$6.95In the USA

No.81October2008

Man

-Thing

TM&

©20

08MarvelCha

racters,

Inc.

EXTRA!EVERETT

RAYMONDKINSTLER

WITH BRUNNER,JONES, KALUTA,

WRIGHTSON,et al.!

PLUS:

Roy Thomas’Halloweeny

Comics Fanzine

CAUGHT IN A

18265827763

5

10

WEB OFHORROR

Alter EgoTM is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344.Roy Thomas, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Alter Ego Editorial Offices: 32 Bluebird Trail, St. Matthews, SC 29135, USA.Fax: (803) 826-6501; e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices.Single issues: $9 US ($11.00 Canada, $16 elsewhere). Twelve-issue subscriptions: $78 US, $132 Canada, $180 elsewhere. All charactersare © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © Roy Thomas. Alter Ego isa TM of Roy & Dann Thomas. FCA is a TM of P.C. Hamerlinck. Printed in Canada. ISSN: 1932-6890

FIRST PRINTING.

This issue is dedicated to the memory ofElmer Wexler, Wayne Howard,

& Larry Woromay

ContentsWriter/Editorial: It’s That Time Of Year Again! . . . . . . . . . . . . 2Caught In A Web Of Horror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Richard Arndt looks at “America’s Nightmare Magazine” of 1969-70—and the careers it launched!

The Thing About “Man-Thing” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20Roy Thomas tells George Khoury all about Marvel’s marsh monster and its icky antecedents.

“I Never Looked Down On Comics” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29Everett Raymond Kinstler talks to Jim Amash about his career as a comic book illustrator.

Oop, Oop, And Away! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51Alley Oop artist Jack Bender celebrates 75 years of the world’s favorite caveman.

The Secret History Of All-American Comics, Inc.: “MORT-ification” 59Bob Rozakis & Ted Skimmer on Mort Weisinger and a history that might have been, maybe.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! Bob Powell’s Shadow! . . . . . . 65Michael T. Gilbert discovers that the weed of crime bears better fruit!

Tributes to Elmer Wexler, Wayne Howard, & Larry Woromay 72re: correspondence, comments, & corrections. . . . . . . . . . . 76FCA (Fawcett Collectors Of America) #140 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79P.C. Hamelinck presents Marc Swayze, Captain Marvel—& Captain Mar-Vell.

On Our Cover: In its early days, Marvel’s Man-Thing was drawn by some of the finest artists in thebusiness, from Gray Morrow through Neal Adams, Mike Ploog, and others. But nobody did it betterthan Frank Brunner, who kindly provided this issue’s swamp-curdling image. And all just to protecta couple of baby birds! [Man-Thing TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Above: One of the most famous artists ever to come out of the comics, Everett Raymond Kinstlersays he enjoyed drawing a pair of “Hawkman” sagas back in the Golden Age—including this cover forFlash Comics #87 (Sept. 1947). But he’s also drawn heroes from Wild Bill Hickok to Black Hood toZorro, and lots more besides—as you’ll see on pp. 29-50. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [©2008 DC Comics.]

Vol. 3, No. 81 / October 2008EditorRoy Thomas

Associate EditorsBill SchellyJim Amash

Design & LayoutChristopher Day

Consulting EditorJohn Morrow

FCA EditorP.C. Hamerlinck

Comic Crypt EditorMichael T. Gilbert

Editorial Honor RollJerry G. Bails (founder)Ronn Foss, Biljo WhiteMike Friedrich

Circulation DirectorBob Brodsky,Cookiesoup Productions

Cover Artist & ColoristFrank Brunner

With Special Thanks to:Heidi AmashMichael AmbroseRichard J. ArndtBob BaileyJack D. BailsJean BailsGeorge Wilson BeahmJack & Carole BenderTerry BissonDominic BongoJerry K. BoydChristopher B. BoykoFrank BrunnerBob CherryGerry ConwayTeresa R. DavidsonAl DellingesScott DerrickMichaël DewallyBetty DobsonRich DonnellyPeter DuxburyMark EvanierTom FieldShane FoleyCarl GaffordJames GaltonJanet GilbertAndreas GottschlichRon GoulartLawrence P. GuidryMartin GreimGeorge HagenauerJennifer HamerlinckMike HowellChris IrvingEric JansenBruce JonesMichael J. KalutaGeorge Khoury

Jay KinneyEverett RaymondKinstler

Bob LatonaZorikh LequidrePaul LevitzJames LudwigMichel MaillotRob MaischGlenn McKayMatt MoringFrank MotlerMark MullerWill MurrayBarry PearlTrina RobbinsHerb RogoffAlex RossBob RozakisSteve SansweetRamon SchenkHoward SiegelTed SkimmerRay SnodgrassBill SpicerBhob StewartMarc SwayzeJoel ThingvallDann ThomasSteven TiceAnthony TollinJim Vadeboncoeur, Jr.Joe VucenicMurray WardHames WareGregg WhitmoreTom WimbishLynn WoolleyAlex WrightDennis Yee

Caught In A Web Of HorrorA Look At “America’s Nightmare Magazine” Of 1969-70

by Richard J. Arndt

3

ow much influence or importance to thehistory of comics can be given to a black-&-white comic magazine that contained no classic

stories—although a number of good ones appearedthere—and lasted a mere three issues before beingdumped by an indifferent publisher?

Web of Horror, which billed itself as “America’sNightmare Magazine,” was started in 1969 by editorTerry Bisson and publisher Robert C. Sproul. Bissontoday is a highly respected, award-winning author ofscience-fiction, but in 1969 he worked on a number ofmagazines for Sproul’s publishing company, whichproduced a wide variety of such, including theMadknockoff Cracked.

Bisson’s credentials in comics at the time consisted ofa mere handful of stories co-written with friend ClarkDimond for Jim Warren’s magazines Creepy and Eerie,during and just after the Archie Goodwin-edited glorydays of those publications.

To backtrack a bit: between 1964 and 1967, publisherJim Warren created a market for black-&-white, non-Comics-Code-approved comic books, backed upmightily by the work of editor and chief writer Goodwin,some strikingly powerful covers by the likes of FrankFrazetta and Gray Morrow, and an array of talentedartists on the interior art, including Alex Toth, AlWilliamson, Angelo Torres, Steve Ditko, Reed Crandall,Wally Wood, Joe Orlando, Jerry Grandenetti, and manymore.

However, a money crunch suffered by Warren in 1967led Goodwin and most of the artists to leave Warren’semploy. By 1969, half of each issue of Creepy and Eeriefeatured reprinted material from their 1964-67 heyday,while the new material was often second-rate at best,despite the efforts of such fine artists as Tom Sutton andErnie Colón.

Sproul—or, more likely, Bisson—saw an opportunity.With Warren’s product weakened and most of his directcompetitors, such as the unrelated Eerie Publications,merely putting out bottom of the barrel pre-Codereprints or providing old stories with new, uncredited(and deservedly so) art, the market for an all-new horroranthology was pretty much wide open.

Whoever first recognized that main chance, it wasclearly Bisson who had the most to do with pursuing it.With what must have been a low budget, he clearlycouldn’t afford the rates of any of the artists who had worked withWarren, or who had drawn Bisson’s co-authored work for Warren’smagazines previously. But he had an insight that many other editors orpublishers of the times might have missed.

Between 1966-1967, Archie Goodwin had published a fan page in thepages of Warren’s Creepy magazine to which budding artists and writerscould send their fan-produced art and stories. Among those whoappeared on those pages were aspiring illustrators such as Bernie (thenBerni) Wrightson, Frank Brunner, and Bruce Jones. All these artists knewother struggling artists, as well. In fact, Wrightson lived in the same

Sort Of SorceryThe sword-and-sorcery cover for Web of Horror #1 (Dec. 1969), by Jeff (a.k.a. Jeffrey) Jones. Theart for each of the three published covers was reprinted as the back cover, minus any text—in

effect, a color pin-up. Each of the three published issues had a different title logo on the cover—not exactly the best idea in the world, when a publisher is hoping for repeat readers! All art andphotos accompanying this article, unless otherwise noted, were supplied by Richard Arndt. Inall probability, the copyrights for all material published in the three issues of Web of Horror

have reverted to the original creators. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

HH

building with Michael J. Kaluta andJeff Jones. Bruce Jones was friendswith all three. All these young menwere highly talented and stronglyinfluenced by the artwork of FrankFrazetta, Roy Krenkel, Al Williamson,and Angelo Torres. Kaluta had evenworked uncredited on backgroundsfor a DC House of Mystery story byWilliamson. Best of all, for Bisson andSproul’s purposes anyway, was thatthey were eager to prove themselvesand would work hard for the oppor-tunity to do so. These five artists—Wrightson, Brunner, Kaluta, andthe two (unrelated) Joneses—formed the core of what became the“Young Turks’” breakthrough into comics. (Other artists who couldbe considered part of the “Young Turks” movement of 1969-1973would be Barry Smith [later Windsor-Smith], Rich Buckler, JimStarlin, Alan Weiss, Steve Hickman, and Steve Harper.)

