another project—which was to rebuild Ancient Rome. STEVE: That’s right! Rome BC, to be built— MARK: Rome BC, yes! STEVE: —on the bones— MARK: He had this idea—he was going to rebuild the Colosseum in Italy as an amusement park. STEVE: But what he was going to use were the sets from some big Spanish production, some Italian film that had all these sets. And we tried to tell him, “See,

but those things are made of cardboard and wood. There’s nothing behind it.” He wouldn’t hear it. Remember, on his fake desk, he had all these soldiers and stuff all lined up, and one day I accidentally knocked them all over. He was mad! [laughs] MARK: He had these little toy soldiers. STEVE: Yeah! He was like, “I’m gonna rebuild Rome BC.” “But you don’t have 10¢! How are you even going to get to Rome?” MARK: Well, he managed to put it on credit cards and never paid them off. He was very good at avoiding creditors. But at one point, I remember one night he turned to me—the whole problem with Marvelmania was that the money that came in to order posters and decals and things never quite equaled the manufacturing costs. So, he was always behind. He was always in arrears. And orders were not getting filled because he didn’t have the money to make the merchandise. So, it was kind of like, a lot of people have ordered this item, and we’re waiting for him to have enough money to make them. Months are passing, and people are writing in angry letters. And then one day, while he was trying to rebuild Rome BC, he comes up to my little desk, my little cubicle, and he says, “What movie studio made Ben Hur?” And I said, “That was MGM.” And he said, “Why didn’t you tell me?” MGM was auctioning off the backlot at that time. They had a sale going on of all their props and costumes and things that were around. And he grabbed up all the cash that had come in that day to order Marvelmania merchandise, went out, hailed a cab because he didn’t have a car—he couldn’t afford a car—and he took the cab to MGM and started buying costumes for his Rome BC plan. And he was being bid against by Debbie Reynolds, who was buying stuff—

took her aside and he said, “Listen. If you’ll let me buy this stuff and you won’t bid against me, I’ll copy it all, use the copies for my purposes, and donate you the originals.” And she went, “Okay.” So, she stopped bidding against him. He got all this stuff. He spent all the Marvelmania money that wasn’t going to be used to print posters to buy these cheap costumes, which looked fine on the screen, but if you looked at them close up, they were—

STEVE: For a museum. MARK: You remember this stuff, right, Steve? STEVE: Oh, yeah! Yeah! MARK: She was buying stuff for the Hollywood museum that she always wanted to build, and she was bidding against him. So, he

STEVE: They were falling apart. MARK: They were falling apart, and he was walking around the office for several days wearing a Roman soldier breastplate, and he had—you mentioned his fake desk. His fake desk was not a desk. It was a box. He couldn’t afford a desk, so he bought some wood paneling like you would use to panel a den, and he just nailed the pieces. So, he had this box. It looked like a desk from the front, and if a visitor asked him for a pen, he leaned down, pretended he was pulling a drawer open or something, and he picked the pen up off the floor, and then he’d mime closing the drawer that wasn’t there. Anyway, after a while we got fed up with how badly he wasn’t paying people, how badly he was stiffing kids, and one day we went to him and said, “You’ve got to fill these orders. You’ve got to do something about this. You’ve got to stop putting the money into this 7

Rome thing and fill these orders or nobody’s going to ever buy anything from Marvelmania again.” Which at that point, maybe they weren’t anyway? And he said, “I’m going to Rome tomorrow, and when I get back, we’re going to do a new mailing. We’re going to offer new merchandise to the kids, and they’ll order that, and I’ll use that money to make the old merchandise we haven’t made.” So that night you and I went out to dinner. We talked about this, and we said, “We’ve got to know more about this guy.” So, we went back to the office after hours. He’d given me a key. You had a key, too. And we went through all the files. Remember that night? STEVE: Oh, yeah! MARK: We figured out how much in debt this guy was, and how many different names he’d been operating under, how many different companies. We also—do you remember the photos we found of him? STEVE: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. MARK: There were photos of him with naked women— STEVE: With Uschi Digard! MARK: With Uschi Digard, who was the most photographed woman in men’s magazines at that time. And he had shot her for a proposed plan that had fallen apart, to do 3-D posters of her. He had these two women with huge breasts, and he couldn’t resist, when they were there, taking a bunch of pictures of him fondling them. [Steve laughs] We momentarily thought of mailing those to his wife, but thought better of it. [Steve laughs] So the next morning, we made up a list of all the people that Marvelmania was going to stiff for money, and we took turns. We divvied up the list. You called half of them, and I called half of them, and told them, “This guy’s never going to pay you. Get out of this if you can. He’s a crook. We’re quitting.” And I quit before he came back. You stayed on another week or two to fill whatever poster orders you could, and then you quit.

STEVE: No, no, no. I quit first, because you stayed to finish the magazine. MARK: I thought it was the other way around. STEVE: No, you had to finish the magazine. And I went in there, and he was taking the money out of the envelopes and putting it in his pockets. And I gave it to him. I said, “Listen, you can’t blah, blah, blah,” and he said, “Get out of here! Don’t you ever come back again! He’s through!” And I left. And then you were there for another—I forget how long, but you had to finish up that issue of Marvelmania Magazine, and then you left. I remember that, because you knew if you left it, it was never going to get printed, so—and then what happened is those other guys came in and they threw everything you did out in the trash and did their own version of it, which, you know… yeah, it got printed, but… MARK: And then, a few months later, Marvel closed them down, and he disappeared. STEVE: He disappeared. Well, I think it was Barry Siegel [who] went there one morning to go in to work, because he was one of the few guys that stayed. There was a whole new group of ex-comic club guys who stayed there, and he came in and the place was locked. If you looked at it, it was empty. Everything was gone. The sheriff had locked it and put a note up there. So, he went over to the guy’s apartment, and he was gone, everything. He had moved. And we think he moved to Sweden or something. [laughs] He was something else. MARK: I ran into him on Santa Monica Boulevard a few months later. I was driving, and he was driving the other way, and we stopped. Our cars stopped, and we glared at each other, then kept on going. We never heard of him since then. But in the meantime, before that, there was this strange day while he was out of the country. We were about to go to lunch, and Jack and Roz Kirby walked in. And they asked if they could take us to lunch, because I had met 8

Jack that day in ’69, and then I took you down to his house once or twice in Irvine, and then we went to see him in Thousand Oaks after they moved. We’d become friends with them, and they were impressed with: A, how much we knew about comics; B, how hard we were working on stuff for Marvelmania and how well some of it was coming out of what did come out. Jack understood completely what was wrong with the company, with the guy there. And they said, “Where can we go for lunch?” And I said, “Canters Delicatessen.” And we went to Canters Delicatessen, and Jack had potato pancakes. I remember that. I don’t know why I remember that. But he ate potato pancakes with his hands, like the traditional way, and he said to us—well, I’m talking too much. You tell the story of what happened that day. STEVE: You remember it better than I do because my memory is shot, but… I think that’s when he told us he was going to DC, and we were like, “How can you do that? [laughs] You’re Jack Kirby! You’re at Marvel! You can’t go to DC!” He says, “Yeah, I’m going to DC. I’m quitting. And they’re going to give me all this stuff, and I’m going to need some help, and I’d like you guys to come and help me.” And we were like, “Well, sure!” We didn’t ask what he was going to pay, we didn’t ask anything. We just said, “Sure.” So that’s when we started, and we went up to visit him at the house, and that’s where he showed us all the New Gods stuff, and Mister Miracle, and all that presentation art that he had. And we were just floored. We were wowed by it. Just went, like, “Woo!” It was amazing.

late 1970. But we went to New York for the July 4th weekend that year, 1970. We were still working for Marvelmania at that time and until shortly after that. And you and I went back to New York. We stayed at the Statler Hilton Hotel. The idea was, we went back a week before the 1970 July 4th Phil Seuling convention. It wasn’t called the Phil Seuling convention, but Phil ran it, and everybody informally called it the Seuling Con. And so we went back on a Sunday, and on Monday we went to DC Comics’ offices because we were Jack Kirby’s assistants, and we met Carmine Infantino, and Julius Schwartz, and Neal Adams, and Joe Orlando, and Murray Boltinoff, and all those people.

MARK: We had to sit on that secret for about a month, and there came a day when he told us we could tell a few people, and nobody believed us. STEVE: Hm-mm. Nobody thought—and then, let’s see, at what point did we go to New York? MARK: Jack hired us in February of 1970. He quit Marvel in the second week of March, 1970. And his comics didn’t come out until

[this spread] The issues of Marvelmania Magazine produced by Mark Evanier—#1 and #5 had Kirby covers. Steve Sherman kept the above letter from Barry Smith (prior to adding “Windsor-” to his name) in his files, and it appears to be BWS’ response from Steve and Mark’s request for an interview for Marvelmania Magazine #2 [above].

body’s thrilled. MARK: Yeah. Not everybody’s thrilled to have the Marvel guy there. Because they’d kind of taken the position that Marvel comics all stunk. STEVE: Well, as I got older, I realized that they were afraid. They were afraid for their jobs. You’d see guys who had been there since the Forties, and they were stuck. And at any point at that time, they were talking about shutting down DC. They were going to just do reprints. And they were scared to death that they were going to lose their jobs, because they were only, at that point, maybe in their late fifties, I think? MARK: Some of them were younger than that. It wasn’t just that they were scared that DC was going to shut down, but the company had gone through this enormous turmoil where Irwin Donenfeld, who was the editorial director and the son of the owner of the company, was fired, and they fired a lot of editors, and they fired a lot of freelancers. Most of the guys who worked for Mort Weisinger on the Superman books had been told their services were no longer required; Wayne Boring was gone, and Jim Mooney was gone, and George Klein was gone, and George Papp was gone, and Pete Costanza was gone. And they had fired this editor, George Kashdan, and so Murray Boltinoff, who’d been [Kashdan’s] partner, was going like, “Oh, I survived, but George is gone.” And while we were there, Mort Weisinger turned in his last issue of Superman. I don’t know if you were with me at the moment, but I was introduced to Mort Weisinger— STEVE: No, I never met him. MARK: —at one point there, one of the moments we were separate there. Mort Weisinger, who couldn’t have cared less about meeting me, was just there because the last issue of Superman he was editing after being there since the Cro-Magnon era, was going to press. And he was done with DC. He walked out the door for the last time, probably. People were gone, and Carmine Infantino was now running this place, and I never got the feeling he had the total confidence of anybody up there. But he was the guy in charge, so… Anyway, so we went to DC the first day. The second day we were supposed to go over and have a meeting with Stan Lee at 10:00 AM. So, we got up that morning, and we got dressed. We went down and had some breakfast. We were back in the room at 9:15 getting ready to go to Marvel at 10:00, and the phone rings, and it’s Stan’s secretary saying, “He’s got a meeting. Come at 3:00 o’clock.” Do you remember this? So, we suddenly had nothing to do in New York, and I hadn’t been in New York since I was nine, so we just went sightseeing. We walked around New York, and at one point we’re walking down Madison Avenue— stop me if you don’t remember any of this. [Steve laughs] Or if you do. And we suddenly hear someone yell, “Mi Amigos!” We look across Madison Avenue, and catty corner on the corner is Sergio Aragonés. And we walked over there. I was amazed he spotted us across—

STEVE: Mark Hanerfeld. MARK: That’s the day I first met Marv Wolfman and Len Wein. We went and sat with them in the coffee room. Sol Harrison, who was the head of production, sat us down. You remember this, he sat us down and he said to us, “If you have any influence with Jack, see if you can get him to try to draw more like Curt Swan. [Steve laughs] We really don’t like square fingertips or some of those weird things he does with the bodies.” And you and I looked at each other like—I think that was our first inkling that things were not going to go well for Jack at DC.

STEVE: Yeah! Or even remembered. MARK: —one of the biggest streets in the world. And that he remembered us, because I didn’t know Sergio that well, and you had met him even fewer times than I had at that point. And he said, “What are you doing in New York?” And we said, “Well, we’re here

STEVE: Yes. Yes. We became aware that “Uh-ohhhh.” Not every10

for the Phil Seuling convention, and we were supposed to go have a meeting with Stan Lee, but he had to postpone it, so we’re just kind of wandering around New York.” And he said to us, “Are you going to visit the MAD offices, the MAD magazine offices?” We said, “Gee, we hadn’t thought about that. Where are they?” And he said, “Right here!” [both laugh] He was standing in front of them. So, he took us in and gave us a tour, and on the way in, we passed this little sad-faced man who was leaving with an art portfolio, and I went, “That’s Wally Wood! What’s he doing here?” And Sergio took us in and we met Al Feldstein and Jerry DeFuccio, and Nick Meglin, and Bill Gaines, Leonard Brenner, and John Putnam, and Angelo Torres was there. And we got this grand tour of MAD magazine we hadn’t counted on. STEVE: Yeah! It was mind-blowing. MARK: And at 3:00 o’clock, we went over and met Stan. STEVE: Yeah. That was something. MARK: What do you remember from the meeting with Stan? STEVE: I just remember it was a very, very small office. I was surprised. Marvelmania had bigger offices than Marvel had. It was just like the front room had the tables and I think Johnny Romita was there, and Marie Severin was there, and maybe one other guy was there. MARK: Herb Trimpe. STEVE: Yeah, and Herb Trimpe. MARK: And Tony Mortellaro were there, and a guy named Allyn Brodsky was working there as an editorial assistant. In the back was John Verpoorten and Roy Thomas, and Stan’s secretary, whose name escapes me at the moment, and they

took us in to meet Stan. Do you remember the first thing he said to us? STEVE: No, no. MARK: He said to us, “I’ve been so busy these days I haven’t had a chance to look at the comics lately. If you ask me what’s going on in Iron Man this month, I couldn’t tell you.” We understood that meant, “Don’t ask me about anything ‘comics’.” STEVE: “Don’t ask me about comics,” yeah. “Don’t ask me comic book stuff.” And then we told him about Marvelmania and all that, and he was like, “Hmm.” Very concerned. He said, “Well, I’ll look into it.” Because we said, “This guy’s going to give you a bad name if you keep going with him.” And he was like, you know—he was very personable. He was wonderful. He was Stan Lee. I mean, what more could you ask for? MARK: Very charming. STEVE: Very charming, and he was great to us, and he said, “Give 11

[previous page] The Marvelmania Magazine #1 announcement of Kirby leaving Marvel Comics. [above] Stan Lee’s response to Steve’s letter, detailing how the Marvelmania debacle played out. [left] An early 1970s Kirby sketch.

[right] A photo Steve took inside the Marvel Comics offices on his 1970 trip there with Mark Evanier. [below] A 1965 Steve Ditko sketch that ran in the Comic Reader #42. [right] Jack Kirby in 1971. Photo by Vince Davis. [bottom] A view of the dealer’s room at the Statler Hilton hotel during those early 1970s Seuling Cons.

my regards to Jack when you see him.” And we said thank you and we left. The only other place I remember is we went to Warren. We went to the Warren offices, and looked around for a while. [MARK EVANIER INTERJECTION: I didn’t correct Steve during this interview but I never went to the Warren offices. Mike Royer had arrived in New York and moved into the hotel room with us. Steve and Mike went to the Warren offices the afternoon I took a train to Hartford to visit my grandparents.] MARK: We spent a day with Steve Ditko. STEVE: We did. That was wild, because he was sooo nice, so ordinary, and so open. And we were going like, “I thought he was supposed to be this recluse,” but, no, he was just really, he was a sweet man, and you just go like—well, there you go. You can’t always believe what you hear. My God, that convention was the biggest one I had ever seen. You looked out, there was a balcony, and you looked out on the main floor, and it was miles, just like comic books and original art. I had never seen so much original art in my life. Just stacks of it, and it was just like, where did this come from? Because all I had ever read in the fanzines and stuff was, “Oh, it’s all been destroyed. There’s no more original art anywhere.” You know, “They burned it.” And here there was all this original art. It was very expensive, ten dollars a page. [laughs] MARK: Yeah. Somebody brought in every page of Tower original art, every single page that was in the THUNDER Agents comics, and they put it on the table, ten bucks apiece. It looked like a White Sale at Macy’s. [Steve laughs] Everyone was looking through it, “Where’s the Wood? Where’s the Wood? Where’s the Gil Kane?” Were you with me? I was in the elevator at one point, and there was a slightly older gentleman, an adult, and he was taking a couple of fans up to his room to show them artwork. And I somehow got in the conversation, and he said, “Hey, do you want to see my artwork?” And I didn’t know who he was. He didn’t have a badge on. So I said, “Sure.” I figured out maybe if I saw his artwork, I’d know who he was. And he takes us into this hotel room, and he takes out his portfolio, starts pulling out Frank Frazetta pages. [Steve laughs] And I go, “Oh! Mr. Frazetta!” This is Frank Frazetta. It was a very strange couple of days. I met my friends Marty Pasko and Alan Brennert there for the first time. I met Gary Groth there. I met Tony Isabella in person. We had been corresponding. He has been my friend for a long time. I met him there that day. It was amazing. I met, like, everybody whose comic books I ever read in my life right there. STEVE: And we flew on a 747, which you can’t do anymore. MARK: But, remember, we flew on the second 747 of the day. The first one left without us. Let’s see if you remember this, Steve. 12

STEVE: Probably not. MARK: There was a guy who was taking his family, and he was so proud, so he was making a little movie with an 8mm camera, and he makes them do several takes of arriving at the gate, getting their tickets and things like that, and then he has them sitting down. He goes, “Okay, go over there and sit down like you’re waiting for the flight.” And then he’s shooting. At one point he finally discovers he’s shooting the plane taking off [Steve laughs], and suddenly realizing that he’s not on it. But his dog is. They put the dog on the plane. And he’s running around, ranting, yelling, “My dog’s on the plane! Bring it back!” Anyway, but it was a very— STEVE: That was a fun trip.

[above] Uh-oh… uh-oh… it’s Froggy the Gremlin! [Steve moves puppet in front of the camera, Mark laughs] Oh, no! It’s Froggy the Gremlin! [in Froggy’s voice:] “Vince Colletta was the best inker!” Get out of here, Froggy—son of a bitch.

MARK: That was a very fun trip, yeah. We had a great time. So, anyway, when we came back, we started working with Jack. Now, I have some questions here. Actually, let me—hold on, here. Don’t go away. [Steve laughs] Keep to yourself for a second, here.

MARK: [laughs] My recollection is that Jack would start work around 11:00 in the morning or so, and he would work until 4:00 in the morning, something like that. He worked until Roz came in and said, “Come to bed, Kirby,” and drag him off, and Jack would go, “One more panel! Let me do one more panel here!” But, yeah, we saw him drawing. He didn’t draw as well when he was conscious someone was looking at him. Every time Jack had to do a chalk talk in front of audiences, he forgot how to draw.

STEVE: I’m in quarantine. I can’t go anywhere. MARK: Okay. I’m looking at my email. I can’t see you right now because I’m opening my email up, here. John Morrow of the Kirby Collector sent me a pile of questions to ask. I told him we were going to do this interview. “Questions for Steve Sherman and You.” “Did you and Steve arrive at Jack’s together every day on specific days of the week, or only when Jack called you in?” I didn’t drive then, so Steve picked me up and we drove out there together.

STEVE: Yeah. Because, really, the drawing wasn’t that important to him. It came so naturally that it was the story and the pacing and everything else that was going on in his head. The drawing, he didn’t have to think about that, so if he wasn’t thinking about the story and just drawing, it was kind of like, “Aw, gee, okay, sure, I can draw this.” But really, he just drew so organically that it was the story and the characters and how to pace it all that was going through his head rather than, “How do I draw a car? How do I draw the building?” You know, the building just took shape. [Steve gestures wildly] I mean, it was just, “Boom. There’s the building. Here’s the figures.”

STEVE: We’d usually go out on a weekend, on a Sunday. Sometimes we’d go during the week, but usually it was on a Sunday. But we’d also meet during the week and work. We’d go to your house and we’d work on stuff. One of the first things we started working on was the Kirby Unleashed portfolio, and we worked long and hard on that. We interviewed Jack, a big long interview, then we also went over the stuff we wanted to put in the book, and that’s when he showed us his closet full of originals, the artwork. I have that picture of you sitting there going through all that stuff. So, we did that, then we’d work on the comics stuff. But, yeah, we’d go out there together.

MARK: I tell people that when Jack erased art—and he did that a lot—it was never because the drawing was bad. It was because it was wrong. He decided he should have drawn something else in that spot, or there was a better way to stage that scene. He would erase and redo the scene better. He would draw it from another angle, or draw something different happening in it. Occasionally we erased panels for him. He’d hand us a page and say, “Take out those two

MARK: Yeah. Okay. Next question. “What was Jack’s schedule like when you worked for him? If he worked at night and slept late, like I’ve heard over the years, did you see him actively drawing when you were there, or did most of the drawing take place when you left for the day?” We actually saw him drawing a lot. STEVE: Yeah, because he would start and stop, you know? I mean, the bulk of it he would start at night, but then during the day, when he had time, he’d sit down and keep going, and then stop, keep going.

[left] Steve’s photo of Mark Evanier going through Jack’s original art, looking for treasures for Kirby Unleashed, and finding the splash to Young Romance #20 (April 1950).

panels,” and we would go, “What? What? Can’t we cut them out and save them?” Because it was all wonderful artwork. We did a little work here and there. I remember drawing the Superman emblem a few times, and a couple times having to correct a balloon that didn’t make sense; he’d left a word out or spelled something wrong. And there was that one page I wound up writing in a Mister Miracle story. Okay, next question. “What was your daily routine at Jack’s place? Did you and Steve have different respective responsibilities or did Jack just hand you stuff to do as it came up?”

MARK: “What were your interactions with Roz and the Kirby kids and other fans that visited? Did you guys relax and take a swim now and then, or only at get-togethers outside of work, like July 4th?”

STEVE: We’d discuss it. We’d sit there, and he’d tell us what he wanted, what he was looking for, and then he’d let us go. He’d say, “I need a page,” or, “I need you to write this story that’s going here.” For the In the Days of the Mob or the Spirit World stuff, he said, “This is what I need.” We’d go, “Okay.” We’d go off and do it and bring it back. He never was on us to do stuff. It was just, “Here it is, guys. Go do it. Bring it back. We’ll do the next thing.”

STEVE: The Fourth of July.

STEVE: Mostly on July 4th we’d go in the pool. I mean, we wouldn’t come out there and fool around. We were out there to work. But, no, we became very close with Roz and the kids. I’m still friends with Neal, and Lisa, and the grandkids. So, no, it became like family. MARK: We’d go to dinner with them, or lunch— MARK: —they would barbecue. He used to barbecue sometimes. STEVE: Yeah. And then we’d go watch fireworks in the park. We’d all get in the car and we’d go watch fireworks. Jack would sit there [mimes Jack holding a cigar]—well, he’d actually stand there with a cigar and just watch the fireworks. You know he was writing about four comics at that [moment]. He was gone, you know? He was just like [finishes miming Jack smoking while watching fireworks], “Okay,” then we’d go back and he’d just start on a story, you know? Fireworks would inspire him.

MARK: And whatever we brought him, he would say, “This is great! This is terrific! You guys did a great job.” Then he’d use very little of it, or none of it. STEVE: But it was enough that he had something to start with, which helped him, I guess. [laughs] Not that he needed help.

MARK: I think we should tell the story, never before told anywhere, of Maxine and Alice. Do you remember Maxine and Alice? STEVE: Was that the photograph of the two girls? [laughs] Yeah. MARK: That was the photograph, yeah. We were handling the letter pages, and the letter went to Jack’s PO box, so Jack had the mail, and we’d go in and Jack says to us one day, “Take a look at the mail, guys. There’s a letter there you’re really going to appreciate.” And it was a picture from two ladies named Maxine and Alice. No last names, no return address. And they had taken a photo of themselves, naked, reading New Gods and Forever People, having the [comics] in front of their faces, and the rest of them were like Hustler magazine poses. And the letter said, “Your comics make us swollen. Come get it! We really love you!” And I remember we looked at it, and Jack said, “Now, those are fans! Those are real fans!” STEVE: [laughs] And then Roz said, “Kirby! Kirbyyy!” MARK: Yeah. And Jack ended up burning the photos because he didn’t want Lisa to see them. STEVE: Yes! She made him. Roz made him. She said, “Get rid of that, Jack! Don’t you show that to the boys!”

Permission letters from Stan Lee and Carmine Infantino, okaying the November 1975 KIRBY booklet that was produced in conjunction with the museum exhibit of Jack’s work, as outlined in TJKC #82.

