Alter Ego #99 by TwoMorrows Publishing

Roy Thomas’ Real George Comics Fanzine

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WANNA SELL SOME COMICS? LET

GEORGE TUSKA DO IT!

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No.99 January 2011

Edited by ROY THOMAS The greatest ‘zine of the 1960s is back, ALL-NEW, and focusing on GOLDEN AND SILVER AGE comics and creators with ARTICLES, INTERVIEWS, UNSEEN ART, P.C. Hamerlinck’s FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America, featuring the archives of C.C. BECK and recollections by Fawcett artist MARCUS SWAYZE), Michael T. Gilbert’s MR. MONSTER, and more!

2010 EISNER AWARD Nominee Best Comics-Related Periodical

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MLJ ISSUE! Golden Age MLJ index illustrated with vintage images of The Shield, Hangman, Mr. Justice, Black Hood, by IRV NOVICK, JACK COLE, CHARLES BIRO, MORT MESKIN, GIL KANE, & others—behind a marvelous MLJ-heroes cover by BOB McLEOD! Plus interviews with IRV NOVICK and JOE EDWARDS, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

SWORD & SORCERY PART 2! Cover by ARTHUR SUYDAM, in-depth art-filled look at Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian, DC’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Dagar the Invincible, Ironjaw & Wulf, and Arak, Son of Thunder, plus the never-seen Valda the Iron Maiden by TODD McFARLANE! Plus JOE EDWARDS (Part 2), FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

Unseen JIM APARO cover, STEVE SKEATES discusses his early comics work, art & artifacts by ADKINS, APARO, ARAGONÉS, BOYETTE, DITKO, GIORDANO, KANE, KELLER, MORISI, ORLANDO, SEKOWSKY, STONE, THOMAS, WOOD, and the great WARREN SAVIN! Plus writer CHARLES SINCLAIR on his partnership with Batman co-creator BILL FINGER, FCA, and more!

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Captain Marvel and Superman’s battles explored (in cosmic space, candy stories, and in court, with art by WALLY WOOD, CURT SWAN, and GIL KANE), an in-depth interview with Golden Age great LILY RENÉE, overview of CENTAUR COMICS (home of BILL EVERETT’s Amazing-Man and others), FCA, MR. MONSTER, new RICH BUCKLER cover, and more!

Spotlighting the Frantic Four-Color MAD WANNABES of 1953-55 that copied HARVEY KURTZMAN’S EC smash (see Captain Marble, Mighty Moose, Drag-ula, Prince Scallion, and more) with art by SIMON & KIRBY, KUBERT & MAURER, ANDRU & ESPOSITO, EVERETT, COLAN, and many others, plus Part 1 of a talk with Golden/ Silver Age artist FRANK BOLLE, and more!

The sensational 1954-1963 saga of Great Britain’s MARVELMAN (decades before he metamorphosed into Miracleman), plus an interview with writer/artist/co-creator MICK ANGLO, and rare Marvelman/ Miracleman work by ALAN DAVIS, ALAN MOORE, a new RICK VEITCH cover, plus FRANK BOLLE, Part 2, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

First-ever in-depth look at National/DC’s founder MAJOR MALCOLM WHEELERNICHOLSON, and early editors WHITNEY ELLSWORTH, VIN SULLIVAN, and MORT WEISINGER, with rare art and artifacts by SIEGEL & SHUSTER, BOB KANE, CREIG FLESSEL, FRED GUARDINEER, GARDNER FOX, SHELDON MOLDOFF, and others, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

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HARVEY COMICS’ PRE-CODE HORROR MAGS OF THE 1950s! Interviews with SID JACOBSON, WARREN KREMER, and HOWARD NOSTRAND, plus Harvey artist KEN SELIG talks to JIM AMASH! MR. MONSTER presents the wit and wisdom (and worse) of DR. FREDRIC WERTHAM, plus FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) with C.C. BECK & MARC SWAYZE, & more! SIMON & KIRBY and NOSTRAND cover!

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BIG MARVEL ISSUE! Salutes to legends SINNOTT and AYERS—plus STAN LEE, TUSKA, EVERETT, MARTIN GOODMAN, and others! A look at the “Marvel SuperHeroes” TV animation of 1966! 1940s Timely writer and editor LEON LAZARUS interviewed by JIM AMASH! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, the 1960s fandom creations of STEVE GERBER, and more! JACK KIRBY holiday cover!

FAWCETT FESTIVAL! Big FCA section with Golden Age artists MARC SWAYZE & EMILIO SQUEGLIO, and interviews with the FAWCETT FAMILY! Plus Part II of “The MAD Four-Color Wannabes of the 1950s,” more on DR. LAURETTA BENDER and the teenage creations of STEVE GERBER, artist JACK KATZ spills Golden Age secrets to JIM AMASH, and more! New cover by ORDWAY and SQUEGLIO!

SWORD-AND-SORCERY, PART 3! DC’s Sword of Sorcery by O’NEIL, CHAYKIN, & SIMONSON and Claw by MICHELINIE & CHAN, Hercules by GLANZMAN, Dagar by GLUT & SANTOS, Marvel S&S art by BUSCEMA, KANE, KAYANAN, WRIGHTSON, et al., and JACK KATZ on his classic First Kingdom! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, STEVE GERBER’s fan-creations (part 3), and more! Cover by RAFAEL KAYANAN!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “EarthTwo—1961 to 1985!” with rare art by INFANTINO, GIL KANE, ANDERSON, DELBO, ANDRU, BUCKLER, APARO, GRANDENETTI, and DILLIN, interview with Golden/Silver Age DC editor GEORGE KASHDAN, plus MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER, STEVE GERBER, FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), and a new cover by INFANTINO and AMASH!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “EarthTwo Companion, Part II!” More on the 19631985 series that changed comics forever! The Huntress, Power Girl, Dr. Fate, Freedom Fighters, and more, with art by ADAMS, APARO, AYERS, BUCKLER, GIFFEN, INFANTINO, KANE, NOVICK, SCHAFFENBERGER, SIMONSON, STATON, SWAN, TUSKA, our GEORGE KASHDAN interview Part 2, FCA, and more! STATON & GIORDANO cover!

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Vol. 3, No. 99 / January 2011 Editor Roy Thomas

Associate Editors Bill Schelly Jim Amash

Design & Layout Christopher Day

Consulting Editor John Morrow

FCA Editor P.C. Hamerlinck

Comic Crypt Editor Michael T. Gilbert

Editorial Honor Roll Jerry G. Bails (founder) Ronn Foss, Biljo White Mike Friedrich

Proofreader

NOW WITH 16 PAG ES OF COLOR!

Rob Smentek

Cover Artist George Tuska (with various inkers)

Cover Colorist Tom Ziuko

With Special Thanks to: Heidi Amash Henry Andrews Tony Arena David Armstrong Bob Bailey Mike W. Barr John Benson Jon Berk Alyssen Bills Bill Bossert Ulla NeigenfindBossert Lee Boyette Mike Burkey Brett Canavan Nick Cardy R. Dewey Cassell Shaun Clancy Steve Cohen John M. De Mocko Michaël Dewally Jay Disbrow Stephen Donnelly Michael Dunne Jon R. Evans Shane Foley Rudi Franke Todd Franklin Mike Friedrich Mike Gartland Janet Gilbert David Hajdu Jennifer Hamerlinck

Paul Handler Heritage Comics Chris Khalaf Robin Kirby Denis Kitchen Tommy Kohlmaier Stan Lee Dominique Léonard Mark Lewis Jim Ludwig Bruce Mason Brian K. Morris Frankie Odler Barry Pearl Fern Peppe John G. Pierce Al Plastino John Powell John Schwirian Jeff Singh Steve Skeates Anthony Snyder Aaron Sultan Desha Swayze Marc Swayze Dann Thomas Walter Tomashoff Mark Trost Dorothy Tuska Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. Michael Vance Dr. Michael J. Vassallo Hames Ware

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

John Belcastro & Kim Aamodt

Contents Writer/Editorial: Sometimes Nice Guys Finish First . . . . . . . . 2 An Artist for All Seasons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The late great George Tuska, saluted and celebrated anew by R. Dewey Cassell.

“I Was Contemptuous, Basically, of the Comics” . . . . . . . . . 37 But Golden Age artist Bill Bossert feels more kindly toward them now, he tells Jim Amash.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! Kooky DC Krossovers – Part 2 . . 53 Michael T. Gilbert examines the fuzzy line between reality and fiction at DC Comics.

Comic Fandom Archive: The Rudi Franke Interview . . . . . . 59 Bill Schelly talks with one of fandom’s finest early fan-artists.

Tributes to John Belcastro & Kim Aamodt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 re: [correspondence, comments, & corrections] . . . . . . . . . 68 FCA [Fawcett Collectors of America] #158 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 A vintage Marc Swayze column… and P.C. Hamerlinck remembers editor Ginny Provisiero. On Our Cover: Since we can’t mix and match Marvel and DC heroes on our covers, who were we gonna show with smiling George Tuska up front? Iron Man? Luke Cage? Certainly. Sub-Mariner? Iceman? Daredevil? Ghost Rider? Even Spider-Man? George drew ’em all, at one time or another. But we couldn’t neglect Mr. Crime (and a generic hoodlum) from the Crime Does Not Pay days… or Buck Rogers and his ladyfriend from the comic strip George drew for years… so we came up with a pulsatin’ potpourri on the career of this most modest yet talented of artists—lovingly assembled by our layout guru Chris Day! [Marvel art ©2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Buck Rogers & Wilma Deering TM & ©2011 The Dille Family Trust; other art TM & ©2011 estate of George Tuska.] Above: Contrary to what you might think, though, genial George did draw a few super-heroes back in the Golden Age, long before he wandered into Marvel in the mid-1960s… as witness this sizzling splash panel from Standard’s Black Terror #26 (April 1949). The scripter may be unknown—but we’re well aware that Jim Ludwig sent us the scan! [Art ©2011 the respective copyright holders.] 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. Eight-issue subscriptions: $60 US, $85 Canada, $107 elsewhere. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © Roy Thomas. Alter Ego is a TM of Roy & Dann Thomas. FCA is a TM of P.C. Hamerlinck. Printed in Canada. ISSN: 1932-6890 FIRST PRINTING.

writer/editorial

Sometimes Nice Guys Finish First! G

eorge Tuska was one of the nicest guys I ever met.

At least, he was… to the extent I can judge from my own contacts with him over the years, first at Marvel in the 1960s and early ’70s, later over the phone during the ’80s, and during the past couple of decades at comic conventions, particularly the Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC, where he and I often ran into each other after I moved to South Carolina. Of course, it can be claimed that no one ever really “knows” anyone fully, especially one who is only encountered in workplace situations, or in fairly casual social contacts. And with George, there was that extra barrier to deal with: his deafness. Virtually all those phone calls I alluded to above were actually made by or to his charming wife Dorothy, who learned over the years precisely what needed to be asked or said over Alexander Graham Bell’s little invention. I know that, for my part, I almost felt that I was talking with George.

Okay, so I guess George could’ve deluded me… and Stan Lee… and Johnny Romita… and Marie Severin… and just about everybody else he ever met... into thinking he was a nice guy. After all, there is that oft-told tale about George slugging a fellow artist, basically without warning (so what if the guy had been picking on a buddy of his?). Maybe George was really a terrible person, a monster with a friendly pasted-on face, like Vincent Price in the 1950s movie House of Wax.

good sense of story and an admirable work ethic and an ultra-professional attitude. He must have realized that he was one of the most valued artists featured in Charlie Biro’s Crime Does Not Pay in the late 1940s/early ’50s… and maybe he even sensed Stan Lee’s glee on the day George informed him that the Buck Rogers newspaper strip had come to an end and he was finally available to draw full-time for Marvel Comics. When he (or rather, Dorothy) phoned me in the 1980s to tell me that he could use an assignment, I hope he knew that I was ready, willing, and eager to have him draw that Golden Age “Flash” story for the Secret Origins title I co-edited for DC. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there was a time in the early 1970s, in particular, when George and John Romita were the two most commercial artists working for Marvel. Everything they did sold. In George’s case, that included a two-issue stint on Sub-Mariner, a lengthy run on Iron Man, the early issues of Hero for Hire (which, sad to say, was a harder sell than it should have been). Good… and likable… and bankable, to boot. Any questions as to why I titled Dewey Cassell’s fine study of George Tuska’s career as I did? George was one of the greats… and a man who gave the lie to that old Leo Durocher saw, “Nice guys finish last.” We’ll always miss you, George.

But somehow, I don’t think so. No, I think with George what you saw was, by and large, what you got. In his low-key, unspectacular way, he was a very talented artist with a

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An Artist For All Seasons A Brief Look At The Life And Career of GEORGE TUSKA by R. Dewey Cassell AUTHOR’S NOTE: Although obviously covering some of the same ground as my (and my colleagues’) out-of-print 2005 book The Art of George Tuska, this article was written largely from scratch with almost all new source material. The quotes by George are from an interview conducted at the 1997 San Diego Comic-Con, where he received the Inkpot Award. That interview is believed to be unpublished, and permission was granted by Comic-Con International to transcribe and include it here. This article also includes new interviews done with George’s cousin Walter Tomashoff, as well as with Al Plastino, Mike Friedrich, Nick Cardy, Fern Peppe (widow of inker Mike Peppe), and Dorothy Tuska, George’s better half of 61 years. Also included is the eulogy Stan Lee wrote about George that was read at his funeral. This article, then, is a new tribute to George, focusing primarily (but not entirely) on the first 35 of his nearly 50 years as a professional artist.

I Led Three Lives—And Then Some! In his long (but very active!) retirement, George Tuska could look back on having done acclaimed work for three of the world’s most successful comics companies—Lev Gleason in the 1950s, and Marvel and DC during the Silver Age and beyond. And that doesn’t count his work at other comics outfits— or on two major comic strips! The photo of a “retired” George in his studio floats above Tuska pages for Crime Does Not Pay #48 (Nov. 1946)… Iron Man #18 (Oct. 1969)… and Teen Titans #31 (Jan.-Feb. 1971). Photo courtesy of the Tuskas; CDNP art from Jim Amash; Marvel art from Barry Pearl; DC art from Dewey Cassell. [Iron Man page ©2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Teen Titans page ©2011 DC Comics; CDNP page ©2011 the respective copyright holders.] NOTE: Because many A/E readers already own a copy of Dewey’s 2005 TwoMorrows tome The Art of George Tuska (done with Aaron Sultan & Mike Gartland), we’ve reproduced very few of the photos and comics pages featured therein. The book’s out of print, but copies can doubtless be located online.

A Brief Look At The Life And Career Of George Tuska

Early Life

tarting at the beginning seems a little trite and more than a little redundant, but for those of you who did not buy the book The Art of George Tuska (and we know who you are), some background seems in order. George recalled his origins: “My mother was born in the Ukraine. She came to the United States in 1880. My brother and sister were born in New York. My mother [later] moved to Hartford, Connecticut. I was born in Hartford on April 26, 1916.” George’s father passed away when he was just fourteen, and his mother remarried.

Of his brother Peter, George’s wife Dorothy recounts, “They were not close. Evidently, they had a run-in when they were very young…. When we were down in Florida, I think on our honeymoon, George looked up Peter. …[Peter] was not interested at all. When George’s mother and stepfather had the farm up near Binghamton and their mother died, Peter took it over. We don’t know what happened to Peter. Very strange situation. They looked so different, too. George was so blond and Peter was dark. But George was very close to his mother, and his sister [Mary], too.” George also had a cousin named Walter Tomashoff. Walter explains the connection: “According to Dorothy [Tuska], my mother was supposedly a cousin. My mother’s name is the same as George’s mother—Anna Oniska. I used to see George’s mother a lot when I was small. I used to call her ‘chu-cha,’ which means ‘aunt,’ and that was typical of any older woman, even if they weren’t related.” Walter remembers George’s mother well: “A strong woman. She always called my mother ‘dotchka,’ daughter…. I know she lived down there on the Lower East Side where we once did. I remember going to her house. I didn’t know that was not her original husband… George’s step-dad. He was a very mild-mannered man. His mother was really assertive, but not in a way to overpower you…. I’m saying assertive from the standpoint that she is not going to take any guff from you. She was a strong woman. Liked to laugh a lot, I remember that. She was always very jovial.”

When he was eight or nine years old, George lost most of the hearing in one ear. Walter recalls: “I remember my mother, at the kitchen table there, questioning George about being deaf in the one ear. Or limited hearing. And this is a different story from what I read there in the book. I remember my mother saying, ‘So, your sister pushed a match in your ear?’ And he said, ‘Yeah. It really hurt.’ When he was quite young. That’s how I heard he lost the hearing in that ear.” As for when he started drawing, George himself recollected, “At the age of eight, I was in the hospital for an appendix operation. After the operation, I was able to walk around the hospital, and an elderly person showed me how to draw Uncle Sam and cowboys and Indians. That was the start.”

Art School, Eisner, & Iger As he got older, George knew that he wanted to be a professional artist, but he hadn’t planned on going into comics: “I went to school to learn to paint, oils and watercolors. My biggest desire was to become an illustrator. Back then, there were a lot of illustration artists and magazines, like Argosy and Saturday Evening Post, but I got into comics and it was just about the same thing. Later on, the illustrators disappeared, because the magazines went away.” Along the way, he met a few legends, among them Jack Kirby. “The first time I met Jack Kirby was at an art school downtown in Manhattan. He was from Brooklyn. He was doing comical pencils. He was very fast. I enjoyed watching him do it. A few years later, Jack worked for DC and I worked for Marvel. Later on, Jack came [back] to Marvel and I got to see him there. He was good to get along with. We had lunch together. We talked a lot about things. I watched how he penciled. He was so fast. Just put it down like snapshots.”

George got along well with his mother and spent a lot of time with her, even later in life. Tomashoff recounts, “He had the old Pontiac, a pale blue Pontiac, paint faded on it. It was a funny thing, with that Pontiac. I remember [he took] my mother and his mother and step-dad [and me] for a ride up in the country… up into Connecticut. I remember it was a small country road. And ‘Bam!’—a blowout. His mother used to refer to him as ‘Sonny.’ She said, ‘Sonny, what’s the matter with the tire?’ I don’t think he had a spare then, either. It was a hot day. He had to go somewhere to a small town to get another tire. And I remember driving again and ‘Bam!’—another tire blew. [laughter] His mother Glamor Girls And Cowgirls said, ‘Sonny, you should look at In his early days, George painted the your tires before you take us on a standard “glamor girls” he hoped to sell to trip like this.’ He was mad. I the slick magazines—but he already had remember that. I know he didn’t one foot in the pulps, as per the painting at kick the tire, but I know he must right. Thanks to the Tuskas and to Dewey have wanted to kick the darn Cassell. [©2011 Estate of George Tuska.] thing.”

An Artist For All Seasons

artists then. He told me, ‘Hit this guy and throw a bomb at this guy.’ And I said, ‘Fine, I can do that.’ I wrote all the story down. And I drew everything, backgrounds, the layouts, drawing, complete. But I didn’t do the lettering and inking. I made my own borders and how many panels per page. I would write the story first and from there drew one panel, two panels, three panels. I would follow all that up and then I would show it to Eisner, and he would say, ‘Well, this could be changed a little or that could be changed, but this is good.’ It helped a lot. It built up my interest more. I would go back and do it over. I felt good about that. The pay wasn’t tremendous, but I didn’t mind anything. I was looking forward to it, a lot. Most of all, Eisner was the one who really helped my work.” During this time period, George occasionally used a pseudonym that was his last name spelled backwards: “Aksut.”

Eisner & Iger—Together Again For The First Time! Will Eisner in 1941 (left) and Jerry Iger in 1942 (right)—about as close as we’re ever likely to come to seeing a photo of the two erstwhile comic shop partners together. The former pic appeared in the book The Art of Will Eisner (Kitchen Sink, 1982)—the latter in Golden Age artist Jay Disbrow’s 1985 tome The Iger Comic Kingdom, which was reprinted in A/E #21. [©2011 the respective copyright holders.]