Perhaps even more importantly, this quintet came directly fromthe fanzines of the day, such as Spa Fon, Squa Tront, GraphicShowcase, and others. They provided what was probably the firststrong evidence that the next major wave of comic artists andwriters would come from the fan community. The fans who readcomics. Such a thing is commonplace today, but in 1969 the rollcall of both writers and artists in the comic book field had changedvery little in the previous 15 years, with a few notable exceptions

Something Old,Something New

4 A Look At “America’s Nightmare Magazine” of 1967-80

Web of Horror #1 featured art by both talented newcomers andlongtime pros. (Counterclockwise on this page and the next, from

top left, are the splashes for:)

(a) “Blood Thirst!”—drawn by Syd Shores, a Timely/Marvelmainstay during the 1940s and’50s, who would become aMarvel inker for much of the 1970s. Script by Terry Bisson.For a photo of Syd Shores, see A/E #78.

(b) “The Game That Plays You!”—illustrated by BernieWrightson, who in a year or so would make his mark asthe original artist and co-creator of DC’s Swamp Thing.Script by Dick Kenson. Note the store name (“S. StrangeBooks”) and a copy of EC’s Haunt of Fear in the window.The photo of Bernie at age 20 is from the Joe Vuceniccollection, taken by George Wilson Beahm, and was sentto us by Christopher B. Boyko.

(c) “Dead Letter,” by “David Norman”—which Richard Arndtsuspects (and Jerry Bails’ Who’s Who verifies) is apseudonym for veteran artist Norman Nodel, some ofwhose work for Classics Illustrated was seen last issue.Script probably by Terry Bisson.

(d) “Island of the Walking Dead,” also by Norman/Nodel.Arndt says this tale, which is he feels is the best-written inthe issue, “reads as though it were intended as a series,although this was the main character’s only appearance.”Writer: Clark Dimond. [Art & script on spread ©2008 therespective copyright holders.]

The stories themselves, if not noteworthy, werecompetent and were provided by editor Bisson, thenewly professional writer Nicola Cuti, Dick Kenson, andBisson’s friend Clark Dimond.

The magazine sported a horror host who was bothfunnier and less ugly than EC’s witches and ghouls orWarren’s Uncle Creepy or Cousin Eerie—a spideryentity known as “the Webster.”

It also did something that infuriated Jim Warren.No only did it have all-new stories—but it had no ads!The Warren magazines had leaned heavily on reprintsfor two years, and all issues during that period had alarge number of ad pages featuring horror-relatedproducts you could order though Warren’s ownCaptain Company. Compared to the Warren magazineof 1969,Web of Horror looked like a pretty good dealfor the kid who was eager to drop 35¢ on it.

Warren promptly issued an edict that stated thatyou could work for Jim Warren or you could work forhis competition, but you couldn’t work for both. Thisprompted a number of Warren artists who weredoing stories forWeb’s upcoming issues to adoptpseudonyms therein. The art team of Bill Fraccio &Tony Tallarico (who already used the pseudonym

[Continued on p. 8]

(examples of which are artist Neal Adams, who came from the world ofcomic strips, and the editor of this magazine, Roy Thomas, who alsocame from the fan community).

Bisson didn’t stop with the Young Turks, however. He also checkedout other fanzine artists such as underground artist Roger Brand(whose work had appeared in witzend, the “prozine” launched bymajor artist Wally Wood); such Wood-assistant alumni as Ralph Reeseand Wayne Howard; and comic veterans such as Syd Shores andNorman Nodel (as “Donald Norman”).

The first issue ofWeb of Horror debuted with a cover date ofDecember 1969, which meant it was probably on the newsstands inSeptember or October of that year. The cover was by Jeff Jones, whohad done several stories for Archie Goodwin during the latter’s timeat Warren and had broken into the book market with a number ofmemorable covers for both paperbacks and Donald M. Grant’slimited edition line of Robert E. Howard books. In a nice touch, thefront cover ofWoH #1 was repeated on the back cover without covercopy. In essence, making an art print of it.

Inside art for that first issue was provided by Wayne Howard, SydShores, Bernie Wrightston, Ralph Reese, and “Donald Norman.”Reese also supplied the first of three “Comic Art Contest” pages,which were two-page spreads of artwork with a blank section thatprovided comic fan-artists the opportunity to fill in the empty areaand to create dialogue for the page. Bernie Wrightson and MikeKaluta provided the artwork for the contest pages in issues #2 and 3.

Caught In A Web Of Horror 5

RICHARD ARNDT: Can you give us a little of your background andhow you first encountered comics?

TERRY BISSON: I was born during World War II and grew up inpostwar Kentucky. The suburbs, not the hills. I first encountered comicsthrough Captain Marvel. I mourned when the Shazam went away, andnever had the same affection for Superman. I remember the old ECs andtheir demise. I never cared for Marvel or DC super-hero comics.

RA: How did you come to write stories for Warren?

BISSON: I wanted to be a famous writer, à la Jack Kerouac. Didn’t workout, but I got a job in the pulps, and worked for True Experience andother romance mags. My friend Clark Dimond was more into the comicsworld and turned me on to the Warren line. He was writing for them, and

we collaborated on a few storieswhich we sold to Creepy and Eerie.These were in fact my first profes-sional sales. I think we split ten bucksa page. Our plot conferences werealong the lines of, “Does he turn outto be a vampire or a werewolf?” Inever met any of the staff, althoughClark was friends with ArchieGoodwin. I met Goodwin years later,briefly.

RA: How did you become the editorofWeb of Horror?

BISSON:Web of Horror was put out by the samecompany, Candar, that published the humor magCracked, although I never worked on Cracked. Theyhad an office on Long Island. Cracked was the flagship.The whole company was about lowball imitations. Thepublisher, Robert Sproul, wanted to put out someimitations of Western, romance, and astrology mags,and I was hired (at about age 27) to put them togetherbecause of my romance-mag experience. Nothing to dowith comics! The pseudo-mags did pretty well (this wasa very low-end market) and Bob wanted to expand. Isuggested we do a Warren-style comic magazine.

RA:Many of your artists and writers either alreadywere or would become the “Young Turks” that set thecomic world on its ear in the early 1970s. How didyou find those contributors?

BISSON: Clark Dimond helped me figure out who tocontact. I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t rememberhow I got in touch with Mike Kaluta, BernieWrightson, Ralph Reese, and the others. I doremember being aware that they were, or soon wouldbe, stars. We also tapped a few old hacks. The greatthing about being an editor, of even a small commercialmag, is that you have money. You can pay!

RA:What can you tell us about your publisher,Robert Sproul?

BISSON: I loved Bob Sproul! He was a very easy-goingguy who gave his staff their head. A shirtsleevepublisher. The production and art people really ran theplace (about six in all). Come to think of it, Imay havebeen listed as editor of Cracked at one point, but themag really put itself together. A solid stable of hacks. Iknew or cared nothing about it. I felt bad about leaving

INTERLUDE #1:An 2005 Interview With Web Of Horror’s

Terry Bisson!Conducted by Richard J. Arndt

The Devil And Berni’s WebsterBernie Wrightson (who then spelled his first name

“Berni”) drew the mag’s mascot, the Webster, on theinside front cover of Web of Horror #1. Script by TerryBisson. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

Terry And The PiratesTerry Bisson, science-fiction andfantasy writer—and, in 1969-70,the editor as well as featured

writer of Web of Horror. Amonghis best-known literary works arethe story “They’re Made Out ofMeat” and the novels Fire on theMountain, Voyage to the RedPlanet, and Pirates of the

Universe.

6 A Look At “America’s Nightmare Magazine” of 1967-80

Once again, on this and the facing page, a half dozenfirst pages of stories—this time from WoH #3 (April 1970).

(Counterclockwise, from top left:)

(a) “Dead End,” with art by Michael Kaluta; written byOtto Binder. Michael is seen on the left here in a 1967photo; the other guy is Steve Harper, a friend andoccasional early collaborator. Thanks to Bob Bailey.

(b) “Curse of the Yeti,” featuring Ralph Reese’s take onthe Abominable Snowman, from a Binder script.

(c) “Santa’s Claws,” which marks Frank Brunner’s debutas an art pro (and writer!).

(d) “Point of View,” with story and art by another“newest of the new,” Bruce Jones—who’s seen in thisrecent photo—’cause we couldn’t come up with avintage one in time.

(e) “Strangers!”—written as well as drawn by Syd Shores.

(f) “Feed It,” as illustrated by Bernie Wrightson; script byMike Friedrich. Richard Arndt feels this is “probablythe best story to actually appear in WoH.” [All art &script on this spread ©2008 the respective copyrightholders.]