MARK: We put a little note in the letter page: “Thanks to Maxine and Alice, a couple of swell girls.” [laughter] All right. Back to the questions, here. “How much were you paid—by the hour, or a flat rate per week, and did your weekly amount of work vary?” 14

STEVE: It varied. MARK: The amount of work varied. What we got paid varied. We just kind of told Jack, “Pay us whatever you want, whenever you want.” And I never felt cheated, ever, for that entire time. STEVE: No. He paid us well for what we did. MARK: But you remember, he would write you— Roz would make out a check for us. She made out one for you and one for me, and Jack would take your check and he’d sign it, and he’d hand me my check, unsigned, and said, “Here, you do my signature.” [Steve laughs] I’d actually forge his name on the check. Because I signed a lot of his stuff. He had me signing fan mail at one point for him. So… STEVE: No, you did an excellent Jack Kirby signature. [Mark laughs] And also everybody else, too. I mean, you could do them all. You did Wally Wood… MARK: Yeah, I used to be able to do that. I used to imitate your handwriting on a couple of things.

My first memory of Steve would be in the early ’70s at our home in Thousand Oaks, California. He showed up with Mark Evanier to visit my dad. During that time, both of them became regulars to the Kirby home. I always remember Steve as being a quiet, soft-spoken man, and very good-natured. He was more my brother Neal’s peer, and I remember my brother involving him in funny antics. When I met Steve’s brother Gary, I was surprised to see that he was the opposite of Steve. Gary was talkative and outgoing. Steve and Gary were very close-knit. I think having opposite personalities really made for a great relationship between the two. Steve Sherman was a extended Kirby family member, and joined us for many family get-togethers. Steve also stayed in touch with my mother Rosalind after my dad passed away, which I’m sure she really appreciated. He was a very kind-hearted man. The last time I saw Steve was before Covid took over our world. He came over to my home with Michael Thibodeaux and a few others. I’m really glad I had that chance to see him. He will be missed. – Lisa Kirby

STEVE: Yeah! Oh, you were great at that.

standing around doing nothing! They’re all in the same pose, and they all have the same physique. And the colors on the cover stink!” He hated the coloring.

MARK: Very strange. “Did you overhear any key phone calls with DC— specifically, plans for a DC West?” Well, we heard plans about opening a DC office on the Warner Brothers lot, which they kind of have now. DC Comics is now a stone’s throw from Warner Brothers. But, at the time, that was like a talked-about thing, and Carmine kept saying he wanted to do it, and they didn’t want to do it. They didn’t want to abdicate that power.

STEVE: Oh, yeah. Which just made Adler very happy, [laughs] that Jack didn’t like it. MARK: Oh, those were brutal calls. STEVE: Well, Jack really hated the ones where somebody would be holding the superhero like this and they’d be draped in their arms, dead. Jack would just be, like, furious, going, “What is that for a cover?” MARK: Yeah. Remember how we redid Mister Miracle’s coloring?

STEVE: Oh, no. Harrison and Adler? They were not going to have that.

STEVE: Yes. Yeah. MARK: We had to fight to get that in. Steve and I did the coloring for Mister Miracle because he hated what they had done for the first issue. He was the editor of the book, and they sent it to him for approval, and he said, “I don’t approve,” and they said, “Well, we’re printing it anyway.” He had a big fight with them over that. He didn’t like any of the colors on those books at all.

MARK: We heard over a number of conversations, there was an issue of—Carmine would send out proofs of covers. Not just Jack’s, but proofs of other covers, and Jack would tell him why he didn’t like them, and Carmine was always shocked. He kept telling Carmine, “The covers are full of death. The covers are full of negativity.” There was a cover on Strange Adventures showing a nuclear holocaust, and it said, like, “Which country will blow up the world?” or something like that—a Joe Kubert cover, and Jack was furious about it. He thought that was a terrible thing to put on a comic book, and an uncommercial thing to put on a comic book. I remember him kind of chewing Carmine out for it on the phone. And there was this cover that Neal Adams did for a thing called The World’s Greatest Super-Heroes. It was a special. It was like a mob scene of all the DC super-heroes standing with their fists on their hips, posed. And Jack didn’t like the cover. Carmine thought it was the greatest cover ever done. And Jack says to him, “These are action heroes! You’ve got them all 15

STEVE: Because that was the time they were experimenting, I think. Isn’t that when Neal Adams showed them how to do more colors? And they could gray out everything, and so they started graying everything down instead of popping it up, because I know Jack was always saying, “The three best colors are blue, red, yellow!” MARK: Yeah. He said, “Every DC comic is colored like it’s a war comic.” And I think he was right. STEVE: He is! Totally. MARK: When he told them that he thought Marie Severin was the best colorist in the business, they thought he was crazy. [Steve shakes his head] He kept fighting with them a lot. Let me go back to John’s list here. “Jack must have had an initial master plan for the Fourth World’s evolution, or stories like ‘The Pact’ and ‘Himon’ wouldn’t have worked so well midway through it. Do you recall him discussing any long-range plans with you early in its production?” Yeah, tons of those things.

STEVE: No. And he also wanted to have other people do it. He just wanted to get them going and have other people come in and write and draw them. I mean, he wanted to have a line going. But they were like, “No. [laughs] We’re paying you top dollar! You’re not going to hand this stuff off to anybody else.” MARK: Do you remember—I mentioned this on one of the recent podcasts I did here—how Jack suggested to Carmine that DC get the rights to Captain Marvel, and bring back Shazam?

STEVE: Yeah! MARK: And he didn’t follow half of them.

STEVE: Sure, I remember that. We were in his house when he told us that. We were in his studio and he was telling us—. MARK: Remember, we had that meeting with Carmine down at the convention in downtown LA, and then we talked about it some more. And I gave him C.C. Beck’s phone number, which I had obtained. And Carmine went off, and the idea was that Jack was going to edit it and we were going to do something on it, write it or supervise it or whatever. And the next thing we knew they took it away from Jack in New York. STEVE: Oh, of course. MARK: He was pretty upset about that. “Was Jack doing any work outside of DC at the time? Did you help with advertising work, magazine illos, etc.?” I remember the card games for Mattel. I actually drew the Superman emblems and Jack’s signature on those, and then they sent them to Mattel, and Mattel loved them, and Mattel had to send them back to DC for approval, and they came back with Murphy Anderson heads on them. And Mattel was furious, and said, “This is awful.” DC insisted. And I can’t remember much else we did from there. STEVE: No, I think he was—well, because at that point he was doing the comics, then he started doing the magazines. We were also working on Kirby Unleashed, trying to get that out before the convention, so we were really pushed against the clock to try and finish that… We did that on an IBM Ball typewriter that they had at this place I worked at, so we typeset the whole—I mean, we typeset it, we color-separated it, we picked everything. It was 16

just like… we hired the printer. And then, of course, we got shafted. MARK: You did more of that than I did. You dealt with the printer and all those people. STEVE: But it was pretty much 50/50 on that. We both consulted on, “Is this right?” I mean, the whole package. And then, once it came out and we started selling them, the DC lawyers go, “You can’t sell those, because we hired Jack.” Even though they didn’t have a contract or anything—but you know Jack, he didn’t want any problems. So they said, “We’ll sell them.” So we had to ship them all to DC, where they sold them. So it was a wash. We got back what they cost. Poor Jack. MARK: The rest of the questions here. “I think [Mark] left right after Kamandi #1 was published, right? But when did Steve officially stop working for Jack? I’ve always assumed it was when he went back to Marvel in late 1975.” STEVE: Right! As soon as Kobra came out, I was done. As soon as Jack said, “Kobra came out,” and he showed it to me, and he was like, “I’m leaving.” [laughter] I said, “I don’t blame you!” I said, “Well, there’s nothing for me to do. I can’t go with you to Marvel, so bye-bye.” And I went into show business! [laughs] MARK: Yes. We’re going to talk—I want to leave time to talk about the work you’ve done since then, Steve, and the amazing ways our paths have crossed while doing all that stuff. Let me go through the list, here. “Were you guys regularly working with and in contact with Mike Royer, or did he mostly just show up to drop off and pick up work?” Royer did it by mail. He almost never came out to Jack’s. From Whittier to Thousand Oaks was a pretty long, large drive. STEVE: Yeah! Well, we would go out and visit Mike, and we would drive from the West Side to Whittier, and it was a hell of a drive to go up there. MARK: Yeah, it was about 45 minutes to an hour, where Mike was. Remember when we went round to Mike, he’d have us stop at a KFC on the way there and pick up dinner. [laughs] STEVE: Yeah! MARK: No, the first New Gods that Mike inked, I took home with me, and Mike had to come to my house to get it. And Jack said to me, “Go over it with him page by page and tell him how he should do every panel!” And I didn’t know what to do. I said, “Well here it is. What you should do is, you should ink this panel, then you should ink this panel, then you should ink this panel!” [laughter] And it came out fine. STEVE: Yeah. Mike’s a great guy. MARK: People want to know—one of our great contributions to Jack was we helped him get a better inker. And not just a better inker, but more control over his own work.

he didn’t get to see the lettering before it was published. He didn’t get to see the inking, usually. STEVE: The coloring, anything. MARK: He didn’t get the coloring. He didn’t get to see the covers, he didn’t get to see what they did with the covers, what they changed. We were the ones who told him that they were redrawing his Superman heads on the Jimmy Olsen book. We found that out from a fanzine before they’d ever told Jack. And finally, he was able to put together a comic because Royer turned his work in to Jack, not to DC. STEVE: Right, and Jack would look at it before... MARK: So, Jack could look at it… STEVE: And nail it! [laughs]

STEVE: Which is what he wanted.

MARK: Yeah. He was proud that it didn’t look like a DC comic. Sol Harrison and those guys were upset that it didn’t look like a DC comic.

MARK: Yeah! Because otherwise it would disappear into the “DC machine,” as they called it. They called it that, and they thought that was a compliment, and Jack would use the same term in a derogatory manner. But

STEVE: I’ve been thinking about this. Do you think they wanted Jack just to get him out of Marvel, or do you think they really wanted him to come up with something? 17

[previous page, bottom] Pasted-up mechanical art for a Kirby Unleashed portfolio ad. [previous page top, and above] Mike Royer did his usual fabulous job inking Kirby on this Mattel card game packaging, but as was their wont, DC insisted on having the Superman heads redrawn by Murphy Anderson. Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen didn’t suffer any redraws, but curiously, Green Arrow (a character Jack hadn’t drawn since the 1950s) was included.

MARK: I think they wanted him to come up with something that would destroy Marvel. STEVE: Too late for that. MARK: And I think the problem with New Gods, Forever People, and Mister Miracle was that they didn’t put Marvel out of business. The books sold decently, according to all the statistics I’ve got, which I’ve got for the book I’m working on, but he didn’t… I think one thing they thought would happen was that all the Marvel readers would come over to DC and see how fabulous Flash was, and Green Lantern, and they’d all abandon Marvel for DC—which wasn’t going to happen, especially at a time when Marvel was improving their distribution enormously, and when Marvel was undercutting DC with the 20¢ price vs. the 25¢, which may have been the biggest business mistake in the history of comics, for DC to go to 25¢ when Marvel was 20¢. That was suicidal. STEVE: And they were also coming out—you know, that’s when Conan came out. That’s when a lot of stuff Marvel put out was grabbing people, so, you know, you can’t expect Jack to—. [laughs] Well, like he used to say, “I’m competing with myself.” He says, “What can I do?” MARK: Yeah, because Marvel was publishing more Kirby stuff in reprints than DC was in new stuff. And I think Carmine wanted to show he could steal Marvel’s top guy away, and it was just an exercise of power, and I think he thought, “Well, Jack will come up with some great book that will—” [below] Jack still did the occasional outside jobs while at DC, like this piece commissioned for the September 12, 1972 West Magazine supplement to the LA Times. [next page] 1970s work for Michel Choquette’s underground comix anthology The Someday Funnies, which was finally published in 2011.

STEVE: Just blow us away.

Mark and Steve’s proposal for Uncle Carmine’s Fat City Comix, and a 1971 Vince Davis photo of Infantino.

MARK: “—shift the balance of power between the two companies.” And I think, though, that they were not willing to let Jack be Jack, because the first thing Sol Harrison said to us was, “We want it to not look like Jack Kirby.” I’ve spent fifty years—that’s how long it’s been—meeting people who would say to me, “Oh, I loved Jack’s work, but why can’t an inker change his art style? Why can’t another writer change the way he writes?” In other words, “I love Jack Kirby, but I want to change [it] the way I want it.” And we learned that you couldn’t do that, that Jack was so organic at what he did. I tell people, “No, you couldn’t have had somebody else come in and dialogue those books. You couldn’t have given them to some inker who would have fixed all the stuff that you think should be fixed. You had to take Jack at face value. He had to do it his way.” If Stan Lee had dialogued the New Gods, they would not have been the same comics with different words in the balloons. They would have been completely different comics, for better or worse. He would never have done the Terrible Turpin issue. He would never have done the Glory Boat issue at all. Those issues would never have been in there if he wasn’t in complete control of the storylines. And I am actually pleased—and I think you’ll join me in this—I’m pleased by how little of us was in those comics, you know? STEVE: [laughs] Yeah! It’s pure Kirby. It’s just pure Kirby. MARK: Steve, do you have the same feeling I have, where I look at—? I have a shelf behind me, off-camera in this shot, with all the reprints of all the New Gods. It’s been reprinted over, and over, and over again. And I don’t have them there because I wrote Forewords in most of them. I have them there [in] the same way I have other things in this 18

house to remind me of Jack: Artwork by Jack, and pictures of Jack, and things like that. And when I look at them, I remember the guys at DC, the guys in the merchandising division saying, “No one will ever merchandise these characters.” The guys there who said, “Why would anybody do merchandise of Mister Miracle? We’ve got Batman!” Now there’s a Mister Miracle doll, and these characters are getting on TV—and the early issues of New Gods have now been reprinted, what, like nine times? STEVE: Oh, yeah. MARK: In hardcovers. STEVE: Those fat hardcovers. MARK: Exactly the way Jack wanted them to be someday. Deluxe printing, good paper, good coloring—well, better coloring. And he said that they would do that. He said, “Someday these comics will be in hardcover,” and nobody believed him. They considered those failed books. Now they wish they had a hundred issues of New Gods to reprint, because it sells every time they reprint it. And I look at that stuff and it reminds me how right Jack was so many times. STEVE: Yeah. I mean, how could you fault the guy? He’d been at it his whole life. He knew exactly. He’d been a publisher. He knew what sold. He knew what the audience would read. He had an innate sense of what to do. These guys kind of second-guessed him all the time. I used to think, “Yeah, maybe if he had done something else besides New Gods or Forever People, maybe that would have—”. But then you go, “—but they’re still printing it! They’re making a movie out of it!” So, he was right all along, you know? What are you going to do?

up with the Dracula book before he did. And there were a couple of things like that. STEVE: Well, he was always trying to push the medium. He wanted to make it more than a trifle. Bubblegum was a penny, a candy bar is a nickel, a comic’s a dime. But he wanted to go beyond that. I mean, he really wanted to go back to large-sized comics, 64 pages, a magazine in full color, and they wouldn’t listen to him. They just wouldn’t listen to him.

MARK: And a lot of the books that they told him then, that they thought were great to emulate, nobody cares about today. Let me see if I can finish our list, here. We’ve got a few more. “Did either of you have concerns about the Fourth World being too complex for fans to follow, or did you encourage Jack to stretch its scope even further?”

MARK: He kept looking at National Lampoon and saying, “That’s what comics should look like.” STEVE: Right, right. But DC, they just weren’t in that business. They were in the Superman/Batman business, and they weren’t going to vary at all. They weren’t going to go off.

STEVE: Nah. We never gave him any advice on that, that I recall. MARK: I think a couple times we told him to slow down, he was putting in new characters too fast, but he said, “Carmine wants this in.”

MARK: Okay, here’s the last question that John sent me. We’ve got more questions to talk about after that. “What was the most frustrating part of working with Jack? Likewise, what was the most rewarding part?” You go first.

STEVE: Yeah. Because he was putting stuff in there hoping they would branch out into other books, you know? He was ready to take any of those characters and put them in their own book. MARK: And he was also concerned that he had told Stan some of the ideas, and he was afraid if he didn’t do them, get them in print first, Stan might remember some of them and do some of those ideas.

STEVE: The rewarding part was being around him, and talking with him, and listening to him, and exchanging ideas and listening to his ideas. The most frustrating part was seeing how frustrated he was with the people that he dealt with. That hurt. You felt you had to protect him. And, not that he needed it, but you just felt that he was such a great guy, that they were treating him like this, you’d go, like, “How can you treat Jack Kirby like this? This is Jack Kirby, okay? He created the Marvel Universe. Leave him alone! Just let him do what he does.” But they wouldn’t. And it was very frustrating to see that, that any time he did something, they’d either change it or wreck it. I know when In the Days of the Mob and Spirit World came out, he was just crushed. He was just like, “Oh, man! Look at this! They printed it on toilet paper!” [laughs] You were just like, “Aw,

STEVE: Sure. I mean, look at Thanos. That’s Darkseid, and they beat him to the movies with that one. He was right. People didn’t believe him. “You know they’ll steal.” “No, they won’t, Jack. They won’t steal.” “Oh, yes, they will. Oh, yes, they will.” MARK: Remember one of the first things he told us about was that idea of doing a book of Dracula, a black-and-white magazine, or a color magazine—he wanted it to be in color, a magazine, not a comic book—of Dracula in different time periods. And he wasn’t sure if he had told that idea to Stan or not. So, he was pushing Carmine to put that book out before Marvel did. And [Marvel] came 19

MARK: I remember, after Jack died, talking to Roz; she remembered that day so vividly, because that was the day their lives changed. He really took it hard, because he had all these wonderful plans, and he realized that he could not do any of them at DC.

Jack.” You know? And what’s so funny is that they canceled them, and then a couple months later, The Godfather and The Exorcist come out—maybe a year later. But he was on the right track—they would have had something. But, you know, their brains weren’t geared for that. They were not great businessmen up there at DC, I’d have to say. I mean, they were lucky they had Superman and Batman. That kept them afloat. Because anything else, they would have just, boop! [mimes something going down the tubes]

STEVE: No, no. MARK: And then there was that time—maybe I’m going to jog your memory about this. There was a big distributors convention at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Sunset. Carmine was going to come out for it, and he wanted to take Jack as his date, because he had tickets for two there. Carmine could not get out of New York for some reason. I think there was a weather problem, actually. So he told Jack, “You go. Take Roz. The tickets are under my name.” Roz had come down with a bad cold, so she couldn’t go. So you and I drove out to Thousand Oaks. We picked Jack up. He was wearing a beautiful suit. He was dressed perfectly. And we drove him, you were driving, to the Beverly Hills Hotel. We dropped him off. We went over to my place and played cards and ate pizza until he called and said, “I’m ready to go home, guys.” And we went over, picked him up, and took him home. Now, on the way there he was like this. It was all, “I’m going to tell those guys how to do comics. I’m going to tell them what they should be doing. I’m going to tell them that, I’m going to tell them this.” On the way back, it was like, “Nobody there cares about the comics. Nobody has any interest in—they didn’t know what was published, they didn’t know who I was. I told them I worked for Marvel, they went, ‘Marvel. We’ve heard

MARK: Well, you kind of stole my answer to both questions. That’s actually what I was going to say. Yeah, it was frustrating seeing him be frustrated. Do you remember the day he told us that New Gods and Forever People were being “suspended?” STEVE: Yeah. He was really hurt. MARK: I’ve never felt so sorry for a man in my life. He was so—he was gray. He had actually turned, like, he was pale. STEVE: Yeah. He was so crushed—which was unusual, because Jack usually, he didn’t get crushed like that over comics, over the magazines, because he knew the score. He knew, you know, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But these were really special to him. He was really trying to upgrade the comics. And if you read those today, you can see that he did. I mean, the stories, they’re so rich— the characters and the writing—that you read them today and they still hold up. What more can you say? Fifty years later, they still hold up. That’s what makes them great, really.

Steve jotted these notes before discussing the idea of King Kobra with Jack. More details and Steve’s full script were revealed in TJKC #22. [next page] An example of the major art changes DC instituted for Kobra #1—and all done by Pablo Marcos, whose style was a pretty jarring departure from Jack’s.

that up, I brought it out to him. We were sitting at the kitchen table. He was looking at it. He was going like, [skeptical sound] “Ennnh.” “Well?” He was going, like, “Corsican brothers!” And I go, “Huh?” He says, “They’re brothers! They’re Corsican brothers. One good, one bad.” “Okay, I got it. See you next week.” [both laugh] And I left and he sat down and he did Kobra. Just like that, he put the whole thing together and made it better. MARK: Before that trip we took to New York, I had spent maybe fifty hours sitting with Jack for various projects and things, even during the Marvelmania days, hearing the history. And he told us a lot. And you spent a few less than me, but a lot. And he would tell us, “I created this idea. I came up with this idea. I came up with this idea.” And I had a little natural skepticism, because I had been far enough into show business to know a lot of people telling me—in my lifetime, I think I met six

of that.’” They didn’t even know what Marvel was, really. And he realized that he was working for a company that didn’t care if they published a single comic book or not—and that really did not have too much respect for anybody in their comic book division. And that night he predicted that Carmine wouldn’t be there much longer. And Carmine was not there much longer. STEVE: No. No. MARK: And it was very—that was another devastating night for him. But the contrast between the Kirby on the way there and the Kirby on the way home was striking. STEVE: Yeah, yeah. Poor Jack. MARK: Yeah. But, you know, he kind of won in the end. STEVE: Yeah, he did. MARK: Not that he actually won, but he—Steve, now, here’s a question. When you meet people who find out you knew Jack Kirby, that you worked with Jack Kirby, what kind of reaction do you get? From people in and out of comics? STEVE: They’re… full of questions. They want to know what was he like. What was he like? What was Jack like? MARK: Okay, so I meet you someplace, I say, “You worked for Jack Kirby. What was he like?” Tell me what you say. STEVE: He was wonderful. He was the greatest guy you’d ever want to meet. He was exactly who you would hope he would be. He was Jack Kirby. He loved comics. He would talk to you. He would ask you about you. You could ask him any question and he would give you an answer. He was just—he loved people. He was tremendous. He was just a real down-to-earth guy. You’d love him. That’s what I say. MARK: And I tell them, if you went to Jack with an idea, he would always say, “That’s a great idea! And how about doing this, also?” And he would tell you something that made your idea better, and would build on it and build on it, and you’d think, “Wait a minute. Did I tell him this idea before and he’s been thinking about it for weeks?” No, he came up with it on the spot. STEVE: That’s what happened with Kobra. I wrote 21

stuck on an Iron Man story because Stan didn’t give me much of a plot, so I’d call Jack. I didn’t call Stan, he wouldn’t help me. I’d call Jack and he’d give me the whole plot. He’d just—I’d tell him one sentence and he’d go, ‘Okay, he goes here, then he does this, then he does this, and this character comes in.’” And I suddenly realized that what Jack said was essentially true. He may have been off in a couple of details here and there, because, you know—he had a tendency to tell us a story about Captain Marvel, something that happened, and we’d realize he means Captain America. Otherwise, the story’s perfect. I don’t know if you were there, but we were up at Marvel and Bill Everett was there. And I went up to him and I said, “Mr. Everett, my name is Mark Evanier. I’m Jack Kirby’s assistant.” And Bill Everett, who did not look like a huggy guy, hugged me and said, “Give that to Jack! Tell him he’s the greatest guy that ever lived! Tell him he’s brilliant! I love him!” And I was the recipient of all that second-hand love. And you were the recipient of a lot of it. STEVE: Yeah! You would get that. People just loved him. MARK: So, when you meet people and they start asking about Jack, what else do they ask you about him? STEVE: What else? Oh! “Did he draw as fast as we’ve read that he drew?” I go, “Yeah, he did. He was fast. He was very fast.” Faster than he probably needed to be, but he was fast. What else do they ask? Oh, “Did he use any files to look at stuff?” And I’d say, “Very rarely did he look at stuff.” It was all in his head. He was just, he was a genius, really. If you have to put a term on it, he was a genius at what he did. Very simple. And a very humble genius. MARK: I had a moment when I was looking at Jack one day and this thought popped into my head and it never left. I thought, “Mark, you’re never going to have the brilliance of this guy because nobody’s going to have the brilliance of this guy, but it might be possible to work that hard.” [Steve laughs] Because I was impressed with how hard Jack worked, how many hours he put in, even when he knew that the pages were going to be—even when he knew they were going to redraw the Supermans, he drew the Supermans. And even though he knew Vince Colletta was going to ink it and leave out half the backgrounds, he’d put in the backgrounds. And even when he knew that he was going to hate the coloring and hate the printing, he’d put all this detail in, and one time we said to him, “Why are you putting all that in? It’s not going to print.” He said, “It’ll print when they print this on good paper in twenty years in deluxe volumes.” And he was right again.