George did not start right out in comics, as he explained: “Before working for comics, I worked at the National Academy of Design art school. I did drawing for cosmetic bracelets, planning design. That was my first job. I don’t know if you could call it art or what, but it was not my thing.” But then George got his first break, thanks to another legend, Will Eisner. In the 1930s, when comic books migrated from reprinted newspaper strips to all new material, pioneers like Will Eisner and Jerry Iger saw the potential advantages of a streamlined approach to comic book art production. They gathered together all of the people associated with producing a comic book and put them on staff. Writers, letterers, and especially artists were housed in one room, creating a sort of assembly line environment. Each of the artists sat at a drawing table, cranking out a certain number of stories each week for their salary. Some of these studios, which bore more than a passing resemblance to sweat shops, produced finished stories for various comic book publishers. An artist might be illustrating a story for Fiction House one day and Fawcett the next. Other studios, like the one run by Harry “A” Chesler, were operated by publishers who also produced material for their own titles. George recalled, “My first job in comics was with Eisner & Iger. I got it through a professional agency. Eisner called for me to bring some samples. I did individual cartoons, and I showed it to him and he said, ‘That is not the thing we do.’ And I asked him, ‘What is it?’ He showed me a comic book. ‘This is what it is.’ I said, ‘Give me a chance.’ He said, ‘Sure.’ So I went home and I came back the following day with a page: completed story, backgrounds, lettered and everything, borders. He liked it very much. It was a story about a Mountie capturing a criminal. He bought it for $5 and asked me if I wanted to work in the office. I said, ‘That would be fine.’ It was small. There were five fellas then—Bob Powell, Lou Fine, Will Eisner, and Will Eisner’s brother Paul, and Jerry Iger. I was 22 or 23. Eisner was about my age. It was a nice bunch to start together with. I got along very well with Eisner. “Later on, as time went by, we moved from 42nd Street to 44th Street. They expanded and there were more artists and cartoonists. I was together mostly with Eisner. We would talk about stories. There wasn’t much writing for

Another Golden Age artist who got his start in a bullpen was Nicholas Viscardi, better known as Nick Cardy. Nick remembers what it was like at that studio in the early ’40s: “When I went to Eisner & Iger’s, what they had was a large room. Incidentally, that was the place that I showed him my samples the first time. I went in and on the right side of the room was Lou Fine, then George Tuska, maybe Bob Powell or a few of the other guys. I think they [comics shops] were all that way. It was the beginning of the comic thing when they started competing. From what I remember, they were doing comics for people that wanted to publish. Like, Busy Arnold wanted a super-hero, so they would create a super-hero, and Fiction House or somebody else wanted a super-hero or something else and they would do these strips for other people that wanted to buy them. In other words, they were the creative part. A publisher would want something and they would go to them. We just did the artwork and he sent it out. They had one desk in front of the other and a taboret. And Eisner was in his office. Iger was in a different building.” Tuska and Cardy became friends. While with Eisner & Iger, Tuska illustrated stories for Fiction House about characters like “Shark Brodie,” “Planet Payson,” and “Kaänga.” For Victor Fox, he created the features “Cosmic Carson” and “Zanzibar the Magician,” and illustrated at least one cover for Mystery Men Comics (issue #6) that was once attributed to Lou Fine. He also illustrated “Spike Marlin” for Harvey Comics and “Uncle Sam” for Quality. Originality was not the order of the day: Spike Marlin looked a lot like Shark Brodie; [continued on p. 8]

House Of Cardy (Left:) Nick Cardy, later the noted artist at DC of Aquaman and of many great covers, was still Nicholas Viscardi when George Tuska met him in the Eisner & Iger bullpen. Thanks to Dewey Cassell. (Right:) Nick and George at the 2003 Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC— displaying a friendship that had already lasted far more than half a century. Thanks to Bob Bailey.

A Brief Look At The Life And Career Of George Tuska

Stranger Than Fiction House? For Fiction House, George drew, among other things, the hot-tempered seaman Shark Brodie for Fight Comics (starting with #1, Jan. 1940)— probably two-fisted “Inspector Dayton” in Jumbo Comics #16 (June ’40)—and early exploits of the Tarzanic jungle lord Kaänga, as per his page for Jungle Comics #5 (May 1940) and his cover for Jungle #13 (Jan. 1941). Writers unknown. Note Tuska’s use of his pseudonym “George Aksut” on the “Shark Brodie” splash. The “Brodie” page was sent by David Armstrong, Jungle #5 by Henry Andrews, Jungle #13 by Dewey Cassell, and “Inspector Dayton” by Henry Andrews. [©2011 the respective copyright holders.]

An Artist For All Seasons

A Fox In Outer Space For Victor Fox’s outfit, George may have originated “Cosmic Carson”; Dewey Cassell feels that’s Tuska art behind the name “Michael Griffith” on these splash pages from Science Comics #1 & 2 (Feb. & March 1940)… and the “Zanzibar the Magician” splash for Mystery Men Comics #9 (April 1940) sports his real name, and is probably his work. Why the “probably”? Oddly, Jerry Bails’ Who’s Who website maintains that Fox sometime used “George Tuska” as a house name. Go figure! George is also now known to have drawn the cover of Mystery Men #6 (Jan. 1940), although that art was long attributed to fellow Golden Age great Lou Fine! What you see below left is a re-creation Tuska did (and signed!) of that cover a few years back for collector Jon Berk. The “Cosmic Carson” page from Science #2 and the “Zanzibar” page were supplied by Henry Andrews, the Science #1 page by Dewey Cassell. Writers, as per usual, are unknown. [©2011 the respective copyright holders.]

A Brief Look At The Life And Career Of George Tuska

[continued from p. 5] Kaänga bore a striking resemblance to Tarzan. Cardy explains, “It was very competitive at the beginning. If ‘Superman’ came out, some other outfit was going to copy it. Like when The Spirit came out. They had super-heroes out at that time. I think ‘Superman’ had just made his first appearance. Then Marvel came out with their super-heroes. So, Arnold wanted Eisner to do something with a super-hero, so he came out with The Spirit.” With a few exceptions, like The Spirit and Uncle Sam, most of these Golden Age characters did not survive into the Silver Age. So, why did Tuska leave Eisner & Iger? Competition was fierce, and many artists migrated from one shop to another in an effort to improve their salary or working conditions. In 1940, Eisner sold his share of the company to Iger and moved to Tudor City to work on The Spirit. George remained with Iger for a while, but it was not the same. He explained the circumstances surrounding his departure, “Iger had about, oh, ten artists. Each one had about five, six stories to do a month. The pages were not much per story—five, six, seven pages. If an artist dropped out, Iger couldn’t get another artist to replace him, so he took his work and distributed it to the other artists, making more work for them to do that month. It kept on going. Another artist dropped out and another artist, and the work got distributed. It was always ‘hurry up with the deadline.’ They said you could take work home and work there. It was a little too much for me. One day, we all went out to lunch, and I told them I had to see someone. I never went back to Iger.”

The Chesler Shop But this was a boom time for comics, and Tuska was not out of work for long, as he recounted: “From there, I didn’t do anything for two weeks. I just looked around. I went to a cafeteria on 23rd Street between 6th and 7th Avenue. I met two fellas I worked with at Eisner & Iger, Charlie Sultan and Dave Glazer. We were glad to see each other. Charlie said, ‘Across the street is Harry “A” Chesler. I called them and he said he needs artists. How about you coming up and I’ll introduce you?’ I said, ‘Fine.’ I went up there. It was on the fourth floor. And he introduced me to Chesler. I started working for Chesler in the studio. I enjoyed working for Chesler. There was no art director there, but it went well. They had a nice group of artists there: Charlie Sultan, Al Plastino, Joey Cavallo, Ruben Moreira. Ruben Moreira was more of a fine artist. He did Tarzan or something like that. Chesler was more like a father. He invited me and Al Plastino to his place in Succasunna, New Jersey. We had a ball.” Harry “A” Chesler was a publisher, so his studio not only produced stories for other companies, but for his own titles, as well, which included characters like “Hale the Magician” and “The Enchanted Dagger,” published under the Dynamic Publications imprint. Working for Chesler, Tuska also illustrated “Captain Marvel” and “El Carim” (“miracle” spelled backwards) for Fawcett. Tuska remained with Chesler for several years.

You Know Me Al Al Plastino, another of George’s oldest friends, produced much of his artwork for newspaper comic strips, as noted in his interview in A/E #69; but comic book fans remember him primarily for his 1950s60s work on such DC heroes as Batman and, particularly, Superman.

Al Plastino recalls working for Chesler: “He was kind of cuckoo. A good guy, but cuckoo. We were getting $9 a page when I worked at Chesler. It gradually went into the twenties. Sometimes we’d have to wait for him Friday night to make payroll. He would go out and hock his coat and do everything just to make the payroll. He paid us in cash all the time. It was nip and tuck with Chesler. But comics were different in those days. We weren’t allowed to sign our work, and there was always somebody stealing somebody’s art. I got connected with Chesler because, during high

Some Enchanted Dagger… A dynamic page done by Tuska for Chesler Publications’ own Yankee Comics #1 (Sept. 1941), starring “The Enchanted Dagger.” Scripter unknown. Thanks to Henry Andrews. [©2011 the respective copyright holders.]

school, I was doing black-&-white drawings for a magazine. It was like the Reader’s Digest magazine. You read a story, you make a little drawing. “I saw this article in the paper saying they wanted a black-&-white artist, and that was Chesler, of course. So I packed my stuff up and went to see Chesler with this big folder, and I saw all these guys working in the studio, about thirty guys. He said, ‘You don’t want to draw this stuff, you want to work for me.’ I said, ‘What do you do?’ He said, ‘We draw comic books.’ I said, ‘No, no, no. I don’t want to do comic books.’ He said, ‘Well, we pay very well,’ and all this baloney. I finally went and met the guys and walked through the studio. George was there then. There was another guy, Astarita. He worked for Chesler. They were all weightlifters. George was a weightlifter. Astarita was a weightlifter. And there was another fella, Dave something. Anyway, so I finally said, ‘I’ll try it for a while.’ He said, ‘I’ll give you five dollars a week. Just to learn. You come in; I’ll give you car fare money.’ And I did. I met George at Harry Chesler. I worked with him for quite a few years. I think he [Chesler] liked George and I. We used to be invited quite a bit to his place. George was a good artist. George always used a—I call it a fountain pencil—you know, a lead [mechanical] pencil. He never used a wooden pencil. Not many people knew that. He used that all the time when he penciled. He penciled very tight.” George became good friends with Plastino, as Al explains: “I liked George. He was a good-looking big guy, very pleasant to be with. We went out quite a few times together, before I was married. I’m not bad-looking myself, but he was a big guy and girls liked him. We used to go to the bar and have drinks together. Once in a while, we’d get together with some

An Artist For All Seasons

Maybe The “A” Stood For “Artwork”? A triptych by a young George for Harry “A” Chesler’s sporadic line of comics: the printed cover for Spotlight Comics #1 (Nov. 1944)—a re-creation of his cover for Bulls Eye #11 (even the Gerbers’ Photo-Journal Guide to Comic Books can only say this one came out “circa 1944”)—and a reproduction of original art from the “Gay Desperado” Western feature in Red Seal Comics #14 (Oct. 1945—actually the first issue). Thanks to Dewey Cassell, rec owner Jon Berk, and Dave Armstrong. [©2011 the respective copyright holders.]

girls. I’d use him as a prop.” Plastino continues, “George was really a muscular guy. He had a good build. He got me lifting weights. [laughter] I weighed 119 pounds soaking wet. George taught me to lift weights, when I was working for Chesler. I got a set of weights. I almost got killed. You know, when you press? The bar slipped and hit me in the throat; just enough to wake me up and say, ‘What the hell am I doing?’ I wasn’t getting any muscles. I was getting big veins. George said, ‘You got to keep it up.’” Al adds, “At Chesler, we spent a lot of time together. In fact, we were going to buy a house there one time. He was going to buy a house and I was going to buy a house, in the same place.” There is an infamous story told about George, remembered probably because it was so out of character. There are several variations on the story; Will Eisner recalled it taking place at Eisner & Iger, but everyone else places it at the Chesler studio. Here is the way Plastino remembers it: “This guy used to play the radio all the time. Dave something. He was a weightlifter, too. It annoyed the whole place. So, I got into a discussion with him, really an argument. The guy could have killed me with one punch. So, George says, ‘Come here, Dave, I want to talk to you.’ So, he walks up to George and he[George] says, ‘Don’t pick on my friend Al’— and he gave him a punch and ‘Boom!,’ he knocked this guy right across the room. Very calm. He didn’t get excited. That was a good one.”

A Brief Look At The Life And Career Of George Tuska

Tuska Hits the Bulls Eye—Dynamically Three exciting splashes pages done by George and others for Harry “A” Chesler’s comics lines. (Clockwise from top left:) The “Lady Satan” splash page from Bulls Eye #11 (the only issue, published “circa 1944,” according to the Grand Comics Database) is, except for the swirl of smoke, the art on which the cover was based—also apparently by Tuska. This issue was published under Chesler’s own name. The artist (not to mention the writer) of the “Johnny Rebel” strip from that same issue is unknown. (Maybe Charles Sultan?) George at least penciled (whether or not he inked) this “Mr. E” splash page from Dynamic Comics #19 (July 1946). By this time, Chesler was using “Dynamic Publications” as the company name for the comics he published. It didn’t matter. The mags never lasted long enough for anyone to learn their names. Thanks to Jim Ludwig for all three scans. [©2011 the respective copyright holders.]

An Artist For All Seasons

National Treasures Henry Andrews, who provided the above scan from the “Kid Dixon” entry in the Quality group’s National Comics #8 (Feb. 1941), says it’s reputed to be Tuska’s work—while GT’s cover for Uncle Sam #3 (Summer 1940), the solo mag starring National’s lead feature, has his signature. Thanks to Henry and to David Armstrong, respectively. [Art ©2011 the respective copyright holders.]

Eisner Again—And Fiction House From there, George recalled going to work for Eisner again in Tudor City: “Will Eisner separated from Iger and he had a studio in Tudor City on 42nd street. I helped him with ‘Uncle Sam’ and other things. Once in a while, I would help him with The Spirit. I got along together with Eisner again. It was kinda homey; it was nice. He had a lot of imagination. He was a producer and director and actor on paper. It was very good working together with him.” Oddly enough, neither Eisner nor Nick Cardy recalls Tuska ever working there. Cardy does recall, however, what the studio in Tudor City was like: “Tudor City was an apartment complex. I’m not sure, but I think Milton Caniff had a place there. It was on 42nd Street and Avenue A. It was right near the water. Then they built the UN adjacent to it. It had a series of about four buildings. Each block had two of those buildings, side-by-side, and then another one. But he [Eisner] had an apartment. It was a two-room apartment. The big room, where he worked, which had the bathroom, and the other room—which was a living room or bedroom made into a studio—and the other large room had some drawing tables. At that time, it was only Bob Powell, myself, and occasionally Chuck Cuidera would come in with ‘Blackhawk,’ and another tall guy who

started with clean-up and then he was doing lettering and then he was doing art—Tex Blaisdell. Every now and then, writers would come in. But there was not a group that was there every day. There were sporadic people coming in. A writer would come in and chew the fat, maybe go with Will Eisner in his room. My desk was facing the wall, which was just before the entrance. In other words, you had to pass me to go into his room. Bob Powell had a desk right behind me. Then they had a couple of other desks there. That was the room. And I think in Tudor City, Kirby and [Simon] had a place up there, and I think Lou Fine had a place in the same building.” What is certain is that Tuska ended up at Fiction House. The bullpen at Fiction House was pretty much like all of the other studios, with a lot of the same artists there, but many comic historians regard Fiction House as the best publisher of the Golden Age. Certainly, Fiction House did an exceptional job of blending action, humor, and an abundance of sex appeal into their comics. Fiction House was known for its “headlight” comics, which featured scantily clad women, often in precarious positions of peril. Tuska honed his aptitude for drawing the female form on Fiction House features like “Camilla” and “Glory Forbes.” He also drew action characters like “Star Pirate” for Planet Comics, “Hooks Devlin” for Fight Comics, and “U.S. Rangers” and “Werewolf Hunter” for Rangers Comics.

A Brief Look At The Life And Career Of George Tuska

Stranger Than Fiction House, Part II George drew these pages of Fiction House’s “Glory Forbes” (from Rangers Comics #22, April 1945) and “Werewolf Hunter” (from Rangers #9, Feb. ’43); scripters unknown. And, as what the wartime radio series Your Hit Parade would’ve called a “Lucky Strike extra”—above right is a get-well card done for some unknown person nicknamed “Buddy,” and signed by no less than five of George’s artist colleagues, who’d sketched Fiction House characters whose series they drew: Bob Lubbers, John Celardo, Al Walker, Charles Sultan, and Fran Hopper. Dewey Cassell says he picked the piece up in a Heritage Comics auction. [©2011 the respective copyright holders.]

However, World War II affected almost everyone at the time, and Tuska was no exception, in spite of his hearing difficulties. George explained: “I was drafted. I had a slight loss of hearing. For the Army, I was in Fort Jackson, South Carolina. 100th Division, all artillery. They noticed my condition and they asked me to work in headquarters. It was big, all officers. They showed me a manual with guns. They asked me, out of this manual, to make large plans so the officers could show the other officers in the classroom how the [shell] goes and drops over the mountain to where the enemy is hiding. It was good. I enjoyed it very much. I felt a little guilty about all of those other fellas coming back after a long day hiking, dead tired, and I’m driving in a Jeep. I felt really lousy about that.” He made amends by bringing his Fiction House skills to bear in doing cheesecake drawings for the troops.

An Artist For All Seasons

too, at the Senate Hearings on Juvenile Delinquency, and succumbed to a similar fate. When Tuska left Fiction House, he turned to a publisher named Lev Gleason. At the time, Gleason was perhaps best known for Boy Comics, whose lead character was a teenager named Crimebuster, and Daredevil, a costumed hero bearing no resemblance to the later Marvel stalwart. But Gleason had another title that was gaining momentum, called Crime Does Not Pay, which featured stories about real-life gangsters and criminals in dramatic realism and gory detail. The book was edited by Charles Biro and Bob Wood, who had worked together before at the Harry “A” Chesler studio and MLJ. Biro drew (or at least signed) most of the covers for Crime Does Not Pay, which were uniformly violent and occasionally compelling—such as that of issue # 42, which portrayed a gangster in a shootout; the shadow cast on the wall behind him depicted his future execution in the electric chair. Biro and Wood also wrote many of the stories. Lead stories for the book were narrated by a ghostly apparition called “Mr. Crime,” precursor to the Crypt Keeper in EC’s Tales from the Crypt. Tuska’s style had been evolving over the years into one that was very realistic and detailed, which fit well with the approach in Crime Does Not Pay. He started drawing for Gleason in 1946 and quickly demonstrated an aptitude for crime comics. He was often given the lead story, which typically featured the more well-known gangsters profiled in that issue. It was not an accident that George excelled drawing Crime Does Not Pay. He took the work seriously, as noted by Walter Tomashoff: “I think I was about twelve years old and he was doing crime comics. I will always remember that he went down to the 34th Street Library, the main library there in New York, to look up pictures of John Dillinger. He was really so wanting it to look like Dillinger. The few things that I saw him drawing—well, okay, it’s oversized comic book pages—but that was the one thing that stuck with me. I was reading it back then and I enjoyed it. And then I was always able to sort of recognize his style when I saw something.”

Real George(s)!

At the time he was working on Crime Does Not Pay, George was living in New York City, as Tomashoff explains: “My folks were superintendents. We lived in the basement of a building in upper Manhattan on Cumming Street, one block above 200th Street. Next to our apartment, there was a storage apartment. It had a shower and a toilet and a sink. There were two rooms. After the service, George needed a place where he could do some drawing. He arranged with my mother to rent that out, I think, for something like five or ten dollars a month. I don’t think she ever got paid the $10, though. [laughter] He used to sleep there. He worked all strange hours. He might not come in until about 10:00 p.m. and work through the night. I never could figure out how come everybody else worked eight to five and George would be working all different hours and earning a living [But] that’s how I got to see some of his work. Because I would just amble in and see what he was doing. I enjoyed having George around. [He had] a big drawing table. Like an architect’s table, tilted up and down. I remember the India ink. He was penciling and then, I was always amazed at how he goes with that India ink. So fast. [And] I remember he used to smoke then. I think it was Camels. I won’t say that he was a persistent smoker. He would stop and then smoke. I don’t know if it was to think about something or what. But I doubt if he even did a pack a day. George was very quiet, really, for the most part. He wouldn’t say anything, unless you pulled it out of him. [But he had] a very good sense of humor.”

In the early 1940s artist George Roussos kept a celebrated sketchbook full of drawings done especially for him by fellow pros. Above is George Tuska’s contribution, done circa 1942. [©2011 Estate of George Tuska.]

When he was discharged, Tuska recounted: “I went back to Fiction House. It wasn’t the same anymore. The fellas were not around. It was mostly girls and older men. We used to kid around a lot, hold a conversation. It was different. It didn’t feel right. I asked if I could work freelance. They said it was fine.” Up until this point, Tuska had primarily been working on staff for the studios, be it Eisner & Iger or Chesler or Fiction House. Working freelance would prove to be an adjustment. “It was a funny thing about working at home, with nobody around there. I had to get used to it. It took me about a month or so. But somehow, working freelance, I had more privacy. I had references all around me. I was sort of contented by that. I was making more pages a day. I enjoyed freelance very much. When my work was completed, I would go in. They would give me another script. And I would go to Florida. I would go in or mail it back. But still, it was not the same with the fellas not around.” Tuska remained a freelancer the remainder of his career in comics.