14 A Look At “America’s Nightmare Magazine” of 1967-80

Another Six-Pack OfSplash Pages

Caught In A Web Of Horror 15

The Thing About “Man-Thing”…ROY THOMAS Relates The Story Behind The Origin Of Marvel’s

Swamp That Walks Like A Man—And A Few Others Of That Icky IlkConducted by George Khoury Transcribed by Steven Tice

his interview took place in 2002 and was intendedfor inclusion in the book Swampmen, as edited byJon B. Cooke. For various reasons, that volume has

yet to see print, so George Khoury and I decided it wastime it appeared in this Halloween issue of Alter Ego, alongwith my 2+-page synopsis for the very first “Man-Thing”story, which debuted in 1971’s black-&-white Marvel comicSavage Tales #1. The interview has been edited and slightlyshortened for this venue; it may yet appear in its longerform in a book version of Swampmen, which JBC hasrecently announced his renewed determination to publishere long. We’re looking forward to it, Jon!—Roy.

GEORGE KHOURY: Do you remember how “Man-Thing” wasinitiated?

ROY THOMAS: Stan Lee called me in; it would’ve been late ’70or early ’71. He wanted to launch this new magazine calledSavage Tales, and one of its features was to be called “Man-Thing.” He had a couple of sentences or so for the concept—Ithink it was mainly the notion of a guy working on some exper-imental drug or something for the government, his beingaccosted by spies, and getting fused with the swamp so that hebecomes this creature. The creature itself sounded a lot likeThe Heap, but neither of us mentioned that character at thetime, though Stan’s said since, when people have asked himabout the Hulk, that he was familiar with The Heap. I didn’tcare much for the name “Man-Thing,” because we already hadThe Thing, and I thought it would be confusing to also haveanother one called Man-Thing.

TT Comics Get HairyInterviewee Roy Thomas—juxtaposed with a 2006pencil drawing of the Man-Thing by this issue’scover artist, Frank Brunner—and a panel of

chronologically-accelerated retelling of the origin ofThe Heap from Hillman Periodicals’ Airboy Comics,Vol. 7, #10 (Nov. 1950), as written and drawn by

Ernie Schroeder. (It’s difficult to show a splash of a“Heap” story—because the title monster was almost

never featured thereon!)

The pic of Roy was taken at a 1968 comicon in St.Louis, at a time when he briefly sported a scragglygoatee; photo courtesy of Michel Maillot. Frank wasone of the major artists of the “Man-Thing” series,

first in Fear, then in his own mag. For FB’s photo, seep. 12; for information on how to commission a workof original art by Frank, see p. 19. [Man-Thing &Human Torch TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.;Heap page ©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

20

GK: You didn’t find the term suggestive?

THOMAS: No. Giant-Size Man-Thing later had a decidedly funny ring toit, but not “Man-Thing” by itself. I don’t believe that ever crossed mymind, nor did anybody mention it at the time. Stan wanted “Man-Thing,”so he got one. With that couple of sentences to go on, I went off andplotted the story. I don’t remember if I wrote it down or just told thegeneral idea of the story to Gerry Conway, who then wrote a script fromit. It was then given to Gray Morrow to draw. I think Gerry had seen afew of the old “Heap” stories, too, by then. But of course I’d already doneanother swampish character before “Man-Thing.” [EDITOR’S NOTE:This interview was conducted before Roy T. received via e-mail a copy ofhis 1970 synopsis.]

GK:Who designed Man-Thing? Was it John Romita?

THOMAS: Far as I know, Gray Morrow just drew it. He was surelyfamiliar with The Heap, too, though I suspect either Gerry or I mentionedThe Heap specifically to him as the look that was wanted. He drew Man-Thing about as close to The Heap as anything could be, which is exactlywhat I in particular wanted. Stan certainly had no objection. Gray drew ina couple of friends of his as enemy agents, including a friend of oursnamed Chester Grabowski, with whom I used to play poker at [comicsdealer and later comicon host] Phil Seuling’s Coney Island apartment.

GK:Was “Man-Thing” supposed to be an ongoing strip in Savage Tales?

THOMAS: Yeah. As you know, the second story was drawn, though byNeal Adams, but took a year or two to see print, because—well, I nevergot all the inside story, but there were several things that led to SavageTales being cancelled after that first issue. [Marvel publisher] MartinGoodman had never really wanted to do a non-Code comic, probablybecause he didn’t want any trouble with the CMAA [Comics MagazineAssociation of America, the organization that administered the ComicsCode Authority] over it. Nor did he really want to get into magazine-format comics; and Stan really did. So Goodman looked for an excuse tocancel it. I also heard we weren’t able to sell the mag in Canada, whichordinarily would probably have taken maybe 10% of the print run—thatsomebody at the competition, DC or Warren or wherever, told theCanadians it was salacious material. But I never got any confirmation ofthat, and it may be an urban legend.

At any rate, we had lots of returns of unsold copies, due to poor distri-bution as much as anything. For several years, there were copies in awarehouse—and also, for a time, sitting in the hallway at Marvel betweenStan’s office and the bullpen were hundreds of copies of #1 in little balesof fifty or whatever. We were told to take home as many as we wanted,just to clear them out. I eventually took some, as did others. In 1976 theyhelped finance my move to Los Angeles. By then, Savage Tales #1 hadbecome a collector’s item, primarily because of the “Conan” story thereinby Barry [Smith] and me, but also because of the other features.

GK:What kind of response did “Man-Thing” get? Was he an instanthit? Did you guys get a lot of mail?

THOMAS:We probably got some, but I don’t remember much about it.

Behind Every Man-Thing, There Are Men—Doing Their ThingThe artist and scripter of that first “Man-Thing” story. Gray Morrow, ina self-portrait that appeared in Sorcery #7 (1974) and Gerry Conway in

a photo from 1973’s F.O.O.M. (Friends Of Ol’ Marvel) #1. Thanks toRich Donnelly for the Morrow art. (A photo of Gray appeared last issue.)

[Art ©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

Call Roy Anxious(Left:) Roy wrote this text page for Savage Tales #1, an assignment that

made him a bit uneasy at the time, since he knew Stan would be going overit carefully. As it turned out, Stan made only one or two minor tweaks, suchas adding re Gerry Conway the sentence “Call him a beginner.” As for what

those “five different [potential] origins” for Man-Thing Stan and Roydiscussed, were, neither of them today has any idea—they were probably justvariations on Stan’s general concept outlined in the interview. [©2008 Marvel

Characters, Inc.; Conan art ©2008 Conan Properties International, LLC.;Femizon art ©2008 Stan Lee & John Romita.]

Incidentally, while this issue was in the final stages of preparation, Roye-mailed Gerry, asking him if he recalled whether he wrote a full script for

Gray Morrow on the “Man-Thing” origin, or whether Gray first broke the storydown from Roy’s synopsis. Gerry was on the road when he received thee-mail, but took the time to respond: “As I recall, we did it Marvel style.

I seem to remember having the art on my desk. But it was a lonnnng time agoand memory is unreliable. Best guess, though, is that I scripted from the art.”

Thanks, Gerry.

The Thing About “Man-Thing”... 21

[Continued on p. 24]

Roy T. was astonished when, in 2003, collector Tom Field mailed him aphotocopy of his November 1970 synopsis for the very first “Man-Thing”

story, whose two-plus pages are repro’d on this page and the next, for thefirst time ever. Till he saw it, A/E’s editor had no recollection whether he’d

ever actually written any of that storyline down (as opposed to simply tellingscripter Gerry Conway or artist Gray Morrow the story orally)—let alone that itwas so detailed, broken down page by page and virtually panel by panel! Hefeels he may have done this because, by the time he typed it, he knew Graywas to be the artist, and Gray was not used to working in the then-“Marvelstyle,” with the plot done first, then the pencils (or occasionally full art),

with dialogue and captions being added later.

Tom Field wrote recently that he found it “interesting” that the vicious,scarred Ellen was clearly meant to return in later stories. Did she ever actuallyreappear in the series? Note also that the plot specifically refers to TheodoreSturgeon's “It”... making it likely that Roy had already mentioned that short

story to the prospective artist.

On the left, for comparison purposes only, is the first, pre-splash page ofthe “Man-Thing” origin as it appeared in Savage Tales #1 (May 1971), scriptedby Gerry and drawn by Gray. Roy lifted the visual of a marsh bird beinggrabbed from below the water by a predator from a scene in the 1955

Universal film Revenge of the Creature (sequel to The Creature from the BlackLagoon); he adapted the concept to have an alligator (rather than a clawedhand) grab the bird, with the Man-Thing then grabbing the gator. Thanksto Peter Duxbury & Barry Pearl for the scans on this two-page spread.