different people who told me they ghost-wrote Allan Sherman’s records in the Sixties. So, I was a little skeptical of all those, “I created this idea, even though I didn’t get my proper credit for it. I created this.” So, when we went back to New York on that trip, up at DC we met Dick Giordano, Julie Schwartz, Neal Adams, Murray Boltinoff, Murphy Anderson, we just met all these people. Then, the next day at Marvel, we met John Romita, and Herb Trimpe, and John Verpoorten. And Bill Everett was up at the office that day. At the convention we spent time with Joe Sinnott, and I spent time with Don Heck, and we spent the day with Steve Ditko. And everybody was telling us, “Yeah, Jack came up with all this stuff! Jack invented this!” Don Heck started saying to me, “Jack had this idea, and he had this idea, and he had this idea.” He said, “I’d get

STEVE: Yeah. He never shirked. He never gave less than a hundred percent. No matter what it was, he gave it his all. MARK: Were you there—I told this story in one of these other webcasts of when Jack was talking about the San Diego convention, the third or fourth year, and he said, “The day’s going to come with this 22

[these pages] From the first actual San Diego Comic-Con in 1970, here’s photos by Roger Freedman of Jack’s “chalk talk” that Mark and Steve describe here. As you can see from the finished art on the previous page, drawing in front of an audience never produced Jack’s finest work—compare it to the illo on page 1 of this issue.

convention is going to take over San Diego. It’ll be our town, and it’ll be where Hollywood comes every year to sell the movies they made last year and to find out what they’re going to make next year.” You were present when he said that, right? STEVE: Oh, yeah! He said it more than once, too. MARK: People doubt me on that. No, he actually said it, and he was right. We went to the first San Diego con together. Let’s go back to that for a minute. Because we were there the day Shel Dorf brought 111 people to Jack’s studio and imposed on their hospitality quite a bit that day. But Jack was sitting there telling these guys to do the convention, to make it about more than just comics, because to Jack comics were about more than just comics. Remember how he used to talk about how comics could be comics in movies, and comics in TV, and comics even in dance. There could be freeform dance which takes the energy of comic books and puts it on the stage. And then we drove down on the Saturday of the first San Diego con in 1970. You picked me up at my house. I remember I was so ready to get out of the house, I didn’t notice my father’s car was missing from the driveway because it had been stolen overnight. [Steve laughs] When I came back, there were police there. But it was you, Gary, Bruce Simon, and me. And we drove down to San Diego very early. We got there about 10:00 AM at the US Grant [hotel], and we spent the day at the convention. And there were, like, 300 people there, and we thought that was…

Hanerfeld had come down, and he announced that he was the DC representative, so suddenly he was doing a DC panel previewing what DC was having coming out. Mark’s the guy who went back to New York afterwards and told everybody, “You’ve got to come to this convention in San Diego next year.” He’s the one who started the trend of people coming out. And Mary Skrenes was there that day. STEVE: I remember Mary. Yeah. MARK: And Shel was coming up to us every twenty minutes saying, “Have you heard from Jack and Roz? Have you heard from Jack and Roz? They’re not here yet.” And there were no cell phones in those days, so it was like, how can we hear from them? Who would they call? [laughter] STEVE: “We don’t have a cell phone! It’s not invented yet!” [laughs] MARK: They don’t have a cell phone. Who would they call? And finally, Jack, I think, was supposed to speak at 2:00, and he arrived in plenty of time. It wasn’t even a hall. It was like the foyer, they’d set up a few chairs. Most people were going to sit on the floor, and on a landing they had a drawing pad for Jack. He was going to give a talk there in the hallway, basically. And Jack came up to me just before it was going to start, and he said, “I want you to introduce me, and tell them that I have left Marvel for DC,” because this is August of 1970. The new comics aren’t out yet and most people don’t know yet that Jack has left Marvel. His Marvel books are still coming out. “And tell them I don’t want to discuss that. I’m not

STEVE: Amazing. MARK: …huge! And we spent a lot of the time there with Mark Hanerfeld, who was there. Hanerfeld was like the official DC representative, only he wasn’t. STEVE: No. But he was. MARK: He was just in town. DC hadn’t sent anybody out, but 23

going to discuss that. I’m just going to talk about the new books.” And he gave me a list of things to tell people. And at this point I had never spoken to 200 people. I guess there were going to be 150 people, 200 people there, tops. Maybe a hundred. And for some reason I got real nervous, because who was I? I had no credentials. I had to get up there and tell them who I was, even. So, I’m standing off to one side, thinking to myself, “Okay, I’ll say this. I’ll say this.” I was really nervous about it. And it’s time to start, and Shel goes up to Jack and says, “Okay, Jack. I’ll introduce you.” And Jack says, “Mark’s going to introduce me.” And so Shel turns to Mark Hanerfeld and says, “Get up there and introduce Jack.” And Mark Hanerfeld goes up and introduces Jack, and I’m sitting there like… [mimes considering speaking, then thinking better of it] “Oh, good. Let him do it, let him do it.” And Jack went up. And you and I were in the front row. We were on the floor in the front row, and Jack had, not long before, told us the story of Victor Fox, the “king of the comics” story. Which was a wonderful story told in Jack’s studio; when he told it, he did the Victor Fox imitation, he got up and did the pacing. It was a hysterically funny story that you and I laughed at. And Jack was up there, and he was nervous. He was only speaking to 150 people who loved him, or so. But he was nervous, and he was tense. And we were whispering back and forth a little bit, and I think I said to you, “Maybe we should get him to tell the Victor Fox story,” because it was such a great story. And you put up your hand, and Jack, without acting like he knew you, called on you, and you said, “Oh, Mr. Kirby, could you tell us the story about Victor Fox?” And Jack, went, “Okay.” And he tells the story, terribly. STEVE: Yeah, he was so nervous. MARK: He was so nervous, he just rushes through it, and it’s like a non sequitur story. People just looked at each other. And then finally he drew some pictures, which were not drawn up to Kirby standards. And I remember thinking how lucky we are we got to

see Jack offstage, because offstage he was ten times as fascinating and interesting and funny. STEVE: No, he froze up in front of strangers. If he didn’t know you, he was very stiff—not stiff, but it didn’t flow as easily. If you just sat with him one on one and just let him go, he was amazing. He was great. We used to take walks outside the house and go up the path, because there were no homes past his. There was one or two. And on Sunday nights we’d go walking, and he’d just talk, and we’d talk over stuff. We’d talk about UFOs, we’d talk about outer space. We’d talk about this and that. And we would talk about comics—not about comic books, but about the people in comics, from the Forties and Fifties, which was—remember Kugelmass? MARK: Yes! [Editor’s note: In a back-up story in Destroyer Duck #1, Mark Evanier documented, with names changed, the notorious story of how J. Alvin Kugelmass swindled Timely Comics publisher Martin Goodman.] I remember him talking a lot about Nixon. He and I had a lot of discussions about Richard Nixon, Watergate, and all of that stuff, and I remember talking about movies he loved a lot. Remember that time we brought out the projector and the movie, Valley of Gwangi? STEVE: Valley of Gwangi! Yes!

STEVE: Oh, yeah. All the time. Whenever I see people talking about him or I see something on Facebook that’s Jack Kirby, I just kind of sigh. “Aw, that’s the Jack I remember.” He was just so wonderful. And Roz, too. I miss her. She was quite a character. I mean, if it wasn’t for Roz, there wouldn’t have been a Jack, because she made sure that he was protected—because left to his own devices, Jack would have done anybody any favor. You could ask him for anything and he would do it. But Roz was there to make sure, “Nah, nah, Kirby, don’t…” [laughs] But, yeah, they were a great couple. MARK: I put a line in my first book I did about Jack, and I was a little antsy about putting it in because I thought people would misunderstand it, but I had the same experience with my parents. At one point I thought to myself about my parents, “I hope they die in the right order.”

[previous page] As the 1970s came to a close, Jack was out of comics and storyboarding the DePatie-Freleng The New Fantastic Four animated series. As evidenced by the letter here, Steve was likewise pursuing new areas of employment, and hit up Stan Lee at Marvel Productions in California.

STEVE: Mm-hm. Mm-hm. MARK: I thought that about Jack and Roz. Jack would not have survived ten minutes without Roz. Roz could survive for a little while without Jack. And she lived, like, two more years. She lived long enough to get in the spotlight a bit, to get some of his standing ovations, which she probably deserved all along.

MARK: You had a 16mm print of it. At that point it was a novelty to watch a movie in your own home. STEVE: Oh, yeah! Well, remember the Betamax video recorder I had? We did that. MARK: Yes. Yeah. STEVE: That fourth of July we did Captain Plunger. Neal put a towel around his neck, and he had the helmet left over from Spirit World that that girl wore, that was like some kind of magic hat. He had that, and he ran around, and he ran into Jack’s studio, and Jack was there, and he was like, “Kirby! Aaah! Kirby!” Then he’d jump in the pool. Oh, those were fun days. MARK: Remember when I got executed in the empty lot next door? STEVE: Oh, that is—that picture. I love that picture. That is just so hysterically funny, because it was like, “All right. Steve?” “Yeah?” “You’re going to take the picture.” “Okay.” “Gary! You put on this hat.” Jack had all of his old winter clothes in his closet from New York, so he put Gary in this big overcoat and this bowler hat, and then he got Barbara, his daughter, and he put her in a big coat and a bowler hat. And he turned around and said, “Mark! You’re the victim!” And you were like, “Huh?” And he put a gag in your mouth and put you down. “Now, get on your knees.” And then Jack got dressed up and he had this water pistol we painted black, and he was like, “Okay! Take the pictures!” MARK: Yeah. I was being executed. It was a mob hit. I was being executed in a field for In the Days of the Mob. STEVE: Comics, man. You could do it. You could do that stuff. [laughs] MARK: Anyway, you miss him as much as I do, don’t you?

STEVE: Sure. But she never pushed for it. She was always in the background. MARK: I remember calling her—I was in New York. DC had reprinted New Gods, Forever People, and Mister Miracle for the first time, they were in black-and-white paperbacks. They were so timid about this, they put them out in black-and-white, with bad—well, not bad, but inappropriate toning on them. And I was up in the DC offices, and Paul Levitz and Jenette Kahn came in, and they said to me, “These books are selling way above our expectations. We’re going to do the series in blackand-white, and then we’re going to wait a couple years and put it out in color. We should have put it out in color in the first place.” And I said, “Would you mind if I called Roz Kirby and told her that?” And she says, 25

[above] Steve inside Puppet Studio, with a pterodactyl puppet reminiscent of Pterri from Pee-Wee’s Playhouse [inset above].

[below] Mid-1970s sketch of Orion of the New Gods.

“No, please call.” So, I called from Julius Schwartz’s desk. And I called her up in Thousand Oaks and I told her what they had said to me, and she started crying over the phone. And she was saying, “Jack always said they’d be a hit. Jack always said they’d be a hit.” And she died very soon after that. I was very glad I made that call so she knew that, and that they had sold well enough, and they had proven to stand, as I said, the test of time. I was so happy when they settled the stuff with Marvel. [I’m] so happy when those books keep coming out, and are proven to be as good and enduring as we thought they were. I am so happy when I see that Jack is getting way more credit than he ever has. He’s well on his way to getting enough of it. We’re not quite there yet, but I keep being aware of people—around show business a lot, I go into meetings and I am amazed that people say to me how much they love Jack. “Tell us about Jack. You knew Jack Kirby.” STEVE: I know. We’re kind of like Last of the Mohicans. “You knew Jack Kirby!” Yeah, we did, we did.

MARK: There’s a lot of people like that. “You knew Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. You knew Stan Freberg.” I’m getting that already. I was in a Costco in Tustin a few years ago. When Carolyn was sick, I used to have to drive her down to a doctor in Tustin and leave her there, so I’d kill an hourand-a-half. I’d go to Costco and shop, at the big Costco. So at Costco, they had a CD of the first ten issues of Fantastic Four, the first ten issues of Spider-Man, the first ten issues of Thor, the first ten issues—it was like a hundred issues of Marvel comics on a CD for, like, four bucks. So I thought, “Well, this might come in handy to have,” so that’s four bucks at Costco, the same price as snow tires there. And I’m checking out with that and all the other stuff I had bought. I’ve got the obligatory toilet paper. They won’t let you out without toilet paper and paper towels. Well, maybe now they will, but they wouldn’t then. And there’s this Hispanic kid, 15, 16 years old, who was acting as kind of a box boy bagging stuff or boxing it. And the CD goes down the conveyor belt to him, and he picks it up and he looks at it, and he sees it’s got Jack Kirby drawings on the outside on the packaging. And he turns to me and he says, “These were drawn by Jack Kirby, the greatest comic artist who ever lived. Marvel f*cked him over.” [Steve laughs] I froze for a second, and I looked to see where my Costco card or my credit card were to see if the kid had seen my name and put them together. I thought he looked at that, he saw my name, and went, “Oh, I’ll say something about it.” He hadn’t. He was saying this to a total stranger, he had no idea I knew Jack Kirby, and I just stood there like, “Wow.” People are catching on to this. STEVE: “There are other people who know Jack Kirby besides me.” [laughs] MARK: Yeah. I have had that experience many times. I’ve had that experience a number of times. I’m hesitant to leave the topic of Jack Kirby completely here, but we’ve been doing this for an hour and 25 minutes here, and I wanted to talk about what you’ve done since then, because I find it so remarkable. Tell the people what your main line of work has been. You were even getting into this while working for Jack for awhile, at the time. STEVE: Yeah. I was always interested in puppetry. Well, my main interest was always film and animation, more so than comics. But after leaving Jack, I went to work for Filmation in production—which, actually, you were involved in that, because the guy who got me in there was the guy who was Seymour’s producer, Gary Blair. And he knew somebody in Filmation. MARK: Oh, yeah, yeah. Seymour was a horror movie host in Los Angeles. Larry Vincent. He was Seymour on Channel 9 and later on Channel 5, hosting horror movies, and I wrote stuff for him for a while. We went down to the set and hung out with Seymour, and anyway… STEVE: And I met Gary Blair, and I was working

on something with him, and it didn’t work out. And so I said, “Well, I guess I’ll have to find a job.” And he said, “What would you like?” I said, “I’d like to work in animation.” So he said, “I know somebody at Filmation.” So he said, “Go to Filmation and talk to this guy.” So I did, and they gave me the animation test, which I failed because I can’t draw that well. But they said, “Well, we’ve got work in production.” So I said, “Okay, that’s fine.” So, for two-and-a-half years I worked in the camera department, in production. I went all over the place, learning all about animation, and got a union job, and a union card. It was great, because when they took the break during the summer, I had an income which was equal to what I would earn if I was working, so it was great. Let’s see; I think I was doing some stuff for Jack at the time, too. I’m not sure. I do remember Carmine came through to talk about Superman, and I tried to talk him into doing Kamandi as a cartoon, but he wouldn’t even listen to me. He was like, [gestures dismissively] “Get away from me.” MARK: I had the same experience with Sol Harrison at Ruby-Spears when we were doing Plastic Man. He came out to supervise some of that, and he would barely talk to me.

I met Steve a few years ago. Bruce Simon asked if he could join us for one of our presentations on Jack’s work at cons we were doing. I was thrilled—after all, Steve had been in the Fourth World as part of Jack’s team in Southern California. He was a celebrity in my view, an actual 12-year-old’s view of the comics. He was a quiet man filled with stories of Jack’s work and life. But cons are long days filled with sitting at tables and chatting with fans and each other. I was stunned after a few cons when he pulled out his Failure, the Insult Dog hand-puppet. Suddenly behind the puppet, a hilarious torrent began pouring out of Steve. He revealed an improviser, delighting in playing with whoever walked by, from trashing the occasional blowhard comics professional, to being kind and gentle with quiet and shy little kids. He made the long days fly by. So here’s a small tribute to the delights of a wonderful man. – Mark Badger

STEVE: [laughs] So then, for a while there, I worked freelance doing graphics. I went to work for a toy company as a business manager, just to earn money and get my own apartment. But I was still trying to get into show business. But eventually I went to work for Sid and Marty Krofft. By the way, Sid’s 91 this year. He looks great. So I went to work for Sid and Marty Krofft as—originally I was going to try to be a writer, to write material, but they needed puppeteers. They said, “We’ll train you to be a puppeteer.” I said, “I’ve always liked puppets. Sure, go ahead.”

own company called The Puppet Studio in North Hollywood. And, for the last 13 years, we’ve been doing work for Princess Cruises, all their shows. All their live shows that have puppets, or costumes that the dancers wear that have animation in it and all that, we’ve been doing. And now, as I’m 71 years old, I’m semi-retired. I still go in, but it gives me time to read all my old comics. [laughs]

MARK: They didn’t need writers because they had me. [laughter] STEVE: Yes, they had you and… I forget who that other guy was. MARK: Lorne Frohman? Rowby Goren?

MARK: Now, what’s very bizarre is, you were working for the Kroffts, and I was working for the Kroffts, just by coincidence—

STEVE: Lorne Frohman. I didn’t think highly of—Rowby, he was funny, but Lorne’s stuff, I don’t know. But anyway, what they did once I became a puppeteer, they were thinking of this idea for this show that took place in Washington, D.C. So, they put us in a room and had us bat around ideas for the show, which eventually became D.C. Follies, although stuff that we did never showed up in it. But, anyway, I became a puppeteer.

STEVE: Yes. And we never met there. MARK: Yeah, we met, on the Barbara Mandrell Show. I was helping out on that stuff over there. STEVE: Oh, right. MARK: And you were working with—who was that late puppeteer there?

MARK: Steve, the stuff I did for it never showed up in it, either. [laughs]

STEVE: Tony Urbano.

STEVE: But, anyway, I went to work for Sid and Marty Krofft. I worked on a bunch of shows for them, and I met a fellow puppeteer named Greg Williams, and we both liked to write. Greg had written for Muppet books, so while we were at Sid and Marty Krofft’s, the work started to dry up, so we said, “Well, let’s go into business for ourselves.” And so we did, and Sid and Marty were nice enough, when they got a job that was too small for them, they gave it to us. So, the first thing we did was this commercial with alien puppets, and after that, it took off. And, for the past 30 years, I’ve been a puppeteer, and I’ve worked on Mighty Joe Young, Men in Black I and II, D.C. Follies, Beakman’s World, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, Riders in the Sky, a bunch of commercials, and it’s been great. We’ve had our

MARK: He and I did not get along that well. But he was a very brilliant puppeteer. He just did not like anybody who was a writer if they didn’t work puppets. And I had worked puppets, actually, a little bit, so he kind of tolerated me. But you and I also got put together, completely coincidentally, on the ABC Weekend Specials. STEVE: Cap’n O.G. Readmore. MARK: O.G. Readmore. You built O.G. Readmore, and you and Greg operated the puppet, and I wrote the scripts. And do you remember who we worked with, the guest stars we had on those shows? 27

STEVE: Oh, we had Vincent Price [center right]. I remember we went to lunch with Vincent Price, and I was like, “Wow! This is Vincent Price!” I wish I had known more about radio back then, because I would have asked him all these questions about The Saint. Oh, Billy Dee Williams. Bowzer.

was sitting next to O.G. We were talking to her, and she starts stroking O.G. She forgot he was a puppet, and she’s, like, caressing him, and just holding his hand, and rubbing him, and things like that. And Steve is looking up, going... [makes a puzzled face].

MARK: Jon “Bowzer” Bauman, yeah.

STEVE: But that was great, because when she first came in, she was scared of it. She was like, “Oh, what’s this creepy thing?” And then, within a few minutes, after he started talking and moving, she forgot all about that and was like… [tilts head back and forth]

STEVE: A magician... MARK: Harry Blackstone, Jr. Pat Morita. STEVE: Pat Morita, yeah, Pat Morita. He was great. MARK: Shari Belafonte. Who else did we have on that? We had a bunch of celebrities.

MARK: Do you remember Frank Welker over lunch doing his Vincent Price impression for Vincent Price, and Vincent Price was teaching Frank how to make it sound more like him, and they were going back and forth, and as they went, Frank started sounding more like Vincent Price, and Vincent started sounding less like Vincent Price. [laughter]

STEVE: A bunch of ABC celebrities, yeah. MARK: These were the wraparounds. O.G. Readmore was a cat who encouraged kids to read more. So instead of reading, you would watch his show on television. He hosted wraparounds, intros and exit segments for the ABC Weekend Specials, and I was hired to write them, and Steve was doing the puppeteering with Greg [above left].

STEVE: Yeah, that was great. That’s fun.

STEVE: Frank Welker did the voice the first time around.

MARK: Amazing stuff. And then the Mandrell Show, I had left the Kroffts for a while, and I took a job over at Sunset Gower Studios, thinking, “Well, I’m going to get away from Sid and Marty for a while. I love them, but I need to work for somebody else.” And I moved in there. I turned down working on the Mandrell Show, and I moved into another show there, and suddenly they’re moving in across the hall at Sunset Gower. So, Marty’s in my office every day saying, “Can you help us on this script?” and stuff. Yeah, that was a very strange… everybody in our lives runs into everybody else. It’s amusing.

MARK: The first season was Frank Welker. The second season was Neil Ross. They just had to change O.G.’s voice. STEVE: We did a lot of those, you know? There were plenty of them. We did, like, two, three seasons, I think. MARK: I think we did two seasons. I have all our stuff on DVD if you want a copy of it. STEVE: Oh, I’ve got that. Well, I’ve actually got VHS tapes of it. [laughs] But, yeah.

STEVE: Yeah! It is. It’s a small town, really, doing TV. Well, that’s an hour-and-a-half, Mark. I think we need to—

MARK: Yeah, I had three-quarter-inch and I transferred them to DVD. But I remember, when we were doing them, Steve was in like a little hole. The set was built up.

MARK: We’re going to wrap this up, here. Steve, it is great to see you again.

STEVE: Up, and it was in a chair.

STEVE: Always good to see you, Mark.

MARK: So, he was sitting kind of below, so when O.G. wasn’t in his chair, Steve’s head would be poking out of it.

MARK: We should see each other more often. This is the closest we can get right now during the pandemic, but—

STEVE: Through the back of the chair. [below, with Bruce Simon] MARK: And we had O.G. in the chair, and Shari Belafonte Harper

STEVE: I know! You can’t get to the Magic Castle for lunch. MARK: There’s no Magic Castle. It’s closed down. Actually, it’s not that difficult to stay in my house, because there’s no place else to go. [Steve laughs] Nothing’s open. There’s no plays, there’s no movies, there’s nothing. STEVE: That’s what I tell people. They say, “Is the quarantine bad on you?” I go, “No. I don’t go anywhere.” [laughs] I stay here, I go to my office where Greg is in the studio, and it’s just him and me. I come home, I go to the market. That’s it! I’m not going to a rave. I can keep this up for a long time. [laughter] MARK: Great. Well, Steve, thank you for doing this with us. And we will see you very soon, and we’ll stay in touch. STEVE: Thank you, Mark! Bye! H 28

An amazing Captain America drawing Jack did for Steve. Inks by D. Bruce Berry.

TRIBUTES

A Talk with Greg Williams Steve Sherman’s business partner interviewed by Bruce Simon

[As much as Steve loved comics and cartoonists, his first love and interest was the world of puppetry, formed as a child in the early 1950s while being exposed to early television’s tsunami of children’s programming like Bob Clampett’s Time For Beany, Bil and Cora Baird’s Life With Snarky Parker, Hope and Morey Bunin’s Lucky Pup, The Adventures Of Cyclone Malone, Howdy Doody, Rootie Kazootie and on and on… Greg Williams began his puppetry career at age 15 with Los Angeles’ famed puppeteer Bob Baker, appearing all over Southern California, along with performing at the Bob Baker Marionette Theater in downtown LA. Greg went on to work with Jim Henson writing a best-selling series of books featuring the Muppets, published by Random House. Greg is also an accomplished historian and award-winning author of what is generally acknowledged as the definitive history of Tinseltown, The Story Of Hollywood: An Illustrated History. Greg was Steve Sherman’s creative and business partner for 40 years, as well as being a close friend and confidant. Their joint concern, Puppet Studio, located in North Hollywood, is one of the premier designers, creators and performers of puppets, marionettes, walkabout figures, and what have you—for television, motion pictures, theme parks and, most recently, entertainment on cruise ships. Over their careers, Greg and Steve had credits in motion pictures such as Men In Black I and II and Mighty Joe Young, television shows like Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, Beakman’s World, D.C. Follies, ABC Weekend Specials, concert tours for Cher and Katy Perry, countless commercials, and live entertainment. Greg was kind enough to sit down for a talk about Steve, their friendship, and their 40-year collaboration.]