The Lev Gleason Show It is hard for us to appreciate today just how popular crime comics were in the late 1940s and early 1950s. As World War II drew to a close, super-hero comics began to fade from the spotlight and the void was filled by crime and horror. Most comic fans are aware of the popularity of EC Comics’ horror books like Tales from the Crypt, and the later furor they raised, but fans may not realize that Crime Does Not Pay was there,

George drew a lot of guns for Crime Does Not Pay, but his own experience with firearms was somewhat more colorful, as Tomashoff recalls: “I’ll tell you a funny thing that happened one time. My mother had bought this used 1949 Lincoln Cosmopolitan. Really nice car. And I would occasionally drive it. I would have been about 17 years old. And I

A Brief Look At The Life And Career Of George Tuska

Tuska Times Two! George was good enough—popular enough—and fast enough that he sometimes had two stories in an issue of Lev Gleason’s Crime Does Not Pay. Issue #49 (Jan. 1947), for instance, contained the pair of tales seen at left. Writers uncertain. First splash sent by Dewey Cassell, second by Bruce Mason. [©2011 the respective copyright holders.]

Try A Little Tenderness The gangsters in Biro & Wood’s comics for Lev Gleason Publications weren’t noted for treating womenfolk with kid gloves. In the above Tuska-drawn panels from Crime Does Not Pay #54 (Aug. 1947), a carjacker shoots the young woman he’s forced to drive him—though the scene could’ve easily been far bloodier (there’s no red in the impact area, for instance)—while in George’s tale from CDNP #61 (March 1948), a mobster’s getting set to torture a frail he suspects of being a stool pigeon. The second splash sports the image of the ghostly Mr. Crime who narrated many (but not all) of the stories in CDNP. Writers unknown. [©2011 the respective copyright holders.]

An Artist For All Seasons

tome Seduction of the Innocent, predicted reading the comic book would turn young kids into juvenile delinquents themselves. Gleason fought this assertion by routinely citing letters in Crime Does Not Pay from parents, prominent law enforcement officials, and even criminals who praised the book for its candid portrayal of the pitfalls of a life of crime. But the fact is that while the criminals in Crime Does Not Pay almost always paid the price for their deeds at the end of the story, their lives were often portrayed as exciting and adventurous, surrounded by beautiful women and fast cars, which Tuska depicted in compelling detail.

A Slippery Sloper (Above left:) The splash to the Tuska-drawn story about gunhappy bankrobber Felix Sloper from Crime Does Not Pay #63 (May 1948). Writer unknown. [©2011 the respective copyright holders.] (Above right:) A latter-day Tuska pencil sketch of Mr. Crime, the ghostly gangland host of Crime Does Not Pay. Wonder if Mr. C. ever had a date with EC’s Old Witch? Thanks to Dewey Cassell. [Art ©2011 Estate of George Tuska.]

had traded [something] with a friend for a .22 Marlin lever action rifle. It just so happened that when I brought it home, George was there at the house. He said, ‘You got bullets for that?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, he gave me a box of shells.’ So, he goes and starts loading into the rifle, and he says, ‘Come on. Let’s go and do some target shooting.’ I thought, well, okay. We go in the Lincoln. And as he sits down, before I even started the thing, the gun went off, ‘Blam!’ It shot into the floor. [laughter] And I looked at George and he said, ‘Maybe we’ll go shooting another time’ and he got out with the gun. I was worried because it was my mother’s car, but when I looked on the floor, the carpeting was a loose weave, so it covered up the little hole that the bullet made. He never mentioned it again.” A typical Tuska story for Crime Does Not Pay was “Felix Sloper—The Girl-Crazy Gunman,” which appeared in issue #63. Sloper started his life of crime at the age of thirteen, landing in a reformatory two years later. Tuska depicts Sloper causing trouble from the start, at first defying authority at every turn and later as a slick con artist who panders to the adults in the facility to win their favor and then persuades his fellow detainees to organize a break. Throughout his short life, Sloper is repeatedly betrayed by women, but never seems to learn his lesson. He robbed several banks, ultimately killing an officer during a robbery in 1925, for which he was hung at San Quentin at the age of 27. The irony is that Fredric Wertham, who cited Crime Does Not Pay in his legendary

In fact, Crime Does Not Pay was sufficiently compelling that at the height of its popularity, the comic book was selling over one million copies a month. (Gleason claimed the circulation was more like six million, since kids routinely shared their comics with their friends in those days.) To put it in perspective, that was a higher circulation than Superman at the time. And Tuska was leading the pack. Like with EC Comics, the Gleason stable included a bevy of respected veteran comic artists like Fred Guardineer, Tony DiPreta, Rudy Palais, Jack Alderman, Joe Certa, Dan Barry, and John Belfi. But Tuska was arguably the best of the bunch. Ron Goulart, in his book Great American Comic Books, called Tuska “the premier crime comics artist.” While he would ultimately be better known for his work on Iron Man, Tuska’s art was never seen by more people than when he worked on Crime Does Not Pay. Evidence of Tuska’s influence can be found in the fact that when artist Pete Morisi was looking for work during this time period, an editor advised him to draw like Tuska, which he did, after graciously asking permission from Tuska to do so. That editor may well have been Charles Biro or Bob Wood, since Morisi’s estate included several pages of Crime Does Not Pay artwork by Tuska. Crime Does Not Pay was an equal opportunity forum for criminals, both men and women. Stories Tuska drew included features about Dillinger and Sloper, as well as Baby Face Nelson and Bonnie Parker, in addition to less well-known criminals like the “Kill Crazy” Fleagle Brothers and “Big Mouth” Nick Luciano. Some issues featured more than one story by Tuska, and his work often illustrated the text pieces that were included in most issues. Every story featured an abundance of graphic violence, from torturing a woman to make her boyfriend talk to shooting a stranger point blank to keep him from squealing to the cops. Tuska also illustrated several covers for Crime Does Not Pay. The success of Crime Does Not Pay attracted a variety of competition, from Timely Comics’ Crime Exposed to EC Comics’ Crime Patrol. (In

A Brief Look At The Life And Career Of George Tuska

Crime Does Not Say Tuska kin Walter Tomashoff was dazzled by the rate of speed at which George turned out pages like the one at right from an unknown issue of Crime Does Not Pay. Repro’d from a Photostat of the original, courtesy of a sadly forgotten donor. Naturally, the writer, too, is unknown. [©2011 the respective copyright holders.]

The WHO’S WHO of American Comic Books (1928-1999) Online Edition Created by Jerry G. Bails FREE – online searchable database – FREE www.bailsprojects.com – No password required

A quarter of a million records, covering the careers of people who have contributed to original comic books in the US. fact, Tuska actually drew several crime stories for Timely.) Gleason launched a second crime title called Crime and Punishment, which also featured the artistic talents of Tuska. Neither it nor any of the nonGleason competitors, however, ever achieved the level of success of Crime Does Not Pay. George Tuska brought Lev Gleason’s Mr. Crime and Marvel’s Iron Man and Thor together for this nevercompleted Xmas card art. Thanks to R. Dewey Cassell. [Thor & Iron Man TM & ©2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.; other art ©2011 Estate of George Tuska.]

That success didn’t just benefit Gleason; it also benefitted Tuska. The fact is, crime paid very well, as Tomashoff shares in this anecdote about Tuska: “I was always impressed. He told me when he was going down to Florida all of the time—he would go down to the Keys and go fishing off the pier—he was telling me he could stop off on the side of the road and knock out a page, saying, ‘Well, that $75. It’s paying for the trip.’ $75 back then—I went, ‘Wow!’ To me, that was a fortune. I don’t know if he was exaggerating or what. But he must have been getting a few dollars together, because I remember he got rid of that Pontiac and was driving a big Hudson model.” Plastino recalls George’s trips to Florida as well: “George got out on his own. He liked Florida. He would go to Florida a lot. I said, ‘George, why the hell do you go to Florida in July for?’ He said, ‘Well, there’s nobody there.’” Tuska’s trips to Florida apparently had some fringe benefits, as well, as Tomashoff explains: “I think when he went down to Florida, the women were after him down there. You know, he had a good build and he stripped down. I don’t think he would be wearing shorts back then, but he would be bare-chested. So, I think he met quite a few there. I remember someone had written him from down in Florida. He didn’t

An Artist For All Seasons

know that I was looking at it, but he left it on his work table, the letter. I picked it up and ‘Wow,’ the gal was talking about his ‘god-like body’ and whatnot. To me, that letter was like reading one of those sex novels today. I never mentioned it to him because I didn’t want him to know I was reading his personal mail like that.” Tuska worked for Gleason for eight years. In addition to the crime comics, Tuska drew a few stories for Boy Comics and other Gleason titles. Then in 1954, Fredric Wertham and Senator Estes Kefauver brought about the end of crime and horror comics. The graphic and realistic violence that made Crime Does Not Pay so popular ultimately served to bring about its downfall. The Senate Hearings on Juvenile Delinquency are often characterized as an attack on EC horror comics, largely because of EC publisher Bill Gaines’ testimony before the committee, but crime comics were equally on trial. In the wake of the hearings and the advent

of the Comics Code, Lev Gleason attempted to sell a toned-down version of Crime Does Not Pay, but it left no place for Tuska, whose style was synonymous with the original incarnation. It is worth noting that George did not mention Crime Does Not Pay in his interview at the 1997 San Diego Comic-Con. Like some of the artists who worked on the crime and horror comics of the ’40s and ’50s, Tuska felt some reservation later in life about the gory violence he had portrayed in the comics, and whatever effect it may have had—real or imagined—on the well-being of children at that time. However, he enjoyed his time working for Gleason. He was particularly fond of Bob Wood and was crestfallen to learn that he was later convicted of first degree manslaughter in the death of a woman.

Life Goes On During his early years at Lev Gleason, Tuska also did some work for Standard Publications, also known as Better and Nedor. The art director at Standard was a close friend of Tuska’s, Mike Peppe. Peppe had started out as an inker, as his widow Fern explains: “My husband learned how to ink by himself. He used to sit with the black ink and a brush and do swirls, brushstrokes. That’s how he became a very good inker. One day, he came up the stairs and said, ‘I have an appointment [with Jerry Iger]. I came back to get my samples.’ They weren’t anything like you would do today. Iger wanted to hire him for $18 a week, but the last thing I said to him when he left the house was, ‘Mike, don’t work for less than $25.’ So he told Iger, ‘My wife said I can’t make anything less than $25 a week.’ So they hired him. He stayed there for a short time. He left there and went to Fiction House. Every month, he would get one picture about an animal, say a bear, and he did a story about it that was included in the comics. Then he went to Standard, and after a while, he was put into the position of Art Director.” It was about that time, in 1948, that George married the love of his life, Dorothy Herdman. They met at a YWCA dance and tied the knot six months later. Together, they had three children, two girls and a boy, and raised them in their home in Hicksville on Long Island. Mike and Fern Peppe were godparents to the Tuska’s oldest daughter, Barbara.

Terror Not-So-Firma (About:) Some of George’s earliest true super-hero rendering was done for Standard/Nedor, as witnessed by this “Black Terror” splash page from Exciting Comics #67 (May 1949), only two issues before the skullemblazoned stalwart made his last appearance in its pages. Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert. [©2011 the respective copyright holders.] (Center & right:) One thing George liked about Standard was artist Mike Peppe, who was their comics’ art director from 1948-52. Beginning in the days of Fiction House, they were lifelong friends. (Peppe is on our left in the photo with George.) After Peppe’s death, George and Dorothy remained friends with his widow, Fern, seen with them in the second pic. The photo, however, was taken in 1948, probably by Mike P. Both pics courtesy of Dorothy Tuska.

Tuska met Peppe while at Fiction House and there began a friendship that would last a lifetime. They would stay up all night working, so they could play golf together in the morning. About George and Dorothy, Fern comments, “We had the best relationship and we still do. We’re like family. I have some paintings that George has done for me. One of them is a painting of two peasant women with big aprons. It’s so sweet. It’s not even completely finished; you can see where he didn’t finish the hand. When we were all very young, this picture was thrown down by his desk. I said, ‘George, what are you doing with this picture?’ He said, ‘Why, do you

A Brief Look At The Life And Career Of George Tuska

Timely Tuska A clockwise quartet of splash pages (from top left) drawn by George for Stan Lee at Timely during the 1950s, courtesy of Dr. Michael J. Vassallo: A particularly grim “Rocky Jordan” detective yarn from Private Eye #2 (March 1951)… The covers of horror comics Suspense #12 & & Adventures into Terror #7 (both Dec. 1951)… but doesn’t that creepy guy lurking in the cave on the latter look a lot like Charlie Biro’s Mr. Crime? Perhaps a little in-joke on George’s part; his face was even colored green! A filler spy tale from Kent Blake #5 (Jan. 1952). [©2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

An Artist For All Seasons

Three Mags, Six Guns A trio of Tuska-drawn Timely sagebrush sagas (clockwise from above left), courtesy of Doc V.: Wild Western #27 (April 1953), with script by Stan Lee… and George signed “G.T.,” as he generally did at Timely… Two-Gun Kid #12 (Feb. 1954)—a horse opera starring the Black Rider, who also had his own title… Wild Western #32 (Feb. 1954)—with the Two-Gun Kid moonlighting away from his solo mag. These guys got good mileage out of their nags! [©2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

want it?’ I said, ‘George, I would love to have it. I wish you would give it to me.’ He said, ‘I just need to have it for one thing. I’m going to show it to somebody as a sample and then you can have it.’ And he gave it to me. It is one of my favorite pictures in the whole house.” Peppe encouraged Tuska to do some work for Standard, which he gladly did, illustrating comic books like America’s Best Comics featuring “The Black Terror,” Thrilling Comics featuring “The Phantom Detective” and “Doc Strange” (no relation to the Marvel mystic), and Mel Allen Sports. Tuska returned several years later to contribute to other Standard comics like Joe Yank and The Unseen. During this same time period, Tuska also contributed to many of the titles for St. John, including Authentic Police Cases, Nightmare, and The Hawk. In addition, he did smaller quantities of work for a variety of other publishers, including Ace, Avon, Prize, and Ziff-Davis. But it was his popularity on Crime Does Not Pay that would continue to benefit Tuska, when an editor named Stan Lee took notice and recruited him to work for an outfit called Timely Comics. Stan was a fan of Crime Does Not Pay, and he wanted Tuska to bring that same dramatic realism to bear for

A Brief Look At The Life And Career Of George Tuska

Strip-O-Grams (Left:) A GT-drawn Scorchy Smith daily, slightly cropped at left when posted online by Stephen Donnelly—date and scripter, alas, unknown. [©2011 the respective copyright holders.] (Below:) A commission sketch of Buck Rogers done in color for collector Dominique Léonard. And, of course, you can see both Buck and his ladyfriend Wilma on this issue’s cover. [Buck Rogers TM & ©2011 The Dille Family Trust.]

Timely. Stan put Tuska to work on mystery and horror titles like Strange Tales and Adventures Into Terror, war books like Battle, and adventure books like Spy Fighters and Man Comics, as well as the aforementioned crime comics like All-True Crime and Crime Can’t Win. He also illustrated Westerns like Red Warrior, Wild Western, and Two-Gun Kid. George worked on a number of Westerns over the years. For Chesler, he contributed to Red Seal Comics which featured a character called, of all things, “The Gay Desperado.” Today, a moniker like that might raise a few eyebrows around the saloon, but back in the ’40s, it just meant he was happy and, I might add, a good guy (not a villain). For St. John, he drew several stories for The Texan. Tuska also illustrated at least one story for a book ironically called Desperado that was published by Lev Gleason. And then there was Timely’s “Black Rider.” The Black Rider was a physician by day and a vigilante by night. (In fact, he sometimes patched up the people he shot.) The Black Rider first appeared in 1948 in issue #2 of All-Western Winners. Over the years, the Rider appeared in several other titles, including his own book as well as a backup feature

in Kid Colt Outlaw. Among the artists to draw “Black Rider” were Dick Ayers and George Tuska. In all, Tuska worked on over 50 different titles for Timely, some while he was still with Lev Gleason, and he typically inked his own pencils. But the advent of distribution problems at Timely ultimately led to a “purge” of the staff, and Tuska had to look for other means to feed the family. George explained the circumstances: “I worked for Stan Lee. He was an editor then. It was called Timely Comics. It was in the Empire State Building, and Stan hired me. I don’t recall what it was. I don’t think it was anything big, but I kept working for him. When comic book work got slack, somebody told me about Scorchy Smith at Associated Press. I went up there. They didn’t like the person who was doing it. I showed them samples and I was accepted. They asked me if I wanted to do the story, too. I said, ‘Great.’ [I did some] freelancing also, and other things every now and then.”

Scorchy Smith And Buck Rogers The Scorchy Smith newspaper strip had started in 1930, inspired by Charles Lindbergh’s flight over the Atlantic in 1927. The adventures of the aviator for hire were originally drawn by John Terry, but when Terry fell ill three years later, Noel Sickles took over the strip and truly defined the character with his impressionistic style. It became the leading strip for AP Newsfeatures. When George started on Scorchy Smith in 1954, the Associated Press pulled out all the stops in advertising his arrival on the strip, calling him “the brilliant young artist [with a] technical art style and knack for adventurous yarns.” George wrote and penciled Scorchy Smith, and the strip was well received by readers. With George at the helm, Scorchy’s adventures ranged from being stranded on an island in the ocean to fending off bandits who wanted to steal an experimental rocket to riding down a jungle river and being attacked by natives. The strip included action, humor, and even a bit of romance, all in three panels a day. For an artist, doing a comic strip was far more prestigious than drawing comic books. Not only might a comic strip be read by more people than a given comic book, but it was being read by adults, too, not

An Artist For All Seasons

Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood Three faces (though not the only three) of Buck Rogers through the decades. (Clockwise from top right:) Buck goes into early action in 1929-30 with jumping belt and rayguns, as written by Phil Nowlan and drawn by Dick Calkins. This 1948 strip illustrated by Murphy Anderson showed Buck and a lady friend called Flame in a tight spot. And no, Buck hadn’t gained a Superman-style chest symbol; the ringed planet was standard issue on the Saturnian guard’s uniform he had purloined. By the early post-Sputnik 1960s, the syndicate decreed relatively mundane storylines for George Tuska to draw—as per this ’61 daily from the “Miss Solar System Beauty Pageant” storyline mentioned in the text. Writer unknown. The above three pieces of art were all reprinted in the 1988 volume Buck Rogers: The First 60 Years in the 25th Century. In the equally prosaic 1960 Sunday at the bottom of this page, our hero shares a shopping expedition with one Starr Sapphire, a character bearing more than a passing resemblance to Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, who would rocket in five years later. Writer unknown. Thanks to Dewey Cassell. [Art on this page ©2011 The Dille Family Trust.]

A Brief Look At The Life And Career Of George Tuska

just children. You also received credit for your work on a comic strip, and it frequently paid better than comic book work and provided a steady source of income. But some comic strips were more prestigious than others—like Buck Rogers. Buck Rogers, originally named Anthony Rogers, got his start in the story “Armageddon 2419 A.D.,” which was written by Philip Francis Nowlan and published in the science-fiction magazine Amazing Stories in 1928. John F. Dille, president of what became the National Newspaper Service syndicate, hired Nowlan and artist Richard Calkins to bring Buck Rogers in the 25th Century to life in a comic strip. The daily strip began in 1929 and a Sunday version followed a year later. The premise of the strip was that Rogers was a former US Air Service pilot who was mustered out after serving in France during World War I. He became a surveyor in Pennsylvania, where he was trapped in a mine cave-in and succumbed to strange fumes that placed him in a comatose state for 500 years. Upon awakening, he is discovered by Wilma Deering, who initially thinks he may be an enemy. He rescues her and wins her confidence, becoming a captain in Earth’s military forces. Together with Wilma and scientist Dr. Huer, he battles the great “Mongol” threat, as well as villains like Killer Kane and the beautiful but deadly Ardala. At its peak, the Buck Rogers strip ran in over 400 newspapers and was translated into 18 languages, spawning a radio serial, movies, and television shows, as well as various merchandise. By 1947, both Nowlan and Calkins had left the strip. Successive artists included Rick Yager, Leo Dworkins, and Murphy Anderson.