On the facing page is a lineup of art spots, taken from the stories,which appeared on the contents page of Savage Tales #1: Conan by Barry[Windsor-]Smith; a Femizon by John Romita; Man-Thing by Gray Morrow;Black Brother by Gene Colan; Ka-Zar by John Buscema. A truly stellar lineupfor that rare black-&-white comic, which originally sold for a whole 50¢!Thanks to Matt Moring for the scan. [Conan art ©2008 Conan PropertiesInternational, LLC; Femizon art ©2008 Stan Lee & John Romita; other art

& text ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

22

ASavage

Tale

verett Raymond Kinstler has always understood that the mainpoint of art is to interact with the viewer. A storyteller from hisearliest days at Cinema Comics with fabled editor Richard

Hughes, Ray honed his craft at MLJ, Parents’ Magazines, Avon, DC,Timely, Classics Illustrated, and Western Publishing. His inside-front-cover art for Avon was a showcase of masterpieces of illustration,rendered in worshipful admiration to artists like James MontgomeryFlagg (with whom he became close friends). At the same time, Ray wasfilling the pages of pulp magazines, children’s books, and paperbackswith superior illustrations. Never content to stay in one place, Rayeventually left all that behind to become one of America’s greatestportrait painters. Celebrities such as James Cagney, John Wayne,Katharine Hepburn, and Scott Carpenter are among the manycelebrities to pose for Ray. He has painted five US presidents: RichardNixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and BillClinton; the Ford and Reagan paintings being the official White Houseportraits.

Jim Vadeboncoeur’s Everett Raymond Kinstler: The Artist’s Journeythrough Popular Culture - 1942-1962, co-written with the artist,details that time period so thoroughly (and in color!) that there’s noway we can improve on what Jim V. has done. So we didn’t even try. Infact, we worked hard to avoid using more than a handful of the sameimages he printed in his book (see ad on p. 19). What we did was tofocus on Ray’s comic book work, as is our usual wont. To me, he hasalways been an ideal role model for comic book artists, because, asRod Stewart once said, “Every picture tells a story,” whether it be oncanvas or in the four-color world of comics. And few tell it better thanEverett Raymond Kinstler, the master storyteller.—Jim.

“I Just Desperately WantedTo Become An Artist”

JIM AMASH: Tell me about your early life.

EVERETT RAYMOND KINSTLER: I was born in New York City onAugust 5, 1926. The interesting thing about that date is that one of mybest friends was Anthony Benedetto, whom you know as TonyBennett. He was born August 3, 1926, in New York City, just a coupleof days before I was.

“I Never Looked Down On Comics”Artist & Illustrator EVERETT RAYMOND KINSTLER TalksAbout His Career In The Wild World Of Comic Books

Interview Conducted by Jim Amash Transcribed by Tom Wimbish & Theresa R. Davidson

29

Two Men—Two MythsRay Kinstler (above) in his first National Art Clubs studio, circa 1950—at a time when he was also drawing comic books—and a page fromone of his famous “Zorro” issues of Dell’s Four Color Comics (#574,Aug. 1954, to be exact), based on the Disney TV version of JohnstonMcCulley’s masked hero, who’s been introduced in pulp magazines in1919. Repro’d from a scan of the original art, with thanks to MarkMuller; scripter unknown. The photo of Ray, as he is called by hisfriends, appeared courtesy of Kinstler in the book Everett RaymondKinstler: The Artist’s Journey through Culture 1942-1962; with specialthanks to Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. [©2008 Disney Productions, Inc.]

EE

When I graduated Public School #166 in New York City, I went on tothe School of Music and Art. When I tell people that I dropped out ofhigh school, most people assume it was because I was not able to keep upacademically. But the years that they chose us, the first years of the HighSchool of Music and Art, you almost had to be an honor student to get in.

I went to Music and Art for about a year, and it was at the beginning ofmy second year that I left and went to the School of Industrial Arts. Ididn’t last there very long, either. Tony and I were in the same class, but Ihave no recollection of him from that time, because I only stayed there forone term.

JA:Was money part of the reason why you left the school?

KINSTLER: No. I was an only child from a middle-class family. We didn’thave much money, but we were not poor. There was always food on thetable. In the ’30s, my mother had to go to work during the GreatDepression. It was nothing more or less than a consuming desire. I justdesperately wanted to become an artist.

I started drawing when I was three or four years old. I used to copycomic strips and pictures of movie stars from the newspapers. During theperiod in which I grew up, there were possibly 10 newspapers every dayin New York City, and my parents would bring home magazines like TheSaturday Evening Post, Liberty, and Collier’s. From the age of five or six,I absolutely fell in love with the imagery, the stories, and the color inthose magazines.

I copied the work of illustrators such as James Montgomery Flagg, andsome of the sports cartoonists. There was a man named Pap—TomPaprocki, I think his name was—who did wonderful black-&-whites forthe sports page. There was also Burris Jenkins, Jr., a sports cartoonist whofocused on the Brooklyn Dodgers and who coined the phrase “ThemBums.” By nine or ten, I was drawing all the time. Motion pictures alsohad a profound effect upon me. I also drew portraits of my parents,Joseph and Essie.

JA:Was there a particular studio whose movies you liked best?

KINSTLER: I liked all the obvious people. Gary Cooper was great, evenbefore John Wayne became as popular as he did. I was already 12 or 13when people like James Cagney and John Wayne came along. You have noidea—and I can’t explain it to you—what it was like to spend time withWayne, Cagney, and Katharine Hepburn in the late ’70s and early ’80s; itwas like reliving my past.

JA: Did you go to art museums when you were a child?

KINSTLER: No, not at all. Thenewspaper comic strips were mybiggest influence. I wasn’t as interestedin the cartoons, but in draftsmen likeHal Foster [Tarzan], Alex Raymond[Flash Gordon], Milton Caniff [Terryand the Pirates]. There were others Iliked, like Raeburn Van Buren, whodrew Abby ‘n’ Slats, and was a very finepen-and-ink artist. Strips like BuckRogers didn’t interest me much; I seemto have veered towards the men whowere superior draftsmen and knockoutstorytellers, of which Caniff was in aclass by himself.

Raymond and Foster were masterillustrators with classical styles,particularly Raymond, who swipedfrom magazine illustrators like JohnLaGatta and Matt Clark, where he

got those very sensuous women and wonderful drybrush qualities.LaGatta was known for lush, wet, naked-backed women. He seemed tolike the fanny more than the front, which is okay, too. [laughter] MattClarke and his brother Benton used to do most of the Westerns for TheSaturday Evening Post. They were both students of Harvey Dunn. Dunnwas a giant, an absolute giant. Even though it was during World War IIand all the men were in the service, I couldn’t get into his class because itwas packed.

Milton Caniff was maybe the most consummate storyteller in comics.His use of angles and shots... nobody had done anything like that before.Caniff was as important as—and made a contribution that to me was verysimilar to—what Orson Welles did with Citizen Kane. And those dateswere parallel, by the way.

JA:When you went to the movies, what grabbed you? Were you lookingat camera angles, shots, and how scenes were lit?

KINSTLER: Not pointedly. I was most interested in adventure, storiesthat dealt with pirates, Westerns, action... historical movies on the grandscale. Anything that had imagery and personality had an enormousinfluence on me, as did many of the actors of the day when I was veryyoung, some of whom I got to know years later, like Fredric March, whowon the Academy Award two or three times. I loved the Barrymores—Lionel and John—Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn... all the obvious people… inmovies like The Lives of a Bengal Lancer and Captain Blood, which weregreat adventure, swashbuckling, and had great imagery. They had anenormous effect on my career, without question.

JA:When you were young, did you write and draw your own comicstrips?

KINSTLER: Yes. When I was in public school, I would copy pictures ofmovie stars and baseball players, and sell them to the class for about anickel apiece. I was also making up strips of my own. One was based onmaybe my first favorite comic strip: Secret Agent X-9, by Alex Raymond,based on the Dashiell Hammett character. I also drew my own panelstrips when I was about 13 or 14. I was more influenced by Raymond thanFoster.

“I Answered An Ad In The New York TimesFor A Comic Book Inker”

JA:When you left school, what did you do?

Two Flashes Of Alex RaymondKinstler says his greatest influence among comic artists was Alex Raymond, beginning with his strip Secret Agent X-9—and, later in this interview, that he enjoyed doing “Hawkman” in two issues of DC’s Flash Comics (as seen on p. 37)because that hero was clearly inspired by the high-flying Hawkmen of Mongo in Raymond’s newspaper strip Flash

Gordon. The X-9 panel at left was sent by Al Dellinges; the panel at right, from the Flash Gordon Sunday page for July22, 1934, was reprinted in Kitchen Sink’s Flash Gordon by Alex Raymond, Vol. 1, in 1990. [©2008 King Features, Inc.]

30 Everett Ray Kinstler Talks About His Career In Comic Books

comic book thing was just a very small facet for him. I don’t even think hewas particularly interested in it.