When I left Bob’s employment, I didn’t know if I would continue in the field, even though I had been producing puppet films for the education market. One day, I got a brochure in the mail about a Krofft puppet school and I auditioned. Over two hundred people tried out. Steve and I, total strangers, were accepted into a summer workshop in 1981 of thirtyfive people. The workshop then reduced down to twelve puppeteers, including me and Steve. What cemented our relationship was that we loved the same puppeteers and their characters going back to Edgar Bergen and his vent figures. Most importantly, we loved to make each other laugh. We laughed a lot. That got us through the tough times. The Kroffts immediately put us to work on their TV shows. Steve did the drummer’s hands for the puppet band, Chuck Shackley and the Texas Critters, on the Barbara Mandrell Show. I did the puppetry and voice for Grandma Fudge on a short-lived Oral Roberts variety show. Steve and I were in business together by the next year. We had our studio and offices at Hollywood and Vine the year after that. We worked off and on for the Kroffts ever since.

O.G. Readmore © ABC Television

BRUCE: There are so many different areas of puppetry; you and Steve worked on feature films and television series, entertained live, and created figures for theme parks and cruise ship shows. You obviously have to be extremely versatile in the creation and execution of these various assignments; can you tell us some of what’s involved in these different areas of expertise?

GREG: Puppetry combines both the skill and timing of a performer and the knowledge of puppet-making. It helps to be strong in both areas because you can build to facilitate the performance. Steve never stopped drawing, so he was perfect for our designs and presentations. He really had a distinctive style and could nail a character in a sketch. I come from a long line of craftspeople, so fabricating came naturally to me. BRUCE: The Puppet Studio building in North Hollywood consists of offices, workshops and a soundstage. What was a typical day working with Steve when the studio was hopping?

BRUCE SIMON: Greg, this is obviously a sad time and a time of transition for you and Puppet Studio. I met you in early 1984 when you and Steve were working on the ABC Weekend Specials with O.G. Readmore at the old ABC studios in East Hollywood. Can you talk a little about how you became a puppeteer, how you two met, and came to your creative partnership?

Beakman’s World © Columbia Pictures

GREG WILLIAMS: I fell into puppetry by getting my first job ever cleaning the party room at the Bob Baker Marionette Theater. I got backstage for performances when employees failed to show at performance time. I was promoted from running scenic (the theater was fully equipped with a fly gallery and multiple layers of sets and curtains), to running the light board and, one day when a puppeteer didn’t show up, I was pushed on stage. 30

GREG: Steve managed the operations and I managed the creative production, although I never made a design decision without his input. He had a real talent for internet searches, and we would marvel at how he could find obscure items and specialty contractors we needed, like finding the best place to digitally print fabric when we were making a snake. We made a lot of puppet snakes. He also kept us current on computer and technical equipment.

GREG: Actors tend to be very generous when sharing a scene with a puppet and the puppeteers. It must be fun for them. Steve and I experienced that as regulars on D.C. Follies with the Kroffts. How bad can it be working with Fred Willard? Steve was nominated for an Emmy one year as an ensemble puppeteer, by the way. Two other standouts? Vincent Price, who as a co-host of the Weekend Specials, helped us when O.G.’s foot was hanging in a weird way and we didn’t have time to repair it. (It’s always stressful to stop shooting for repairs while the cast and crew wait.) Price said, “Let me put my knee against his foot,” and we finished the scene. Loved him for that. Then came Dom DeLuise—his TV movie Happy was a delight. He was the producer as well, so it was smooth sailing and much fun. On that film, we also got to work with a favorite of mine, Jack Gilford. Jim Henson is another standout. Steve and I worked with him filming Muppet*Vision 3D on the Disney Burbank lot. This was when Disney was buying the Muppets. Steve and I were outside the sound stage on a break when Jim came over to chat with us. He knew me from when I wrote Muppet books for his company. Jim was really excited about working with Disney and said that he would have a lot of work for us going forward. We were thrilled. But then Jim died and that bubble burst. There also a Tom Hanks story I am not telling here. But Hanks is a great guy, and we both loved working with him.

BRUCE: A lot of the work of creation and performance that you and Steve produced for feature films like Men In Black and Mighty Joe Young is now done digitally with CGI, and I think, at least, that’s a great loss in entertainment value when the creatures you created “acted” live with the cast, as opposed to the cast acting to perhaps nothing at all. What does a puppeteer bring to a live performance that a digital creation never can? GREG: Men In Black from the first to the third movie was a harrowing experience of computer animation replacing puppeteers. When we did the first movie, the puppets—particularly the worm guys—were a hit for audiences because of what the performers brought to the characters. I was the smoking worm guy, and flicking his cigarette while hanging in the break room made it into the movie. The villain at the end was originally a million-dollar, to-scale creature by the talented Rick Baker. I had to work this huge arm of the character that came down and grabbed Will Smith. It was technically difficult, but we pulled it off in rehearsal. Smith said the creature was very intimidating. However, the CG producer convinced the director to let [Industrial Light & Magic] do the monster. On the second film, we were shooting the scene where the actors got in an elevator with the worm guys. I am not sure what the director’s issues were, because I was on the roof of the elevator with my control box, but I remember when we concluded the scene, he said very loudly, “Let’s see what the CG team can do for us.” Yikes. CG also reduced our work in commercials where we have done talking laundry, spray bottles, and pots and pans for a shelf-liner ad (print and media). Fortunately for us, we had strong live performance skills, so we made the transition to live events, giant parade puppets, work for concert artists, and for Princess Cruises where we did over twenty shows over the years. So we continued to work. We also worked again with Rick Baker for Mighty Joe Young. Steve worked the shoot in Hawaii and I did pick-up shots in LA. So we weren’t out of creature effects entirely. We also both loved computer animation and were always incorporating it. We set up the animation process for TV show Beakman’s World. That was when we were animating on Amiga computers. Our first computer was an Osborne; then the Amiga, of which we had four; and finally, Macs.

BRUCE: Steve, of course, is well-known for his work with Jack Kirby. Are you a fan of comics and familiar with Jack’s work? GREG: I read a lot of comics as a kid, but never with the passion Steve had. I remember when I dug out my old comic collection for him, all dog-eared and missing covers, he blanched. I was already familiar with Jack’s work, but my friendship with Steve really educated me about the man. Jack was, like Henson, an amazingly gifted artist on so many levels. I understood Steve’s devotion to him, and to Roz and the family. I visited Jack’s studio a couple of times and was totally tongue-tied because of who he was and the impact his work has had on our culture. I did the same with Jim Henson too. I get all goofy in front of such extraordinary people I admire. He was probably used to it. I did learn through Steve the sad truth of how Jack lost ownership of his creative work. But Jack was a tough guy and I admired how he took it all in stride and never stopped working. BRUCE: Finally, Steve was well-known for being a retiring individual but, like most puppeteers, he came truly alive when he was working with a figure. I think that if Steve had a daily 15- or 30-minute televised puppet show, like the ones he loved as a kid, he would’ve been the happiest guy on the face of the earth, agreed?

BRUCE: You and Steve have worked with many great stars over your careers, especially when the legendary O.G. Readmore hosted the weekly ABC Weekend Specials; any juicy stories of amusing or alarming puppet/celebrity interactions?

GREG: Agreed. He was a funny, funny man. He entertained me constantly through the course of our careers. I miss him much. H [left] The Worm Guys from Men In Black. © Columbia Pictures

Thinking about Steve Sherman by Bruce Simon

ributes are always better given to the living while they can be appreciated, but I’m afraid we didn’t have the luxury of time in Steve’s case, as he left us quickly and unexpectedly—one of those cases of entering the hospital for one thing and, in a rapid course of events, having everything go south. I spoke to him by phone a couple of times a day while he was in the hospital, until his phone stopped picking up—a terrible, sad day. I’m perhaps being a little more personal that I probably should be here, but I’d like to just share some things about Steve and our friendship of over 50 years, beyond what he did professionally. When Steve and his younger brother Gary showed up on that Spring night in 1968 at Palms Park in West Los Angeles for an event we optimistically called The Evening of Imagination, the members of the Los Angeles Comic Book Club had no idea of the momentous events that would follow. Not quite the driving of the Golden Spike, but something important and lasting to us, at any rate. The Evening of Imagination was an evening event comprised of such antediluvian delights as 25-year-old comics exhibited in thick plastic bags and Orson Welles’ famous War of the Worlds radio broadcast being played from a reel-to-reel tape recorder, all designed to inveigle and attract new memberships to our Club, which met every Saturday at Palms Park to sell and trade comics, after a raucous meeting of adolescent oneupmanship disguised as parliamentary procedure. Steve would sit back and watch amusedly, as he was a few years older than the median age of our tribe—and Gary, being a few years younger, joined right in, loudly, joyously. For as reserved as Steve was, Gary was decidedly not. Steve had talents that made him the go-to guy in our circle; his father Eli was an electrical engineer and had taught Steve how to do just about anything about everything; this guy knew how the world worked, and in a practical sense, Steve could MacGyver his way in and out of any situation. Cars, cameras, printing; anything with moving parts or arcane instructions, Steve could master—a handy thing amongst a crew of dreamers, doofs and dullards. Secondly, Steve drove! His trusty Duster opened my world up beyond bikes and buses and shoe leather, as he made it possible for multitudes of adventures like ferrying me, Gary and Mark Evanier to attend the first San Diego Con, for just one example; and mundanely, but just as memorably, scouring art and paper stores in Downtown Los Angeles for the large sheets of two-ply Bristol board Jack preferred, as he detested the cheap paper DC provided him. It was an honor to source and trim the boards to their proper dimensions for Jack to use. When Marvelmania International, the successor of the M.M.M.S. as Marvel’s official fan club, opened an office in a tiny business court on La Cienega Boulevard in 1969, just about the 32

entire membership of the comic club the first and last of these departures in became employees of this grifter’s scam, format, leaving behind stillborn projer, mail-order business—something ects such as Soul Love and True Divorce, Marvel, Jack Kirby, and certainly we, and some that didn’t make it past the didn’t realize until later. Mark became presentation phase such as Superworld, editor of the fan club’s magazine (and conceived as a slick magazine with Steve was listed as Associate Editor) comics by Jack, Steve Ditko and a host which I wrote for and contributed to, of others; prose and articles by the as well as joining the ranks in the back likes of Harlan Ellison; and many other room filling orders for posters, stickers, artists and writers who were eager to portfolios, and other products, many work with Jack. They could have been sporting the work of Jack Kirby who, like contenders, all of them. Steve eventually most every other person or service prowent from assistant to family friend, vider connected to Marvelmania, wound confidant and collaborator with Jack, up stiffed for payment. Many more working on screenplays together that frustrated fans never received what they became the basis for Jack’s creatorpaid for with their hard-earned allowowned projects Captain Victory and ances, as Mr. Marvelmania was wont to Silver Star. just open up the day’s mail, shake out In those early years, Steve, Mark the bills and change, and leave the enveand I also worked constantly on our lopes in piles to be dealt or not dealt own comic projects, mostly to build with later. I especially remember that our drawing, writing, lettering, and day in 1970 that Jack and Roz walked technical skills for the future, but Steve into our office, dressed for an Eastern had interests and skills in other areas winter on a sunny spring Southern as well; he was mad for the world of California day (as they had just recently puppetry, stop-motion animation, and relocated to the West), and asked if I special effects for film. Steve could conwould kindly take down from the walls ceive and build in three dimensions, all the giant originals of the posters Jack [previous page] Steve discovered Kirby’s work with 1959’s Adventures of which led him to work with Mattel, the Fly #1. His early love of classic horror films is evident from this 1964 had drawn for Marvelmania and hand the Kroffts, Jim Henson and, with attempt at capturing Christopher Lee’s likeness (on his dad’s company them to him, as he had not been paid— stationary) from Hammer Film’s The Curse of Frankenstein [1957, top]. his friend and creative partner Greg which I gladly did. Williams, establish one of the premier [above] Early mimeo fanzine work by Steve. It wasn’t long after that, Steve companies specializing in the field, and Mark left Marvelmania to work as Jack’s assistants in his new Puppet Studio. position as editor/writer/artist on a group of new books for DC So many happy memories of goofy projects over the years: flurComics. One of the facets of this new arrangement most interestries of gag drawings skewering our pals and each other, Steve’s one ing to Jack was establishing new books in new formats beyond the piece of published comic art in my first underground comic (Savage regular comic books of the time. Along with writing letter columns Humor in 1973—collectors, take note!), and Greg and Steve hauling and articles for the comics, Steve and Mark worked with Jack on me in to help out and pitch in on a TV pilot they created that Sony features and photoshoots for the two magazines that actually made Television had optioned. It was a wild show about a gang of puppet it to the stands; In The Days Of The Mob and Spirit World. But with characters that ran a low rent TV station, utilizing and repurposing disappointing results in production and distribution, these were their library of TV shows, cartoons and serials to their own wicked

Savage Humor #1 (1973) from the Print Mint includes the one-page story “The Three Scuzzy Whores” with a script by Barry Siegel, and art by Steve Sherman.

“That’s probably Steve’s only piece of published comic art. When I was down in Los Angeles in August for his memorial, Diana and I were going through Steve’s art portfolios and found four or five versions of that same page. Steve was a very funny cartoonist, but he couldn’t ink or letter for beans, and there are multiple versions of that page that were ruined in the inking and lettering phase— I wound up doing both for him on that page. At that point Steve decided that drawing for print was not his thing, and confined himself to non-print work like character design and such from then on.” – Bruce Simon [l to r] Bruce Simon, Scott Shaw!, Steve Sherman, Mark Evanier, and Robert Solomon at Mark’s 60th birthday party. Mike Royer, Scott, and Mark were also involved with Savage Humor #1.

ends. A shame it didn’t go; but we took some Hollywood meetings I’ll never forget. For years I’d bring my young daughters to see Steve and Greg at Puppet Studio and we’d laugh, fool with the puppets, and laugh some more. We once wandered into a magic shop on Hollywood Boulevard where Steve placed my five-year-old Mimi in a magic cabinet and ran her through with a dozen swords, after which she exited, unharmed, to wild applause. You never forget friends like that. Being friends with Steve and his brother Gary over the many, many years was always a riot of laughs in venues far afield the regular comic nitwit’s haunts of book and comic stores—film and television studios, and the tiny cocktail lounges and Mexican restaurants near those same studios, as Gary made his way in the film and TV industry, working his way up from grip to assistant director on a wearying amount of cop dramas and situation comedies. Gary and Steve shared a practicality and pragmatism of thinking—they were clear-eyed and unsentimental about the so-called glamorous businesses they were in. And another thing about the Sherman Brothers: they were so temperamentally different;

Steve laid back and Gary loud and boisterous, but no two brothers were closer, no one’s laughs were louder and, when Gary left us, decades too soon in 2009, a light in Steve’s life dimmed. He was never the same. Then there was the memorable night in the Spring of 1998 where Steve, after we went to an event at the Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills, asked to talk to me on a private matter and, while perched on stools at the Acapulco Bar in Westwood, told me about a woman he had met online when he’d received an e-mail from her inquiring if he was the Steve Sherman she knew years back in school. He wasn’t, but wrote back so amusingly that over time it turned from a gag, to a correspondence, to something more. She wanted Steve to come visit her in Connecticut and he wanted to ask me if that was an insane thing to do. This was a bit early in online days, and I could tell Steve was intrigued, but he wasn’t one to act rashly—boy, was he not one to act rashly—especially to cross the country to meet someone face-to-face that he had only met online. Wow! I listened intently and could tell that she must be something special to grab Steve’s attention like that, so I advised him to go for it. He did, and Steve and his beloved Diana married on Christmas Eve of 1998. In recent years, Steve and Greg worked more and more on puppet and walkaround figures for theme parks and cruise ship shows, as CGI replaced many of the figures they created for movies and television. It was a new and challenging gig for the veteran creators, and sadly and concurrently for Steve, health problems started occurring; first a heart attack in 2013, and deteriorating kidney function more recently. Steve spent more and more time in his home recliner covered with his latest passel of pooches; Mr. Jinx, Dr. Huckleberry and Eloise. He’d join Mark Badger and me for panels about Jack at conventions around California—from packed rooms at the San Diego Comic-Con, to one show held at a county fairground in Merced, where we gave a Kirby panel in a barn stall with hay on the ground. He’d bring a hand puppet of a snarling Doberman that he’d use at our table to insultingly banter with the passing crowds. We had fun no matter what. Steve passed sadly and unexpectedly on June 24, 2021 at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was my friend, my best friend for 53 years. He still has a drawer in the bedside table of my guest room full of stuff that he left behind from when he’d visit. It’ll stay there. I loved him and I loved Gary. I’ll always miss them both. H [top] Steve with brother Gary. [above left] Kirby draws the Hulk in a Summer 1977 “Chalk Talk.” The Incredible Hulk television series, starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno, debuted on November 4, 1977, with no creator credit listed for Jack. Gary Sherman contacted the show’s producers to complain about the omission, and this letter led to Kirby eventually getting a cameo as a police sketch artist on the March 30, 1979 episode, “No Escape” [left].

I was Hugh Grant in Notting Hill [right] Long before Mighty Joe Young, Steve learned about gorillas, working with Jack on Kamandi.

[The above title comes straight from Steve’s wife Diana Mercer, who used it to describe her role as a sometimes bemused observer, looking into the world this magazine is about. As an outlier, she knew Steve not as Jack Kirby’s assistant, or even as someone in the entertainment industry initially. I don’t know if Steve ever met Julia Roberts, but as you’ll see, his first encounter with Diana was just as fortuitous as Hugh Grant’s with that actress in Notting Hill. This interview was conducted over Zoom on April 12, 2022, and transcribed and copy-edited by yours truly.] THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: Where and when were you born, and how’d you end up in California?

[above] Steve and Greg with Dee Wallace Stone between takes on the 1983 TV movie Happy, starring Dom DeLuise.

he was home early most days and didn’t have much to do. So we started writing back and forth. I wasn’t paying much attention to it, because I’m not moving to California. Then a sentence became a paragraph, which became several paragraphs—and again, I’m not thinking much of it, because we lived so far apart. It took us a few months before we even talked on the phone. That was October; by December we’re on the phone, and in February 1998 he came out to visit. Pretty much as soon as he arrived, I knew: “This is the guy.”

DIANA MERCER: I was born in 1964; I’m 58. I did all my schooling in Indiana, and then I moved to Connecticut to practice law. Then I met Steve on America Online, and that’s how I ended up in California. TJKC: [laughs] Was this in the early days of AOL? DIANA: This was before even chat rooms and stuff. They used to have profiles; you could fill out your profile, and search them. I had dated a guy named Steve Sherman in college, so I searched for all the Steve Shermans. There were 27 of them, and I wrote an email to each of them. One guy wrote back, “I’m gay, leave me out of this.” [laughter] And Steve wrote back and said, “I’m not the guy you’re looking for, but I saw your AOL profile, and I like bad horror movies too.”

[above] Diana shared, “He had a big crush on Antonella Barba from American Idol. That’s the lady with the polka dot lips. We ran into her at IMATS, the make-up artist show. LOL.”

Steve Sherman’s wife Diana Mercer, interviewed by John Morrow

TJKC: How soon thereafter did you get hitched? DIANA: Christmas Eve, December ’98. My grandparents got married Christmas Eve in 1924, so I wanted to be married then, too. TJKC: I’m assuming at the time, you didn’t know anything about comics, or Jack Kirby, or what Steve was doing with his puppetry. DIANA: I didn’t know him at all. I had no idea who he was. This was before Google or any of that, so I couldn’t look anything up. TJKC: Did you have any exposure to comic books growing up? Did Steve share with you that he had a comic book background before all his work in the entertainment industry?

TJKC: Smooth! [laughter]

DIANA: A little bit, but it kind of wasn’t sinking in. I have three cousins and a brother, so the older kids would go off and leave us younger kids to read Richie Rich and Little Lotta comic books in his bedroom.

DIANA: I know! Quite the pick-up line, isn’t it? He was older than me, and he lived far away, but we ended up corresponding. He was in the middle of doing Mighty Joe Young; this was 1997. Normally those shoots were very long hours, but they were shooting near his home, at the Spruce Goose hanger over in Playa Del Rey, and

TJKC: What attracted you to him initially? I’m sure there was some kind of spark prior to him showing up on your doorstep. 35

[right] Steve with brother Gary Sherman. [below] We’re not sure if Steve first saw the Kamandi #1 cover on Jack’s drawing table in inked or pencil form, but here’s Jack’s final original art, inked by Mike Royer. Not recalling the title, Diana delightfully dubbed it “the thing with the Statue of Liberty” during our interview.

DIANA: You know, it’s a really good thing we started by writing, because he didn’t talk a whole lot. There’s a lot going on inside his head, but he didn’t voice it. The writing made him say it, so he wrote me paragraph after paragraph about him and his life. He was funny and smart and sensitive. I was pretty sure I was in love with some guy I’d never spoken over the phone with. TJKC: That says a lot for his writing ability, for sure. Once you found out how deeply entrenched in comic books he’d been, did that give you pause at all? I know my wife had no idea what kind of crazy rabbit hole I was leading her down with this hobby the last thirty years. DIANA: With Steve, it was always there. He was never all about it, but it was certainly there. After his death, I was kind of surprised that all of these people came out of the woodwork,

saying what big fans they were, and just writing beautiful testimonials—and people that I don’t think he ever met in person. I was really, really touched, and I guess I hadn’t really wrapped my head around it. If he had bragged about the Kirby thing, maybe I would’ve gotten my head around it more. We went to see a comic exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in Los Angeles, and they had Jack’s drawing table, with the original art for [Kamandi #1’s cover]. Steve goes, “Oh, the last time I saw that, it was on Jack’s drawing table.” Just completely offhand. A lot of people would faint if they heard that, standing next to Steve. Like, “I think you’re a bigger deal than I know you to be.” TJKC: Did you get to spend much time with the Kirbys? DIANA: We used to do Christmas Eve with [Jack’s son] Neal and Connie and Jillian, and the comics stuff was always there, Jack Kirby and all of that. I had a friend who is a big comic book fan, and they invited us over for dinner. And her husband was all but trembling, [laughter] because he wanted to ask Steve a thousand questions. I don’t know; he had an encyclopedic knowledge of television and movies from way back, and he had a lot of other stuff going on. We would do stuff like watch the whole Jack Benny series and stuff like that, so it wasn’t just comic books. His head was in a lot of different things, so I didn’t necessarily give comic books a whole lot of importance. He and [his brother] Gary wanted to take me to Comic-Con, and I was like, “No, you guys go.” And then I went and had a super good time. He would complain about Comic-Con and how it wasn’t about comics anymore, blah-blah-blah. And we would spend the whole day there talking to you guys and all of his old friends. It was actually pretty cool to have all these neat friends; “Why don’t we do more of this?” TJKC: What’s your best memory of Steve and his brother Gary together? Because they fed off each other really well, and I could tell they were brothers, but were so very different.

Would you agree with that?

television; he didn’t really want all that fuss, I guess. I used to have to throw these parties for this networking group I was in, and one lady brought her nine-yearold, and all night long he had to keep telling this kid, “No, we don’t play with all these toys. They belong to a 60-year-old man.” [laughter] He had a John Kricfalusi playset, and a bunch of figurines and rubber statues of, like, Laurel and Hardy. It was mostly books, but in front of the books would be characters and things.

DIANA: Oh yeah. It was like Abbott and Costello, and “Who’s On First?”. Gary was so fast, and Steve was just as fast. They were never funnier than when they were making fun of people. [laughter] Evanier and another friend from the comicbook club, Steve Finkelstein—the Finkelstein stories are legendary. Until his parents moved out of their house, he still lived in his childhood bedroom, and he’d say things like, “Workin’s for saps.” And they’d imitate him. He’s 55 years old, and they’d ask him, “Hey Finkelstein, you think you’ll ever get married and have kids some day?” and he’d say, “Sure,” and they’d go, “When do you think you might get that started?” [laughter] One of the cons we went to, I took pictures of Steve with every beautiful tall woman there. So there’s this really tall woman, and there’s Steve with his shorts and backpack, and she’s wearing a bikini or something. It was so funny. He was such a good sport about it.

TJKC: Was Steve’s association with the Kirbys a constant factor in your life? How prevalent in your day-to-day existence was the name “Kirby”? DIANA: We didn’t talk about it all the time, but it was like an unspoken rule that the Kirbys were kind of more important than anyone to Steve. It influenced a lot of what he was thinking and doing. TJKC: What’s your profession? DIANA: I’m retired now, but I practiced law. I was a divorce lawyer. I wrote a book about divorce law, and I made Steve read the manuscript. And he said, “Oh my God, if I’d known any of this, I never would’ve gotten married.” [laughter] TJKC: What did you do for fun? What was your favorite thing to do together, or favorite place to visit on vacation? You said you were about to go to Hawaii—do you have family there?