Waring and George and myself. George was a good golfer. He could hit the ball, boy. “ In addition, Tuska received a telegram in May 1962 from the Vice President of ABC News, James Hagerty, inviting him to appear on television to witness the historic orbital flight of astronaut Scott Carpenter. Hagerty sought out Tuska “as the artist of the Buck Rogers strip, the storylines of which are now becoming realities.” Because of his hearing difficulties, George declined to participate. Plastino was an admirer of George’s work, noting, “I remember when he was doing Buck Rogers…. Beautiful work. Clean. His work was so neat. He was not a sketchy type of guy.” George sometimes found Buck Rogers frustrating, though, as he noted: “I worked at home quite a while for them. I was doing other small things for them also, like golf instructions. The big missing thing on Buck Rogers when I was doing it was Wilma. She wasn’t there. Wilma has

So, when the syndicate telephoned in 1959, while George was still doing Scorchy Smith, he faced a tough decision, as he recalled: “Somebody called up from Chicago and said, ‘I’m from the National Newspaper Syndicate.’ I didn’t know what it was [about]. They said, ‘We have here Buck Rogers.’ Buck Rogers was more popular than Scorchy Smith. I said, ‘I don’t know. I know the fella who is doing it. I wouldn’t like to take it out of his hands.’ He said, ‘I tell you what. I’ll call you a week later and you let me know. Otherwise, I might give it to somebody else.’ I was in between. So, I accepted it.” Accepting the job was not an easy decision, as Dorothy Tuska recounts, “George felt very bad that he took it over. George apologized to Murphy [Anderson]. He felt that maybe if he hadn’t said yes, he would do it, Murphy would still be doing it, even though he was slow. It was a very trying time for George. He was so used to writing Scorchy Smith, and he was sorry he left that to do Buck Rogers. He was not happy doing it. And then we had to get a letterer to do it. First an inker and then a letterer. The letterer was Martin Epp, I think.” Writers during Tuska’s tenure on Buck Rogers included Jack Lehti, Howard Liss, and Ray Russell, as well as noted science-fiction author Fritz Leiber. The stories Tuska illustrated ranged from exciting space-borne adventures to somewhat silly beauty contests. But, there were some benefits to doing Buck Rogers. As a member of the National Cartoonists Society, George was invited to play in the annual celebrity golf tournament held at Shawnee on the Delaware, a resort owned by renowned band leader Fred Waring. Tuska, Mike Peppe, Al Plastino, and their wives enjoyed a weekend in the Poconos and George took home a second place trophy one year, presented to him by entertainer Jackie Gleason. Al Plastino recalls the golf outings with fondness: “June the 8th was Fred Waring’s birthday. And we’d go every June the 8th, the cartoonists, and we’d have a two- or three-day outing there. It was on him. That’s where I met Jackie Gleason. He played with us. There was a picture of Jackie Gleason and

The Rocket’s Red Glare Since so much of George’s work for Marvel during the 1960s and ’70s has been reprinted, we’ll concentrate on less accessible art featuring that company’s stalwarts—like this (color) commission drawing done for Belgian collector Dominique Léonard of the first super-hero drew when he returned to Marvel circa 1966. [Captain America TM & ©2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

An Artist For All Seasons

always been with Buck. I think a hero has to have a girl. Otherwise, I plugged away.” There were other difficulties, as Dorothy recalls, “The fellow that was in Chicago, he called. He was with the newspaper syndicate. He called to speak to George and I answered. And I said George couldn’t come to the phone, because he couldn’t hear. Well, he got so nasty. I think that kind of blew it for George. He was not very nice. He couldn’t understand why George couldn’t get to the phone and I had to answer.” George worked on Buck Rogers until the strip ended in 1967, cranking out six dailies and a Sunday each week. The end was something of a relief, as George noted: “Sometime later, I was called and told they were discontinuing Buck, for some reason. I didn’t mind. It was pretty rough, the schedule.”

Marvel Redux While drawing the newspaper strips Scorchy Smith and Buck Rogers, George continued to do some comic book work, including covers and interior artwork for Harvey Comics’ Spyman and Alarming Adventures, as well as humorous pieces for the Mad rival, Sick magazine, edited by Joe Simon. He also illustrated T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents for Tower Comics and several stories for Archie, Dell, and Gold Key, the latter of which were often inked by Mike Peppe. Then, in the waning years of Buck Rogers, Tuska turned to an old friend, Stan Lee, at what was now called Marvel Comics. But thirteen years of drawing newspaper comic strips had taken their toll, as George explained: “I called Stan Lee at Marvel and he said, ‘Come on over.’ At first, it was ‘Captain America.’ There is a difference working in comic books and newspapers. The newspaper is not very flashy stuff, but the comics, there is more action, more fighting, panel after panel. After so long away from comic books, I was stale. Stan called me into his office. He said, ‘You see this figure you drew? That’s not right.’ And showed me [with his fist through the air] ‘Pow!’. He did bring up a lot and it was very interesting. I enjoyed it very much. Then I got into the swing of things.” Actually, Tuska’s first work for Marvel Comics was a “Tales of the Watcher” story that he penciled and inked in issue #58 of Tales of Suspense. On the splash page of the 1964 story, Stan Lee welcomed back Tuska, saying, “We’ve managed to re-hire an artist who was one of our top stars many years ago,” (although it would be three more years before George would rejoin the bullpen on a full-time basis). Because of his 6' 2" height with blond hair and an athletic build, Stan nicknamed him “Gorgeous” George Tuska. His next assignment was a daunting one— penciling and inking over Jack Kirby’s layouts on “Captain America” in Tales of Suspense, starting with issue #70. In this five-issue run, Cap encounters Nazis, The Red Skull, and The Sleepers, as well as a guest appearance by The Avengers. With practice handling Cap and the Assemblers under his belt, George’s next big assignment was The Avengers. Most noteworthy among his contributions to “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” was issue #48, featuring the return of The Black Knight, for which Tuska did the interior pencils, inks, and cover. He also inked a number of Avengers stories and covers penciled by John Buscema, including issue #53, which features a face-off with The X-Men, foreshadowing his first significant solo opportunity. While he was still embellishing The Avengers, Tuska also tackled The XMen. He penciled and inked the classic cover to issue #39, which also served as the basis for the “Marvel Value Stamps” of Cyclops and Marvel Girl that later appeared in various Marvel comics. Following that were a couple of issues in which he inked Don Heck’s pencils. Then Tuska penciled his own issue of the merry mutants, followed by a three-part origin of Iceman that appeared as a backup story in X-Men. He illustrated several other X-Men covers as well. By this time, Buck Rogers was but a memory, and George had hit his stride once again in comics. But that was not the end of Tuska’s involvement with The X-Men. Issue

Value Added? Here’s something that may not have been reprinted: In the early ’70s George Tuska drew this “Marvel Value Stamp” of Marvel Girl which appeared in a mag or two. Hey, when’s Marvel gonna give those their own Essentials volume?

#66 of X-Men would be the last featuring new, original stories until the book was re-launched with a new team in issue #94 in 1975. In the interim, X-Men became a reprint book. However, there were numerous new stories that featured appearances by one or more of The X-Men during the intervening five years, including Amazing Spider-Man #92, Avengers #88, Amazing Adventures #11-17, The Incredible Hulk #150, and others. But the first new, original “X-Men” story to appear after XMen #66 was a three-part solo story featuring the mutant Angel that appeared as a backup in Ka-Zar #2-3 and Marvel Tales #30. This “Angel” story is unusual in several respects. Not only was it relegated to the back of two reprint books, but it was penned by none other than Jerry Siegel, of “Superman” fame. Siegel wrote a three-chapter tale about The Angel that was penciled by Tuska and inked by Dick Ayers. It is possible that this “Angel” story was done for inventory and then inserted into the reprint books because the opportunity presented itself, but it seems equally likely that it may have been intended as a backup feature in X-Men. Issues #38-57 of X-Men included multi-part backup stories that explained the origins and powers of The X-Men. The three parts of the “Angel” story were certainly meant to be presented in the same title, as evidenced by the fact that the closing caption of the second part was changed to redirect readers to Marvel Tales #30. (Ka-Zar was canceled after issue #3.) While he was working his way back into the saddle at Marvel, Tuska contributed to several other titles, including inking Marie Severin’s pencils in several early issues of the new solo book The Incredible Hulk, as well as penciling a couple of issues of Daredevil. Over the years, Tuska’s style of drawing had evolved, from the “house” style he’d adopted in the early years at Eisner & Iger, to the realistic and dramatic style found in Crime Does Not Pay and his early Timely work, to the cartoonier style evident in the comic strips he did in the ’50s and ’60s, and finally to the actionoriented style he exhibited at Marvel. A big part of George’s success at the latter company, where the “Marvel method” required the artist to provide the flow of the story as well as the art, was his gift for storytelling. Walter Tomashoff elaborates, “The thing that I liked about George, he would be so descriptive when he talked about something. Like, this one time he was telling me about this guy who was fishing out on a sandbar, beyond the pier going out into the water. He was casting way out and didn’t pay attention to the tide coming in. It was about waist high and there was this shark circling him. And George, he takes you through that story, and you just envision that shark coming

A Brief Look At The Life And Career Of George Tuska

Craig for a couple of issues, but the clean lines of his penciling lacked the sense of drama and action that Colan had rendered, so Marvel decided to give Tuska a try at Iron Man. And although it was initially just another assignment for George, he clearly put forth his best effort, bringing excitement and creativity to the printed page. His first issue of Iron Man was #5, which featured a story completely outside the normal continuity of the comic book, suggesting it was meant to be a try-out for Tuska, a test he obviously passed. That story, and the next fourteen issues that followed, were inked by Johnny Craig, with the exception of #14, which Craig penciled himself.

Mandarin Cooking (Above:) George drew and colored this dramatic face-off between Iron Man and The Mandarin—along with a “self portrait” of sorts—for collector Aaron Sultan, who graciously shared it with us. (Right:) A “sketchagraph” drawing Tuska did for Dewey Cassell. [Iron Man & Mandarin TM & ©2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

around. And all the people were yelling to the guy about it, and I think in the end result, the shark won. He got the guy. [Also,] I remembered so clearly, you mentioned in your book about when he was weightlifting and the guys from the pool hall came up. When George is telling it, ‘We go to the door, and there’s three or four of us, big muscles and all, and open it and there are these guys with the pool sticks, cigarettes hanging out of their mouths.’ And I’m just picturing that whole scene. And he said, ‘They look at us like this and they just turn around and go ahead and leave.’ He was proud of the fact of being a strong individual like he was.” Tuska didn’t mind moving from one title to another. He especially enjoyed working for Marvel, whatever that work might be. George recalls about his early days back with Marvel and Stan Lee, “I was doing quite a bit for him—Spider-Man, Daredevil, Fantastic Four. But somehow, I kept getting stories of “Iron Man.” I got to like it. It became a series [for me]. And once in a while, I would be put on something else.”

Iron Man That Tuska should become the regular artist on Iron Man was something of a happy accident. Gene Colan had been penciling the armored Avenger through the end of his run in Tales of Suspense and the first issue of his solo title. Colan left big shoes to fill. Marvel used Johnny

The combination of Tuska and Craig proved to be a powerful one and is considered by many fans to be the definitive run of the series. A big part, though, of what endears those early issues to fans are the layouts that George used in the stories. Issue #9, in which Iron Man faces off against The Mandarin and a robotic version of the Hulk, is a great example of the unconventional approach that Tuska took to laying out the early “Iron Man” stories, using odd-shaped panels to literally draw the reader through the action. He also strived to enable Iron Man to show expression, a trait he shared with predecessor Gene Colan. Coupled with the exceptional writing of Archie Goodwin and dynamic covers by Tuska such as that of issue #7, with the Gladiator slicing through the Iron Man logo, it is no wonder that the first couple of years of the solo Iron Man title are considered its heyday. Issue #20 of Iron Man marked a turning point of sorts. Johnny Craig left the book as inker and was replaced by Mike Esposito, under the pseudonym “Joe Gaudioso.” Issue #23 was the last for which Tuska drew the cover, and it also marked the last issue for which Tuska penciled the interior artwork, at least for a while. Issues #24 & 25 were penciled by Johnny Craig; the former inked by Tuska. Then with issue #26, “Iron Man” artistic co-creator Don Heck took over as the mag’s primary artist, inked successively by Craig, Esposito, and Chic Stone. Tuska did a couple of intervening issues but did not return to the book as its regular penciler until #40, at which point he went through a series of inkers, most notably Jim Mooney and Vince Colletta. This 16-month absence in 1970 and 1971 is most logically explained by a detour Tuska made to DC.

DC Diversion While still settling in with Stark and his alter ego, Tuska was approached by DC Comics in 1970. Dorothy Tuska explains the circumstances: “I think, at the time, the work had slowed down, and George was never one to not come home with work. Whatever came up, he would do. Evidently, when he couldn’t get anything at Marvel, he went over to DC.” [Continued on p. 26]

An Artist For All Seasons

Sidebar #1:

A Visit With The Tuskas by Dewey Cassell [AUTHOR’S NOTE: This article was written prior to George’s death in 2009.]

hile writing the book The Art of George Tuska in 2004, I had an opportunity to visit with George and Dorothy at their home for the first time. I had driven up to New Jersey from my house in North Carolina and arrived late in the afternoon. The drive was uneventful, and when I got there, they gave me the nickel tour and then we departed for a nearby steak house to enjoy dinner. Following our repast and some delightful conversation, we returned to their home and George showed me some of the commissioned drawings he was working on. I left shortly thereafter for a nearby motel, with plans to return the following day to record a detailed interview. During the night, I became violently ill and was admitted to the nearest hospital, where I remained for the next three days. George and Dorothy visited me there, expressing great concern and compassion. The doctors were never entirely sure what happened, but my condition improved somewhat and my father flew up from his home in Florida to help me drive the car back to my house. This article is not about that visit. Later that year, I returned to the Tuska home to conduct that elusive interview. This time, I flew into the Newark airport and rented a car for the trek down to the Tuska homestead. George and Dorothy live in a gorgeous retirement community, just ten miles from the Jersey Shore. (A favorite pastime of Dorothy’s is to venture down to Atlantic City to try her hand at the slot machines.) They reside in a single-story duplex with a one-car garage, next door to lifelong friends, Tom and Sally. The picture of me with George was taken on their front stoop, with their beautiful yard in the background. The Tuskas warmly welcomed me into their home. As you enter the foyer, the kitchen is to the left. There is a table in the kitchen next to a large window with a great view of the yard, where George and Dorothy often sit. Also to the left, beyond the kitchen, is a formal dining room. Straight ahead from the foyer is the living room, with a sectional sofa, television, and bookshelves filled with figurines Dorothy has collected and with books, many of which contain examples of George’s artwork. Also on the bookshelf and the sofa table are a multitude of framed photographs of the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.

bottom drawer of the dresser is filled with dozens of old comics that George uses for reference when doing commissions. Along the back wall of the room is a rocking chair and television set. On the floor next to the rocking chair is a basket with all of the fan letters George has received over the years. (Yep, he saves them all.) Hanging on the wall behind the rocking chair is his Inkpot Award. On the left side of the studio is George’s desk. The desk has a computer on it, but they only have a dial-up connection to the Internet, so it rarely gets used. George typically sits in a chair at the desk and draws holding a drawing board. He has a small taboret next to the desk and the desk drawer has a file of reference material, primarily preliminary pencil drawings on tracing paper, some of which appear to date back to the late ’60s. There is a shelf above the desk with a statue of Iron Man, a framed “Iron Man” splash page, and photographs of George with Stan Lee, Mike Peppe, Al Plastino, and entertainer Jackie Gleason. And in the back left corner of the room is the closet. This is no ordinary closet. No clothes encroach on this hallowed space. Rather, this is the sacred storage area for Tuska artwork, published and commissioned. If you’ve ever seen family friend Mike Garland put a piece of Tuska artwork up for auction on eBay and thought, “Wow, I wonder where that came from?”—it was from the closet. I once got an unpublished penciled Sunday strip to The World’s Greatest Superheroes featuring Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, and Aquaman. It came from the closet. The closet has magical properties. There is no higher honor than being granted permission to rummage through the closet. (A feat I did not manage on this trip, although I have done a bit of rummaging since.) If you proceed down the hallway of their home, you’ll find a bathroom on the right, the master bedroom on the left, and at the end of the hallway, a door to the garage. During my visit, George took me out to the garage to show me a large, two-drawer filing cabinet, jammed full of folders which are filled to over-flowing with magazine and newspaper clippings for reference. Many artists have similar reference files. If George was reading a magazine and noticed a photograph of a building with interesting or unusual architecture, he would cut it out. Or if he saw a photograph of a person in an unusual pose, he would cut it out. It is a lifetime of potential illustrations.

If you turn right from the foyer, you proceed down a short hallway. The first door you come to on the right is George’s studio. (It doubles as a spare bedroom, so George gets evicted whenever a guest stays overnight.) As you enter the studio, to the right is a sofa bed and small dresser. The

Home Folks (Left:) George and Dorothy Tuska at home, in a photo taken by Dewey Cassell on his visit. (Right:) Dewey and George.

A Brief Look At The Life And Career Of George Tuska

Speaking of illustrations, I neglected to mention that they are everywhere in the Tuska home. George gets up every day at 6:30 a.m. and starts to draw. If he is not working on a commission for a fan, he loves to paint. George’s paintings, as well as paintings by their son Bob, cover the walls of the dining room, living room, hallway, and master bedroom. Most are unrelated to comic books. There is a painting of a tiger’s head, reflecting great majesty and strength. Another painting is of two American Indians on horseback, armed for battle. Yet another painting is of geese flying across a snow-covered landscape. The comic book-related artwork adorns the walls of George’s studio, including a dynamic painting of Iron Man in flight. The Tuska home is an unpretentious celebration of George’s work. As for the interview, if you’ve ever met George, you know he doesn’t talk a lot. He lost much of his hearing at an early age and he is not entirely comfortable speaking, especially in a crowd. But in private, I found him quite conversant. (When I call them on the telephone now, Dorothy will answer, but when George learns it is me, he will yell, “Hi, Dewey!” from across the room.) For fear of missing something during our interview, I recorded our conversation both on my laptop using Goldwave software and on my portable tape recorder. (Both methods worked fine.) We conducted the interview in his studio and much of the interview included Dorothy as well. I captured about four hours of Q&A, although there were some great tidbits we talked about over lunch that I missed, frantically scrambling later to jot them down on paper lest I forget. I should add that, perhaps out of lingering concern from my first visit and to maximize our time together, Dorothy prepared a wonderful meal for us. Regarding the details of the interview, it is pretty much all there in the book.

something drawn. Hopefully, I accomplished my mission. But I also walked away with a priceless treasure in the recordings of our interview, as well as the other interviews I did for the book with folks like Will Eisner, Joe Simon, Stan Lee, Jim Mooney, Marie Severin, Gene Colan, Nick Cardy, and others, some of whom are no longer with us. As with most great trips, the time passed all too quickly and long before I was ready, I had to go. I left with a bevy of photographs and artwork to scan for the book, as well as a couple of pieces I bought for my own collection. I had long admired George’s artwork, but it was after this trip that I became truly fanatical about collecting it. There is something about spending time with the person behind the pencil that makes you appreciate their work all the more. My affection for the Tuskas has deepened over the years and a week seldom goes by now when we don’t talk on the phone. Last fall, I took my whole family to visit the Tuskas on our way to New York. (They had already met my son, who has accompanied me to conventions for years.) I find so much to admire in George that goes beyond his artistic ability. George (and Dorothy) are kind and generous and humble and gracious. They are a model of that “greatest generation” that we are losing all too quickly. I am grateful for, and blessed by, their friendship, and our visits together, all too infrequent, are priceless.

The publisher wanted the book to be in George’s own words and I endeavored to be true to that mission. I could probably have polished it up a bit more than I did, but I wanted to be able to hear George’s voice when reading the quotes in the book. I wanted to be able to hear the pain in his voice when he described his fight with Rafael Astarita, a story some folks loved to tell, but about which George still feels badly. Or to hear the excitement in his voice when describing Stan Lee standing on top of the desk in the Marvel offices, striking a pose to illustrate how he wanted

[Continued from p. 24] Many of the artists who worked for a competitor used a pseudonym, but not George. Dorothy elaborates, “I don’t think George cared. Stan knew he went to DC. I think George told him. It didn’t matter. I think he only used [a pseudonym] when he first started work… way back when.” DC liked his action-oriented style of drawing super-heroes and wanted him to bring that to bear for them. Tuska agreed, but almost immediately regretted his decision when the first thing DC assigned to him was romance comics. It is interesting to note how many artists, later known for drawing super-heroes, did a stint drawing romance comics. The list includes legends Alex Toth, Don Heck, Vince Colletta, and Gene Colan. Some of them, like John Romita, had a gift for it. Others, like Jack Kirby, did not. Tuska’s tenure at Fiction House had honed his skills for drawing the female form, but it was not what he wanted to do. In reality, though, Marvel super-hero comics were full of romance— Sue and Reed (or Sue and Namor), the Thing and Alicia, Spidey and Gwen (and Mary Jane), Hulk and Betty, Daredevil and Karen, the list goes on. A key component of that vulnerability that Stan endeavored to include in Marvel heroes was romance. DC was much the same—Hal Jordan and Carol, Barry Allen and Iris, Superman and Lois. George drew stories and covers for Girls’ Love Stories, Falling in Love, and Heart Throbs. Fortunately for Tuska, DC soon moved him to horror books like The Witching Hour, Ghosts, House of Secrets, and The Unexpected, as well as super-hero books like Teen Titans, Challengers of the Unknown, and the “Legion of Super-Heroes” stories in Superboy. Of particular note is his “Legion” tale in Superboy #183, which featured new costumes suggested

I’ve Got A Secrets! This Tuska page from House of Secrets #104 (Jan. 1973) was reprinted—along with the rest of the story, of course—in the black-&-white trade paperback Showcase Presents The House of Secrets, Vol. 2. [©2011 DC Comics.]