“I Had Fun Doing ‘Hawkman’”JA: In 1947, you started freelancing at DC. Who did you work withthere?

KINSTLER: I remember Bob Kanigher and Julie Schwartz, but not partic-ularly well. I do remember Kanigher saying at one point, “Kid, your stuffis old-fashioned; you draw every man with a mouth like a razor blade.” Iwas influenced by these square-jawed illustrators like J.C. Leyendeckerand Flagg. I didn’t particularly like working for him, but my dealings withthem were very limited. They were not significant to me, because thosewere the years where I was moving into paperbacks, and more heavilyinto pulps. That’s basically when I fell into Avon.

JA: Here are the features I have you doing at DC in around 1947: “BlackPirate”… a couple of “Hawkman” stories, including a cover for FlashComics… a few romance stories, including one for Girls’ Love Stories….

KINSTLER: I don’t particularly recall doing any of that except“Hawkman.” “The Black Pirate” sounds familiar, but I’d have to see it. Ihad fun doing “Hawkman” because it was based on the Alex RaymondHawkmen storyline from Flash Gordon. I saw the character, and Iremembered Vulcan and the Hawkmen.

JA: I have you working on True Comics for Parents’ Magazine around1947 and ’48.

KINSTLER: I remember showing them my samples. Their offices weresomewhere near Grand Central Station. It was a very sterile atmosphere. Iremember a feature I drew about Matthew Henson, a black man who wentwith Admiral Peary to the North Pole. I did a couple for stories for them,but I did not enjoy them. They were very businesslike; working theredidn’t appeal to me.

So much of what I did was very motivated by the people I workedwith. If I found somebody like Sol Cohen at Avon or Matt Murphy atWestern Publishing, I had a great time, because they were pals.

JA: You didn’t sign the work you did at most of the places you worked.Were you explicitly told not to sign?

KINSTLER: I was told that my signature would be taken off if I signed it.I always took pride in using my name. When I was drafted, the firstmorning, we fell out in a big yard at 5:00 in the morning. We were all inthese herringbone jumpsuits, and we had these little caps on, and Ithought, “My God, I’ve lost all my individuality.” I can still feel theabsolute loneliness of it. Wherever I found a publisher that would not letme sign my work, that was a good barometer for me; it was an intuitionon my part that I didn’t want to keep working there. It was a matter ofretaining my individuality and having my name on something.

An Hawkward PausePages of Kinstler’s two “Hawkman” entries, from Flash Comics #87 & #89 (Sept. & Nov. 1947). With art over the years by Moldoff, Kubert, and Kinstler, is itany wonder the Feathered Fury has always been one of the best-remembered of Golden Age super-heroes who never had their own solo titles? The script for“Peril at High Tide!” (at left) is credited by the GCD to Robert Kanigher, that of “The Crimes of the Acrobat” (right) to John Broome. Thanks to Al Dellinges &

Bob Bailey. We ran the splash of the latter adventure back in A/E V3#4; see TwoMorrows ad bloc at the end of this issue. [©2008 DC Comics]

“I Never Looked Down On Comics” 37

This Time The CavalryNeeds Help—From

The Highway Patrol!Broderick Crawford, soon to bethe star of the vintage TV seriesnamed above, starred in a 1953

movie called Last of theComanches—the one-shot comicbook version of which wasdrawn for Avon by EverettRaymond Kinstler. Seen here(clockwise from top left) arethe cover, inside front cover,splash page, and two story

pages. Thanks to Jay Kinney forthe splash, and to Jim Ludwigfor the other art. [©2008 therespective copyright holders.]

“I Never Looked Down On Comics” 39

ou think comic books can’t have an influence on a person’s career?Think again.

The first comic book I ever read featured “Alley Oop.” Today I amin my 18th year of drawing that newspaper comic strip and drew the mostrecent series of Alley Oop comic books. My wife Carole has assisted onthe strip since 1992 and began writing it in 2001.

I was very, very young when my parents brought home a copy ofMammoth Comics from the “dime store” for me to read, but my loveaffair with Alley Oop began that day and never let up.

And apparently I am not the only person out there who admires thecharacter. Our comic strip still appears in over 600 newspapers, with anestimated 26 million readers every day, plus many more on the Internet.

That compares favorably with the peak reached in the days whenOop’s creator called the shots, daily and Sunday. (If your hometownnewspaper doesn’t carry Oop, take a look at it, daily and Sunday, atcomics.com/comics/alleyoop or beg your newspaper to add it.)

Oop even was the symbol of early comic book fandom. The“Alley” award, a statue of the caveman, was given to honoroutstanding talent from 1961 to 1969. And don’t forget thewonderful rock song by the Argyles, which lives on.

Alley Oop’s comic book life began in 1936 and has extended intothis century. Oop has appeared in some 189 different comic books,mostly in reprints of the work of the great V.T. Hamlin, who createdthe strip. Frank Johnson did the two Dell books in the 1960s, and Idid most of the new art in the Antarctic series of 1998 to 2000.Those are the only two comic book entries that contained originalart other than splash pages and covers that showcased the Hamlinreprints.

In addition to those 189 comic books out there for Oop fans tocollect, there are many other compilations that may or may not beconsidered comic books. These would include theMenomoneeFalls Guardian, The Sawtella Chronicles published by Ken Pierce,the three Dragon Lady Press books, the three Kitchen Sink books,a fourth book in the same chronology published by ManuscriptPress, Strip Adventure magazine, the current Comics Revuemagazine, and the especially comprehensive series Alley Oop:The Magazine, now in its 27th issue (which celebrates Oop’s 75thanniversary with the NEA syndicate).

Oop, Oop, And Away!A Short Celebration Of Alley Oop‘s 75th Anniversary

On The Newspaper Comics PageArticle by Jack Bender

Generation MooJack and Carole Bender, the current artist and writer of the Alley Oop strip,with the children of the caveman’s creator, V.T. Hamlin. (Left to right:)

Jack Bender, Teddy (Teodoro) Hamlin Dewalt, Carole Bender, & Jon Hamlin.Photo courtesy of the Benders. Shown at left is Jack’s cover for Alley OopAdventures #1 (Aug. 1998) from Antarctic Press; repro’d from a photocopy

of the original art. [Comic cover ©2008 NEA, Inc.]

YY

51

From Antediluvian To Art DecoAlley Oop was created, written, and drawn by Vincent Trout Hamlin (1900-1993), seen at top right in a caricature by George Scarbo from Martin Sheridan’s

groundbreaking 1944 book Comics and Their Creators. Though Oop got off to a self-proclaimed “flying start” with its first daily on Aug. 7, 1933, the strip reallytook off when, on April 7-8, 1939, Hamlin transported Oop and his lovely ladyfriend Ooola to the 20th century via Dr. Wonmug’s time machine, in the two

dailies seen below. [Caricature of Hamlin ©2008 the respective copyright holders; Oop strips & characters ©2008 NEA, Inc.]

Special Alley Oop Section:

Evolution OfA Comic Strip

Caveman

Alley Oop’s 75th Anniversary On The Newspaper Comics Page 55

59

Book One – Chapter 5: MORT-ificationBOB ROZAKIS: Let’s talk about Mort Weisinger. I only met him once, inthe mid-’70s, when Guy Lillian invited him up to the office to be inter-viewed for the Green Lantern issue of The Dynamic World of AAComics. So most of what I know about him is what Julie Schwartz toldme over the years.

TED SKIMMER:Well, Mort came over from DC after we absorbed theirline in the last half of the ’40s. Initially, he was working on Superman andAction Comics, but when they were cancelled, he was something of theodd man out. He had a couple of humor titles, I think, and one or twoothers.

Then there was the situation with Billy Gaines over the horror books,and he ended up taking over Green Lantern and All-American from Julie.[EDITOR’S NOTE: See Chapter 2, “The Bill Gaines Years,” in Alter Ego#78 for details.]

You know, people say a lot of things about Mort, and most of the artistsand writers who ever worked with him didn’t like him. But he certainlyknew how to sell comic books. He was the one who built the GreenLantern “family,” piggybacking on the success of the TV show in the1950s.

BR: But the first new direction was with Kid Lantern.

SKIMMER: That’s right. DC had started a “Superboy” series inMore FunComics, then moved it into Adventure Comics. It was dropped when we[AA] took over the titles, most probably because of the lawsuit betweenDC and Siegel and Shuster. But Mort knew there was an interest amongthe readers for younger versions of the heroes, so he proposed “KidLantern,” the adventures of GL as a boy.

BR:Which revised the origin of Green Lantern substantially.

SKIMMER:Well, yes, it did. But you have to realize that the readershipback then was not like what it is today. After the war, the audience wasreduced to kids, mostly boys, and mostly 8 to 12 years old. The vastmajority of kids reading our books in 1949 were not old enough to have

read All-American #16, sothey had no idea whatGreen Lantern’s originwas anyway.