TJKC: Roz had passed by the time you got married, but did you spend much time with Lisa, or Tracy and Jeremy, their grandkids?

DIANA: We went there on vacation, and as soon as the plane landed, it was like, “This is where I belong.” So we were working toward moving there, and when he died, I was renovating our dream condo over there. He really liked the beach. He was kind of a lizard; he liked hot stuff. We have this dog, Mr. Jinx, who’s a character. We went to Palm Springs and took Jinx, and by the end of the trip, the joke was, he’s the Mayor of Palm Springs, because he’s such a friendly little guy. So Steve and Jinx were completely joined at the hip, and when Jinx was a puppy, whenever Steve would go to tie his shoe in the morning, the lace would snap, because Jinx had chewed it. So I bought a gross of shoelaces, because he had to replace them every single day. But he was never one to get mad about anything, really. I only saw him angry twice. One thing we did, was we played poker. We got caught up with Chris Moneymaker, that amateur that won the World Series of Poker one year. They started airing the poker on ESPN, and we became fascinated with it. A friend of mine was a professional player, and he got us started with a group called BARGE. It’s just this fun group, and the people are great. It was going to be in Vegas in six weeks, and we’d never played poker before. So we went to this tournament with all these professional players, and both of us barely knew how to play. It’s all the computer scientists and lawyers, and the people are so fun; they’re kind of a big deal at work, but they come to BARGE to be silly. And Steve just loved it; like always, he kind of hung to the side, but I could tell he was taking notes, and he would just talk to these people with really interesting stories and backgrounds. He loved going to BARGE.

DIANA: We went to Jeremy’s first wedding, around when we got married. But we didn’t see them a whole lot; Steve did see them without me, but we didn’t really hang around a whole lot. TJKC: Steve and Neal were always very close, right? DIANA: Yeah, but Steve would never let me have anybody over. He didn’t want anybody to come over. Evanier had a couple of girlfriends, and I’m like, “Let’s invite them over,” and Steve’s like “No, no, no.” He just liked to sit in a chair with the dog on his lap and watch 37

We kept it pretty simple. We would plan our year around the BARGE thing every year. He just liked to do stuff together; I think he really liked being married, which made me sad because we didn’t get married until he was 48. And he liked doing stuff with his family and Gary. They also had a sister and a half-sister. TJKC: I assume with Steve working on different movies and TV projects, you had some interesting encounters with celebrities. At the Disney Legends ceremony in 2017, I was completely starstruck seeing Oprah, and Bob Iger, and Whoopi Goldberg and others. And Steve egged me on, like, “Just go over and talk to them! C’mon!” And it was no big deal to him. DIANA: Were you there when he talked to Oprah? And she’s like, “You’re so sweet!” and she gave him a big hug and a kiss. TJKC: Yeah, and he was like, “Oh, it’s just Oprah.” [laughter] I assume he had plenty of interactions with other celebrities during his career. There’s one story about Tom Hanks that Steve’s partner Greg didn’t tell us for this issue. DIANA: Meeting Tom Hanks was cool. I, of course, had to run an errand over to Steve’s office while they were there. And I’m in the outside room, and they’re using that as a craft service area, and I hear this voice, and I’m just like, “Whoa!” Tom Hanks comes out, and it’s just me and him, and he goes, “Hi, I’m Tom,” and I go, “Uh, I’m Steve’s wife.” And he goes, “Oh, I love Steve! Steve is the greatest!” He couldn’t have been nicer. His cousin is Will Scheffer, who’s married to Mark Olsen, and they did Big Love and Getting On; they’re TV writers. They had a deal with HBO and Playtone, and we also were invited to the premiere of Big Love. Steve saw Bill Paxton, who he’d worked with on Mighty Joe Young, so we said hello to him. I was standing in the bar line behind Harry Dean Stanton; it was pretty crazy. He really, really liked Dom DeLuise, and Fred Willard,

who he worked with on D.C. Follies. And he loved the Kroffts (Sid and Marty). There’s all these stories that just sort of trickle out. We’d been married awhile before he showed me that Paul McCartney thing. He wasn’t “Let me tell you a story—I’m the big guy in the room,” y’know? He would just kind of offhandedly talk about when Charlize Theron flashed him, and that kind of thing. [laughter] TJKC: In closing, is there anything else you’d like people to know about Steve? DIANA: He was just the sweetest, nicest guy, and it’s such a huge loss. And it was not expected at all. I mean, he had the kidney dialysis, but that was going fine. But he was always really sweet with fans too. And very self-effacing. H [top left] Oprah Winfrey at the 2017 Disney Legends private reception. [above] A thank you letter to Steve, following the cancellation of the Barbara Mandrell & the Mandrell Sisters TV variety show. The Krofft Puppets appeared in 35 episodes. [left] Steve with Dom DeLuise while filming the 1983 TV movie Happy.

the Ultimate Collector Story S by Glen David Gold

teve Sherman tried his best to not meet me, but I wore him down. It took years. But because he finally relented, he ended up telling me one of the best collector-mentality stories you’ll ever hear. I collect Kirby’s original artwork. Because I’m obsessive, long ago I started paying attention to people who’d been in Jack’s circle— artists, friends, allies—who had managed to pick up a piece or two. Armed with a mental list of folks, I’d run into them at conventions or make phone calls to them to talk about what they had, what oddball stories they knew about the work, if they’d ever sell, what the pieces meant to them, that kind of thing. Over the course of a few years, I managed to talk to pretty much everyone. Except one guy. It’s not that he wouldn’t take my calls—it was that he dodged any question about artwork. Lovely, friendly person with great stories about working with the boss at Marvelmania, and later working with puppets (I think the puppets were more humane than his prior gig), and a general friendly distancing, a closed door when it came to whether he owned anything. In 2004, I wrote an article for Playboy about collecting comic artwork, and in it I laid a diagnostic finger on how odd the passion is. More or less I confessed to being slightly insane, but I was also self-aware enough to be a human being first, collector second. I sent a copy to Steve and seemingly five minutes later, he called me, laughing about my insights. He invited me to come over and look at his stuff. So I did. And you know what? It was great, but greater still was getting to hang out with him. He had a gentle soul, and this quiet wit that made even the most devastating comment about someone’s nutty behavior seem kind. We ended up being friends. I called him sometimes to see if he might sell me something (no) but also just to get his take on the latest Marvel movie, or auction results, or museum show of Jack’s work. Ultimately I helped him sell a few small things, but he held onto the great white whales of his collection for a while. And then a couple of years ago this thing happened that put our friendship into focus: he had a series of heart attacks. One of them was so intense it in fact killed him, and he had to be brought back to life. On the other side of all that, he was okay but also diminished. We talked about the experience—I asked him if he remembered anything, looking I guess for “white light” or his long-gone relatives. And he said no. “But,” he added slowly, “when the worst one came, when I could feel myself slipping away for real, the last thing I remember was

this little voice saying, ‘Oh no, Glen Gold is going to get all my artwork.’” He added, “And that’s what brought me back.” This made me laugh about as hard as any collecting story ever has. He had his priorities straight! In conclusion, to anyone reading this who got to enjoy Steve’s company in the last couple years of his life; you’re welcome, I guess? But also: I’m so glad I got to know Steve. May we all have something we feel so intensely about, that it brings us back to life. H [Glen finally was able to get Steve to part with this Thor #159 page.]

Foundations

Here’s even more of Simon & Kirby’s Link Thorne work, this time from Airboy Comics V4, #9 (Oct. 1947), with art reconstruction and coloring by Chris Fama, and a character no doubt inspired by the infamous Ma Barker. We’ll continue with another installment of the complete Link Thorne stories next issue.

INNERVIEW

The Case for Jack Kirby

Steve Sherman interviewed by Steven Brower • Originally published online at: https://www.printmag.com on September 26, 2014 [below and next page, top] Jimmy Olsen and Kamandi are apparently the two Kirby titles where Steve had the most creative input, so here are Jack’s sketches of key characters from those strips, as drawn in his mid-1970s Valentine’s Day sketchbook for wife Roz Kirby. [next page, bottom] Three presentations Steve did with Jack, long before Captain Victory and Silver Star became comic book series. Silver Star dates as early as November 14, 1975—Kirby had just gone back to Marvel in May 1975, so wasn’t putting all his eggs in that one basket.

[2022 Introduction: I never met Steve face-to-face, although I wish I had. His warmth and decency came through on social media—no small feat. Before Facebook, I only knew Steve as Kirby’s assistant and sometimes collaborator during one of my favorite periods of Kirby’s oeuvre, DC Comics in the early 1970s. I had always wondered who Steve was, beyond reading about him in the pages of this magazine. What I did learn through social media is that he was kind and genuine, with no apparent ulterior motives. He shared his knowledge generously and with great enthusiasm. Beyond that, he had a great sense of humor, a friendly countenance, and was clearly a creative soul. I loved watching clips of his puppetry. I was completely unaware that it was Steve’s artistry I was watching with my then young daughter on two of her favorite shows, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse and Beakman’s World. I did interview him, however, on the eve of the Marvel/ Disney vs. Kirby’s lawsuit’s scheduled appearance before the US Supreme Court. His advocacy and passion for Kirby never wavered. We are all the poorer for Steve’s passing.]

STEVEN BROWER: Did you read comic books as a kid, and if so, which ones? STEVE SHERMAN: Yes. I think the first comic I ever read was Dennis the Menace when I must’ve been five years old, at the barbershop my Dad took me to. Prior to that I had been hooked on the Sunday comics and cartoons on TV. I was a big fan of the funny animal comics. Later, I came across some coverless ECs being sold at a local store. I started buying the DC line, Superboy, Superman, etc. I saved them all in a wooden Army footlocker. Unfortunately, we moved out of the country for a while, and the footlocker got left behind. My younger brother, Gary, and I started buying again and saving them. In the late ’60s we started buying the Marvel comics. We bought a huge lot of back issues from a high school friend. Kept them all. The first Kirby comic I ever came across was The Fly when it first hit the newsstand. Wasn’t sure at the time who Kirby was, but I liked the comic a lot. BROWER: How did you come to work for Kirby? SHERMAN: Mark Evanier, my brother and I were working at Marvelmania International, which was set up in Los Angeles. We were all members of the Los Angeles Comic Book Club which would meet on Saturdays at a local recreation center... the fellow running [Marvelmania] hired us to roll posters, package envelopes, etc. I first met Jack when I, along with Mark Evanier, Gary, and our friend Bruce Simon, drove to his place in late 1968 or early 1969 in Orange County, which is south of Los Angeles. At that time he was temporarily living in a two-story townhouse. I don’t even think a lot of the furniture had arrived yet from New York. Jack had his drawing table set up in a tiny bedroom. He and Roz were very nice to us. They were looking to buy a house in Thousand Oaks, which is about 40 minutes north of Los Angeles. Jack was doing a lot of the artwork for Marvelmania. It was a nice visit. A few weeks later Jack and Roz drove up to Los Angeles and took Mark and myself to lunch. He told us he was leaving Marvel, and would we like to be his assistants on his new DC titles? Of course, we both said yes. BROWER: What was that experience like? Were you assigned tasks? SHERMAN: It was fun and exciting. We (Mark and I) were given a chance to come up with ideas for magazines and characters for Jack Kirby! Who wouldn’t be jazzed? Jack gave us assignments for In the Days of the Mob and Spirit World. He also allowed us to contribute ideas for Jimmy Olsen. We also came up with designs for different magazines—some Jack’s idea, some ours. Much later I contributed ideas to Kamandi and co-created Kobra with Jack. BROWER: Were you nervous at first? 48

SHERMAN: We didn’t have time to be nervous. Everything happened so fast. Jack had to get out a book a week, on top of doing the first issues of the magazines and other things. Plus Mark and I were putting together Kirby Unleashed and planning a trip to NYC to attend the Seuling Con. That first year went by pretty fast. BROWER: What was his work process like? SHERMAN: Jack worked seven days a week, about ten hours a day. He would start around noon or 1 p.m., work for a while, take a break and get back to work at about 8 p.m., until 3 or 4 a.m. He would take a blank sheet of Bristol, rule it off, and start drawing. Nothing fancy or elaborate. The story was already in his head. He basically just transferred it to paper. He could usually do three pages a day. When he was done, he would copy the pages and then ship them off to DC Comics via Special Delivery USPS. BROWER: Was he open to suggestions? SHERMAN: Yes. Not so much with the Fourth World books, since he had a very clear vision of what he wanted to do. But with Jimmy Olsen and Kamandi, he was receptive to any ideas Mark and I might have had. When he did the 1st Issue Specials, he was very open to any ideas, since he was frustrated that he was coming up with characters and concepts that were only going to be used once. BROWER: Did this experience have a lasting effect on you as an artist? If yes, how? SHERMAN: Yes. I learned a lot from Jack, especially how to be professional and how to develop a story so that it flows. It was really a privilege to be able to work with him. BROWER: Did you remain friends? SHERMAN: Oh, yes. I was friends with Jack until the very end. We worked on two story concepts after he left DC—Captain Victory and Silver Star. I would visit him at least twice a month. I am still very close friends with his son Neal. BROWER: What are you thoughts on the ongoing court case with the Kirby Estate and Marvel? SHERMAN: Well, by the time this is published we will know whether or not the Supreme Court took the case. I hope they do. All Jack ever wanted was for his family to be taken care of when he was gone. So if the Court finds that Jack was indeed a “freelance contractor” and that he does have a claim on the copyrights, I think an amicable settlement with his Estate could be reached. I’m pretty

certain that his children do not want to be in the business of publishing comics or producing movies. In my opinion, what they want is an equitable acknowledgment of the contribution that Jack made in the creation of the Marvel Universe. H

OBSCURA

Barry Forshaw

A regular column focusing on Kirby’s least known work, by Barry Forshaw

Barry Forshaw is the author of Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide and American Noir (available from Amazon) and the editor of Crime Time (www.crimetime. co.uk); he lives in London.

as any illustrator will tell you, if you haven’t nailed something in the original drawing, all the colour in the world won’t make it work. However, when we saw the splash panel for “The Martian Who Stole My Body,” with its truly grotesque giant marauder (sporting red fins instead of ears and strange antennae that sprouted from its chalk-white pupils), there was no denying that it was the sudden splash of colour on these black-and-white shores that made the most remarkable impact. And that wasn’t all.

A MARTIAN DOUBLEWHAMMY

Ah—Jack Kirby splash panels! Don’t you love them? In fact, I’d go so far as to say that for most readers of this magazine, the aspect that probably instilled in us a love of The King’s work were those eye-filling, full-page panoramas, crammed full of the kinetic actions and impeccable design sense that was his alone. But as my task (as detailed in the job description given to me years ago by editor John Morrow) is not to talk about the more familiar things—such as the Fantastic Four tackling Galactus—but to peer into the nooks and crannies of Kirby’s work, let me talk about something that had a considerable impact on British comic aficionados decades ago (remember, this column is being written only a couple of miles away from the ever-flowing Thames). Up until 1959, the only exposure that comics fans in the U.K. had to American Marvel or DC books would have been in the black-and-white reprints which were the only way we could obtain such material (this was due to the ban on the import of American material). And, ironically, this meant that Jack Kirby sciencefiction and fantasy strips would only be seen as backup to characters who were reprinted here, such as Blackhawk or The Flash (although the three glorious issues of Race for the Moon were reprinted under that title). But in 1959, the embargo on American material came to an end, and suddenly—to the delight of British fans—the wonderful full-colour American books began to be imported (or were made available customised with a British price in place of the cents price). And one of the earliest to appear was Journey into Mystery #57 (March 1960), followed by the succeeding issue of that magazine in May of the same year. And the two stories that blew away readers were a double-whammy—in fact, it was one story carved into two separate entities, “The Martian Who Stole My Body” and “Return of the Martian” (both stories were inked in striking fashion by Dick Ayers with notably bold brushwork). British fans had been impressed by Kirby’s truly bizarre and imaginative creation of alien monsters even when seen in black-and-white—after all,

THE SEQUEL IS THE EQUAL

However, even better was to come with the sequel in the next issue of Journey into Mystery: “The Return of the Martian.” Once again, we had the destructive alien visitor dominating the splash panel, but this time it was the sense of design that impressed as much as the impactful imagery. The tanks which the Martian is ripping to pieces are virtually off the top of the panel, so that they become almost abstract elements in the design—aided by the fact that the title was placed dead centre of the creature’s body (unorthodox for the day). And—even more impressive—two pages into the story, we had the creature bursting out of a prison cell with the image shattering the frame (in a way that Kirby would not have been permitted to get away with in his DC days, where he was obliged to be more conventional). The destruction of a car on the following page was also more violent than was expected in 50

Monster from Planet X!” The piece represented two things in quintessential form familiar to Lee/Kirby fans: it was another one of the duo’s gigantic monsters destined to be destroyed or vanquished in the final panel—a particular Stan Lee specialty—and the story is of an unassuming, unheroic protagonist who is semi-despised by his wife or girlfriend for his “weakness” until he proves his worth by destroying the monster. Both of these themes get a solid workout in the tale, but, as usual, the real reason for reading it is Kirby’s bizarre imagination in creating a memorable monster. As often with this era, the most striking image is not necessarily the one of Groot used for the cover, but the splash panel [below] where the angular tree creature has a particularly menacing air. More bizarre (and more unusual) is the panel on page 3 which takes up a full third of the page, with a monstrous Groot attracting other wooden objects towards him and absorbing them to increase his bulk. In fact, the image of wooden barrels and cupboards being pulled towards him is both ludicrous and fascinating; but once again, it is the admirable economy of design with which Kirby creates his effects that makes the tale work. I mentioned above how Stan Lee was not above purloining from H.G. Wells’ methods of dispatching his monsters—i.e. the smallest things. And in this piece (spoiler alert!), he does it again— Groot is done for via termites. H

comics of the day. As in all the Stan Lee/Larry Lieber/ Jack Kirby monster stories, there was to be no great loss of life because of the Comics Code, but violence could be wrought on inanimate objects. The writer Joe Lansdale once told me in a similar fashion that when he worked on the Batman animated series, he was able to destroy the ventriloquist’s dummy villain in a way that would not be permitted had it been a human body. I don’t want to dismiss the wonderful books that were being done in the 1960s (such as Mort Weisinger’s Superman mythos; Richard Hughes’ golden Post-Code, pre-superhero period at ACG with Adventures into the Unknown and Forbidden Worlds; and Julie Schwartz’s magnificent DC SF titles Mystery in Space and Strange Adventures), but there is no denying that it was a rather staid era, with the strictures of the Code making any sense of threat rather mild. Kirby arrived on this scene like gangbusters, and although readers did not know at the time that the operatic violence of the monster books was soon to be transmuted into the panel-busting heroics of the Marvel super-hero age, just take a look at these two issues of Journey into Mystery, and you’ll see how all the elements were already in place. Oh: and as for the fate of the Martian in these two tales, who cared that the reason for his demise—Earth’s germs—was ripped off from HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds (along with some of Wells’ text)? The workaday writing on these Marvel monster books was invariably the last thing of interest—Kirby was key.

GROOT BEFORE HE WAS CUTE

If your only acquaintance with the alien tree creature known as Groot is via the winning little member of the crew in the Guardians of the Galaxy films—the creature with, of course, just a single line of dialogue: “I am Groot”—then you don’t know the whole story. The original Groot had a far less likeable personality when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (or possibly Larry Lieber) created him for Marvel’s Tales to Astonish #13 (November 1960) in a story called “I Challenged Groot! The 51

Mob Mentality

Sherman Speaks Out!

Steve discusses Kirby’s experimental magazine line with the Jack Kirby Museum on June 1, 2021

[right] Jack and Roz Kirby at Coney Island in 1941. Murder, Incorporated was active from 1929 to 1941, so Jack knew firsthand what they were capable of. [below, top to bottom] Rand Hoppe, Tom Kraft, and Steve Sherman.

[Tom Kraft and Rand Hoppe of the Jack Kirby Museum kept Kirby fans enthralled during the Covid lockdowns, by hosting a regular series of online video chats about Jack. This discussion was streamed live on June 1, 2021, and the transcript was copy-edited by John Morrow. Some deleted comments refer to images we didn’t show here due to space limitations, and would only make sense while viewing the full video, which can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=cz2VFiMzpuk&t=5s] RAND HOPPE: Hey everybody, here we are, it’s the Jack Kirby Museum. I don’t know, we’ve been gone for a while, but we’re doing the live thing again. It’s the beginning of the Speak-Out Series! This is it, it’s three events! This is the first one, and there’ll be two more, because that’s what “three” means. [laughter] We’re going to be talking about Jack Kirby’s magazines that he did at DC Comics and what happened... what’s on the screen next? Here today, we’re going to talk about In The Days Of The Mob, and we’re looking forward to having Steve Sherman join us. He’s not in the Green Room right now, but hopefully soon, and we’re gonna go through all the stories that Jack told and it’ll be really fun. These stories are wild—wild, I tell you! I am Rand Hoppe. I am the founding Trustee, acting Executive Director of our small 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center. And who are you? TOM KRAFT: I am, as the name says, Tom Kraft. I am the president of the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center, located in beautiful Hoboken, New Jersey. RAND: It’s true, yep. We’ve been doing some live streams for a while; I guess practically for a year now, I think, since the pandemic hit. We kind of really took to the live streaming and it’s been really fun, and we had a really good time. We did that whole summer of the Fourth World— but we’ll get to that. We’re gonna just do some set-up, some introductory stuff to kind of get moving, and we’re still hoping that Steve will show up in the Green Room. So let’s head off into the world here. So, it’s 1947, and what’s happening is that it’s post-war and—what was it, Stuntman at Harvey [Comics]? It didn’t really happen, so Simon and Kirby, the Joe Simon/Jack Kirby team ended up selling some stuff to Hillman, and Hillman had a comic called Clue Comics, and it was kind of just a boy’s adventure comic. But once Simon and Kirby got there, they started doing crime comics, because crime comics had become a trend. Simon and Kirby did not invent them; was it Lev Gleason or what’s his name: Mr. Daredevil [Charles Biro]? Anyhow, Simon and Kirby did some crime comics and I think this is their first one in Clue Comics [vol. 2, #1, March 1947]: “King of the Bank Robbers,” a True-Clue Crime Story. Now, the interesting thing about this is, that is the name of a chapter of this book, The Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury, and that book came out in the late ’20s, and it’s filled with stories about the gangs. Oh, it says Steve is in the backstage... 52

Four gangster story, so we’re still not at In The Days of the Mob, but very soon. [The Godfather] came out in ’69 and it was very popular. It was a book, not a movie; the movie was in ’72. But Mario Puzo was a writer for Martin Goodman and what you would call his “men’s sweat magazines” or slick magazines, men’s magazines, adventure magazines for men, and he wrote this book. He actually lived in the town that I grew up in and mentions it in the book completely at random, so it just seems like a lot of this was just kind of building up to this. [shows DC house ad for In The Days of the Mob, above]. This first showed up in a 1971 Superboy comic that I found online. Steve, do you have any memories at all about the development and the challenges that Jack might have had with Carmine [Infantino] and making this thing happen?

okay Steve, we’ll be with you in a sec. So there’s The Gangs of New York with a lot of stories about the gangs of New York, and one of the stories was “King of the Bank Robbers,” so it makes sense that this is where they got some of their stories from. So they did a few stories in Clue Comics, but then guess what? It turns out in 1947 these things were hot and Simon and Kirby... turned their Clue Comics into Real Clue Crime Stories, and look who’s on the cover? It’s Ma Barker and her sons. Obviously Simon and Kirby knew that story, and thought it would make a great comic, so there’s the mother of crime all the way back then. TOM: I also should mention that Jack Kirby was born in 1917, so he actually was of a certain age when all the stuff was going on. So this was something that he lived through.