An Artist For All Seasons

could start drawing. So that’s what I did.” The first villain that Friedrich penned was Firebrand, and he proved to be a favorite, as the writer notes: “At the time, I was very interested in trying to weave political issues into the comics, and Firebrand was a quasi-political character. If you pay much attention to it, it was the one character I kept coming back to, because I enjoyed playing with him. He was the one villain I really felt good about in all the years I worked on the character.” Social consciousness was also a recurring theme for Friedrich: “That was kind of what I did at the time. If I could weave it into the stories, I thought that was my responsibility. I remember one of the first things that I did was get Tony Stark out of the armaments business.” Friedrich immediately embraced the “Marvel method” of comics writing, but for him, that presented some challenges working with Tuska. He had an appreciation for the “talent that George had and the craft that George had,” but as he recalls, “He was a frustrating artist to work with for me. I contrast it to my work with Gil Kane. I understood Gil and I knew what he was trying to do, and I knew the range of poses and characters that he liked to draw. He was also really trying to tell a story in a particular way that I just understood because I had been a big fan of his as a kid and had studied his work. Every story that I worked on with Gil, I was very satisfied with. Even though he didn’t do a lot of the nuance that I would like to get, he captured an awful lot and made things a lot more

Irons In The Fire Ol’ Shellhead clashes anew with Marvel’s villainous Firebrand, as discussed by scripter Mike Friedrich on this very page! Inks by Mike Esposito. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [©2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

by fans. Tuska’s work for DC was well received, but he did not enjoy drawing teenagers, either. He preferred the big strong super-hero types like Iron Man. And soon Marvel was giving him all the work he could handle.

Iron Man Revisited By issue #40 of Iron Man, Tuska had returned to Ol’ Shellhead for good and settled in for a nice, long run. Gone, though, were the dynamic layouts and peculiar panels. Gone, too, was writer Archie Goodwin, replaced by Gerry Conway. Still, the Iron Man stories from this time period include several highlights, especially the Guardsman storyline, in which Tony Stark’s close friend and confidant, Kevin O’Brien, dons the Guardsman armor developed by Stark. The armor exacerbated O’Brien’s own inner demons and he ultimately turned on his friend in a battle with Iron Man that cost him his life. Issue # 48 marked the arrival of a new regular writer for Iron Man, Mike Friedrich, as he explains: “Well, I took it over very suddenly. I had left DC and came over to Marvel, and Roy Thomas was the guy I was reporting to. I think Roy was sort of filling in [writing Iron Man] and was really desperately concerned because he did not have the time to continue it himself. I think he did one issue. So, it was a book that was immediately available, and I started on it the first day I worked at Marvel. I was supposed to come up with a plot that first two or three days, so the artist

If Synchronized Swimming Ever Becomes An Olympic Sport— Here’s America’s Tag Team! George is one of the relatively few artists who’ve drawn both Marvel’s SubMariner (in Namor’s own mag) and DC’s Aquaman (in the World’s Greatest Superheroes newspaper strip)—so Aquafan supreme John Schwirian persuaded him to draw the two undersea stars together. [Sub-Mariner TM & ©2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Aquaman TM & ©2011 DC Comics.]

A Brief Look At The Life And Career Of George Tuska

dramatic than I wrote. I was never able to achieve that kind of level of understanding of George’s work, to be able to play to his strengths. Everything was just sort of one of two different intensities and I just couldn’t write a story that way that I was satisfied with. Things were never as dramatic as I wanted them, or they were too dramatic. And they were never as subtle as I wanted them, or they were bland and boring. He had a hard time doing emotional development in the soap opera sense, so it was very hard to do boy-girl romance stuff with George. It’s kind of a cliché, but every writer that ever took over Iron Man put their stamp on the character by getting rid of the old girlfriend and introducing a new one. And that was me. I did that [with Roxanne Gilbert]. I was not able to develop that as much as I would have liked.” Nonetheless, when it came to action, there were definitely some highlights in their tenure together. The story in issue #54 involved The Sub-Mariner, a character not traditionally associated with Iron Man. Friedrich explains the process: “As long as I was using characters that had been established within Iron Man, I could do whatever I wanted. I was basically told that it was wide open. So, if I used The Mandarin, it was because I wanted to. If I didn’t use him, it was because I thought of something else. I didn’t get a lot of guidance. The only restrictions had to come with anything that would have impacted the other characters. So, I certainly had to get permission if there was going to be a crossover with somebody else. [Sub Mariner] was a little bit easier because I had roomed with Bill Everett. He was a good friend of mine, so it was a little bit easier to bring him in. I don’t think we did a crossover in the sense that Iron Man appeared in Sub-Mariner, but it was not hard to get permission to bring him into Iron Man because I knew Bill personally. And again, this was sort of second-tier Marvel. Who cares too much about what happens down at that level? If you’re doing Daredevil or Iron Man or SubMariner, whatever you wanted to do was fine. They were a lot more careful about Spider-Man or Fantastic Four.” That same issue of Iron Man also marked the introduction of the character Moondragon. By issue #57, Mike Esposito had taken over the inking. Tuska considered Esposito one of his best inkers, and together they defined the Iron Man character for a new generation.

remember that it was a lot of fun doing it. Probably the most enjoyable story that I wrote for Iron Man.” Roy Thomas and Mike Friedrich both make cameo appearances in the story. Tuska’s relationship with Iron Man spanned over 100 issues. Along the way, he also illustrated other comics for Marvel, including Sub-Mariner, Doctor Strange, Ghost Rider, The Champions, The Defenders, Shanna the She-Devil, and “Doctor Doom” in Astonishing Tales, as well as Marvel black-&-white magazines like Monsters Unleashed, Tales of the Zombie, and the movie adaptation of Planet of the Apes. He also returned to The Avengers to pencil the third part of a storyline about how the original Human Torch’s android body had been used to construct The Vision, as well as the yarn recounting The Beast’s recruitment into the ranks of the Assembled. And although not typically associated with Spider-Man, Tuska illustrated the web-spinner on several occasions, including a Hostess Twinkie advertisement as well as ghosting The Amazing Spider-Man newspaper strip. Gene Colan recalls how Tuska was

But not everything about Iron Man was well-received during this time period. Take the nose, for example. In issue # 68, Iron Man grew a nose— or his helmet did, to be precise. Reader response was not exactly positive. As to whose idea it was, Friedrich says, “I have no idea. It was certainly not me and it wasn’t the artist, but somebody asked for it. I kind of remember that it was an idea that Stan Lee gave Roy Thomas. Roy was opposed to it, but said, ‘Well, Stan wants it, so that’s what we’re doing.’ So we did it for a while and got a lot of negative mail. Roy went back to Stan and said, ‘We got negative mail,’ and it was changed back. Now, I can’t swear to that story. You’d have to check with Roy. That’s the best I can remember. I know I didn’t come up with it. I thought it looked stupid.” It is ironic that fans accepted and found completely logical the notion of a nose on Doctor Doom, but a nose on Iron Man just didn’t look right. For all the changes Stark made to his armor, breathing room was one that was not well-received. Friedrich did try experimenting with Iron Man on occasion, as he recounts: “Toward the end of my tenure, I tried this idea of a sort of super-villain war that Iron Man is caught in the middle of, and my original idea was that it would be something that would be a Marvel wide concept, but I couldn’t get any management support for that, so I just did what I could do within Iron Man, with the characters that were available to me.” One of the other later Iron Man storylines written by Friedrich took place at the San Diego Comic-Con. Friedrich recalls the circumstances: “By then, the Comic-Con was starting to get a little bit of notice and I was trying to promote it a lot because I had returned to California. We were trying to talk about how this was the best environment for comics. I knew Shel Dorf, the convention organizer. I think Roy had come out to one or two of the conventions, so he was agreeable to it. I

I’ve Got A Secret—Part Deux The final page of the Tuska-penciled, Mike Esposito-inked, Mike Friedrichscripted Iron Man #68 (June 1974) is the reason for the issue’s cover blurb: “EXTRA! Don’t dare miss the shocking SECRET of IRON MAN’S NEW MASK!” The secret? It had a nose! Scripter Mike F. apparently couldn’t bring himself to specifically mention the newly prominent metal proboscis in Tony Stark’s thought balloons—except to hint that the new headgear “increase[d] the fearsome aspects of my character to those who oppose me!” Hey, maybe Tony should’ve given it bat ears, to boot! [©2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

An Artist For All Seasons

Sidebar #2:

George And Me By Hal Jordan (as told to Dewey Cassell)

always liked George Tuska. Heck, he looked more like a super-hero than I do, at least without the ring. In fact, in some ways, he and I were like polar opposites. He was quiet and reserved. I, on the other hand, have never been accused of being shy. He was a family man, and I never seemed to settle down. He made friendships that lasted a lifetime. My friends often end up in danger of losing their lives. We were kindred spirits, though. We both had our hearts stolen by a very special lady. We both enjoyed being outdoors. We both have a wry sense of humor. And while I lived amazing adventures every day, George drew amazing adventures every day. Just rarely my adventures, unfortunately. I should explain.

George and I first crossed paths in April 1978. Vinnie (Colletta, that is) lured him away from that dastardly villain, Stan Lee, to come work with me and my buddies from the Justice League. First, he penciled one issue of us in Justice League of America. Then, together with Vinnie and Marty Pasko, George launched a brand new newspaper strip called The World’s Greatest Superheroes, starring yours truly and the rest of the JLA gang seven days a week. Well, at least that’s the way it was supposed to work. Clark Kent muscled his way in, and, after a couple of years, the rest of us rarely saw print. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I was a little ticked off when I found out I wouldn’t be in the first storyline of the strip. It’s not like I was busy off somewhere fighting Sinestro. You should have seen the pencils George drew when he tried out for the strip, though. In my book, Wonder Woman never looked better. Pasko picked Vandal Savage to be the first baddie, which was a great choice because he really put the JLA to the test. That’s probably why they didn’t let me play. It wouldn’t have been a fair fight. I could have cleaned up easy with my ring. At least I got to weigh in when the JLA took on Doctor Destiny. I love that Sunday scene of me using the ring to check on Diana and Barry. George really had a knack for drawing action. Guess those years spent with Stanley weren’t a complete waste. When it comes to drawing an explosion or someone throwing a punch, no one can touch Tuska. You can almost smell the cordite and feel the bruise. Larger than life. Yeah, that’s it. That describes George, and his work, perfectly. It only lasted for a short while, though. And then I started to notice that, while George would pencil me in, Colletta never inked the pencils, and I ended up on the drawing room floor (or in some comic book geek’s art collection.) I’m not blaming Vinnie, mind you. I figure it was some suit in the penthouse who had it in for me. (Who knows, maybe I flirted with his wife.) It certainly wasn’t the art. I loved the way George drew me. Some of the guys who penciled me in the past made me look like a 98-pound weakling in spandex. And that Kane guy liked to draw pictures looking up my nose. George made me look buff. He put muscles on my muscles. With that square jaw and wavy hair, I practically look like a movie star. Hey, maybe that’s it. Kent got sore that George was making me look more handsome than him. You know, everybody thinks Kent is all Boy Scout and apple pie, but that reject from Krypton’s got a mean streak a mile wide. We’ve crossed swords before when I tried to fix some stuff that got messed up. The boy gets all uptight about the time-space continuum

and all that crap. I shouldn’t be so bitter, though. At least I made a few appearances in the paper. Some of the gang that were in the promotional material for the strip—like Supergirl, Hawkman, and Elongated Man—never showed up at all. Guess it was just too crowded. Or Kent just had a better agent. Anyway, once George left the strip, the suits let him draw a few more Justice League of America stories, but I wasn’t an active member at that time. But he finally got to draw me in my own book. Boy, we had some fun. Put the ring through a workout. Just for three issues, though. Three and a half if you count that framing sequence in # 170. And then it was over. I never saw him again, except for an occasional convention sketch. I know it wasn’t personal, though. George drew a couple of backup stories of my fellow Lanterns that were never published, either. It just seemed like something conspired against us. Maybe George’s favorite color was yellow. I’m just glad we had what little time together that we did. George was a gentleman in the truest sense of the word. He not only looked like a hero, he was one, in my book. Sleep well, my friend. May the Guardians welcome you home. —Hal P.S. Boy, wouldn’t it have been cool to see George wearing the ring? I have a hunch he would have looked a little like that iron guy!

A Brief Look At The Life And Career Of George Tuska

Sink Or Swim Tuska’s splash page for the swell-selling Sub-Mariner #41 (Sept. 1971). The cover for this issue was penciled by George, though the inker is uncertain—and apparently Marie Severin redrew Namor’s face somewhat on it—but since it was viewed in The Art of George Tuska, we won’t squeeze it in here. Issues #41 &42, penciled by GT, outsold surrounding issues; the cover of #42 was penciled by Gil Kane. Repro’d from a scan of the original art, courtesy of dealer Mike Burkey (www.romitaman.com).

by John Romita, Tuska gave Cage great strength and power, without the trappings of a costume. Cage was, after all, the kind of hero that Tuska enjoyed drawing—bit and strong—and he remained with the book for a total of 20 issues, bringing life to many supporting characters, as well. His inker was most often Billy Graham, who also penciled several issues. Following the success of “Luke Cage,” Marvel decided to introduce a second African-American hero, “Black Goliath,” and they once more turned to Tuska to illustrate the character, first in the pages of Hero for Hire, then in his own book.

The World’s Greatest Superheroes Then, in 1978, Tuska found himself faced with a difficult decision. As he explained: “Sometimes I think I made a mistake. Stan was there through everything. [But] somebody up at DC Comics asked me if I wanted to do a DC comic for the newspaper. I didn’t know much of anyone there. I worked mostly at Marvel. I told Stan about it and he said, ‘You can’t do this to me.’ He was upset. I said I would think about it and let him know. I accepted it— ‘Superman.’” One can appreciate why Stan was upset. Marvel had just launched a newspaper strip of their own the previous year, based on The Amazing Spider-Man, and they were already planning to follow it up with a second strip featuring The Incredible Hulk. Stan would not have been happy about having an artist like George start a new comic strip for the competition. Except for an adaptation of the Masters of the Universe movie in 1987, Tuska never worked for Marvel again. regarded in the Marvel bullpen: “Stan always would hold his work up as the criteria of how he wanted the other artists to draw.” Tuska was not traditionally thought of as a cover artist, though. He did illustrate some covers over the years, including ones for Fox, Quality, Chesler, Fiction House, Lev Gleason, Harvey, DC, and certainly Marvel. In fact, the majority of covers he drew were for Iron Man and The X-Men. But a Tuska cover could prove to be a draw for a comic book, as former Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas notes: “I remember when he did Sub-Mariner, he came in between a couple of other artists and just did a two-part story with Gerry Conway, and those two issues sold better than the ones before or after them. He did the cover for one, if not both, of those, so I think that George was probably the factor that made the difference there. That was true with a number of other comics, as well.” One of Tuska’s most noteworthy contributions to comics was his depiction of AfricanAmerican heroes. When Marvel decided to launch their first comic book based entirely on an African-American hero, Luke Cage, Hero for Hire, they turned to Tuska to illustrate the character. (Black Panther preceded Cage, but as a guest star in Fantastic Four.) Following a design

Power To The Ghost People! All the issues of Hero for Hire, later Power Man, have been reprinted… hey, they’re well into Power Man and Iron Fist by now… so here’s a nice commission drawing of Luke Cage that George drew for Dominique Léonard—as well as a Ghost Rider sketch done for the same avid Tuskaphile. [Power Man TM & ©2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

An Artist For All Seasons

The More, The Merrier? (Above:) Working with writer Martin Pasko and inker Vince Colletta, George had a nice long stint on the World’s Greatest Superheroes comic strip. Shown here is the Sunday for Oct. 15, 1978, which features The Flash, Wonder Woman, Black Canary, and Green Lantern—a quorum of the Justice League of America—but not Superman. Thanks to dealer Anthony Snyder; see his ad on p. 52. (Below:) But, slowly and surely, the Last Son of Krypton emerged (surprise, surprise) as the true star of the strip, as evidenced in this daily for Feb. 24, 1981, scripted by Paul Levitz and inked by Colletta… and in the strip’s latter years its name was changed to Superman. Thanks to Todd Franklin. [©2011 DC Comics.]

A Brief Look At The Life And Career Of George Tuska

The Chicago Tribune/New York News Syndicate had approached DC Comics editor Julie Schwartz about developing a strip starring Superman and the Justice League of America, replete with all the action typically found in the comic books. Vince Colletta, then art director at DC Comics, supplied the inking. Marty Pasko wrote the early story arcs, which featured various members of the Justice League, including Aquaman, Flash, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Black Canary, Batman, Robin, and Black Lightning. However, the focus of the strip ultimately shifted to just Superman and his supporting cast of characters, including Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and Perry White, with only occasional guest appearances by other heroes. The villains of the strip were a rogues’ gallery of DC Comics’ best of the worst, including Vandal Savage, Lex Luthor, Doctor Destiny, The Prankster, The Weaponers of Qward, The Joker, and Brainiac. Some of the newspaper storylines actually mirrored the comic books, although not necessarily in the same time frame. (There were no “synchronized” storylines between the newspaper and comic books, as Marvel Comics did with the wedding of Peter Parker and Mary Jane.) Of note is one storyline in which a robot sent by Brainiac attacks Superman. Notations on the original artwork indicate that Tuska was asked to go back and add antennae to the robot, probably because, without them, the robot bore a striking resemblance to an Iron Man villain, The Crimson Dynamo. The World’s Greatest Superheroes lasted almost eight years, but Tuska only made it through five. “I didn’t enjoy it at all. Vinnie Colletta was the art director, but it didn’t matter. Then I decided not to do it anymore. I told them I would like to do comic books, whatever they had.” Paul Levitz, now President and Publisher of DC Comics, assumed the writing chores on the strip from Marty Pasko in the fall of 1979. Levitz notes, “I think George left around the time that the number of papers had declined, so it wasn’t paying any better than comic book work.” After leaving the Superheroes strip, Tuska drew several issues of Justice League of America, Green Lantern, Firestorm, Masters of the Universe, Tales of The Legion of Superheroes, and World’s Finest Comics. George noted, “After a while, I didn’t do much and I stopped.” In late 1986, Tuska put down his pencil and brush, and so ended an almost fifty-year professional career in comics. No regrets, though. In all of his years of drawing, he was never out of work for more than two weeks, a remarkable accom-

To Paraphrase Richard Pryor: “When Your Hair’s On Fire, People Will Get Out Of Your Way!” A Firestorm commission sketch drawn and colored by Tuska for Dominique Léonard. [Firestorm TM & ©2011 DC Comics.]

plishment for a freelance artist. And the comics he drew were translated into many different languages, garnering him fans from all over the world. As Tuska put it, “I enjoyed working as a cartoonist. It was work, but nice.” We should all be so lucky.

Retirement—After A Fashion Of course, the story doesn’t end there, as Dorothy explains: “That’s when we moved down here. George more or less retired. That’s when he used to do his painting. And he used to do the booklets for the golf club down here. He did a lot of their covers. It was just all fun at that time. No money, but all fun.” And then, in 1997, fan David Siegel “found” George and Dorothy and persuaded them to make the trip to Comic-Con International in San Diego, where George received the Inkpot Award. For the next ten years, George made numerous convention appearances, amazing fans with his dynamic commission drawings.

George Is One Of The Reasons They Call It “Heroes Con”! George at the 2001 Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC, amid oft-colored sketches of many of the heroes he’d drawn over the years for Marvel, DC, et al. Photo taken by Bob Bailey.

In 1998, Fleer/Skybox contacted Tuska and contracted with him to do 1000 sketchagraph cards for the Marvel Silver Age set, featuring characters such as Iron Man, Daredevil, Captain America, Luke Cage, and others, as well as 1000 autograph cards. Then in 1999, George received another surprising call, as Dorothy recounts, “He did a story for WildStorm [WildC.A.T.S.: Mosaic]. The writer [Scott Lobdell] called up and asked if George would do it. He wrote such a beautiful dissertation about George. He compared

An Artist For All Seasons

Gorgeous George & Smilin’ Stan On George’s passing in late 2009, Stan Lee wrote the above tribute to one of his favorite artists, which was sent to George and Dorothy’s son Tom. The photo, courtesy of Jon Berk, shows George and Stan greeting each other joyously at a San Diego Comic-Con several years ago, after their paths hadn’t crossed in some time. Thanks to Dewey Cassell for the copy of Stan Lee’s tribute.

him to Michelangelo.” The Tuskas later learned that, in the same year, a Roy Lichtenstein painting called “Emeralds,” based on a Buck Rogers strip George had drawn in 1961, sold at a Sotheby’s auction for $1.6 million. Tuska continued to play golf every week until he was 90, and he got up every day at 6:30 a.m. and went into his studio to draw. He passed away on October 16, 2009, at the age of 93, leaving behind his wife Dorothy and their children Barbara, Kathy, and Bob, as well as grandchildren, greatgrandchildren, and a legion of fans whose lives were touched by his

artwork over the years. Sincere thanks to Mike Gartland, Aaron Sultan, Jon Berk, Paul Handler, Tommy Kohlmaier, and many other fans and collectors, as well as to Heritage Auctions, which provided images for the article. Dewey Cassell is a frequent contributor to Back Issue and the co-author of the sold-out book The Art of George Tuska. He is currently working on a book about artist Marie Severin.