So, in Mort’s revisedhistory, a much youngerAlan Scott finds thelantern while he’s lost on acamping trip. Frightenedand cold in the darkwoods, he sees a strangegreen glow in the distanceand follows it to a cave.Inside, he finds thelantern and the ring. Afterhe uses the ring to savesome other campers froma bear, he realizes heshould use it as a super-hero, and so he creates hiscostume and Kid Lanternidentity.

BR: The story appearedin Sensation Comics #92in 1949, when Mort tookover editing. In exchange,Action Comics, whichbecame first ActionWestern, then ActionMen of War, went to Bob Kanigher, who had been handling the title.“Wonder Woman” had been the lead feature in Sensation, with“Wildcat,” “Lady Danger,” and “Streak the Wonder Dog” as back-ups.

SKIMMER:Wonder Woman’s popularity had started to fade by that point.Charlie’s [Gaines’] rights agreement with Marston was that he would

hat if… instead of selling his share of All-AmericanPublications to DC co-publishers Harry Donenfeld andJack Liebowitz in the mid-1940s, as happened in what we

call the Real World, Max Charles Gaines had instead bought DC Comicsfrom them?

Just imagine… a comic book industry in which (due to threatenedlawsuits by Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, and Bob Kane, which resulted inthere having briefly been two competing versions of “Superman” and

“Batman” titles on the newsstands in the late ’40s) Green Lantern andThe Flash and Wonder Woman became the premier Golden Ageheroes—stars of comic books, radio, movies, and television, rather thanthe Man of Steel and the Caped Crusader! (Even so, in our world, all arton the next six pages features characters TM & ©2008 DC Comics.]

Not a dream, not a hoax… just an imaginary story of an alternateuniverse and of…

The Secret Historyof All-AmericanComics, Inc.

by Bob Rozakis

WW

heodore [“Ted”] Skimmer worked in the editorial and production department of All-American Comics from 1944 through 1997. During his53-year career, he had a front-row seat for the history of the company, a history he’s agreed to share with us in this interview I conducteda few months ago.—Bob Rozakis.

TT

It’s Always Fair Weather…Mort Weisinger (seated) and his old friend andlater fellow editor Julius Schwartz, in a photothat first appeared in an issue of The DynamicWorld of AA Comics, the company’s always-entertaining, ever-informative house fanzine

sold by subscription and through comics stores.Mort and Julie, however, had their differences

in later years.

continue publishing her own title, but he didn’t have to keep her as afeature in anything else.

BR:Mort kept “Wildcat,” but he brought over “Congo Bill” and “TommyTomorrow” from Action. There were a couple more “Lady Danger”stories, but then she was gone. Inventory stories, I presume.

SKIMMER: [laughs] There were always inventory stories. In any case,Mort was right on target with “Kid Lantern.” Sales on Sensation went upsignificantly, and in early 1950 he got his own title.

Meantime, Green Lantern’s popularity continued to grow. After thetwo movie serials, they started on the TV series. There were a variety ofproduct tie-ins… nothing like what we have today every time a moviecomes out, but the company made a few dollars here and there. GreenLantern board games, Green Lantern kites, Green Lantern whiffle bats—lots of cheap toys. If they could slap a piece of GL art on it, it was done.

BR: Not like today, whereeverything is speciallydesigned.

SKIMMER: Nothing like that.Charlie would come into theproduction department andtell Sol Harrison, “Get mesome artwork for a GreenLantern card game.” Sol wouldhave someone go into thecabinet where the old artworkwas kept and pick out a shot ofGL, one of Alan Scott, thebattery, the ring—whatever.Voila—Green Lantern, theCard Game. They just cut upthe original art, becausenobody wanted it. When thecabinet got full, they’d havesomebody flip through it all,cut out anything they mightwant to use later—you know,head shots, nice poses, thatkind of thing—and toss therest.

BR: There was still plenty ofthat in a filing cabinet when Ijoined the company in 1973. I

used some of it for the Slurpee cups we did for 7-11.

SKIMMER: Anyway, Mort’s new spin on Green Lanternbecoming a super-hero while he was a teenager took on alife of its own. Alan Scott grew up in Littletown, where hisparents Tom and Sarah owned a general store. Their next-door neighbors were the Coles. The father, Professor Cole,was an explorer who was always going off to exotic locales.

BR: [laughs] And he always seemed to be wearing a safarihat and jacket, even around Littletown. I think there wasone story in which they were having a family picnic byLittletown Lake and he was wearing the outfit.

SKIMMER: It made easy identification for the readers, andhe was a regular plot device for the writers. Either he’d bestuck somewhere strange and Kid Lantern would have to gorescue him, or he’d bring home some rare artifact thatwould cause problems. His daughter Carol was Alan’sclassmate; she was the teenage equivalent of Cathy Crain.Invariably, she’d be the one who’d get into trouble with the

various treasures her father brought home.

BR: Right. If he put a sign on it saying, “Don’t touch this!” she wouldsay, “I wonder why?” And all hell would break loose because she wouldtouch it. Mrs. Cole didn’t play much of a role in the series—but sheapparently baked a lot of pies. Whenever there was a story in whichCarol wanted to prove Alan was Kid Lantern, she’d come over with apiece of a pie that her mother had just baked as a pretext to get in thehouse.

SKIMMER:Mort’s next expansion of the “GL” line was when DoibyDickles got his own title in 1953. That was a direct result of the TV series,because Joe E. Ross had become extremely popular as the comedy reliefon the show.

BR: Green Lantern’s Pal, Doiby Dickles was certainly a mouthful of atitle.

60 The Secret History of All-American Comics, Inc.

Kids Will Be Kids!We recently discovered, in thehands of devoted “Green

Lantern” fan Shane Foley, someof the original drawings from thetime when the new Kid Lanternwas being created—in sketchesthat have the Kid’s power ringon his right hand. The costumeat top left was originally chosen,but the character wound up witha virtual dead copy of the adultoutfit when Weisinger decidedhe should make it even moreobvious to the reader that he

actually was Green Lantern. Theidentity of the artist is uncertain,but, by coincidence, he has thesame initials as Shane… whichmay be the reason our Australianbuddy paid top dollar for these

pieces a few years back.

65

Rough ‘n’ Ready(Above:) Bob Powell’s cover rough and his finished art for his first Shadow Comicsissue (Vol.6 #12, March 1947). Adding a sexy babe to the mix was a good call,guys! [©2008 Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

The Shadow Comic Book!

ne of the most successful 1930s pulp publishers wasStreet & Smith. But when “Superman” debuted in1938, comic book sales took off—and Street & Smith

took notice. And what better feature of theirs to convertto graphic form than The Shadow, their top pulptitle? So, in February 1940, The Shadow got hisown comic, illustrated by Vernon Greene, underthe direction of Jack Binder.

Actually, the origins of the comic book goback even further. According to Shadow scholarAnthony Tollin, Walter Gibson (who wrote thebulk of The Shadow pulps) had tried to interest hispublishers in a Shadow comic book as early as 1937,a full year before Superman came onto the scene.When Gibson noticed that early comic books(primarily comic strip reprints) wereselling well, he pitched a Shadow comicbook featuring all-new material to Street& Smith. But editor William deGrouchywasn’t sold on the idea, and the proposalwas scrapped.

Not long afterward, Quality comicpublisher Everett “Busy” Arnoldapproached Gibson about the possibilityof doing a weekly Shadow comic book asa free Sunday newspaper insert, butdeGrouchy nixed that idea, too. Arnold

Bob Powell’s Shadow!by Michael T. Gilbert

OO

Who Goes There? The Shadow Knows!(Left:) Powell delineates Lamont Cranston, the best-known of of

The Shadow’s various secret identities. [©2008 AdvanceMagazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Magazines.]

Keep On Truckin’!(Below & on next page:) Powell illustrated the story “No Safetyin Numbers” for the Nov. 1946 Shadow digest. This type of illo,

spread across two pages with room in the middle for the“gutter,” was for some reason called a “double truck” in thetrade. [©2008 Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé

then approached a young cartoonist named Will Eisner. In June1940 comic book history was made when Eisner’s Spirit seriesappeared instead of The Shadow!

But in 1939 Street & Smith’s new president, Allan Grammer,finally okayed a Shadow comic book. Though Gibson probablywasn’t involved with that first issue, he became the primaryscripter with issue #2—at double the going rate!

Spin-offs were nothing new for The Shadow. The darkavenger had made his very first appearance on July 31, 1930, asa narrator on Street & Smith’s Detective Story Hour radioshow. The Shadow Magazine pulp followed on April 1, 1931,and was an immediate success. Later, the character graduatedto his own radio show in the fall of 1932.