STEVE SHERMAN: It’s been fifty years; I can barely remember yesterday. [laughter] As I recall, it happened pretty fast. In fact, I think Jack turned all four of those magazines out in one month. He was doing the [Fourth World] comics at the time. He wanted to do something; he wanted to do dollar comics. He was trying to convince them that they should do bigger packages and get out of that, you know, 20¢ [format], and a lot of what these magazines turned out to be were because the distributor told them what they wanted. The distributor said, “Let’s do crime, let’s do horror”—shocker, whatever you want to call it—“divorce,” and he said the Black community was underserved, “So let’s do a Black romance comic.” Yeah, having Jack Kirby do a black romance comic, wow. [laughter] And so he knocked them out. I think we had a week to do each one. Mark and I wrote one of the text pages in one night. I shot the cover, Jack pasted it up. It was

RAND: That’s true, that’s one of the things about the context, about his interest in these stories, was he knew these people. They were who he grew up with. What did he always say? The easy way to grow up in his neighborhood was to become a corrupt cop or a corrupt politician or a gangster. TOM: Yeah, the gangsters were after getting nice suits. RAND: Right, but nobody messed with their mothers. [laughter] But the Hillman thing didn’t last very long, and they ended up going to Prize, where they did Justice Traps The Guilty. So there’s a story they did there, and Headline Comics #23, I believe, is the first issue they did. [Originally] it was just news stories or adventure stuff, but then it turned into a crime comic with Simon and Kirby... There was a period of time where Simon and Kirby did a significant amount of crime comics. I don’t know how long it really went on for, but I will say this: Get this book [The Simon & Kirby Library: Crime], because it’s beautiful. If you can find it, it’s one of the latter editions of the Simon & Kirby library that Steve Saffel and Harry Mendryk worked on, and it seems like by the time they put this one out, they really knew how to make the reproduction just beautiful. In the ’50s at some point, this book came out: The Story of the Syndicate: Murder Inc. We’re going to talk about this book a little bit later, but in 1951 this book came out, chock full of info. So, Star Trek [right, featured gangsters]—and then soon thereafter, we had this Fantastic Four gangster story which is pretty hilarious, with The Thing. And here’s Steve coming in again... yeah, he’s back! I just brought up these images of Kirk and Spock being gangsters and the Fantastic 53

RAND: The Warrens were kind of there, right? So there was Creepy and Eerie on the stands, so maybe the distributor was like, “Try this.” STEVE: Well, I think DC didn’t know how to distribute magazines. The only magazine they had was Mad, and [Bill] Gaines was not too happy with Jack doing magazines, because he was still in there and he was giving Carmine advice. He was still angry with Simon and Kirby for going with the Comics Code Authority, so he held a grudge. And the guys in the production department, Jack Adler and Sol Harrison, weren’t happy either. They didn’t want to do it. It was an experiment and at least they gave Jack a crack at it, but they just weren’t set up for it.

[next page, top] Colletta-inked art for the header of Steve’s story in In The Days Of The Mob #1. [next page, center right] Newfangles #49 (July 1971) announced the death of Jack’s b-&-w line.

just very fast. He wanted color; he thought it would be a nice slick magazine in color, and then when it came out, it was just a big mess, and he had the second issues ready, but they just canceled it because—I don’t know, they didn’t even distribute them. I think Mark and I had to go all the way out to the San Fernando Valley to some bookstore and we finally found one on the stands. I know Jack was just disappointed. It was really good work; it was beautiful stuff. Mike [Royer] inked it and then they printed [Spirit World] in that blue ink.

RAND: It just seemed like everywhere it went, there was an obstacle or somebody with a bad attitude or something, to cause problems for sales. I’m gonna go back to some of the slides. So this was the house ad that came out. STEVE: Yeah, you can see it’s 50 cents. 50 cents! You can make a lot of money at 50 cents! [laughter] TOM: This is 1971, so maybe it’s a little more than today. RAND: Is this the comp [above left]? It seems like it’s almost there; the lettering is different on “Big Al.” STEVE: The “Roaring 30’s Come Alive!” and the colors are different; a lot of little differences. TOM: I guess the text was redone too. It also says In The Days Of The Mob “Comics,” and they got rid of the “Comics.” Who put this together? Did you, Steve, or Mark? STEVE: No, Jack did. Like I said, we were going so fast, there was no time. Jack just had to send it in. Don’t forget, the only way to get it there was by US Post Office. So you had to make sure that he got it in the mail in time for them to get it. No FedEx, no internet. And you get a free giant Wanted poster; Mark and I did that. [laughter] TOM: Mark said that he did some of these collages, that it wasn’t Jack. Is that true? I think that’s what he was mentioning. He looked at some original art I had or something at one point, and he goes “I put that together,” so he did some of it. STEVE: Could be. RAND: So then we meet Warden Fry and we enter this kind of tissue paper magazine with some tones done by the guys in New York, right, Steve? STEVE: Yeah, Jack didn’t do the tones. It was the cheapest paper they could find. RAND: So it’s all about the prison, the prisoners are in prison in hell, and Warden Fry is like a Cain or Abel kind of host for the stories, introducing people—and look, it’s Ma Barker again, everybody. [laughter] Here we have original art that we’ve scanned for the Ma Barker story, so you can kind of see some Vinnie [Colletta] stuff going on. There’s some white-out over here. I feel like one of the sons has been whited-out here... but yeah, it’s kind of fun to not have panel borders,

and have it be open. It basically goes through how everybody dies.

and they printed it in kind of a sepia... and I believe these stories are published in a Jack Kirby Bronze Age Omnibus... We have someone on Facebook asking, “Who is Steve Sherman?” [laughter, as they see it’s Mark Evanier] Hey Mark! So we end up heading off into some Al Capone, and it’s just a whole story about how the big guys want to take him out, they want to replace him with somebody. He doesn’t want to get replaced, obviously, but we have this really sweet spread. He decides to throw a party; he knows he’s gonna get demoted, but he throws a big party. Guess what happens? There’s lots of death.

STEVE: What confused me at the time is, who’s the audience for this? You know, 50¢ comic books, who are you aimed at? You’re not aiming at Kirby fans because they want super-heroes, and you’re not getting adults, because at the time I don’t think adults were buying comics—certainly not in magazines. This certainly wasn’t aimed at 12-year-olds. RAND: No, not at all, especially the second issue. I mean, that is probably the big elephant in the room in a way.

TOM: Basically, they were gonna assassinate Al Capone, and then they killed the assassins before they got to the party.

TOM: I wonder if there was ever any numbers on sales? STEVE: Well, I’m sure there were. You had to have, because they knew how many they printed.

RAND: So when we see [The Untouchables] with Robert DeNiro as he kills somebody with a bat, well, maybe that didn’t happen—and it was really just his stooges killed somebody with a bat. It’s all about, you know, fun. [laughter] But then we see the Warden again, he’s like, “All right, Al, I’ll see you on the other side.” You know I kind of agree with [viewer John Sagness] on this; the audience was probably the same Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella audience, but it didn’t really capture it. So we have “The Breeding Ground,” where reading this, it reads like Jack wrote this. We have a story from you and Mark coming up I think, about the florist.

RAND: And right then, they were offering them for sale in the house ad in some of the DC comics. Vinnie’s inks look okay with the added tones, I guess; they’re kind of all right... They all just see their end. The one son Lloyd is a model prisoner, but he gets out, he’s gonna straighten up, but he’s got a girlfriend with a temper and a gun—always a great combination. [laughter] TOM: So yeah, that’s the end—he ends up dead too, and then Ma gets to see her boys in Hell. RAND: I wanted to show the 2013 edition that was published, that John Morrow worked on and DC published. They took the tones

STEVE: “Funeral for a Florist.” Yep. I actually researched that. 55

RAND: And then the Warden’s back... here’s some comments about Country Boy, who later showed up in New Gods #4 [left]! [laughter] So that’s kind of fun, that Jack would talk about the M.O. and how the FBI would catch him, but then like, “Yeah he was kind of all right. Let’s put him in the New Gods.” Then we have... the inside back cover “next issue” ad—so [the next issue’s] been worked on immediately because there’s [Mike Royer’s] inks right there in the next issue ad.

RAND: So here’s a layout for the cover for #2: “May be posed photo, easily done.” [above] TOM: And Steve, you were mentioning that you were set up to... I think Barbara Kirby was in it, and your brother was shooting photos...?

TOM: How soon after issue #1 did Jack start working on #2? Because Royer didn’t start [inking for Jack] till around ’72.

STEVE: No, I was shooting the photos. Barbara and my brother Gary were dressed up. Mark was the victim and Jack was behind him with the gun. We shot that in an empty lot next to Jack’s house.

STEVE: I think as soon as he finished the last of the four. I think he just went on to it. RAND: At some point after In The Days of the Mob #1, Jack got himself a xerox machine, I think courtesy of [his son] Neal.

RAND: And this is your personal project, Tom, that you’ve taken on. TOM: Yeah, since I have both of those, I started trying to figure out what Jack might have done with issue #2, so I started putting something together like this [next page, top]. It’s not done yet, but I did the collage at the top and everything, but it’s the idea that if Jack actually was able to do it, this might be what it could have looked like.

STEVE: Yes. Neal was working for Canon. That was his first copier; it was a Canon that [used] that paper that disappears. The paper was coated. After that he got a Xerox. RAND: And then also, this big switch was that Mike Royer came on. Young Mike Royer, look at him [left]! And this is like ’75 San Diego Comic-Con, so he’s even older than he was in ’71 when he was inking the next [issue]. Mike’s talked about the ink job that he did on this, and it is really something special.

RAND: And then there’s this guy [right]. [laughter] STEVE: Yeah, that’s the photo we took. You can see the hills of Thousand Oaks behind him. That’s my brother and that’s Barbara on the other side. That’s Jack’s winter coat from New York that he had. [laughter] That’s a gun we got at the dime store and painted black.

TOM: Yeah, I think it’s some of Mike’s best inks. It’s so good.

TOM: I was thinking about using 56

TOM: Well, I actually bought the original art and I had the big blank spot in the middle, and I saw the Hitler theme there [in John Morrow’s version, above], and it just didn’t feel like it was the right thing that would go there, because he’s talking about “These were the killers.” Yeah, Hitler was definitely a killer and all those people were killers, but that’s not in context to a mob story, and if you read the words on the right, this is their story, meaning this is not Hitler’s story, this is their story. So I went through a bunch of Murder, Inc. books and a lot of research online, and then I called the Los Angeles library because I figured that that’s something that Jack would do. He would probably try to find something, because I also own some collages that have space images from the Griffin Observatory in LA. So I went through their archives and I found an image that I thought made sense. It was an image that was put together by a newspaper company; they did a collage of a bunch of different pictures to get all the mobsters lined up in a row.

this photo for the center of [issue #2’s cover, above]. So you were the photographer of the group?

RAND: It’s a total, like, dark room, airbrush, painting thing. We actually found all the source images, didn’t we? All the individual ones, and they had taken all these images of these guys and created kind of a murderer’s row at the LA newspaper.

STEVE: Yeah. I wonder what happened to that one nice shot I shot for the Divorce book? I gave Jack the proofs and the proof sheet and the negatives, and never saw it again... it was this hot redhead in a bikini, having a fight with her boyfriend. I think it was gonna go in the Divorce book.

TOM: And that was like in the late ’30s I think, so it made sense to me because all these guys—like the guy with the patch on his eye, all

TOM: So [issue #2] is a lot different than the first one. It’s much more gory and it’s talking about Murder, Inc., so it’s a very different feel from the first one, which is more kind of like an introduction about the Warden. Now, the Warden is just kind of like a side part of it. RAND: ...here’s the first spread. For the book that came out in 2013 with DC, I remember [John Morrow] calling me and talking about it, and he’s like, “I don’t know what to do with that empty hole. You know Jack was probably gonna put a picture in there. He mentions Hitler in the text here; maybe it’s a picture of Hitler?” And I’m like, “Maybe? I don’t know.” So again, if you were to get that Omnibus, this is what you would see. It’s not in sepia tones because they don’t have the gray tones and they didn’t want to keep that level of consistency, or pay anybody to do that—but then what happened, Tom? 57

these guys are in the story. So “these were the killers” and it fit perfectly. The aspect ratio, the proportions, fit perfectly into that box, so I’d say it’s probably an 80% chance that was what Jack was thinking of, maybe more. [Editor’s note: I think you were dead-on here, Tom (pun intended)!] RAND: It’s possible. It’s cool. TOM: Yeah, it’s cool, but those were the killers. I mean, they were them. RAND: It really fits the text here on the lower right, a lot better to have pictures of gangsters rather than Nazis. And what a spread; holy smokes! This is their story, “Murder, Incorporated,” so here’s one of these examples [below]. Now this is goofy, because we have the pencil photocopy, so we can see what Jack drew and what Jack gave to Mike, and then we have the original art, but you can see all the shenanigans going on here with white-out and glue—and this is the first time this story saw print, in Amazing World Of DC Comics, featuring Jack’s best friends Sol Harrison and Jack Adler. [laughter] So they decided that Mike’s lettering was no good, so that’s why it says “edited, written, and drawn by Jack Kirby, and inked by Mike Royer,” but they completely pasted over all of Mike’s lettering. Did a letterer need some work that day? Somebody in the production office? What’s the point, anyway? STEVE: Naah, they just wanted to screw with it. TOM: Mike told me he thought they did that, because they didn’t like his slanted lettering, because it wasn’t a DC style. They wanted it perfectly vertical lettering, so if you look at, you can see in some cases where the lettering paste-up is gone, you can see Mike’s original slightly slanted [lettering], and then what they put on top is perfectly straight.

[above] Some of the Kirby promotional giveaways Steve produced (on his own dime) to help the Kirby Museum.

RAND: That’s not the case on this page, because that’s the two versions, right? That’s Mike’s, and then this is... TOM: I don’t think so; that’s a paste-up over Mike’s. That’s why it’s a different color, it’s darker. Because they

RAND: Yeah, we go for a ride in the Poconos. TOM: And this is a tactic that the mob used to basically kill somebody, and most of the time the victim didn’t even know it. They just go for a ride and they end up dead. Look at this great page [below]; great mouth. It’s a really great mouth. They’re all laughing, because they’re going to a vaudeville show up there in the suburbs. RAND: The guy was hiding in the back seat, so he’s like, “I hope Jack heard that one. You hear that one, Jack?” and then Jack pops up and starts stabbing the target. He didn’t even know he was there. TOM: He dies, but it was very hard to kill him. RAND: I love this pose of the girlfriend in the chair reading the newspaper [left]. used really cheap paper that they pasted over it. RAND: So we’re going to move on. Oh, and then John Morrow got Frank Miller to do a version of it for [the cover of Kirby Collector #16, above]. I thought I would throw that in there, because that’s pretty cool. So they get Kid Twist’s girlfriend, they drop her in the fields outside of Brownsville in Brooklyn, she crawls back, and this is brutal—and then what happens? “Meyer did it. I’m gonna kill Meyer!” And it’s just all kinds of revenge and murder. TOM: Beautiful art, though. I love the top of the second page. It’s amazing; this guy was like buried alive... It’s amazing when I look at this, because it reminds me so much of a gangster movie, especially like the top right with the shadow of the guy getting shot, and the angle showing the ceiling like that; it’s just so cinematic. RAND: And then there’s this fantastic montage kind of page. TOM: It’s showing all the activities of Murder, Inc.—which actually existed for those who don’t know. When I first read this a long time ago, I thought Jack came up with the idea of Murder, Inc. I didn’t know that was a real thing... RAND: And it’s not blatantly said in the lead-up to this, but there were some comments about how they wanted to kill... Thomas Dewey, who was an anti-mob D.A. in New York City, or New York State, and then became the Governor and ran for President, and almost won against Harry Truman—that famous newspaper, “Dewey trounces Truman,” back in the day. So the Warden shows up, and then what happens? TOM: We kind of switch; there’s a period inbetween kind of thing to get to “The Ride.” 59

TOM: So the reason they were killing him is because he was taking money from the pinball machines. Wasn’t that a big thing for gangsters? I read that they used pinball to make a lot of money. STEVE: All the candy stores— they all had pinball machines in New York, and up and down the East Coast. RAND: We do have the original art for this as well. He doesn’t have cement shoes; he’s got a pinball machine that holds him down at the bottom of the lake... and then we get to the “Ladies of the Mob.” Jack had this bit up here when it got photocopied: “The Face Of Violent Death” [above] didn’t end up in the final. “Oh, yes friends!! Despite the pouts and moans from Women’s Lib, when Murder, Incorporated aimed for blood and guts, there were ladies present!” Okay, Jack. Look at this; holy smokes, it’s beautiful... [below] I had to include this one just because I love the way that Jack drew, and Mike inked, that woman’s bathing suit. I just love it; it’s so “Mike.” The way he did the blacks, with the lines open—he’s filling it in, it’s just great Mike stuff.

kill you. And there’s the Decent Kid. This is the saddest one, this is the worst one. This is basically a gang rape as far as I can tell, or brutality; incredibly brutal. TOM: “They did things to the Decent Kid of a brutal and traumatic nature.” “Hold her down...” STEVE: You’ll notice this second issue is much more adult than the first one. I think Jack was really trying to push the envelope here.

TOM: And you notice in [that] panel, how he always adds to it, like all the shapes, the background, and all that stuff. It’s funny because they didn’t credit him as a letterer, but there’s a lot of places where they didn’t paste over his lettering.

TOM: I was saying before, I wonder if this could ever even be published nowadays. It was in 2013, but I mean, it just seemed so risky now compared to back then.

RAND: So Mrs. Tootsie, her husband gets murdered, but she starts having fun with everybody else.

STEVE: [I’m sure] Carmine and the rest of them saw this issue and just plottzed.

TOM: She’s the lady of the mob. It’s great stuff.

RAND: Yeah, I could see that. Then we have the “A Room For Kid Twist” story... again, John [Morrow[ was trying to figure out what to [put in the blank background], so when it got published, he just used the collage from the inside front cover. It was kind of hard... I guess based on the story that Jack wrote, it was probably a prison photo of some sort.

RAND: And then there’s Ellen, the Kiss Of Death Girl. If you kiss her, guess what? Somebody else is gonna want her, and then they’ll

TOM: Well, he was out of prison, and was put into this room for observation. He was going to rat on all the other gangsters, so I don’t know what kind of image would be there. RAND: “The end for Murder, Incorporated came when law jammed some prize canaries into the HalfMoon Hotel.” Yeah, I don’t know. I just love Mike’s inking on this page, so I included the pencils... TOM: In that last panel, the Warden looks like the devil. RAND: Yeah, he’s got that skull action. 60

STEVE: Yeah, Red Skull, kind of. [left]

STEVE: Yeah, because he was really trying to push, he was trying to do as much as he could to get out of 12¢ and 20¢ comics.

TOM: So that was the end of Kid Twist, and that was 1941. It ends by saying that, basically, the whole era of the gangsters is coming to an end.

RAND: It seemed like Carmine was into it, but... STEVE: He was at first; then he got sidetracked with other things. Then he got really into the Superman movie; that took all of his interest away. TOM: Was it Jack’s idea to do these books to begin with? You said that he was trying to get away from 20¢ comics.

RAND: Then [there’s] a comedy piece.

STEVE: Yeah, it was his. And the distributor was for it. I can’t remember the guy’s name, but he was the head of DC’s distribution.

TOM: I was trying to figure out—I know Jack drew it, but the first panel at the top with the Model T, it just doesn’t... I don’t know who inked that, but it doesn’t look like it was Jack’s pencils. It looks different than the rest of the page.

RAND: Reuben also mentions that there was Chicagoland stuff in Kamandi, which I forgot about! [see next page, top] STEVE: No, Jack never wasted anything. [laughter] If he could use it again, he’d do it. Just change it around a little bit. TOM: Did he have a big library of reference books? For instance, all the mob stuff—like did he have that book about Murder, Inc., or did this stuff just come out of his head?

RAND [after a text message from Mark Evanier comes in]: [The two-page comedy strip] was inked and lettered by John Costanza. That’s absolutely true; thank you, Mark... Here’s the coming attractions for [In The Days Of The Mob] #3 [right]. TOM: Do you remember Jack talking about an issue #3, Steve? STEVE: No, I don’t. Mark might remember, but I don’t—because as soon as those first issues came out, it was dead. You just forgot about it. RAND: So that’s the world of In The Days Of The Mob... If you can find [the 2013 edition], it’s a cool thing to have. And those stories [from] In The Days Of The Mob and Spirit World are included in this Bronze Age Omnibus. It’s a book that’s this thick, filled with all those wonders: “The Losers,” “Atlas,” Sandman, OMAC, Demon, and Kobra. TOM: I think we’ve done podcasts on almost all of those. STEVE: What a good character. Bruce Simon will tell you what a great character [Kobra] is. [laughter] RAND: That is the show... it’s been great having you here, Steve. STEVE: Good to see you! I can’t wait to see you next year at the convention. RAND: I know! Come to the booth. Bring the puppet, please! More pins! [laughter, Steve pulls out Failure the Insult Dog puppet] STEVE: So, anybody have any questions? RAND: Reuben on Facebook is asking about what was going on at the time of the Mob stories; what was he was working on? STEVE: New Gods, Forever People, Jimmy Olsen, and Mister Miracle. RAND: So it was right in the middle of the Fourth World. 61

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STEVE: Yeah, he lived that stuff. Cause back when he was growing up, it was in the papers. 1930, 1940, it was the news. So he’d read it all, he memorized it all. I mean, he had some research books, but not a lot, like what you would think. And he didn’t have time to research anyway; once you sat down and started working, it was just straightthrough. No, not a lot of research—maybe for a picture of a car or a train, something to refresh his memory, but other than that, no. He’d seen all the [gangster] movies; all the movies were in his head, and he could just off the top of his head tell you the story. You ask him, and he’ll say, “Oh, Kid Twist, he got thrown out of the window,” because this was Jack’s neighborhood. It happened in his neighborhood. He knew all the places; he could draw it with his eyes closed... [A viewer writes in, “Why didn’t they just do one magazine, with a different subject each issue, instead of four separate magazines?] Because they wanted to put out four at a time. They wanted another one of Jack’s ideas to blitzkrieg the newsstand, so you had four coming, boomboom-boom, so once you bought one, you’d want the next one, and the next one, and the next one. But the distribution was just awful, so they never got out there. H

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UP ON THE ROOF t is instructive to note that during Jack Kirby’s boyhood, he often found himself involved in fights that would sometimes even move over rooftops, and from building to building. Seemingly as a result, he was able to use this experience to depict action that took place in such settings. Fairly early in his career, he set the S&K series “The Newsboy Legion” in a fictional area of New York that he called Suicide Slum. 1 Here on the cover of Star Spangled Comics #8, the heroic Guardian leaps across space from rooftop to rooftop. The shot is at a dizzying angle, and we feel a powerful sense of vertigo because our eye level is right below the string of boys that look as if they are about to tumble onto us at any moment. Even early on, Kirby was a master of such perspectives. Among my favorite moments in Kirby’s run of the Fantastic Four comes in issue #49. 2 Galactus is an omnipotent god-like being who appears to be unstoppable, but the Thing, the embodiment of stubborn persistence, refuses to give in. He is seen high above the New York skyline, forcibly deconstructing Galactus’ energy-draining device. One of Kirby’s most potent artistic abilities was to show relative scale and mass. In the small panel, the King gives us a marvelous panorama of cityscape, emphasizing Ben Grimm’s size relative to Galactus and the teeming metropolis far below. The positioning of the huge serpentine object the Thing has dislodged gives the panel even more dynamic energy. When we see Galactus begin to fall in panel four, the intricate network of architectural structures give us the sense that he will plunge a great distance.