GEORGE TUSKA Checklist [NOTE: The following Checklist is adapted from information contained in the online Who’s Who of American Comic Books (1928-1999), established by Jerry G. Bails; see ad on p. 16. Names of features below which appeared both in magazines with that title and in other publications, as well, are generally not italicized. George Tuska, Alberto Becattini, and Thomas Lammers were the sources of some of this info. Key: (w) = writer; (a) = full art; (p) = pencils; (i) = ink; (d) = daily comic strip; (S) = Sunday comic strip.] Name: George Tuska (1916-2010) (artist & writer) Pen Names: George Aksut; also worked under byline Carl Larson [NOTE: “George Tuska” was used at times as a house name at Fox Comics, with art sometimes by others.] Education: National Academy of Design Member: National Cartoonists Society Honors: Inkpot Award (San Diego Comic-Con) 1997 Syndication: Amazing Spider-Man (ghost p) late 1980s, King Features Syndicate; Arnold Palmer Golf (a) syndicate & frequency unknown; Buck Rogers (a)(d)(S) 1959-67 for John F. Dille Co.; Scorchy Smith (d)(S) 195459, Associated Press; Superman (a)(d)(S) 1982 & (a)(d)(S) The World’s Greatest Superheroes (a) 1977-82, both Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate

Comics Studios (Shops): Harry “A” Chesler Studio (w)(p)(i) 1941-42; Eisner & Iger Studio (w)(p)(i) 1939; Iger Studio (p)(i) 1940-41 COMIC BOOK CREDITS (Mainstream US Publishers): Archie Comic Publications, Inc.: The Fly (a) 1959; The Shield (a) 1959 Better/Standard/Nedor/Pines Publications: Apache Trail (a) 1957-58; Black Terror (a) 1948-49; Doc Strange (a) 1947; Gang World (p) 1953; illustrations (a) 1940s; Joe Yank (a) 1952; Looie Lazybones (a) 1947; Mell Allen Sports (a) 1949; New Romances (a) 1954; Phantom Detective (a) 1940s; Real Life Comics (a) 1949, 1952; The Unseen (a) 1953; war (p) 1953-54 Charlton Comics: Racket Squad (a) 1956-57; Sick (a) 1966 Chesler Publications: Black Dwarf (a) mid-1940s; Dan Hastings (a) 1941; Gay Desperado (a) 1945-47; Hale the Magician (a) 1942; Lady Satan (a) 1941-42; Master Key (a) c. 1944 reprint (unconfirmed); Mr. E (a) 1941

A Brief Look At The Life And Career Of George Tuska

DC Comics & Related Imprints: Alfred (p) 1979; Black Lightning (p) 1979; Challengers of the Unknown (a) 1970, 1982; covers (p) 1970-72, 198283; Falling in Love (p) 1970-71; Firestorm (p) 1983, 1985-86; G.I. Robot (p) 1983; Ghosts (a) 1971-73; Girls’ Love Stories (p) 1958; 1970-72; Girls’ Romances (a) 1971; Green Arrow & Black Canary (p) 1978; Green Lantern (a) 1983; The Hawk & The Dove (p) 1971; House of Mystery (p, some i) 1970-73; House of Secrets (a) 1970-73; Infinity, Inc. (p) 1985; Jimmy Olsen (p) 1981; Johnny Peril (p) 1980; Justice League of America (p) 1978-85, Legion of Super-Heroes (a) 1971-72; Lilith (p) 1971; Masters of the Universe (p) 1982-83; Mystery in Space (p) 1981; Private Life of

And Then I Drew (Clockwise From Above)… In 1959, working for editor Joe Simon, George drew stories starring both The Fly and The Shield—and later drew these commission pieces of those MLJ/Archie stars for Dominique Léonard & Michael Dunne, respectively. GT’s “Fly” story was reprinted in the 2004 trade paperback The Adventures of The Fly; its splash panel popped up with our “Mighty Crusaders” coverage in A/E #96. [Heroes TM & ©2011 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.] Nearly two decades earlier, George had drawn the entire interior art for Fawcett’s Captain Marvel Adventures #3 (Fall 1941)—which is currently on display in DC’s The Shazam! Archives, Vol. 3, so no need to reprint any of it here. Instead, here’s an elaborate pencil illustration of the World’s Mightiest Mortal and the Man of Steel done for collector Michael Dunne at the 2005 Charlotte Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC. [Superman & Shazam hero TM & ©2011 DC Comics.] For Harvey’s Speed Comics #5 (Feb. 1940), the artist drew “Spike Marlin,” “the hardiest sea-dog on the Coast.” Thanks to Bruce Mason for the scan. [©2011 the respective copyright holders.]

An Artist For All Seasons

Clark Kent (p) 1981; Secret Origins/Firestorm (p) 1986; Secret Origins/Golden Age Flash (p) 1986; Superboy (a) 1971-72; Superman (p) 1972, 1978, 1983; Superman & Batman (a) 1978-79, 1982, 1984; Tales of Gotham City (p) 1980; Tales of the Unexpected/The Unexpected (a) 1970-73, 977; Teen Titans (p) 1970-72, 1976; Weird War Tales (p) 1981, 1983; Who’s Who in the DC Universe (p) 1958-86 entries; The Witching Hour (a) 1970, 1972; Wonder Woman (p) 1978; Fawcett Publications: Captain Marvel (a) 1940; Dr. Voodoo (a) 1942; El Carim (p) 1941; Golden Arrow (a) 1946; Jim Dolan (a) 1941-42; Lash LaRue (a) 1950-53; Nyoka the Jungle Girl (a) early 1940s; Rick O’Shay (a) 1941-42 Feature Comics: Black Magic (a) 1958; Sick (a) early 1960s-1970s (15 years total); Young Love (a) 1958; Young Romance (a) 1958 Fiction House: Camilla (a) 1943-45; Chip Collins (p) 1940-41; Cosmo Corrigan (a) 1940-41; covers (a) 1941; fillers (w)(a) 1943; Glory Forbes (a) 1944-46; Greasemonkey Griffin (a) 1940-41; Hooks Devlin (a) 1944; Inspector Dayton (a) 1940; Jane Martin (a) 1940-41; Kaänga (a) 1940-41, 1943; Kayo Kirby (a) 1940-49; Oran of the Jungle (a) 1940; Planet Payson (a) 1940; Private Elmer Pippin (a) 1943; Reef Ryan (a) 1943; Rip Carson (a) 1943-44; Rocky Hall (a) 1943; Sea Devil (a) 1944; Shark Brodie (a) 1940; Simba (a) 1944; Space Ranger (a) 1940-49; Spencer Steele (a) 1940; Star Pirate (a) 1944; Tabu (a) 1943; Tales from Ryland (a) 1947; U.S. Rangers (a) 1943-45; various features (some w) 1940-47; Werewolf Hunter (a) 1943; Wilton of the West (a) 1940; ZX-5 (a) 1940 Fox Comics: Cosmic Carson (w)(a) 1940; Mob-Buster Robinson (a) 1939-40; Wing Turner (a) 1939-40; Zanzibar (a) 1939-40

Unknown Jungle (a) 1954; War Comics (p) 1953; Western Outlaws and Sheriffs (a) 1951; What If/Captain America (p) 1977; Wild Western (a) 1953; The X-Men (a) 1968 Parents Magazine Press: True Comics (a) 1945 Quality Comics: Archie O’Toole (w)(a) 1940-41; covers (a) 1942; Hercules (w)(a) 1941; Kid Dixon (w)(a) 1940-41; Lion Boy (w)(a) 194041; Shark Brodie (w)(a) 1940; support (some w, after co-plotting w/Will Eisner) (no precise dates); Tommy Tinkle (w)(a) 1940; Uncle Sam (w)(a) 1940-43 St. John Publishing: Bold Buckeroo (a) 1948-50 (reprints); crime (a) 1948-54; horror (a) 1952, 1954-55; Nightmare (a) 1954; Western Bandit Trails (a) 1949 Street & Smith Comics: Hooded Wasp (a) 1941; Mark Mallory (a) 1941 Superior Publishers: Captain Flight (a) 1945 Tower Comics: Dynamo (a) 1968; Menthor (p) 1965, 1967; The Raven (a) 1966; T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (p) 1966-67; Weed (a) 1966-67 Warren Publications: Creepy (a) 1966, 1968 Western Publishing: Daniel Boone (p) 1965; The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (A) 1965 Ziff-Davis Comics: G.I. Joe (a) 1952; Hawk (a) 1951; horror (a) c. 195152; jungle (p) 1942; romance (p) 1952; science-fantasy (a) 1952; Western (a) c. 1951-52

Harvey Comics: Alarming Adventures (a) 1962; Bee-Man (i) 1966; covers (a) 1966-67; Jack Q. Frost (p) 1966; Johnny Fox (a) 1941; Man in Black Called Fate (a) 1966; romance (a) 1958; Sorcerer (i) 1966; Spike Marlin (a) 1939-40; Spyman (a) 1966-67; Timberland TNT (a) 1943 Hastings Associates: Eerie Tales (a) 1959 Health Publications: Panic (a) 1959 Hillman Periodicals: various features (a) 1946 Lev Gleason Publications: Boy Comics Hero of the Month (a) 1946; Chip Gardner (a) 1950; Crime and Punishment (a) 1950-54; Crime Does Not Pay (a) 1946-54; Crimebuster (a) 1954-55; Desperado (a) 1948; romance (a) 1949 Marvel Comics: The Angel (1970-71, stories written c. 1967); The Avengers (p) 1967-77 (i) 1992; backup in Casey Crime Photographer (a) 1949; backup in Kent Blake of the Secret Service (a) 1952; Battle Action (a) 1957; Battle (a) 1954, 1957; Battleground (a) 1956; Black Goliath (p) 1976; Black Rider (a) 1953-54; The Brothers Link (a) 1971; Captain America (p)(i) 1965-69, 1977; Captain Marvel (p) 1978; The Champions (a) 1976, 1978; Chuck Mason (a) 1951; covers (p)(i) 1951-54, 1975; Daredevil (p)(i) 1968, 1977; The Defenders (p) 1978; Doug Grant (a) 1951; Dr. Doom (p) 1971; Dr. Strange (a) 1975-76; Dracula Lives! (p) 1975; Godzilla (a) 1977; Golden Voyage of Sinbad (a) 1974 (movie adaptation); Hercules (a) 1975; Hulk (a) 1968, 1977; Iron Man (p, some i) 1964, 1968-78; Jet Dixon of the Space Squadron (a) 1951-52; Jungle Adventures of Greg Knight (a) 1954; Ka-Zar (p)(i) 1970-71; Kid Colt (a) 1954; Luke Cage, Power Man, a.k.a. Hero for Hire (p) 1972-77; Man Comics (a) 1949-53; Man-Oo the Mighty (a) 1954; Man-Wolf (a) 1974; Marines in Battle (a) 1956-57; Masters of the Universe (p) 1987; Men in Action (a) 1952; Men’s Adventures (a) 1953; Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (p) 1968; Planet of the Apes (p) 1975-76; Rex Lane (a) 1953; Rick Jordan (a) 1951; Shanna the She-Devil (a) 1972; Space Squadron (a) 1951; Speed Carter Spaceman (a) 1954; Strange Tales (a) 1951-54; SubMariner (a) 1974; Suspense (a) 1950; Tales of The Watcher (a) 1965; Thing & Dr. Strange (p) 1974; Tigra (a) 1976; Two-Gun Kid (a) 1953-54;

Thanks For The Marvel (And Other) Memories, George! Some time back, Tuska penciled this Iron Man sketch for Dewey Cassell, one of a number such in our article-writer’s collection. Maybe he was thanking him in advance for this retrospective of George’s stellar career? If so, Alter Ego belatedly seconds the motion! [Iron Man TM & ©2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

A 12-Issue Series— Celebrating 40 Years Since CONAN THE BARBARIAN #1 Written by Roy Thomas Drawn by Mike Hawthorne & John Lucas Covers of #1-6 by Doug Wheatley Issue #1 on sale 12/15/10 Issue #2 on sale 1/19/11 Price: $3.50

From Dark Horse Comics

“I Was Contemptuous, Basically, Of The Comics” Artist BILL BOSSERT On His Golden Age Career— And On Those Of A Couple Of Folks Named BLUM Interview Conducted by Jim Amash

Transcribed by Brian K. Morris

NTERVIEWER’S NOTE: Bill Bossert worked in comics for only a year or so—in the Eisner & Iger comics shop, where he drew the features “Captain Terry Thunder,” “Ghost Gallery,” and “Captain Kidd” (though he only recalled doing the first of these). He married one of the first—if not the very first—women to write comic books: Audrey “Toni” Blum, daughter of noted comics artist Alex Blum. I had always hoped to learn more about both of the Blums, as well as about Bill—and now that I have, so will you! Oh, and thanks to David Hajdu, author of The TenCent Plague, for putting me in touch with Bill. —Jim.

“The Four Ages Of Bossert” That’s how either Bill Bossert himself or his wife Ulla Neigenfind-Bossert labeled the above quadripartite photo-grouping they sent us, showing the artist in childhood, young manhood, his middle years, and the recent past. Thanks to the Bosserts for all photos that accompany this interview, except as otherwise noted. (Left:) Bossert’s splash page for Jungle Comics #18 (June 1941). In the early days of “Captain Terry Thunder,” the strip clearly contained a considerable quotient of whimsy. Later, under other hands, it became deadly serious “Foreign Legion in the jungle” fare. Writer uncertain, but see comments made in the course of this interview. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [©2011 the respective copyright holders.]

“My Father Didn’t Want Me To Be In Art” JIM AMASH: Let me start with some basic questions like when and where were you born? BILL BOSSERT: I was born in Greenwich Village, New York… February 24th, 1918. JA: And you were an artist and a writer? BOSSERT: Well, I’m not a writer. I was the artist, but the thing about it was that my father didn’t want me to be in art at all. He said, “Don’t do it. I’ll have to support you your whole life. I don’t want that.” I know a lot of fathers do that, but I’m a cranky kind of a guy. I said, “I know I’m not going to be a professor like you in Cooper Union, New York.” He loved math and he loved science, and all that turned me off. Cooper Union, if you don’t know, is a college in New York City. It’s got a long reputation of good works for electrical engineering and architecture. It also has an art school. I said, “Dad, I don’t want to go to that art school.” And he said, “Why not? If you do, it doesn’t cost me anything.” I said, “Okay, let’s go and take a look at it.” This was when I was ready to graduate from high school in ‘36. We took a tour

“I Was Contemptuous, Basically, Of The Comics”

through the art school, and there was paint on the floor, paint on the walls, there were one or two unfinished paintings—how could you tell if they were finished or not? [Jim laughs] And there was not a single artist to be seen. Not one of the studios contained a human being. They were all across the street having coffee, talking art. We both laughed, and my father said, “Well, yeah, I guess.” I said, “I think I’m more conservative than you are. I want to go to Pratt Institute.” And he said, “Well, if you do, you’re going to have to pay me back.” I said, “Oh, jeez. Well, okay.” So that’s what I did. I went to be an illustrator, but I wasn’t that good at it. But I was good at a lot of things, and I loved going to Pratt. It was an eye-opener for me in my life, and the other students and I hung out together, and we did everything we could. We had just a marvelous, marvelous time. JA: Being at the end of the Depression, you needed a job. BOSSERT: Yeah. I couldn’t get a job, and I was a graduate of Pratt Institute. So that was a blow that was really very, very tough for me to accept then, and I didn’t want to accept it. But I was glad to have an excuse to say, “Well, it’s the Depression, nobody can get work.” But then the other thing about the Depression, which was quite interesting to me, is that my father, who was a professor, he had a safe job. And they reduced his wages some during the Depression, but not enough to hurt him. But he was contemptuous of people who couldn’t find work.

JA: When you went to Eisner & Iger, they were still together, right? BOSSERT: Yes, they were. Iger was the money man, and he was a cartoon, himself. He should have been in Hollywood as a villain, you know? He wasn’t a villain, really, but he was sleek, little, tiny—he looked like an exboxer, only he was too small. And he watched the bottom line, but that’s not the wrong thing to do. JA: There was nothing creative about him, was there? BOSSERT: No, nothing creative at all, but he supplied the money, and Eisner provided the impetus and the creative work, and he was great. He watched over us like a mother with her chicks, and there were about 20 of us. It was like a factory. We were off Third Avenue in New York City. We’d get there in the morning, and work there all day long, knocking off at the evening, and we’d be there half a day on Saturday. It was an old time sweat shop. It was a great deal of fun, and we learned because Lou Fine was the—I don’t know if you know his name. He was a handicapped guy. He was really crippled, but he drew beautifully.

My mother was Irish, and some of the Irish relatives would come across. They’d get a job on the boat to come over, and they’d hope to get a job in New York. They’d come and stay with us, and it just would make my father furious. He said, “We’ve gotta feed these guys,” and “We can’t get them jobs,” and “The jobs are out there. They’ve got to find them. Nobody can say there’s no jobs.” See, he didn’t have an ounce of sympathy, which was so unlike him, because otherwise he was more careful about being sensitive. JA: What were your parents’ names? BOSSERT: Will and Bella Bossert. [chuckles] Bella McGuiness, see. And later on, she wanted to be a member of Daughters of the British Empire. I said, “Ma, you’re a McGuiness. Does that sound British?” And she didn’t wink, she didn’t turn her hair, she said, [in a regal British accent] “I want to be a Daughter of the British Empire.” [mutual laughter] Yeah, she did it so well. She said she made it. She became a Daughter of the British Empire. [chuckles]

“I Immediately Got A Job At Eisner & Iger” JA: How did you get your first job working in comics? BOSSERT: I graduated in 1939, a good year, [mutual laughter] and I couldn’t get a job. I took my samples everywhere and of course, the only ones in my class that got jobs were hired by big advertising agencies. They only took the top of the class, the guys that were really superb illustrators, probably the minute they signed up at the very first day of going to Pratt. But in any case, I had to get a job, so a friend of mine called me and said, “Bill, I got a job doing comics.” I said, “Oh, Jesus. Who wants to do that?” And he said, “Well, come on over and take a look.” I said, “I don’t think I’m good enough.” So I went over there, showed my work… I immediately got a job at Eisner & Iger. The friend was Chuck Mazoujian, who was a classmate of mine. He’s Armenian, and his parents went through the Armenian thing in Turkey. They were driven out; it’s a typical immigrant story, his family. Chuck was a very good artist. I hated the whole idea of comic books. It was so pitiful: slam bang and guts, guts, blood all over, and a lot of stuff going on. But I turned out to be quite good at it. There was a woman writing this stuff named Audrey Blum. She was very good, and in fact, we got married. [chuckles]

Technical Kayo Will Eisner and Jerry Iger, proprietors of the Eisner & Iger shop, can be seen on p. 5; and above, from his interview in A/E #48, is a photo of artist Chuck Mazoujian, the friend who pushed Bill Bossert into comics. Also, here’s a “Kayo Kirby” page for a Fiction House issue and reportedly drawn by Mazoujian—or maybe he didn’t do it. It was sent to us some time past by Lee Boyette & Jon R. Evans as being from Fight Comics #5 (May 1940), but the Grand Comics Database lists Dan Zolnerowich as the artist of #5’s “Kayo Kirby” tale. But then, assigning credits to un-bylined Golden Age stories has always been always a risky business. The writer, too, is of course unknown. [©2011 the respective copyright holders.]