66 Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Howard Nostrand, Powell’s assistant,discussed the changeover in 1974, in the16th issue of Bill Spicer’s Graphic StoryMagazine:

“I started working for Bob whenI was 18. It was in 1948, and wewere doing a lot of stuff forStreet & Smith. We did “TheShadow,” “Nick Carter,” and“Doc Savage.” They had prettygrubby artwork back then. Backin 1948, Bill deGrouchy had alittle studio he ran called PennArt. I think he must have beenpaying $10 a page to turn outfinished artwork. The stuff wasreally just miserable. We’d justsit there and look at the crapbeing bought. And, you know,this was “The Shadow,” “NickCarter,” and “Doc Savage” andwhatnot. We ended up doingthe whole book then. I think wewere getting $25 a page fromStreet & Smith.”

Things quickly improved when Powelland his studio took over The Shadowand back-up features like Nick Carterand Doc Savage. Powell’s Shadow firstmaterialized (or dematerialized!) inShadow Comics, Vol. 6, #12 (March1947), the cover of which appears on ourintro page. In the same interview,conducted by Bhob Stewart, Nostranddescribes the workings of the Powellstudio:

On June 17, 1940, months after Shadow Comics debuted, a newShadow syndicated strip began, scripted by Walter Gibson and illustratedby Vernon Greene. The team likewise did work for Shadow Comics.Charles Coll and his studio also provided serviceable, if uninspired, art.Though the comic book version sold well (almost half a million copies in1941!), it lacked the moody atmosphere of the radio show and pulpmagazine.

That all changed in 1948, when Bob Powell took over.

He got the job after Gibson, embroiled in a financial dispute withStreet & Smith, refused to work on the pulp or the comic book. Soonafter, Powell became the main creative force behind The Shadow comicbook.

So Who’s This “Gilbert” Guy, Anyway?Vernon Greene’s 1940 version of the hero, from The Shadownewspaper strip. [©2008 Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./

The Condé Nast Magazines.]

Bob Powell’s Shadow! 67

[Shazam hero TM & ©2008 DC Comics;Mar-Vell TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

[FCA EDITORS NOTE: From 1941-53, Marcus D. Swayze was a topartist for Fawcett Publications. The very first Mary Marvel charactersketches came from Marc’s drawing table, and he illustrated her earliestadventures, including the classic origin story, “Captain MarvelIntroduces Mary Marvel (Captain Marvel Adventures No. 18, Dec. ’42);but he was primarily hired by Fawcett Publications to illustrate CaptainMarvel stories and covers forWhiz Comics and CaptainMarvel Adventures. He also wrote many Captain Marvelscripts, and continued to do so while in the military. Afterleaving the service in 1944, he made an arrangement withFawcett to produce art and stories for them on a freelancebasis out of his Louisiana home. There he created both artand stories for The Phantom Eagle inWow Comics, inaddition to drawing the Flyin’ Jenny newspaper strip for BellSyndicate (created by his friend and mentor Russell Keaton).After the cancellation ofWow, Swayze produced artwork forFawcett’s top-selling line of romance comics, includingSweethearts and Life Story. After the company ceasedpublishing comics, Marc moved over to CharltonPublications, where he ended his comics career in the mid-’50s. Marc’s ongoing professional memoirs have been a vitalpart of FCA since his first column appeared in FCA #54,1996. Last issue Marc discussed the importance of “doodling.”In this installment, he brings us back to 1941 … and the realCaptain Marvel.—P.C. Hamerlinck.]

hy don’t you write something about when youwere drawing and writing those Captain Marvelstories?” The question came from a faithful reader

of this column … and it was food for thought. “The realCaptain Marvel,” he added. More thought!

The period he was talking about would have begun the veryfirst day I showed up at Fawcett in 1941. The purpose of mybeing there was to draw Captain Marvel … in story art, oncovers, and wherever else needed. My writing of stories beganshortly afterwards … voluntarily, at first.

Captain Marvel was young at the time, it having been only amatter of months since his first appearances in print. Alreadyhe had undergone changes. The buttoned-down chest flap wasgone, as was the fringed sash that had dangled from his waist.In place of the original slender physical build was the morefamiliar heftier frame.

And he had begun to emerge from the growing crowd ofcomic book super-characters … at the sales counter. It was ameaningful time in the life of Captain Marvel … also in mine.I knew so little about comic books … or of the super-herocraze that was going on at the time. My assumption was that

Captain Marvel, as one of those fellows in the capes andlong drawers on the covers of those books, should bemore impressive in the performance of his feats. I sawthat, as a competitive game among them, being wagedthere on the newsstand racks, but actually to be settled… on various drawing boards?

It’s a wonder now what the future with that companymight have been, had I clung to that misconception.

They spoke of the work I had submitted being in theart style they sought. I believe it was not so much thestyle, as the technique. Any special effort spent in thepreparation of those samples would have gone toward theunusually heavy outlines and scarcity of shading of thefigures. It boiled down to the pointed brush, popular

among the New York comic book artists, versus the flexible metal pen Ifavored.

Their major concern, though, was not art styles or techniques … thesepeople were in need of help. Experience had taught that in order tomaintain the identity of their feature character consistently, it was

[Art & logo ©2008 Marc Swayze; Captain Marvel © & TM 2008 DC Comics]

By

80

WW““

Where’s The Beef?Marc Swayze’s cover for Whiz Comics #37 (Nov. 1942) shows the “heftier frame” thatCaptain Marvel had assumed within two or three years of his creation, both in his own

work and in that of C.C. Beck and his art shop. [©2008 DC Comics.]

egular readers of this publication know the many reasons whythe original Captain Marvel, created by Bill Parker and C.C.Beck, is unique among comic book super-heroes. One of those

reasons has to do with his name. No other super-hero name has ever beenused by so many different comic book characters (not counting reboots,revitalizations, and re-interpretations) and published by so many differentcomic book companies in the US and abroad.

Among these CM-named characters were two published by MarvelComics: Captain Mar-Vell, the alien warrior who became Captain Marvel,protector of the universe—and Genis-Vell, that character’s son, whorecently adopted the Captain Marvel name in tribute to his father’s legacy.These were the two CMs who most often reflected and referenced theoriginal Captain Marvel by having the heroes’ alter ego be a separate,non-powered person. Where the World’s Mightiest Mortal had BillyBatson, Mar-Vell and Genis-Vell had Rick Jones.

When creating a character with the same name as a previouscharacter—especially one as famous and with as much of a legend and fanfollowing as the original Captain Marvel—one must make a consciouschoice as to how much you will “tribute” the earlier character, and howmuch you will not reference the earlier character at all.

The public record is conflicted as to whose idea it was for MarvelComics to have its own Captain Marvel. In Les Daniels’Marvel: FiveFabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics, it is stated that, afterthe publication of MF Enterprises’ short-lived Captain Marvel series from1966, Stan Lee “thought it would be terrible if someone else had the namewhen we were Marvel Comics … I thought we’d better do a book, so Iwrote one about an alien from another planet.”

Roy Thomas, however, says something different in Alter Ego #50 andin his introduction to theMarvel Masterworks edition reprinting the firstyear’s worth of Marvel’s Captain Marvel stories. Thomas states that it waspublisher Martin Goodman’s realization that he had to protect hisinvestment in the name “Marvel” by having a Captain Marvel of his own,and gave Stan Lee the assignment of creating one. Thomas even recallsthat Lee “was not thrilled about doing this.”

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Enough “Marvels” In This Caption For You?Two titanic transformations. (Above:) Billy Batson becomes Captain Marvel inFawcett’s Captain Marvel Adventures #130 (March 1952), with art by C.C. Beckand Pete Costanza, in a story probably written by Otto Binder. Thanks to ScottDerrick. [©2008 DC Comics.] (Left:) Rick Jones switches places for the first time

with Mar-Vell in Marvel’s Captain Marvel #17 (Oct. 1969). Script by RoyThomas; art by Gil Kane & Dan Adkins. [©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Trading PlacesContrasts And Comparisons Of Captains

Marvel & Mar-Vell—& Their Alter Egosby Zorikh Lequidre

Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck

RR

First appearing in the pages ofMarvel Super-Heroes #12 (Dec. 1967),Stan’s Captain Marvel pointedly had no relation to the originalParker/Beck creation previously published by Fawcett. In fact, one couldmake an argument that Lee was more influenced by Superman thananything else. As he was created by Lee and developed by Roy Thomas,Captain Mar-Vell was an alien soldier sent to earth as a spy to determineif humankind should be destroyed. He took on a secret identity as a mild-mannered rocket scientist named Walter Lawson. He wound up defendingmankind from various threats, and he and his alter ego had a romantictriangle relationship with the head of security at a missile base. So notonly was he an alien (and the end of his name coincidentally rhymed withSuperman’s Kryptonian family name, el), he also had the Clark Kent/LoisLane/Superman dynamic. Furthermore, the woman in that triangle wasnamed Danvers, the secret-identity last name of Superman’s cousin,Supergirl. Thomas swears this was an accident, but the similarities wereonly increased when Miss Danvers later became Ms. Marvel, a femalesuper-hero with similar powers to Captain Marvel. One letter-writer tothe comic even inadvertently (assumingly) referred to Danvers as “Linda,”the first name of Supergirl’s alter ego, although by then Miss Danvers’ firstname had been established as “Carol.”