This sense of the architecture of space has always fascinated me, and having internalized so much of Kirby’s work, I find that I often notice similarities in stories that are sometimes separated by decades. In the mid-1970s, Jack Kirby was working at DC Comics, doing his best to find a secure place for himself after the cancellation of his Fourth World epic. One of the projects that he took on was a World War II-based series called “The Losers,” published in Our Fighting Forces #151-162. A critically acclaimed story in this run was “A Small Place in Hell,” appearing in Our Fighting Forces #152 (Jan. 1975). Something in the story’s layout jogged my memory. Where had I seen this before? Then it came to me. The setting of “A Small Place in Hell’ reminded me of one of my all-time favorite

angle of the shot dramatizes the danger they are in by navigating the roofs. They maneuver over the buildings as they stalk their prey, the Nazi executioners. Their dynamic leap in panel three brings the eye down to panel four. 5 On the second Our Fighting Forces page, the Losers are also using the shelter of the roofs as they move from building to building, attempting to evade the Nazis that occupy the town. I love the second panel in which they are climbing down the drainpipe to reach the ground. There is again a strong sense of vertigo, as Kirby uses the downward diagonal progression of figures here. He uses the diagonal both here and in the second panel of the Fury page, where we see Cap and Bucky perched on the slatted rooftop, to give us this feeling of precariousness. As in the Sgt. Fury page’s top panel, Kirby uses a motorcycle’s diagonal positioning in the bottom panel of the Losers panel to emphasize the dynamic movement of the panel. 6 Let’s finish with the Thing again. In a veritable Wiley Coyote moment, Ben has accidentally leaped out into space. Powerful visual cues on the page give us a sense that he will not stay aloft for very long. The dark shaded side of the buildings beneath his right foot make us believe that Ben will follow that trajectory downwards and drop like a stone. Fortunately, Reed catches him in an arm lasso before he lands on the buildings far below. Even though this is a relatively small panel, the depth of space created by proportion and architecture is profound. All of this is indicative of the fact that in artistic composition, it is the scale, positioning and relationship of figures to one another and to the background that make the picture more dynamic. It is yet another potent example of Kirby’s mastery of the medium. H

3 comics, Sgt. Fury #13 [Dec. 1964, above], featuring Captain America. 3 What struck me most forcefully was the compositional use of the surrounding building’s rooftops, as the Nazi soldiers in both stories move through the respective towns. Throughout his career, Kirby has used architecture to emphasize the movement of his narrative as well as the action of his figures. These two particular gripping war stories are standouts in this method. 4 In the first panel on the Losers page 7 [right], we see the Nazis moving deeper into the panel from left to right, following the angle of the rooftops above. Kirby’s composition has the soldiers massing towards the horizon line until they reach the center of the panel, and then the positioning of the figures moves the eye outward and to the right as they come towards us, breaking down doors and firing machine guns. It is another example of a deceptively simple composition giving us a dynamic sequence of events in space/time. Notice that we do not see the Nazi firing on the right until our eye enters the deep space of the panel and moves back outwards. It is the break in the central roof structure that stops the eye going further inward and initiates the movement of the figures back out again. In the top Sgt. Fury panel [above], a similar thing is taking place. We see the Nazis coming up the street, and by the diagonal lines of the truck and the houses, our eye is drawn back down the row of buildings until it reaches the central blue structure. That building’s wall drops like a plumb line to the figure on the motorcycle, which moves the eye back out to the right foreground. In panel two, Captain America and Bucky are first seen perched on a rooftop. The

4 64

5 [below] Kirby’s storyboards for the January 25, 1978 “The Menace of Magneto” episode of the DePatie-Freleng The New Fantastic Four animated series. Rooftops abound!

Quite A...

...PATCH JOB!

Incidental Iconography

An ongoing analysis of Kirby’s visual shorthand, and how he inadvertently used it to develop his characters, by Sean Kleefeld

hoosing which character I want to research and write about in this column usually ties in with other research I’m doing already. For examples, my piece on the Watcher a few issues ago came about while I was doing a deep dive on the Galactus Trilogy, and my piece on Ego came from a focus on Jack’s collage work more broadly. But when I was looking to select a character for this issue, I wasn’t working on anything that lent itself to studying Jack’s character designs. I opted this time to just scan through a list of Kirbycreated characters and go with one that might strike me as interesting.

I’d gotten only as far as the “C”s when I saw the name CrazyQuilt. “The Batman villain? That’s one of Jack’s characters?” I asked myself. I had first seen the character back in the 1970s when I had copies of Batman #255 (which reprinted Star Spangled Comics #123) and #316, but the only Batman work that I could think of that Jack had done wasn’t until the 1980s. A few internet searches later, though, and I discovered that Crazy-Quilt is actually a latter day addition to Batman’s rogues’ gallery; his first five appearances in the 1940s pit him against the Boy Commandos! Like most of the characters I write about here, there’s some interesting things going on! Crazy-Quit debuted in “Crime in Technicolor,” the lead story in Boy Commandos #15 by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby [left and below]. Before losing his eyesight in a gunfight, Quilt was drawn as a relatively stereotypical French artist, wearing an artist’s smock and beret while sporting a pencil-thin mustache. After the incident, he dons a tunic and trousers made in a crazy quilt style, using scraps of primary color swatches. He accessorizes that with a yellow scarf and a blue hat, which I believe is supposed to be a wide-brimmed Panama. Although likely not as commonly known today, crazy quilts first became popular in the late 1800s. It’s believed the style of sewing together a seemingly random patchwork of irregularly cut scraps of cloth was inspired by some of the exhibits at the 1876 World’s Fair in Philadelphia. Most crazy quilts in fact are not quilts in the strictest sense, and are closer to blankets from a functional perspective. That the character would adopt an outfit seemingly created in the same manner and call himself Crazy-Quilt thus makes sense, even though his costume is not quilted as one might expect with, say, a winter jacket. I would like to take a moment to call out CrazyQuilt’s realization that he can only see colors [right]. While this is pretty absurd from a scientific and artistic sense—all any of us see are colors—we do get an interesting panel that gets at trying to show what things look like through Crazy-Quilt’s eyes. The surgeon he looks at is bathed in green and orange, and the lines and spot blacks we typically see outlining the figure are broken up—as if the figure was drawn and inked normally, but then was cross-hatched all over using an 66

A few issues later [#22, left], Swan then brings Crazy-Quilt back again with another modification. This time, the leather straps and mask have been replaced with a full skullcap. The three headlamps remain, but the mask is gone. Given that Crazy-Quilt has no real “secret identity”—he called himself simply Quilt before he was shot—the mask really didn’t serve a purpose anyway. This story also introduces Crazy-Quilt’s “colorscope” that he uses to hypnotize people. Jack picks up the character again with Boy Commandos #24 [right and bottom left]. He largely takes the design updates from Swan’s version, despite it being only about a yearand-a-half since he invented the character. The skullcap piece is now in place, and the individual quilt design is larger than he had originally created it, with none of the pieces containing their own patterns. The only alteration Jack seems to make is just being inconsistent with the belt—about half of the panels that should show Crazy-Quilt’s belt do not. But as you’re likely aware, Jack wasn’t exactly known for being consistent with details like that to begin with. Crazy-Quilt only had two more Golden Age appearances after that: one more issue of Boy Commandos drawn by Swan behind a Carmine Infantino cover (who draws the older leather-strap headpiece instead of Swan’s skullcap), and he takes on Robin the Boy Wonder in Star Spangled Comics #123, drawn by Jim Mooney. He then vanished from the comics pages for nearly three decades before finally returning in Batman #316. He’s only made about a dozen appearances since then, but aside from the hat Jack originally gave him, his basic costume has remained largely unchanged. He had some flared shoulder pads for a bit and they moved his scarf down around his waist for a while, but he’s kept the crazy quilt style tunic and leggings, as well as his mustache, for all these years. I’m honestly not sure what I find most striking in digging back through CrazyQuilt’s design history: that Jack’s basic design ideas have remained in place for three quarters of a century—said ideas being ones he dashed off once and barely ever even glanced at again—or that Jack created the character in the first place! H

opaque white paint. It’s like a more complex version of the dotted line effect Jack would later use to show the Invisible Girl. While I have seen similar artistic approaches in earlier comics on occasion, I’ve never seen it used to the same effect as Jack does here. Now, interestingly, despite Crazy-Quilt returning only three issues later [Boy Commandos #18, left], Jack is not the artist behind the story; the duties here are handled by Curt Swan. The story makes more clear that Crazy-Quilt’s claim of only being able to see colors is really his only being able to see especially vibrant colors. So he devises a headlamp that projects strong red, yellow, and blue lights on everything before him, which he wires up to some controls and battery pack on his belt. The headpiece is little more than a few leather straps, but the lights do mean he has to ditch his hat. The headband also has an attached piece; something like a domino mask that comes down over Crazy-Quilt’s eyes. I find this fascinating in that he’s undergoing a substantial change both to his look and his “powers” in only his second appearance—it’s in fact a multi-page sequence to explain all this—and these were not done by Jack. The other “change” Swan makes to the costume is that he simplifies that pattern on Crazy-Quilt’s tunic and pants. It’s still very much a patchwork of random shapes, complex enough that virtually no comic artist would have the time to even attempt making it consistent from panel to panel, but what Swan does is eliminate some of the simple patterns within each patch of cloth. Jack had drawn some with polka dots, stripes, or a brick pattern, but Swan simplifies things by keeping all the individual patches plain. He also frequently draws them somewhat larger than Jack as well, meaning he has fewer to illustrate overall.

[left] Jack’s illo of Crazy-Quilt with a few more design changes, from Who’s Who #5 (July 1985).

Gallery

STEVE’S JOBS

Commentary on pencil art for issues with Steve Sherman’s involvement, by Shane Foley [right] Kamandi #29 (May 1975), page 5 And so Jack’s take on “Whatever happened to Superman?” is under way. Though the idea was prompted by Steve Sherman, the way the story is told— evocative, yet explaining nothing about Superman’s actual status in Kamandi’s world—is surely pure Kirby. What strikes me about this page is that, though Jack had drawn tens of thousands of fight scenes to this point, most, like this one, still feel fresh and from a slightly different angle than we’ve seen before. What a powerful and moving figure the ape Zuma is here. [next page] More Kamandi #29, pages 2–3 plus multiple panels Totally in character with other elements of Kamandi’s world, as conceived by Jack, names known to us have their true meanings lost or warped, making for some truly fun story aspects. Since the Superman legend is first told here in “comic strip terms” (page 3), and there are all these references to DC comics (shown here with panels from pages 7, 8, 9,13 and 15)—we, as readers from way back when, may have wondered if Jack was alluding to Superman being a legend only. It was not until the actual costume was revealed (top right panel, from page 18) that we knew Supes was a reality in Kamandi’s past. Other Superman references not shown here are spoken on page 1 (“not a bird or a plane”), 6 (kryptonite), 8 (“up, up and away,” and flying “higher than the tallest building”). And I love Kirby’s concept of the “daily planet” elsewhere in the issue—a massive, spherical rock!

Twice-told Kirby covers, with commentary by Shane Foley

[right] Jimmy Olsen #144 (Dec. 1971), page 19 Last issue we commented on Jack’s ability to do great likenesses, when he did Henry Kissinger in Captain America. Here, he does another superb job as he riffs the likeness of Scottish comedian/actor James Finlayson for InterGang assassin Felix MacFinney. This is a beautifully told sequence, with the director’s camera moving around the centre of the drama, then moving sideways to the unexpected possible means of a resolution, subtly introduced earlier in the story. Is it just me (or Jack’s photocopier), or do the pencils on JO always look a little lighter than on other strips of the time? [next page] Our Fighting Forces (The Losers) #153 (March 1975), page 11 Another page where Jack’s habit of doing absolutely tight, complete pencils stuns me. Look at that final panel: Storm’s chair legs have decoration, there’s a glimpse of an artifact on the sideboard near his elbow, and a partial picture shown behind his head. The furniture behind Rumpkin’s head has details and shadows, and there are curtains in the doorway. And never is the clarity of any panel lost in the detail! With his contract stipulating 15 plotted, edited, scripted, and penciled pages per week, this amount of detail and thought is mind-boggling. (Hmmm—was Rodney Rumpkin a Sherman idea?)

[left] OMAC #7 (Oct. 1975), page 4 Kirby’s ability to show incredible struggle is showcased here to perfection. And again, the completeness of Jack’s pencils, such as in the final panel, constantly astounds me. Here (like in the Losers first two panels on the previous page), he guides the inker to exactly how he wants the blast and energy build up to look. No vague lines needing imaginative interpretation left to the inker—it’s all there! [right] Sandman #1 (Winter 1974), page 16 A great page to show Kirby’s simple, clear storytelling techniques. From the simple, dynamic first panel, the reader subconsciously follows the line between the boy’s eyes to the next panel, coming directly to the figure of the boy Jack wants him to see. (It works, doesn’t it? All those other running figures are seen after we see the kneeling boy—and only if we consciously try to look at them. Brilliant!) The boy’s left leg helps guide our eye straight to Sandman in the next panel. The flailing figures around ensure he is the epicentre of the action. Even for the simpler lower panels, which don’t have detail to potentially lose the reader, Kirby makes sure there is clarity—the angle of the cape of Sandman in panel 4 points directly to the figure in the final panel.

[above] First Issue Special (Manhunter) #5 (Aug. 1975), page 4

to space (Jack’s first balloon is quite squashed in), so no quibble there. Then in panel 4, lettering the words so far from the borders (a conscious decision throughout the whole issue) meant that far more of the hero’s head was covered than intended in the pencils. But this is nitpicking I guess—this issue has some of Berry’s finest inking! So what have these last few pages to do with Steve Sherman? Well, he was still Jack’s assistant and.... H

More superbly crafted action from Kirby. This time my comment is a question regarding letterer D. Bruce Berry’s decisions to alter some of Jack’s balloon placements. Looking at the published version, I particularly notice panel 2: Why decide to lower the balloon out of the dead space and into the action? I can understand slightly moving the balloon in panel 1, but this? In panel 3, the changes may have been necessitated due

C o l l e c t o r

The JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR magazine (edited by JOHN MORROW) celebrates the life and career of the “King” of comics through INTERVIEWS WITH KIRBY and his contemporaries, FEATURE ARTICLES, RARE AND UNSEEN KIRBY ART, plus regular columns by MARK EVANIER and others, and KIRBY’S UNINKED PENCILS NS from the 1960s-1980s EDITIOABLE IL (from photocopies AVA NLY preserved in the KIRBY ARCHIVES). Now in FULLFOR O 5.99 COLOR, it showcases Kirby’s art even better! $1.99-$

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #77

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #78

SILVER ANNIVERSARY ISSUE! How Kirby kickstarted the Silver Age and revamped Golden Age characters for the 1960s, the Silver Surfer’s influence, pivotal decisions (good and bad) Jack made throughout his comics career, Kirby pencil art gallery, MARK EVANIER and our regular columnists, a classic 1950s story, KIRBY/STEVE RUDE cover (and deluxe silver sleeve) and more! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (DELUXE EDITION w/ silver sleeve) $12.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99

KIRBY COLLECTOR #73

KIRBY COLLECTOR #74

KIRBY COLLECTOR #76

ONE-SHOTS! Kirby’s best (and worst) short spurts on his wildest concepts: ANIMATION IDEAS, DINGBATS, JUSTICE INC., MANHUNTER, ATLAS, PRISONER, and more! Plus MARK EVANIER and our other regular panelists, rare Kirby interview, panels from the 2017 Kirby Centennial celebration, pencil art galleries, and some one-shot surprises! BIG BARDA #1 cover finishes by MIKE ROYER!

FUTUREPAST! Kirby’s “World That Was” from Caveman days to the Wild West, and his “World That’s Here” of Jack’s visions of the future that became reality! TWO COVERS: Bullseye inked by BILL WRAY, and Jack’s unseen Tiger 21 concept art! Plus: interview with ROY THOMAS about Jack, rare Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER moderating the biggest Kirby Tribute Panel of all time, pencil art galleries, and more!

FATHERS & SONS! Odin/Thor, Zeus/ Hercules, Darkseid/Orion, Captain America/ Bucky, and other dysfunctional relationships, unpublished 1994 interview with GIL KANE eulogizing Kirby, tributes from Jack’s creative “sons” in comics (MUMY, PALMIOTTI, QUESADA, VALENTINO, McFARLANE, GAIMAN, & MILLER), MARK EVANIER, 2018 Kirby Tribute Panel, Kirby pencil art gallery, and more!

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #79

KIRBY COLLECTOR #81

KIRBY COLLECTOR #82

See “THE BIG PICTURE” of how Kirby fits into the grand scheme of things! His creations’ lasting legacy, how his work fights illiteracy, a RARE KIRBY INTERVIEW, inconsistencies in his 1960s MARVEL WORK, editorial changes in his comics, big concepts in OMAC, best DOUBLE-PAGE SPREADS, MARK EVANIER’s 2019 Kirby Tribute Panel, PENCIL ART GALLERY, and a new cover based on OMAC #1!

“KIRBY: BETA!” Jack’s experimental ideas, characters, and series (Fighting American, Jimmy Olsen, Kamandi, and others), Kirby interview, inspirations for his many “secret societies” (The Project, Habitat, Wakanda), non-superhero genres he explored, 2019 Heroes Con panel (with MARK EVANIER, MIKE ROYER, JIM AMASH, and RAND HOPPE), a pencil art gallery, UNUSED JIMMY OLSEN #141 COVER, and more!

“THE MANY WORLDS OF JACK KIRBY!” From Sub-Atomica to outer space, visit Kirby’s work from World War II, the Fourth World, and hidden worlds of Subterranea, Wakanda, Olympia, Lemuria, Atlantis, the Microverse, and others! Plus, a 2021 Kirby panel, featuring JONATHAN ROSS, NEIL GAIMAN, & MARK EVANIER, a Kirby pencil art gallery from MACHINE MAN, 2001, DEVIL DINOSAUR, & more!

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More About Jack Kirby:

COMIC BOOK ARTIST BULLPEN COMIC BOOK ARTIST BULLPEN collects all seven

KIRBY COLLECTOR #83

FAMOUS FIRSTS! How JACK KIRBY was a pioneer in all areas of comics: Romance Comics genre, Kid Gangs, double-page spreads, Black heroes, new formats, super-hero satire, and others! With MARK EVANIER and our regular columnists, plus a gallery of Jack’s pencil art from CAPTAIN AMERICA, JIMMY OLSEN, CAPTAIN VICTORY, DESTROYER DUCK, BLACK PANTHER, and more! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99

issues of the little-seen labor of love fanzine published in the early 2000s by JON B. COOKE (editor of today’s COMIC BOOK CREATOR magazine), just after the original CBA ended its TwoMorrows run. Featured are in-depth interviews with some of comics’ major league players, including GEORGE TUSKA, FRED HEMBECK, TERRY BEATTY, and FRANK BOLLE—and an amazing all-star tribute to Silver Age great JACK ABEL by the Marvel Comics Bullpen and others. That previously unpublished all-comics Abel appreciation (assembled by RICK PARKER) includes strips by JOE KUBERT, WALTER SIMONSON, KYLE BAKER, MARIE SEVERIN, GRAY MORROW, ALAN WEISS, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, MORT TODD, DICK AYERS, and many more! Includes the never-released CBA BULLPEN #7, a new bonus feature on JACK KIRBY’s unknown 1960 baseball card art, and a 16-page full-color section, all behind a KIRBY COVER!

BACK ISSUE #131

THE KIRBY LEGACY AT DC! Explores Jack Kirby’s post-Fourth World Bronze Age DC characters! Demon, Kamandi, OMAC, Sandman, and Kirby’s Odd Jobs (Atlas, Manhunter, and more). Plus: the SIMON & KIRBY Reunion That Wasn’t! Featuring BISSETTE, BYRNE, CONWAY, GIBBONS, GOLDEN, GRANT, RUCKA, SEMEIKS, THOMAS, TIMM, (176-page TRADE PAPERBACK with COLOR) $24.95 • WAGNER, and more. Demon cover by KIRBY and MIKE ROYER! NOW SHIPPING! (Digital Edition) $8.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-105-9 • NOW SHIPPING! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99

Jack Kirby Books ER EISN RD AWAINEE! NOM

OLD GODS & NEW

For its 80th issue, the JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR presents a double-sized 50th anniversary celebration of Kirby’s magnum opus! This companion to that “FOURTH WORLD” series (NEW GODS, FOREVER PEOPLE, MISTER MIRACLE, and JIMMY OLSEN) looks back at JACK KIRBY’s own words, as well as those of assistants MARK EVANIER and STEVE SHERMAN, inker MIKE ROYER, and publisher CARMINE INFANTINO, to determine how it came about, where it was going, and how Kirby would’ve ended it before it was prematurely cancelled by DC Comics! It also examines Kirby’s use of gods in THOR and other strips prior to the Fourth World, how they influenced his DC epic, and affected later series like THE ETERNALS and CAPTAIN VICTORY. With an overview of hundreds of Kirby’s creations like BIG BARDA, BOOM TUBES and GRANNY GOODNESS, and postKirby uses of his concepts, no Fourth World fan will want to miss it! Compiled, researched, and edited by JOHN MORROW, with contributions by JON B. COOKE. (160-page FULL-COLOR paperback) $26.95 • (Ltd. Edition HARDCOVER) $35.95 (Digital Edition) $12.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-098-4 • NOW SHIPPING!

KIRBY & LEE: STUF’ SAID

This EXPANDED SECOND EDITION of JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #75 includes minor corrections, and 16 NEW PAGES of “Stuf’ Said” by the creators of the Marvel Universe! This first-of-its-kind examination, completed just days before STAN LEE’s passing, looks back at KIRBY & LEE’s own words, in chronological order, from fanzine, magazine, radio, and television interviews, to paint the most comprehensive and enlightening picture of their relationship ever done—why it succeeded, where it deteriorated, and when it eventually failed. Also here are recollections from STEVE DITKO, WALLACE WOOD, JOHN ROMITA SR., and more Marvel Bullpen stalwarts who worked with them both. Compiled, researched, and edited by publisher JOHN MORROW. (176-page FULL-COLOR trade paperback) $26.95 • (Digital Edition) $12.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-094-6

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Comments

(Whether you ever met Steve Sherman or not—WRITE US!)

[It was a bittersweet experience producing this issue, for sure. If reading it inspires you to write your own tribute to Steve Sherman, or memories of him, please send them in. If I don’t have room to run them right away, I’ll keep them on file for a possible mini-tribute to him in a future issue. Because Steve has always been, and always will be, a big part of Kirby fandom. And a quick shout-out to his fellow Fourth World Kirby assistant—Mark, you better stick around a long, long time, cause I can’t imagine doing another one of these anytime soon. Now, on to letters:] I wanted to let you know I greatly enjoyed OLD GODS & NEW [TJKC #80]. The book struck a good balance between images and text (and I particularly appreciated the full color gallery at the beginning of the book). You mention on page 100 that DC was “planning a 500-page comic titled BLOCKBUSTER, with a $2 cover price,” and speculate that this may have been related to Kirby’s advice to DC about experimenting with new formats. This doesn’t seem to be the case. DC never planned such a book, the news being instead the result of an elaborate hoax on DC’s part, done in order to confirm suspicions that a staffer was leaking news to fanzines (a fake memo was created and left where the staffer could find it; the staffer took the bait and carried the news to NEWFANGLES, where it saw print). I first saw this mentioned in an online column by Bob Rozakis, I believe, but it has also been related by John Wells in BACK ISSUE #100 (page 6). Rodrigo Baeza, Santiago, CHILE [Yikes, how’d I miss that—and in one of our own publications? Oh well, you win some, you lose some... speaking of which, just as I was wrapping up this issue, I learned that OLD GODS & NEW was nominated for a 2022 Eisner Award for Best Comics-Related Book! By the time this sees print, the actual winner will be known, but win or lose, I want to thank Mark Evanier, Steve Sherman, Richard Kolkman, and Jon B. Cooke for all their efforts—directly and indirectly—in making that book a reality. In many ways, it’s the book I was born to write, but without all the content from them that’s included, it would’ve been a pale imitation of what it is.] Yeah, waaaay behind in my reading, but after having just finished TJKC #81, I had to write and let you know that you don’t need to worry about losing your Kirby mojo! Sure, last issue was the landmark OLD GODS & NEW, but I was never much of a fan of Kirby’s post-Marvel work at DC (although I find the topic in general interesting).