Artist Bill Bossert On His Golden Age Career

JA: Tell me about Andrey, a.k.a. Toni, Blum. BOSSERT: Audrey Blum had to supply paragraphs for everybody in the place. She had to write a paragraph for each of the artists who was doing a story. JA: She didn’t write a full script? BOSSERT: No, she just wrote an A Toni Winner outline, and she’d make up the Audrey “Toni” Blum, scripter at the Eisner & Iger shop and later Mrs. Bill Bossert—seen with the top half of a one-page whole thing. She’d write the feature she reportedly wrote as “Lora Lane” for 1938’s Jumbo Comics #1. Since the art for “Stars on Parade” is credited outline, and she’d help them to “Toni Rossert” in three places on the page, we’d be tempted to wonder if she had a hand in drawing it, as well… break it down page-by-page. but Bill Bossert (hmm… similar name, there!) doesn’t say she ever worked as an artist. Even so, she shared Then she would get the pages that all-important debut issue with the likes of Will Eisner, Jerry Iger, Bob Kane, and Jack Kirby. Repro’d from Blackthorne Press’ 1985 reprint Jerry Iger’s Classic Jumbo Comics #1; thanks to Jim Ludwig. [©2011 Caplin-Iger Company, back, and she would pencil in the Ltd., or successors in interest.] actual dialogue on the page. Then the lettering man would letter the dialogue. There was one guy who spent the whole day with “Bill Eisner… Had A Movie Director’s Skill” rubber cement, white paint, and an electric brush for cleaning up pages. That’s what he spent his whole day on, cleaning page after page of messy JA: When you got the job, was it Eisner or Iger who hired you? stuff. BOSSERT: Iger wouldn’t hire anyone. He would just fuss about the wages, JA: So she provided a plot, and then the artists were doing some of the and about how much you produced each day. He tried to be funny, and he plotting. was just like a mob guy, except he wasn’t evil. He looked exactly like a mob guy, smoked big cigars, and when he sat down, his feet didn’t touch BOSSERT: Yeah, a little bit of it. But you’d be amazed at some of the guys the floor, but he had these blonde broads. Women of the night, you know. who didn’t have a clue what the storyline was supposed to be, even though [laughs] We were just fascinated with him, but we didn’t want to imitate she gave them a couple of paragraphs, and would give names of the good him. guy and the bad guy, and the police and the undercover agent, or whatever the story was. They’d screw it up. They would start out, and then JA: I heard that people use to do imitations of him, of his voice and so she’d have to keep rewriting the whole thing because they made such a forth. mess. She’d say, “This is supposed to be on the fifth page and you have it BOSSERT: Oh, imitations? Well, I did that all the time. I was always in on the second page. You’re giving away the whole story in the beginning.” trouble. Yeah, I imitated everybody. When I was in the military later, I [chuckles] So she had to re-do the whole story as it went along. It was a imitated everybody in the military, and that didn’t go over very well. Well, really nerve-wracking thing, but that’s what she did. it did go over well in some quarters very well. [laughs] JA: I do want to spend a little time talking about her, because we know JA: Do you remember how much they paid you when you started? virtually nothing about her, and obviously you can tell me. [laughs] BOSSERT: Yes, I can. She was a sweetheart. JA: I take it she’s not with us anymore. BOSSERT: No, she is not. She died in ‘73 of breast cancer. JA: Do you happen to remember her birth date? BOSSERT: I’m not sure, exactly. I think it was January 12th, 1918. We made fun that she was older than I was.

BOSSERT: Eleven bucks a week, but I didn’t have any [other] work, so I had to take it. My father said, “Hey, you graduated the first of June and here it is, the middle of July, and where’s the job?” [mutual laughter] “Hey, give me a break, Dad.” JA: Were you doing the complete art job when you started? BOSSERT: Yes, I was doing the whole thing, but I had to learn it. I didn’t know [how to produce a page]. I had a rough idea, and in order to get the job, I had made a sample which I, unfortunately, never kept. But it was my own idea of a story, and how I broke it up to show a close-up and a long

“I Was Contemptuous, Basically, Of The Comics”

shot. What Bill Eisner [sic] was incredibly good at was that he had a movie director’s skill. He would translate the ideas of how movies are made into the comics. Before that, everything was flat in comics. There were flat colors, there were flat drawings, there was no perspective, there was nothing. There might be a lamp against a wall or a window or a chimney somewhere, but it was really crude stuff. The word balloon was the biggest thing. There was never any space for much action in many of the panels. But the thing that made the miracle happen for the comics was the war. Once the war started, it was a shock to discover that, when I was an officer in the Army, I had to teach my men how to read and write, and it really was a heartbreaking thing. Poor guys, they were perfectly bright, wonderful people, and they just were denied an education. JA: How many pages a day were you supposed to produce? BOSSERT: Oh, I don’t know, but we produced one story a week. Now these were big sized, 12" x 18" pages. Each page was double-sized and then reduced, but at the end of a week was when that you could say that you had done one story. That was my rate. Some of the guys were slower.

Now Lou Fine was fast, but he did exquisite drawings. They couldn’t be critical of him. Now about the price: eleven bucks to start, but I immediately was getting $21 because I was good. JA: How much interaction did you have with Eisner during the course of a day? Was it a lot? BOSSERT: It was in the beginning. But, as I say, he watched over everybody, and it pleased him no end when he got to the point where he didn’t have to do that. It’s like a mother with kids. It’s immediate relief when you find that you’ve transferred some information to them, that they don’t have to ask for every damn thing. “Where’s the toilet?” and all that. [mutual laughter] So he was glad, and he was very serious. He had a nice sense of humor. I avoided contact with him most of the time, and after the war it was kind of funny because he and Chuck were in the Army, and they were doing comics in the Army, and so the war was about something else for them. However, Eisner did wonderful things, like training comics where he showed how the trucks were put together, how adjustments had to be made in the motor, how you had to check the tires, and all that. It was all graphic and funny. He did the whole thing, and he wrote most of his own stuff. Audrey helped him sometimes. She would write some of the features, but he was very careful to keep his ideas and his characters going, and concentrate on his own stuff. But he watched the creative activity, if you can call it that, and some of it was quite creative, and I found it a very useful thing. You know, I didn’t want to do that my whole life. JA: Is that what you meant by saying you avoided him, because you didn’t want to go back to doing comics? BOSSERT: I didn’t want to do that. In fact, at one point, I went to him and said, “I’m quitting.” By that time, I was making nice money, and he said, “What!? It’s not the money, is it?” I said, “No, it’s not the money. I have a low number. I’m in the Draft, and I’m not going to go from here directly into the Army. That’s too stupid for me. I’m going to take off for however long I can. I’ve got my bicycle and I’m going to ride through the South, and see America. I don’t know my own country.” He said, “Well, why do you have to quit? Why don’t you go freelance?” I said, “What the hell is ‘freelance’?” I’d never heard of it. And he explained, “You take the blank pages, ink, and brushes, and you ride around down South on your bike, or whatever you want to do for three weeks. Then on the fourth week, you rent a room in some little town, wherever you are, and you do the comics. And then you roll them up, and you mail them to New York, I mail you a check to Atlanta, Georgia, or wherever the hell you’re going to be.” I said, “I never thought of that. Fine, okay.” And it worked! I couldn’t believe that would actually work. But it did, and at that point, I was doing a thing called “Captain Terry Thunder.” It was a real bull**** feature, but it was very successful. Audrey wrote it and I drew it. Captain Terry Thunder was a captain in the French Foreign Legion. You tried not to get too topical, because it might not fit what was going on in the real world. The thing that was interesting about the comics was their name. They were called “comics,” but there’s never anything funny in any of them. They’re just “the bad guy’s coming, and he’s demanding payment or he’s gonna burn down the factory,” and it’s all one terrible thing after the other.

Sons Of The Desert A retrospective drawing done in 1982 of Captain Terry Thunder and two of his Saharan buddies. A third—Vincent the Vulture—was seen on the first page of this interview. [©2011 Bill Bossert.]

Here I had characters named Anderson the Arab. You can imagine, today you’d be kicked out of the job if you dared to use a Muslim and call him Anderson the Arab. And Kismet the Camel, who was a little camel that didn’t speak but had a lot of thoughts, so we had a lot of funny stuff, and they were all kind of sappy jokes, but they were just perfect. The military, I guess, loved them, and so it went along pretty well.

Artist Bill Bossert On His Golden Age Career

JA: How long did you work for Eisner before you started doing freelance? BOSSERT: I guess I worked there maybe a year or so, I’m not sure. It seemed like it was a lot longer. It seemed like I had a long, long career, but I didn’t. JA: Was Eisner very social with the group at all? BOSSERT: No, he was not social. I don’t even think he was very social in his private life. He was a serious guy. JA: How critical was he of your pages? Would he make you redraw things? BOSSERT: Oh, yes, but there was always a factor of how much do you know about anatomy, and how well could you draw? I had a graphic sense, but I was not up with Chuck as far as drawing realistically. Now that’s the point that was the highest, where you could show a lot of figures, draw them quickly and accurately, and have a whole group scene in a bar or in a nightclub, and so on. I got all the basics from [Eisner]. He would look at a page and say, “All of the panels are about the same size. You ought to break away from that so that there’s more visual excitement in just the shape of what’s happening. And if you have a guy jumping out of a window, make that a long panel on the right hand side of the page, and show what happens to him when he lands.” Those were simple kinds of things which he got across to me quite easily, because I understood it as soon as he started talking. Then it would show up in the other pages. But he tried to avoid having you do the page over, because that meant lost time for everybody. JA: Did you do thumbnails or sketches first, or did you work directly on the boards? BOSSERT: In the beginning, I did little thumbnails, and sometimes, if I had a complicated story, I would make a thumbnail of the page itself or one of the panels. But as a rule, I went right directly in pencil, and then I could erase what I didn’t like. The other part was the artists often didn’t leave any room for the text. They’d fallen in love with their own drawings, and some of the guys were very good at drawing, but they forgot that these were characters that had to have a life, and here they’d have to chop off their heads to make room for the story to move. [chuckles] JA: Overall, would you say Eisner was liked or disliked? What did the people in the shop think of him? BOSSERT: I think he was admired because he was a highly skilled guy, and he was a gentleman, and he was serious. And with a boss that’s doing the very job that you’re doing, that’s already a plus in any kind of a business. If the guy who’s making the money out of you is also making money and paying attention to the whole project, and everything that’s happening in the factory, then you feel good about it. That’s how he was. He had a good sense of humor, and he was funny. And he worked a full day along with everybody. JA: Were you paid by check or cash? BOSSERT: I think we were paid by check. I’m pretty sure of that. That’s an odd question because, offhand, I don’t exactly remember. But probably, when I was getting eleven bucks or twenty bucks, that might have been cash. JA: Do you remember the first feature that you did? I only know of a few features that you did, and I don’t know how many you did, but I have you as doing “Capt. Terry Thunder,” and “Ghost Gallery.” BOSSERT: “Ghost Gallery”? I don’t even remember that. Audrey, my first wife, once said, “Why didn’t you keep some of these things?” I said, “Well, I never thought what I did was important.” I was contemptuous, basically, of the comics, which was unfair, because it served a purpose. It was

Ghost Of A Chance Bill doesn’t recall drawing “Ghost Gallery”— and we couldn’t score a specimen of his art for that feature—but reportedly he did draw it, just the same. Seen here is a slightly later splash for the series, from Jumbo Comics #51 (May 1943); thanks to Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., for helping us ID the issue number of Ye Editor’s coverless copy. Since this was Fiction House, note the fictitious house byline, “Drew Murdoch.” Artist & scripter unknown. [©2011 the respective copyright holders.]

enjoyable, it was not dishonest in any way, they supplied what the market was wanting, and the turnover was great, and there was lots of stuff out there. JA: If you had wanted to get back originals of your work after they were printed, you could have, right? BOSSERT: Oh, I guess so. It never even occurred to me that that would be of any interest. But all I have is a one-page of a fake re-creation of Captain Terry Thunder.

“I’m Never Finished With [Audrey Blum Bossert]” JA: I’d like to ask you about the people there, so let’s start with your wife. How long did it take you to get interested in her? BOSSERT: What happened at lunch time was, we’d all get up, the whole bunch, and we made little cliques, and we had a gang of about six or eight of us who would go and have a sandwich on 3rd Avenue at some little place; a sandwich and a Coke or a beer—not usually a beer. And in these meetings, we would sit around, and Audrey said later that I was the

“I Was Contemptuous, Basically, Of The Comics”

Oh, You “Kidd”! Nor does Bill talk herein about his Eisner & Iger shop work that was done for Victor Fox’s comic group—but he seems to have done a bit of same, as witnessed by these splash pages from Fantastic Comics #16 (March 1941) & #22 (Sept. ‘41). Scripter unknown. Our thanks to Jim Ludwig. [©2011 the respective copyright holders.]

funniest one—everyone was happy to be in my company, and she was especially happy. We just hung out together in these short, little times. She lived uptown on 92nd, 91st Street between Park. Her father was an artist, too. JA: Alex Blum. I’m going to ask you about him after we finish with her. BOSSERT: [laughs] I’m never finished with her. She was such a dear. She was a wonderful, wonderful person, and we had three kids.

BOSSERT: Yeah, there was a couple of guys who wanted—well, Bill Eisner dated her for a very brief, time. He took her out to dinner or something, I don’t know. Nothing happened. And there was one other guy who tried to get her to go out, but she didn’t want to have anything to do with him. But he was a very good-looking Swedish guy. I don’t remember his name. He was very slow at drawing, and he drew very carefully and very well. He looked like a weightlifter. JA: Did you happen to remember if he was hard of hearing?

JA: How long did it take from meeting her to when you started dating her?

BOSSERT: Yes, I think he might have been. I’m not positive.

BOSSERT: Oh, maybe three months, something like that.

JA: Because you’ve just described George Tuska. The description you’ve given me fits in him perfectly.

JA: I understand she was a very nice-looking lady. BOSSERT: She was. You would not say she was beautiful, but she was very dramatic, striking-looking. She looked Spanish or Italian, and she was a very loving person. We got along right away very dearly, and I got along with her family, and it was just a wonderful thing. JA: Was she the only woman who worked there? BOSSERT: Yes. [laughs] JA: So how is that none of the other guys got anywhere with her, but you did? [laughs] I would imagine that a lot of guys—

BOSSERT: George Tuska? I don’t have a connection with George, but it could have been him. JA: Once you started dating her, was anybody a little envious? BOSSERT: Not that they dared to evidence, no. You see, I’m a tough old New Yorker, and I wouldn’t put up with anything like that. I’d invite the guy out, and we’d have a fight or something. No, I’d do none of this pussyfooting around. [mutual laughter] JA: So how long from when you started dating until you married her? BOSSERT: That was a long, long haul, because what happened was I went

Artist Bill Bossert On His Golden Age Career

on my bike, and that worked beautifully. She was very angry that I had taken off. She said, “Now here we’re madly in love, and you say you want to be with me every minute, and now suddenly you go.” I said, “Wait, the world is about to disappear in war, and as I told Bill, ‘I’m not going to leave comics and go into the Army.’” So I got on my bike, I took off, and she was very annoyed at that. But we corresponded every day. Can you believe that? She wrote beautiful letters, and the interesting thing about this, that letter-writing went on all through the war. And at the end, we had a big footlocker full of our exchanged letters, and we threw them away. JA: [pained] Oh, no!!! BOSSERT: But our thinking was, “Wait a minute, what’s in those letters? Are we going to sit down at the end of the war and go through and see if there’s anything interesting? They were personal letters, and we would never want our kids or grandkids to read them, so we threw them away. But they’d served their purpose. They were sustaining, loving letters. Of course, I was sent to the Pacific, so I never got home, but I got leave to go to Sydney, Australia; but I never got a chance to come back home until the end of the war. Yeah, I was buried alive by the Japanese, and I was almost dead. My men dug me up, and saved my life. How about that? And it’s funny that I was doing a comic called “Captain Terry Thunder,” and then I turned out to be Captain Bill Bossert. [mutual laughter]

“[When I Got Back,] I Went Directly Into The Service” JA: How long did you do this bike traveling before you went into the service? BOSSERT: Four months. And there’s one wonderful thing that happened. I was required by the Draft Board to keep in touch with them every week. I had to send them a penny postcard. Now that’s kind of interesting, isn’t it? A penny postcard. You see, whenever you got a low number, you had to report to the Draft Board, and they would want you to report in person. I’d say, “Well, I’m not going to report in person because I’m not going to be here,” and they were just in a fury. They were ready to put me in jail because they said, “You can’t be away.” And I said, “I am going to be away. You’ve got to figure out something.” So what they did was that I went on my bike, and every week, one penny postcard would have to be sent by me to the Draft Board, so that they still knew I was in the United States, and I was not permitted to go out of the United States.

the heavy traffic on the highways. I went to North Carolina, and I went all the way down to Miami, Florida, and then up and across to New Orleans. That took four months. I rode a Raleigh three-speed, which I gave to my nephews later. I just planned it neatly. The weather was mostly always beautiful, and when it rained, I rented a room in a motel. JA: When you came back from four months, did you go straight into the service, or did you go back to work for Eisner? BOSSERT: Oh, no. I couldn’t go back. I went directly into the service. The funny thing was that here I was in New Orleans. I was at the last Mardi Gras before the war, and it was wonderful. I had a nice room in the Vieux Carré, which is the French Quarter, and I met all kinds of wonderful people, and I had wild times there. It was a wonderful way to end up just before going. But then I came home in the snowstorm. [mutual laughter] Then, of course, they were afraid that we’d all come down with pneumonia, so they shipped us to Texas. I could have gotten to Texas on my bicycle in about three hours or so. [chuckles] And here they spent a week going off and going through all the paperwork, and then getting shipped down by train to Texas. In the military, I made a few sketches of a guy that I invented called “Private Mal Function.” Now “malfunction” means something that didn’t go right, and of course that was an expression that was used in the Paratroopers because it meant that the parachute did not open, and the dopey joke in those days was if the parachute doesn’t open, you’re allowed to bring it back, and they’d give you a new one. [Jim laughs] And then everybody goes, [unenthusiastically] “Ha, ha, ha, ha.” Well, this was Private Mal Function. He was always getting into all kinds of trouble, and I didn’t do much of that. I did it to entertain my troops, and they got a lot of laughs out of it. I’d make copies for them to send home to their wives and sweethearts. JA: So you didn’t marry Audrey until after the war.

JA: They were afraid you might try to dodge the draft, then? BOSSERT: There were some who went to Canada, or they went to Puerto Rico before it was a colony. I got on my bicycle, and had a wonderful time. I camped at the side of the road. I had a little tent, and I just fit inside. I made my meals at the side of the road, and in those days, there wasn’t

“Good Girl Art” Photo Andrey “Toni” Blum probably posed for this early-’40s photo as reference for the artist. And if you know Fiction House, you know whatever drawing Bill Bossert did from it most likely got used!

BOSSERT: No, it was during the war, but she said she wouldn’t marry me. I said, “Why not? We love each other.” And she said, “You volunteered for the Paratroopers, and anybody who would throw their life away is not going to get me to be the victim, too.” I said, “You haven’t got that choice. You’re in love with me, dammit.” [mutual chuckling] That’s how it worked out, but she was really very annoyed. But when I got into the Army, I looked around and said, “This is so terrible. I can’t stand this.” I went to the sergeant and said, “Hey, I’ve gotta get out of this place.” He said, “You’re not going anywhere.” I said, “It’s crazy to expect me to put up with this kind of a life. I won’t.” He said, “You can’t go anywhere! You’re here unless you volunteer for the Paratroopers.” And I said, “Well, gee, I’m only in the Army

“I Was Contemptuous, Basically, Of The Comics”

for just a year. Okay.” This was 1940. I was in fairly early, but it was supposed to be for one year. Pearl Harbor was bombed two months before I would have been out. In any case, they said, “No, you can’t go unless you go into the Paratroopers.” So I had a good buddy who was drafted the same day that I was. It was March 7th, 1940. How about that? Some dates, I’m pretty sure of. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Since Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was bombed on Dec. 7, 1941, either Bill’s term was extended, or else he was drafted in March 1941, not March 1940.] JA: When did you get out of the service? BOSSERT: July 1945.

“[Audrey] Had Ambitions To Write More Than Comics” JA: Getting back to Audrey, when you two got serious, was she still interacting with the other people in the studio? Or would that have decreased some? BOSSERT: Initially, she was active with them because I was down South, and I wasn’t in the Army yet; but once I got in the Army, she was still doing some work for Eisner. I have a photograph that friends took in New Orleans in 1940, just at the end of my time doing comics. It was almost the last strokes of the comics, and there I am, sitting. JA: As a writer, you said she once won an award. Did you think she was well-respected as a writer? BOSSERT: She never thought that, no, because she had ambitions to write more than comics. She wrote short stories. She could never get them published, and that was the heartbreaking part of it. I liked what she wrote, but of course, that doesn’t get you published, so I don’t know what it was. Maybe it fell in between The New Yorker and Collier’s, or something like that, I’m not sure. But in any case, it was not ordinary writing. It didn’t appeal to anybody who looked at it.

Portrait Of The Young Man As An Artist Bill’s wife Ulla sent us a note revealing that the above photo of Bill was taken in New Orleans in February 1940, while he was on the bike journey he mentions. She writes that this was “his last comic story [before he was drafted], written by Audrey—the last Mardi Gras—the end of the bicycle trip. By March he was in the Army until July 1945.” Above is a light-hearted page from a “Captain Terry Thunder” adventure that appeared in Jungle Comics #12 (Dec. 1940); writer uncertain, but perhaps Audrey Blum. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [©2011 the respective copyright holders.]

JA: You don’t think she had any particular pride in doing comic books?

JA: How long did she write comic books?

BOSSERT: No, she looked at it as a job. I don’t think she looked down on it, and I didn’t, really. I wasn’t contemptuous of it; it was a job that I succeeded at. And even if the job is not ranked very high in the world of literature, that’s not important to you if you’re looking for a job. It’s just one of those things.

BOSSERT: She was starting just about the same time that I did, so that’s 1939, I guess. She kept on writing after I was drafted in the Army, then she worked freelance. She didn’t go into the shop every day. I don’t remember when that happened. She kept it up until the middle of the war, I think.

JA: Earlier, you described how she wrote. Did she always work that way, or would she sometimes write full scripts?

JA: Why did she quit writing comic books?

BOSSERT: I’m not really sure. Maybe whenever she wrote for Will Eisner, I can’t remember now, but she may have. He may have given her special assignments where he wanted a whole script. JA: I don’t suppose that Toni had kept any record of her assignments, did she? BOSSERT: No, we didn’t. We moved around a lot and we didn’t keep a lot of things, and we both regretted not keeping any copies of our work.