This Captain Marvel’s first adventures involved him being sent toEarth alone by his superior officer, Colonel Yon-Rogg, who had designson his beloved, Medic Una—whose parting with Mar-Vell was both sadand tragic. CM wound up battling a Kree Sentry (giant alien robot) in thefirst of many struggles in which he tried to balance his duties and loyaltyto the Kree Empire with his growing concern and affection for the peopleof Earth.

However, this was the era of pop-culture comics. Spider-Man, theHulk, the Fantastic Four, and others had caused a sensation in collegecampuses and counter-cultural communities … and the Batman TVseries had incited a renaissance in super-hero comics, proving that takingsuper-heroes either seriously or as camp were both commercially viable.Whether or not this was the reason for the creation of a new humor

comic, Marvel proved that it was quite capable of poking funat itself with Not Brand Echh, a 25¢ book loaded withparodies of its own and other companies’ comicbook characters and more. In issue #9 (Aug.1968), they attacked the first three issues ofCaptain Marvel.

The story was the adventure of “Captain Mar-Vinn”keeping an eye on the “Scent-ry” whiletrying to remember what his mission is and

attempting to communicate with “Colonel Egg-Nogg,”who is giving him the brush-off as “Medic Uno-Who” drowns

the “Kreep” spaceship in tears. In this story, with Roy Thomas and GeneColan reprising their writer/artist tandem, there were no fewer than sevenblatant references to a Captain Marvel that had not seen print for fifteenyears … from Mr. Mind appearing on the splash page…, to a black-hairedboy in a red sweater selling newspapers… to Disney’s Seven Dwarvesportraying the Seven Deadly Enemies of Man (with “Injustice” replacedby “Lust,” and “Lust” being “censored”) … to a reference of a “StationWHIZZ” … to “Dr. Sivanna” working on the Scent-ry … and to the BigRed Cheese himself standing outside a phone booth, while Mar-Vinnexpounds upon the absurdity of changing in a phone booth and wishedhe had “a magic word or something, like maybe SHAZAM ...”

The Captain Marvel series limped on for a year and a half, withseveral artist/writer changes, and becoming progressively more tragic andcosmic, until, according to Roy Thomas’ introduction in the secondvolume ofMarvel Masterworks: Captain Marvel (reprinting issues # 10-21), and in an interview from A/E #50, he thought of the original CaptainMarvel as a possible inspiration for something that could pick up thesagging sales of the book. In hisMarvel Masterworks introduction,Thomas “had this notion of doing a science fiction twist on … the 1940scharacter, by having Mar-Vell trade places with a young boy.”

Roy was so excited by this idea that he got Stan Lee to put him back onthe book as a writer (replacing Archie Goodwin). Only a few days later, bycoincidence, artist Gil Kane expressed a desire to work on CaptainMarvel. With the new direction planned, Thomas thought Kane would beperfect for the book, so Kane replaced artist Don Heck. Thomas haddesigned a new costume inspired by Atoman, an obscure Golden Agecharacter published by Spark Publications in 1946. Kane helped himrevise it, and in issue #17, “The Sensational New” Captain Marvelappeared.

Whereas the classic Billy Batson/Captain Marvel was a creature ofmagic, this Rick Jones/Captain Marvel would be one of science-fiction.While the relationship between the personalities of Billy and Marvel wasnever really delved into, the new Thomas/Kane Captain Marvel wouldexplore all aspects of it. And while Billy Batson and the “Big Red Cheese”had always basically seen eye to eye—with never a complaint about onlybeing on Earth for part of the time, Rick Jones and “Silvertop” (Rick’snickname for Mar-Vell, due to his white hair) would always have a degreeof tension about the subject. Rick and Mar-Vell talked to each other all

Mind If I Play Through?Mr. Mind was penciled in by writer Roy Thomas into in the otherwiseGene Colan-drawn splash of the “Captain Marvin” parody in Not BrandEchh #9 (Aug. 1968). Inks by Frank Giacoia. At this time, the ink on thestories being lampooned was barely dry in the first three Mar-Vell tales.

For the entire story, see either the hardcover Marvel Masterworks: CaptainMarvel, Vol. 2, or the black-&-white Essential Captain Marvel, Vol. 1.

[©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Trading Places 83

the time, while only in one very early instance were Billy and Marvel incontact with each other. [FCA EDITOR’S NOTE: The author isreferring to the classic scene fromWhiz Comics #11, Dec. 1940, whereCap “helps” Billy during a college entrance exam. There was also a rareconflict between the two in “Captain Marvel Falls in Love” fromWhizComics #53 (April 1944), where Cap and Billy “Shazammed” back andforth while they quarreled with each other.—PCH]

How did Rick and Mar-Vell talk to each other? As a result of exposureto anti-matter radiation from an exploding negatron sphere, Mar-Vellslipped into the Negative Zone. By casting illusions before young RickJones, he was able to lead the boy to a hidden Kree base in the middle ofthe desert and influence him to put on a pair of millennia-old “nega-bands”—which basically looked like golden bracelets. When bangedtogether, these bands would force a trading of atoms between Rick onEarth and Mar-Vell in the Negative Zone. Captain Marvel could thenbang the bands and trade atoms with Rick in the Negative Zone. Thisatom-trading only worked one way, though; only the person on Earthcould affect the trade through the banging of the bands.

It seems that the nega-bands provided a form of energy that was an

antidote to the radiation that had sent Mar-Vell to the Negative Zone, butthat this energy only allowed Mar-Vell to stay on Earth for three hours ata time. Rick could stay on Earth indefinitely. This energy also gave CMhis powers (flight, super-strength, resistance to energy weapons, etc.) bymaking real Mar-Vell’s will. But if CM should use the energy too fast, hewould be automatically zapped back to the Negative Zone in less thanthree hours. Rick Jones had no powers from the nega-bands.

Rick Jones (possibly inspired by DC’s “Snapper” Carr from JusticeLeague of America) had been Marvel Comics’ token “sidekick” characterfrom his very first appearance. He had partnered with the Hulk andCaptain America before “meeting” Captain Marvel, but his relationshipwith CM was his longest-running continuous relationship with a super-hero, lasting from that Oct. 1969 issue all the way to the end of the serieswith issue # 62 (May 1979) as well as the first three issues ofMarvelSpotlight, ending in Nov. 1979. During that time, he and Mar-Vell alter-nated between being linked by the nega-bands and separated severaltimes. Jones had an on-again, off-again musical career and a series ofgirlfriends, all of whom he wound up having to leave due to his super-hero adventures. At one point, he actually got to use the powers of thenega-bands to be a super-powered hero himself. In his most significantmoment, during the Kree-Skrull War, he proved to have within him thefull evolutionary potential of the human race, and was able to use that tocall forth super-heroes from the past to save the world (the result of whichwas to weaken him so much that in order to save his life CM had to rejoinwith him). Late in the life of the series, Rick and CM had separated again,and it looked like they would part ways, but they just kept coming backtogether for further adventures. They were ultimately inseparable.

One of the key differences between Billy/Marvel and Rick/Marvel wasthe same as the key difference between Marvel comics and super-hero

comics that had come before.Marvel comics told anongoing story where thingschanged and progressed, andcharacters developed andgrew. Earlier super-heroes,once they found their nicheand their defining (and mostmarketable) characteristics,had tended to stay basicallythe same. A story publishedin, say, 1951 featuring thesame characters as one in1941 would likely be littleaffected by events that hadgone on in the world of thosecharacters; Billy Batson stillworked at Station WHIZ …Freddy Freeman still soldnewspapers … and ClarkKent still worked at thenewspaper as Lois Lanepursued the secret ofSuperman.

The facts of therelationship between BillyBatson and Captain Marvelwere constant, and it wassomething you could counton. The relationship wasmagically-based, andfurthermore, this was a comicbook! Nobody cared aboutthe inner psychological

Up And Atoman(Above:) Roy Thomas borrowed much (though not all) of the look of Jerry

Robinson’s Atoman—(seen is the cover of #1, Feb. 1946, from SparkPublications)—then Gil Kane adjusted it further for their jointly revampedMar-Vell. (Right:) Rick Jones and Mar-Vell had a often uneasy relationshipright from the start, as seen in these panels from The Avengers #89 (June1971), the beginning of the “Kree-Skrull War” storyline, after the Kreecaptain had lost his own title. [Atoman cover ©2008 the respectivecopyright holders; Avengers panel ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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