Silver Age Marvel is my meat and I was happy to see you return to that area in #81! Enjoyed Shane Foley’s look at Kirby’s “Bursts of Genius.” There could’ve been so many more examples, but I’ll point out only one egregious omission under “control room.” I speak of Jack’s classic semi-symbolic cover for AVENGERS #13 with a mad Count Nefaria holding off the Assemblers from his control room! For shame, Shane! His “Beta Redux” feature was also welcomed. Of course, anything by Will Murray is cause for celebration, but two articles on Silver Marvel in the same ish? I had to have been living right! Although his theories of the nascent days of early Marvel are always intriguing and oft times convincing, pulling out my copy of HULK #1 and looking through its pages (pass the smelling salts for faint hearted slabbing fans), for the life of me, I couldn’t see those places in the text Will pointed out as having been altered. The lettering looks exactly the same to me throughout the caption or dialogue balloon. If they were altered, Artie Simek must have had the steadiest hand in the industry! Sorry Will! Finally, I was bowled over by Sean Kleefeld’s piece about Kirby’s feature for ESQUIRE magazine! Never heard of this before! And though I’m grateful for Sean bringing this to my attention, there were a number of questions I was dying for him to answer, but he never did, namely: Who hired Kirby to do the job? Did he have an agent? Was he recommended by Stan? How much did he get paid for the job? A mag with the circulation of ESQUIRE at the time, must have paid a pretty penny! Why didn’t Kirby get more exposure like this at the time? Or did he, and I just don’t know about it? Inquiring minds need to know! Pierre Comtois, Lowell, MA Loved the Galactic Head cover [TJKC #82]! Nice and large, so I could savor all the details. A cool merging of man and machine. Was this created just for Jack’s satisfaction, like the collages? I would tend to think so. Far too much detail for panel-to-panel continuity. So far as knowing Jack’s name and accomplishments, yes, today is much better in that regard. His name is there in the movie credits. His past stories are reprinted. Even articles and reporting about the characters now routinely note Jack’s importance and contributions. Your achievement was noting and exploring it for twenty years before Disney/ Marvel was legally obligated to acknowledge it. The shame of it is, it could have been done, by all parties, continually, from the start. 78

Cracked up at Atomium, from the ’58 Brussels Expo (which I’d not heard of) being an element, ten years later, in Jack’s Sub-Atomica design. What a treat to discover that so many decades later. Did Jack have a very organized filing system or just stacks of vintage magazines? Same for the Roman statue face being used for Ego, the Living Planet. Another great discovery. Fun seeing how Jack revamped the look, revising it in an entirely new context. “The Dogs of War,” while mostly about the New Gods, seems to have overlooked a few: Lockjaw, Dr. Canus, and Captain Pypar (KAMANDI #26-28). Fun seeing Jack with his dog in the photos. Enjoyed the CAP #102 pencil pages, especially as I echo your thoughts about the inking. Not a fan. It was quite disappointing to see how they were so heavily embellished, masking and undercutting the charm of Jack’s work. Yes, Frank Giacoia, had he been more timely, would have been a far better option. For secret societies, I loved how many you came up with. I remember my surprise, during my first reading as a kid, that Wundagore was a spaceship. But Habitat might have been the most conceptually brilliant; being hidden just outside of town. A correction: that schematic of the Baxter Building was from FF ANNUAL #1, not #3. The Wood cover inks you displayed from JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #122 were wonderful. So were his inks over Jack on the covers to TALES OF SUSPENSE #71 and X-MEN #14. No one could be forced to stay, obviously, but Marvel really lost a tremendous talent when Wally went over to Tower. Imagine THOR, like SKY MASTERS, done with the Kirby/Wood team. Even Wood, solo on a title or two, would have been wonderful. A Graphite Edition of Jack’s DESTROYER DUCK pencils? I’d buy it. In all candor, I didn’t care for the inked version. Alfredo Alcala was a talent—I don’t dispute that—only I didn’t feel he was a good match for Jack. If you should opt to do it, hope we’ll get some background info. I know why the book came to be: to help defray legal costs for Steve Gerber. But how and why did it continue? Did Jack enjoy working on it? What working method did he and Steve use? Were they happy with it? Why did Jack leave with #5? Enjoyed the virtual panel discussion, particularly the insightful question of why Jack didn’t do self-copyrighted work earlier. Sounded like he didn’t want to risk providing for his family. What a shame the direct market and self-copyrighted comics came maybe a decade late to have been a viable option for the Fourth World or ETERNALS. They were all Jack’s ideas. He just needed an assurance the work would get solid distribution and he’d make a decent wage from it. Yet, so many tried, early on, with disappointing results.

Otherwise, imagine no interference and, potentially, much longer runs. That would have been something. Joe Frank, Scottsdale, AZ [Thanks Joe, and to the many others who wrote in to say they’d love to see a DESTROYER DUCK GRAPHITE EDITION. We’re working to make that a reality!] Will Murray has long been one of my favorite contributors to TJKC, as well as the other fine publications from TwoMorrows. His articles are always well thought out, informative, and insightful. However I have a bone to pick (actually two) with him in his article “Secrets of the Savage Land.” [TJKC #82] The first is a questionable leap of logic on page 46. First he mentions that both Kirby and Lee read Doc Savage in their youth. He then goes on to say that Simon & Kirby’s CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN was an updating of Doc Savage and his group, then says FF and X-MEN show a clear Doc Savage influence. So far so good. But in the very next sentence, Will writes “…one would be hard pressed to credit either man at the expense of the other” for the creation of the Baxter Building. It seems he’s providing evidence that Kirby was the main mind behind the creation, but then states that you can’t definitively credit either man. I can agree that, since no one else was present, there’s no way to credit either Lee or Kirby with the creation of the Baxter Building. But based on the evidence Will presents in the article itself, it sure seems to point to Kirby as the driving force here. I dunno, no big deal really, but it seems like Kirby had more of a track record of putting his heroes in a special headquarters (like Challengers Mountain, for example) than Lee. Another error I found in Will’s article is on page 50 where he writes “Jack Kirby soon left the X-MEN and never developed the Savage Land or Ka-Zar further. That was left to Lee and artist John Romita in the pages of DAREDEVIL...”. Then just below that is a page of unused Kirby layouts for one of those two issues of DAREDEVIL for which Kirby did layouts for Romita. And this page clearly shows Kirby’s margin notes, indicating that Kirby wrote the plot for the story. So, Kirby did, in fact, develop the Savage Land and Ka-Zar further. Romita did the pencils over Kirby’s tightly plotted layouts, and Lee added dialogue. But it seems the main “further development” of KaZar and the Savage Land in this twopart DAREDEVIL story was provided by Kirby. Mark Reznicek, Hurst, TX I just had a sudden urge to rewatch one of Mel Gibson’s early flicks, MAN WITHOUT A FACE, where he plays a disfigured teacher. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather when at 4:25 in, all of a sudden, literally from out of nowhere—the cover to King Here’s a tentative list of upcoming themes, so start thinking, and get to writing! SEND US YOUR THEME IDEAS! • VISUAL COMPARISONS - From before & after versions of altered stories and art, to Jack bringing new life to his older visuals, expect the unexpected to be revealed! • THE KIRBY COLLECTORS - Readers’ stories about what

Kirby’s Immortal Kosmic Klassic THOR #144 “This Battleground Earth” filled the screen! And ’twas no momentary cameo, either—the camera featured it prominently for quite a bit, as the scene played out! Apparently director/star Mel Gibson was yet another world-famous superstar who was also a big fan of the King! Way to go, Mel! My favorite Jack Kirby movie moment used to be when he got mentioned by one of the sailors in CRIMSON TIDE—but now THIS movie’s definitely got the number one spot, cause you get to actually SEE Jack’s work... and Mel even lingers a bit on it!! Trevor Von Eeden, NY In TJKC #81, it was great to see Joe Simon’s color guide for the cover of FIGHTING AMERICAN #8 (it’s Joe’s writing). But I’m not convinced the color guide was created for the intended (but never published) FIGHTING AMERICAN #8 (June-July 1955). The cover, featuring Round Robin, was later published (along with the story) in Harvey’s FIGHTING AMERICAN revival in V2, #1 (Oct. 1966). Joe Simon was a talented artist who lived to the ripe old age of 98. He had time, paints, and a stat camera. I believe this color guide is a “recent” creation by Simon. Joe Simon not only kept the copyrights, but also had a large stack of original Simon & Kirby art to work from. This “color guide” for a 1955 comic book features the date of FIGHTING AMERICAN #4 (Oct.-Nov. 1954), and has no Comics Code Authority stamp on the paste-up (which has been hand-colored). I think Joe Simon had a lot of artistic fun in his retirement, and utilized any and all of the classic art boards he had on file. Richard Kolkman, Fort Wayne, IN Wanted you to know how much I enjoyed the article “Kirby Kinetics: Going Deeper Into Space” from TJKC #82. It made me think of my favorite Kirby splash page from CAPTAIN AMERICA #107—one that took my breath away as a youngster (and still does today). In addition, your “Before And After” section that featured two examples of Syd Shores’ inking of Kirby’s CAP during that time period, and your comments about Syd’s inking style, led me to look at the letters section in CAP #107, where three letters call out for special praise of Syd’s inking. During that late 1960s time period, I loved that various inkers were assigned to ink Jack. Joe Sinnott’s slick, brush style was perfect for the FF; Vince Colletta’s pen-and-ink cross-hatching was a good look for the mythological THOR; and Syd Shores’ “Golden Age” style inks fit a hero (like Cap) who was from that era. Finally, I just want to say how thankful I am for you and everyone at TwoMorrows. Keep on, keepin’ on! Marty Erhart, Austin, TX it means to them to be Kirby collectors—from their craziest original art and comics deals, to getting tattoos, Kirby inspired man-caves, and their Holy Grails of collecting! • LAW & ORDER - From Justice Traps the Guilty! and Police Trap to In the Days of The Mob, Terrible Turpin, and OMAC’s Global Peace Agency, we’ll assemble a lineup of Jack’s famous flatfoots and fuzz.

#84 Credits: John Morrow, Editor/Designer/ Proofreader/Art Curator/etc.

THANKS TO OUR CONTRIBUTORS: Mark Badger • Steven Brower Norris Burroughs • Mark Evanier Chris Fama • David Folkman Shane Foley • Barry Forshaw Roger Freedman Glen Gold • Heritage Auctions Rand Hoppe • Larry Houston Alex Jay • Neal Kirby • Lisa Kirby Sean Kleefeld • Tom Kraft Diana Mercer • Gary Owens Mike Royer • Scott Shaw! Steve Sherman • Gary Sherman Barry Siegel • Bruce Simon Greg Williams • Barry Windsor-Smith and The Jack Kirby Museum (www.kirbymuseum.org) If we forgot anyone, please let us know!

Contribute!

The Jack Kirby Collector is put together with submissions from Jack’s fans around the world. We don’t pay for submissions, but if we print art or articles you submit, we’ll send you a free copy of the issue it appears in. Submit art & articles by mail, or e-mail to: twomorrow@aol.com

NEXT ISSUE: KIRBY: ANIMATED! How Jack Kirby and his concepts leaped from celluloid, to paper, and back again! From his 1930s start on POPEYE and BETTY BOOP and his work being used on the 1960s MARVEL SUPER-HEROES show, to FANTASTIC FOUR (1967 and 1978), SUPER FRIENDS/SUPER POWERS, SCOOBY-DOO, THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN, and Ruby-Spears. Plus EVAN DORKIN on his abandoned KAMANDI cartoon series, and more! TJKC #85 ships late Fall 2022!

Winter 2023 (TJKC #86):

VISUAL COMPARISONS! What’s wrong with this picture? Find out in #86!

TwoMorrows 2022 www.twomorrows.com • store@twomorrows.com

THE

CHARLTON COMPANION by JON B. COOKE

An ALL-NEW definitive history of Connecticut’s notorious all-in-one comic book company! Often disparaged as a second-rate funny-book outfit, Charlton produced a vast array of titles that span from the 1940s Golden Age to the Bronze Age of the ’70s in many genres, from Hot Rods to Haunted Love. The imprint experienced explosive bursts of creativity, most memorably the “Action Hero Line” edited by DICK GIORDANO in the 1960s, which featured the renowned talents of STEVE DITKO and a stellar team of creators, as well as the unforgettable ’70s “Bullseye” era that spawned E-Man and Doomsday +1, all helmed by veteran masters and talented newcomers—and serving as a training ground for an entire generation of comics creators thriving in an environment of complete creative freedom. From its beginnings with a handshake deal consummated in county jail, to the company’s accomplishments beyond comics, woven into this prose narrative are interviews with dozens of talented participants, including GIORDANO, DENNIS O’NEIL, ALEX TOTH, SANHO KIM, TOM SUTTON, PAT BOYETTE, NICK CUTI, JOHN BYRNE, MIKE ZECK, JOE STATON, SAM GLANZMAN, NEAL ADAMS, JOE GILL, and even some Derby residents who recall working in the sprawling company plant. Though it gave up the ghost over three decades ago, Charlton’s influence continues today with its Action Heroes serving as inspiration for ALAN MOORE’s cross-media graphic novel hit, WATCHMEN. By JON B. COOKE with MICHAEL AMBROSE & FRANK MOTLER. SHIPS NOVEMBER 2022! (256-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-111-0

THE

TEAM-UP COMPANION by MICHAEL EURY

THE TEAM-UP COMPANION examines team-up comic books of the Silver and Bronze Ages of Comics—DC’s THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD and DC COMICS PRESENTS, Marvel’s MARVEL TEAM-UP and MARVEL TWO-INONE, plus other team-up titles, treasuries, and treats—in a lushly illustrated selection of informative essays, special features, and trivia-loaded issue-by-issue indexes. Go behind the scenes of your favorite team-up comic books with specially curated and all-new creator recollections from NEAL ADAMS, JIM APARO, MIKE W. BARR, ELIOT R. BROWN, NICK CARDY, CHRIS CLAREMONT, GERRY CONWAY, STEVE ENGLEHART, STEVE GERBER, STEVEN GRANT, BOB HANEY, TONY ISABELLA, PAUL KUPPERBERG, PAUL LEVITZ, RALPH MACCHIO, DENNIS O’NEIL, MARTIN PASKO, JOE RUBINSTEIN, ROY THOMAS, LEN WEIN, MARV WOLFMAN, and other all-star writers and artists who produced the team-up tales that so captivated readers during the 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s. By BACK ISSUE and RETROFAN editor MICHAEL EURY. (272-page SOFTCOVER) $36.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-112-7 • NOW SHIPPING!

THE LIFE & ART OF

DAVE COCKRUM

by GLEN CADIGAN

From the letters pages of Silver Age comics to his 2021 induction into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, the career of DAVE COCKRUM started at the bottom and then rose to the top of the comic book industry. Beginning with his childhood obsession with comics and continuing through his years in the Navy, THE LIFE AND ART OF DAVE COCKRUM follows the rising star from fandom (where he was one of the “Big Three” fanzine artists) to pro-dom, where he helped revive two struggling comic book franchises: the LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES and the X-MEN. A prolific costume designer and character creator, his redesigns of the Legion and his introduction of X-Men characters Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Thunderbird (plus his design of Wolverine’s alter ego, Logan) laid the foundation for both titles to become best-sellers. His later work on his own property, THE FUTURIANS, as well as childhood favorite BLACKHAWK and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS, plus his five years on SOULSEARCHERS AND COMPANY, cemented his position as an industry giant. Featuring artwork from fanzines, unused character designs, and other rare material, this is THE comprehensive biography of the legendary comic book artist, whose influence is still felt on the industry today! Written by GLEN CADIGAN (THE LEGION COMPANION, THE TITANS COMPANION Volumes 1 and 2, BEST OF THE LEGION OUTPOST) with an introduction by ALEX ROSS. (160-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $27.95 • (LIMITED EDITION HARDCOVER) $36.95 • (Digital Edition) $14.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-113-4 • NOW SHIPPING!

BRITMANIA

by MARK VOGER

Remember when long-haired British rock ’n’ rollers made teenage girls swoon — and their parents go crazy? BRITMANIA plunges into the period when suddenly, America went wild for All Things British. This profusely illustrated full-color hardback, subtitled “The British Invasion of the Sixties in Pop Culture,” explores the movies (A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, HAVING A WILD WEEKEND), TV (THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW, MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR), collectibles (TOYS, GAMES, TRADING CARDS, LUNCH BOXES), comics (real-life Brits in the DC and MARVEL UNIVERSES) and, of course, the music! Written and designed by MARK VOGER (MONSTER MASH, GROOVY, HOLLY JOLLY), BRITMANIA features interviews with members of THE BEATLES, THE ROLLING STONES, THE WHO, THE KINKS, HERMAN’S HERMITS, THE YARDBIRDS, THE ANIMALS, THE HOLLIES & more. It’s a gas, gas, gas! (192-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $43.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-115-8 • SHIPS OCT. 2022!

Get Mark Voger’s three other books for $99.95! Monster Mash Groovy • Holly Jolly Save $24!

BACK ISSUE #137

BACK ISSUE #138

BACK ISSUE #139

BACK ISSUE #140

BACK ISSUE #141

1980s PRE-CRISIS DC MINISERIES! Green Arrow, Secrets of the Legion, Tales of the Green Lantern Corps, Krypton Chronicles, America vs. the Justice Society, Legend of Wonder Woman, Conqueror of the Barren Earth, and more! Featuring MIKE W. BARR, KURT BUSIEK, PAUL KUPPERBERG, RON RANDALL, TRINA ROBBINS, JOE STATON, CURT SWAN, ROY THOMAS, and others. VON EEDEN and GIORDANO cover.

CLASSIC HEROES IN THE BRONZE AGE! The Lone Ranger and Tonto, Flash Gordon, Popeye, Zorro and Lady Rawhide, Son of Tomahawk, Jungle Twins, and more! Featuring the work of DAN JURGENS, JOE R. LANSDALE, DON McGREGOR, FRANK THORNE, TIM TRUMAN, GEORGE WILDMAN, THOMAS YEATES, and other creators. With a classic 1979 fully painted Gold Key cover of Flash Gordon.

NOT-READY-FOR-PRIMETIME MARVEL HEROES! Mighty Marvel’s Bronze Age second bananas: Doc Samson, Jack of Hearts, Thundra, Nighthawk, Starfox, Modred the Mystic, Woodgod, the Shroud, Thunderbird and Warpath, Stingray, Wundaar, and others! Featuring the work of BUSIEK, DAVID, ENGLEHART, GERBER, GIFFEN, GRANT, MANTLO, MICHELINIE, STERN, THOMAS, and other A-list talent!

DINOSAUR COMICS! Interviews with Xenozoic®’s MARK SCHULTZ and dinoartist extraordinaire WILLIAM STOUT! Plus: Godzilla at Dark Horse, Sauron villain history, Dinosaurs Attack!, Dinosaurs for Hire, Dinosaur Rex, Dino Riders, Lord Dinosaur, and Jurassic Park! Featuring ARTHUR ADAMS, BISSETTE, CLAREMONT, COCKRUM, GERANI, STRADLEY, ROY THOMAS, and more. SCHULTZ cover.

SPIES AND P.I.s! Nick Fury from Howling Commando to Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., Ms. Tree’s MAX ALLAN COLLINS and TERRY BEATTY in a Pro2Pro interview, MARK EVANIER on his Crossfire series, a Hydra villain history, WILL EISNER’s John Law, Checkmate, and Tim Trench and Mike Mauser. With ENGLEHART, ERWIN, HALL, ISABELLA, KUPPERBERG, STATON, THOMAS, and cover by DAVE JOHNSON!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Now shipping!

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(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Jan. 2023

CBA BULLPEN

Collects all seven issues of JON B. COOKE’s little-seen fanzine, published just after the original COMIC BOOK ARTIST ended its TwoMorrows run in 2003. Interviews with GEORGE TUSKA, FRED HEMBECK, TERRY BEATTY, and FRANK BOLLE, an all-star tribute to JACK ABEL, a new feature on JACK KIRBY’s unknown 1960 baseball card art, and a 16-page full-color section! (176-page TRADE PAPERBACK with COLOR) $24.95 • (Digital Edition) $8.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-105-9 Now shipping!

JOHN SEVERIN

TWO-FISTED COMIC ARTIST

A spirited biography of EC Comics mainstay (with HARVEY KURTZMAN on Mad and Two-Fisted Tales) and co-creator of Western strip American Eagle. Covers his 40+ year association with Cracked magazine, his pivotal Marvel Comics work inking HERB TRIMPE on The Hulk & teaming with sister MARIE SEVERIN on King Kull, and more! By GREG BIGA and JON B. COOKE. (160-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 (Digital Edition) $14.99 • Now shipping!

OUR ARTISTS AT WAR AMERICAN TV COMICS

Examines US War comics: EC COMICS (Two-Fisted Tales, Frontline Combat), DC COMICS (Enemy Ace, G.I. Combat, Our Fighting Forces, Our Army at War), WARREN PUBLISHING (Blazing Combat), CHARLTON (Willy Schultz and the Iron Corporal) and more! Featuring KURTZMAN, SEVERIN, DAVIS, WOOD, KUBERT, GLANZMAN, KIRBY, and others! By RICHARD ARNDT and STEVEN FEARS, with an introduction by ROY THOMAS. (160-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $27.95 (Digital Edition) $14.99 • Now shipping!

BRICKJOURNAL #74

Amazing LEGO® STAR WARS builds, including Lando Calrissian’s Treadable PETER BOSCH’s history of over 300 TV by JÜRGEN WITTNER, Starkiller Base by shows and 2000+ comic book adaptations JHAELON EDWARDS, and more from across five decades, from well-known STEVEN SMYTH and Bantha Bricks! Plus: series (STAR TREK, THE MUNSTERS) to Minifigure Customization by JARED K. lesser-known shows (CAPTAIN GALLANT, BURKS, AFOLs by GREG HYLAND, stepPINKY LEE). With profiles of artists who by-step “You Can Build It” instructions by drew TV comics: GENE COLAN, ALEX CHRISTOPHER DECK (including a LEGO TOTH, DAN SPIEGLE, RUSS MANNING, JOHN BUSCEMA, RUSS HEATH, and more! BB-8), and more! Edited by JOE MENO. (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (192-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $29.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Now shipping! (Digital Edition) $15.99 • Now shipping!

(1940s-1980s)

New Magazines!

ALTER EGO #176

ALTER EGO #177

ALTER EGO #178

The Golden Age comics of major pulp magazine publisher STREET & SMITH (THE SHADOW, DOC SAVAGE, RED DRAGON, SUPERSNIPE) examined in loving detail by MARK CARLSON-GHOST! Art by BOB POWELL, HOWARD NOSTRAND, and others, ANTHONY TOLLIN on “The Shadow/Batman Connection”, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, JOHN BROOME, PETER NORMANTON, and more!

Celebration of veteran artist DON PERLIN—artist of WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, THE DEFENDERS, GHOST RIDER, MOON KNIGHT, 1950s horror, and just about every other adventure genre under the fourcolor sun! Plus Golden Age artist MARCIA SNYDER—Marvel’s early variant covers— Marvelmania club and fanzine—FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), MICHAEL T. GILBERT on Cracked Mazagine, & more!

Golden Age great EMIL GERSHWIN, artist of Starman, Spy Smasher, and ACG horror—in a super-length special MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT by MICHAEL T. GILBERT—plus a Gershwin showcase in PETER NORMANTON’s From The Tomb— even a few tidbits about relatives GEORGE and IRA GERSHWIN to top it off! Also FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), and other surprise features!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Now shipping!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Oct. 2022

ALTER EGO #179

ALTER EGO #180

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #27 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #28 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #29

Celebrating the 61st Anniversary of FANTASTIC FOUR #1—’cause we kinda blew right past its 60th—plus a sagacious salute to STAN LEE’s 100th birthday, with never-before-seen highlights—and to FF #1 and #2 inker GEORGE KLEIN! Spotlight on Sub-Mariner in the Bowery in FF #4—plus sensational secrets behind FF #1 and #3! Also: FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, a JACK KIRBY cover, and more!

THE YOUNG ALL-STARS—the late-1980s successor to ALL-STAR SQUADRON! Interviews with first artist BRIAN MURRAY and last artist LOU MANNA—surprising insights by writer/co-creator ROY THOMAS—plus a panorama of never-seen Young All-Stars artwork! All-new cover by BRIAN MURRAY! Plus FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), MICHAEL T. GILBERT, and beyond!

Extensive PAUL GULACY retrospective by GREG BIGA that includes Paul himself, VAL MAYERIK, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, TIM TRUMAN, ROY THOMAS, and others. Plus a JOE SINNOTT MEMORIAL; BUD PLANT interview Part One, as the retail and mail-order pioneer discusses his early years and first forays as San Jose comic shop proprietor—at 16!; our regular columnists, and the latest from HEMBECK!

STEVE BISSETTE career-spanning interview, from his Joe Kubert School days, Swamp Thing stint, publisher of Taboo and Tyrant, creator rights crusader, and more. Also, Part One of our MIKE GOLD interview on his Chicago youth, start in underground comix, and arrival at DC Comics, right in time for the implosion! Plus BUD PLANT on his publishing days, comic shop owner, and start in mail order—and all the usual fun stuff!

DON McGREGOR retrospective, from early ’70s Warren Publications scripter to his breakout work at Marvel Comics on BLACK PANTHER, KILLRAVEN, SABRE, DETECTIVES INC., RAGAMUFFINS, and others. Plus ROBERT MENZIES looks at HERB TRIMPE’s mid-’70s UK visit to work on Marvel’s British comics weeklies, MIKE GOLD Part Two, and CARtoons cartoonist SHAWN KERRIE! SANDY PLUNKETT cover!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Dec. 2022

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(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Now shipping!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Fall 2022

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ALTER EGO #175

Spotlighting the artists of ROY THOMAS’ 1980s DC series ALL-STAR SQUADRON! Interviews with artists ARVELL JONES, RICHARD HOWELL, and JERRY ORDWAY, conducted by RICHARD ARNDT! Plus, the Squadron’s FINAL SECRETS, including previously unpublished art, & covers for issues that never existed! With FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, and a wraparound cover by ARVELL JONES!

PRINTED IN CHINA

ALTER EGO #174

FCA (Fawcett Collectors Of America) issue—spearheaded by feisty and informative articles by Captain Marvel co-creator C.C. BECK—plus a fabulous feature on vintage cards created in Spain and starring The Marvel Family! In addition: DR. WILLIAM FOSTER III interview (conclusion)—MICHAEL T. GILBERT on early rivals of MAD magazine—the haunting of JOHN BROOME—and more! BECK cover!