BOSSERT: Well, it came down to money. I was a Paratrooper, so I was an officer. I got a hundred bucks extra every month for danger pay. That’s before World War II. Once we were in the war, I became a captain, so the money really piled in. I sent all the money home. I didn’t need it, but I sent 9/10ths of my salary to her, even before we were married. And after we were married, she kept all of it, and she said to her father, “Dad, you have to support me completely. I’m not going to pay a nickel rent, or give any help for sustaining the family. You have to do it all, because I have to save all the money Bill is sending, so we have a nest egg to build a house or buy a house.” And that’s how it worked, and thank God she did that,

Artist Bill Bossert On His Golden Age Career

because otherwise we never would have had a decent home right at the end of the war. JA: But why did she quit working? BOSSERT: I really don’t know when she stopped. She became a volunteer nurse. She felt that she went to the Foundling Hospital—“foundling” is a word, orphans who are found. It’s an ancient British word. I don’t think they use the phrase any more. There was a Foundling Hospital in New York, and she worked there for a while until it got too hard for her. It was so sad. These children would be found in the bus stops, and on the street corners and in doorways, just abandoned children. She was a lovely, concerned person about everything. JA: So she just basically got too busy during the war to continue writing, then. BOSSERT: I don’t know. I can’t even say that for sure. She was writing during the war. She was writing things that she would hope would sell as short stories, but that never happened. And I don’t think she ever missed writing comics. She did win a writing award. It wasn’t a big deal, but it was nice that she was finally given some kind of recognition outside of Eisner & Iger. JA: She won an award for what? BOSSERT: For her comic book writing. Of course, we laughed about it, and I don’t have any information about it now. JA: When did she win this award? BOSSERT: After the war? I don’t know when it was. She might have won it at the end of the war. I was there with her and that was the end of the war, but she did some comic writing during the war to make some money for us. She didn’t really have to do it, but she wanted to do something. JA: Since her name was Audrey, why did she have the nickname “Toni”? BOSSERT: Her name was Audrey Anthony Blum, see? Her middle name was a man’s name. I don’t know how she got that, but all of her friends called her “Toni,” and so I was a friend and I called her “Toni,” too. It was very appropriate in a way. T-O-N-I is how you spelled it. That was kind of cute. JA: I found it interesting that she’s the only woman in a shop full of men, yet she would go out and eat with them, and obviously she didn’t feel threatened or anything like that. So I figure she must have been the type that had a fun personality, and would like a good joke, too. BOSSERT: Oh, yes, that’s true. When you’re born in New York City — well, she wasn’t born in New York, she was born in Pennsylvania, but her parents... it was quite wonderful because her parents moved to New York because her father, Alex, couldn’t make any money during the Depression at all in Philadelphia. The rich ran out of money, and Alex couldn’t sell portraits any more. So they moved to New York, and they walked the streets of Greenwich Village. Of course Audrey said her mother and my mother probably bumped tummies together because we were almost born at the same time. [mutual chuckling] So it’s kind of a cute idea that they didn’t know each other, but in the crowded part of Greenwich Village, people that were there, it was very possible that they bumped bellies. [chuckles] I thought it was a cute idea.

“Star[s] At Eisner & Iger”

the busiest corner in all of New York and I bumped into him. He was long retired. We had just a few minutes to talk, and that’s the last I ever saw of him. His work was a little higher than the rest. It wasn’t higher than Will Eisner’s work. JA: Was Eisner working on The Spirit while you were there? BOSSERT: Yes, he was working on The Spirit. As I said, he kept that very close to his chest, you know. Audrey did some writing for him, but as I told you, he didn’t want to share any of that. He wanted that totally his, and he mostly made it his. He wasn’t wrong in doing that. I mean there’s a lot of authors that have to have help for one reason or another, and they don’t want to water down their reputation. They have to be very careful, especially in the comics. But once they hit big, then they can’t keep up with the demand, and have to have help. JA: Did she write some of The Spirit for him? BOSSERT: She may have; I really can’t confirm that. JA: She is credited as having written some of the Spirit stories. I was just curious if you remembered it. BOSSERT: Yeah, I think that was a logical thing to have happened. I think he’d be backed into a corner, would have to have help. JA: Tell me more about Chuck Mazoujian. BOSSERT: He was very skilled, and did some work for Life magazine. He could draw like a whiz, but he never had any imagination beyond the actual skill of drawing. But he got a very good job in an advertising agency, and what he did was like comics. They were summaries of what the advertising agency wanted the advertiser to buy. In other words, it showed the happy housewife holding up the special stuff for the floors, and showing how she used it, and blah, blah, blah. It went from one panel to the next panel, just like a comic. The advertising agencies would sell that to their companies, and then they’d make a film or something of it. JA: Was Eisner creating most of the features in the shop? BOSSERT: I really don’t know that. Audrey created some, but I don’t know the graphic part of it. She would write something, and she would try to visualize something for the villains and heroes.

JA: Tell me about Lou Fine.

JA: So she did create some features herself, then?

BOSSERT: Lou was the star at Eisner & Iger. He was the sweetest person, and one thing I didn’t tell you before is that, many years later, I was walking on 5th Avenue and 42nd Street outside the big public library. It’s

BOSSERT: Yeah, but I don’t know how far you could

A Rose In Blum We wish we had a copy of one of Audrey Blum’s actual story scripts—although it’s not unlikely that she wrote one or both of the “Captain Terry Thunder” pages that accompany this interview—but we’re grateful to Bill and Ulla for sending us several photos of her. Here’s another….

“I Was Contemptuous, Basically, Of The Comics”

say that she created it; I really don’t know. I suppose they were all done in conference, and I was not involved in any of it. JA: Was she one of Eisner’s main writers? BOSSERT: Yes, for a period. I don’t know for how long, but there she was. She was very important, certainly in the beginning. She was the only one around writing besides Will. JA: What do you remember about Bob Powell? BOSSERT: He was a very active guy, very cheerful. He was someone I didn’t feel close to in any way, but he was a nice guy and he had a light touch in his work. He wrote and drew “Mr. Mystic,” and he did another one, like a Tarzan type. JA: Was it “Sheena, Queen of the Jungle”? BOSSERT: That’s it, “Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.” I remember that one. They were always knock-offs that somebody took from the movies. JA: Did you remember Chuck Cuidera?

made charts for corporations to show where the business was now, and what the projection was for the next three years, and so on. They had to liven it up with cartoons and with drawings and also with accurate tables showing growth or loss. I’m not positive, but “Cuidera” sounds very familiar.

“Alex [Blum] Was A Sweetheart” JA: Audrey’s father Alex, he was working with Eisner & Iger when you met her, right? BOSSERT: Right. He was just starting there, and they were wondering how to use him. Whoever it was that decided that was very wise, because they had him do a looking-back kind of stories, looking back at the French Revolution, or something like that. He had a very florid way of drawing, and he was very good, but he was very slow. It was hard to fit into the comics, but he did. He succeeded very well, but it looked like they were going to be on the dole or something. [chuckles] JA: Was Audrey working there before he was? BOSSERT: She probably was. I can’t remember that exactly, but it was

BOSSERT: I remember Chuck Cuidera. I think he and I worked someplace else before we were at Eisner & Iger. I might be wrong, but we might have worked at Chart Makers. There was a place called Chart Makers in New York City, and they

Between Count And The Condor The great Lou Fine, in a photo taken by fellow artist Gill Fox in Stamford, CT, circa 1942—flanked by a “Count of Monte Cristo” page of his from an early issue of Fiction House’s Jumbo Comics and his exquisite “Black Condor” splash from Quality’s Crack Comics #12 (April 1941); art scans are courtesy of dealer Mike Burkey (www.romitaman.com) and Michael T. Gilbert. Scripters unknown. [Art ©2011 the respective copyright holders; Black Condor TM & ©2011 DC Comics.]

Artist Bill Bossert On His Golden Age Career

very, very successful, and suddenly he had no work, so they moved to New York on the hope that New York would have something going, and it didn’t, so he had to go to the comics. His going to the comics coincided with his daughter going to the comic books to write them, and me going to make my first job after college. So that it all coincided, where we came together. It was a unique thing, and they were a lovely family. Toni had a younger brother. I don’t know what’s happened to him. He turned out to be an egomaniac, and he disappeared out of the family. But the mother was a sweet, beautiful woman. JA: Do you happen to remember the brother’s name?

What About Bob? Bob Powell with his young son John in the early ‘40s—and, below, a vintage illo (for what, we dunno) that seems to have been inked by Powell over pencils by his fellow artist Ernie Schoeder. Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., Hames Ware, and Jim Amash all concur in this identification, incidentally… though we’ve no idea who the characters are supposed to be. Any help out there? This colored drawing was discovered recently by John Powell among his father’s effects, and he kindly sent a copy on to us—coincidentally, just in time for this issue! He’d also sent the photo earlier, for the Bob Powell coverage in A/E #66; Ernie Schroeder was interviewed in A/E #43. [Art ©2011 Estates of Ernie Schroeder & Bob Powell.]

BOSSERT: I can’t remember it now off-hand, but he married a French woman, and I have a little anecdote about that. After the war, he went to Paris to learn French. Instead of that, he married this French girl. She was pregnant right away, so they came back to America. She was introduced to me, and here I had fought the Second World War, and I was back after being nearly killed in the Pacific. And she starts launching in about how wonderful the German soldiers were in France. She said, “All the German soldiers were much nicer than the American soldiers.” That didn’t go over well. JA: It doesn’t go over well with me, now. BOSSERT: So the marriage broke up, and she went back to France. She remarried an Italian guy, a contractor, and they moved to Italy. Audrey’s brother remarried, a very interesting, very bright woman, and they moved out west somewhere, but they didn’t want to have anything to do with the family.

close. In other words, maybe when she got the job, she said, “Would you look at my father’s work?” Then they looked at the father’s work, which was not at all comics. He went through the mill, and he was not a young man. It was a tough, tough thing to do, but he was a good guy and he worked hard at it.

JA: Do you remember what Audrey’s mother’s name was?

JA: I’m curious about the kind of stuff he did before he was in comic books. What do you know about that?

When Alex died, they had been lucky to find a wonderful barn right in Rye, New York, which is right at the top of the real estate lists. They were

BOSSERT: I have Audrey’s portrait in the rental house. It’s an oil painting. Done about the time she met me, it’s a lovely, lovely portrait of her. It’s absolutely beautiful, and I’ve got it beautifully framed. The Blums lived in Philadelphia, in Germantown, and he was a portrait painter. He came as a small boy from Budapest. He was nine years old, and he had an older brother who was very supportive of him. As I told you, when the Depression hit America in 1929, that was the end of rich people having money to spend on portraits. Photography was coming in, so he was

BOSSERT: Helen, and she was a painter, too. In fact, she had some wonderful paintings, and I don’t know where they are now. They got divided up by everybody when she died.

“I Was Contemptuous, Basically, Of The Comics”

to avoid going there in the late Fall. [mutual laughter] Yeah, we invited them to our place at Christmas time because we had a cozier house, and they could stay with us. JA: Do you remember if he had any hobbies, or did he like to read? BOSSERT: No, Audrey’s brother had the hobbies. God, we got so pissed off with him. When Audrey was dying, he came and visited us here on the Cape. And he and Audrey went walking, and he didn’t give her a chance to say anything about herself. He was just talking about how he’d broke-up with his second wife, and he had some other sexual connection with somebody else. He just ran his mouth, and so we both decided the hell with him. So we stepped away from him completely. It was a cruel thing for him to do.

Love In Blum Alex Blum and his wife Helen.

there at the end of the war, and it was a gorgeous place. He and his wife painted while they lived there. We had three little kids, and would go over there on weekends. We kept contact with them for the remainder of their lives. Helen had incredible vigor, and some of her still-lifes were just so delicious and wonderful and strong. But because it was the wife’s work, her stuff was kind-of put behind the curtain, and it didn’t go anywhere. It’s too bad in a way. As a matter of fact, the only picture I have is Audrey’s, about the time that she met me, that her father painted in oils. JA: I talked to Will Eisner this week, and he wanted me to extend his very best wishes to you. BOSSERT: Oh, isn’t that nice? That’s sweet of him. He was an outstanding person, a wonderful, caring boss. There were things about him that transcended everything. The only thing that’s hilarious is that Eisner gets so much of the space, and so much of the photographs, and that Iger guy—he was the weasly guy in the background, sliding the money aside. [laughs] JA: You told me off-tape that you had a couple of real nice anecdotes about Alex Blum. BOSSERT: One of the photographs that we’ve come across, I took it because I wanted everybody to look like a 1900 couple. So we all dressed up in costumes—I don’t know where we got the costumes, from the Players of Pleasantville or something—and on our porch, I got everybody assembled,. Alex is in the foreground with a black top hat, and they’re all very elegant. But then I wanted it to look like it was a tintype, see? So I made it kind of a grey-brown, and so it’s absolutely impossible to transmit it. It’s a shame, in a way. But also, it’s faded over the years, so it’s really too bad. Alex was a sweetheart, a lovely person. And he was always cold. He was always chilly, and they had this big barn and it was very expensive to heat, so they did everything in their power to keep the heating turned down. So their only warm room was the bedroom. Whenever we got there, he was in the bedroom, and he always wore his long-johns, and big rubber boots so he was protected. Then they’d turn the heat up in the big room so that our kids would not freeze. It was kind of funny, and we tried

He was an egomaniac, but when he was a teenager, he did beautiful model ships. I mean really perfect, perfectly beautiful, and he had them in shows. I think he won some prizes as a high school student. Audrey and I were married in the apartment, and what he did, he rigged up the Victrola. We had a Victrola in those days and he played “The Wedding March” so we could walk down the corridor, and meet the judge to marry us. We had the State Supreme Court Judge who volunteered to come and marry us. It was just a wonderful, wonderful day for our family and friends. Alex was not a joke-teller. He was more formal than that, but he loved to hear them, and he adored being with us. He was not formal in the sense that he thought he was above everybody, but he was a very, very sensitive man. His older brother had a business in Manhattan, and he knew how to make money; he was a real immigrant moneymaker, like many American immigrants are, and Alex was not. He never could figure out what to charge for anything. He was always on the edge for money, so his brother was always helping him out. One of the things that the brother did—he did it for both Alex and Helen—he had them paint in the style of Impressionists, and then he invented names. He’d say, “This is Pierre Van Zandt, a very famous Impressionist painter of France, 1893. It’s the last one of his special paintings, and that’s why the price can be $1,600.” [Jim laughs] See? He really printed these little sidebars that went with the picture, and told the history of the supposed artist. Yeah, well, that’s kind-of funny and dishonest. It was effective because he sold the paintings. He was a tough guy. [laughs]

“My Business Took Off” JA: I’m assuming—and you can correct me if I’m wrong in this assumption—that you came back from the service, and Audrey wasn’t writing any more. Did she become a housewife? BOSSERT: Yes. She was busy with our two kids. We had Tom and Jill and then, because she had saved the money, we were able to buy a house in Pleasantville, New York. Directly upstate, it’s a wonderful commute because it’s only one hour from New York City. I had to work in New York City, because I went to school after the war and became a graphic designer. I decided I didn’t want to work in an agency any more, and I wanted to be independent. I opened my own studio on 40th Street and 5th Avenue, and it was a bold move because I didn’t have any extra money, but it worked because I was aggressive, and I stayed away from the little companies because they would fail to pay. You know, if they owed you five hundred bucks, you couldn’t get the money from them if they

Artist Bill Bossert On His Golden Age Career

Classic Blum (Left:) Alex A. Blum’s early comics work included the military feature “Tom, Dick, and Harry” in Jumbo Comics #51 (May ‘43). He is reported to have at least penciled this story. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [©2011 the respective copyright holders.] (Right:) He’s best remembered in the comics world, however, for numerous adaptations drawn for the Classics Illustrated series—including that of Homer’s Iliad (#77, Nov. 1950), as per this battle scene before the walls of Troy. Scripter unknown. [©2011 Frawley Corp. & its exclusive license, First Classics, Inc., a subsidiary of Classics International Entertainment, Inc.]

decided not to pay, whereas the big companies, they would never cheat you on the money part. So I went to General Motors and I was also lucky. I had neighbors in Pleasantville who were connected with big corporations, and they liked us as neighbors. I would ask them, “Is there anybody I could see in your company?” Because they were not art directors, they were just executives of one kind or another, and they were almost all helpful when I’d come down; they’d say, “Come in and see me at my office. I’ll take you into the art department.” And they’d introduce me all around, and I got work. What I did was not only acceptable, but was exciting for the company. They liked it, and they hired me repeatedly, so my business took off. I had one guy who did the mechanicals. I didn’t have another employee, but sometimes I had to hire an illustrator or a lettering specialist, whenever it was required by the job. But generally speaking, I’d do logotypes, and all kinds of folders and booklets and stuff. JA: And you did this for how long? BOSSERT: Oh, it went on forever. [mutual laughter] Well, see, Audrey died in ’73. She had breast cancer for five years, and they tried everything under the sun, very intrusive kinds of chemotherapy, and none of it worked. It was very tough, but by that time, we had three kids. My

youngest son, Robin, was with Boston University. His brother and sister named him. When he arrived, we said, “Well, what’s this little guy gonna be called?” And they said, “Oh, he should be Robin Hood,” and we went, “Oh, now wait a minute.” [chuckles] So everybody agreed Robin would be okay. JA: You were an art director and you did ad work for how long? BOSSERT: I call myself a graphic designer, because I was an art director, but I also did the work. An art director, you can’t really pin him down, necessarily, as someone who actually does anything. If he’s an idea man, he may just do little doodles and then hand it to somebody to carry it forward into an area where it can generate money. I did everything. I loved it. I loved meeting the people, I loved talking about the job, I enjoyed the lunches with the clients, and I loved going back and coming up with ideas. I did have to hire other people to bring it to perfection. Like when I did the logotype for Hilton, the first one that I did, I did a little sketch— and I still have the sketch somewhere—it was exactly what I thought it should be. I got it done by a good lettering man and sold it. You can’t sell it, usually, by just showing a sketch. You have to make a presentation and all that jazz. And that worked very well.

“I Was Contemptuous, Basically, Of The Comics”

JA: So how long did you work? When did you retire? BOSSERT: I never formally retired, because I kept working, and after I sold my house in Pleasantville, I bought an 1858 schoolhouse in Mount Kisco, and I rent it out now. When I met Ulla, my present wife, I left that place, and I went to Germany. I still rent the house, and I still make an income from the old schoolhouse, but it was a wonderful place. I did my artwork there and I lived there. It was an easy commute to the city from Mount Kisco. I kept a work space on 42nd Street until 1983 or ’4, when I finally moved out. When I moved out to Mount Kisco, I concentrated on getting the clients. It was an easy commute. The prices were a lot lower than in New York City, but also, it was handy for me to do. So that went on until I decided to hell with it. I had to arrange my retirement and, of course, I have this house in Cape Cod. I bought that in 1968. We always came up here when the kids were little. It was a great place to come up and spend the summer. I still rent the old house out to other people. The income from that is generous, and helps make it easy for me to live in Germany. JA: What is it about Germany that attracts you so much? BOSSERT: My wife. [mutual laughter] It’s funny, I had one set of grandparents who came from Germany to a place over New York City at Sullivan County and they bought farms up there. Twenty families, all speaking German, they all lived together, and they didn’t speak a word of

English. That is what could happen in America in the days before air travel, before expansions of highways, and so on. These days, I paint. In fact, I have a show on right now in the town of New Orleans here. It’s in the library. It’s a beautiful gallery, and I have about 30 paintings hanging. JA: What kind of paintings do you do? BOSSERT: I’m a realist, a naturalist. What I see, I paint, and I have a sense of humor that I express occasionally in the Bill and Ulla Bossert in a recent paintings. I can draw figures and photo. animals, and I do all kinds of things that manage to sell. I did etchings, but I don’t do so much of that now. I’ve slowed down a great deal in the last few years. But I have fans, and whenever I have a show, I manage to sell a few.

Rocking The Boat Though it they’re not discussed in the interview, Bill also wrote and drew a couple of filler gag pages for issues of DC’s Sgt. Rock— in #397 (Feb. 1985) and #401 (June ‘85). Thanks to Jim Ludwig for finding these. [©2011 DC Comics.]

Artist Bill Bossert On His Golden Age Career

Always On The Road—With Art Utensils In Hand In recent years Bill has kept busy drawing and painting. (Right:) A sketch he titled “NYC Construction Workers Taking a Break.” (Above:) A watercolor titled “Disks over Esslingen,” showing how satellite dishes, not flying saucers, changed one town in Germany. These and many other artworks are featured in his 2003 book Bill Bossert: Always on the Road. [©2011 Bill Bossert.]

BILL BOSSERT Checklist [NOTE: The following Checklist is adapted from information contained in the online Who’s Who of American Comic Books 19281999, established by Jerry G. Bails; see ad on p. 16. Names of features listed below which appeared both In magazines with that title and in other publications are generally not italicized. Key: (w) = writer; (a) = artist; (p) = penciler; (i) = inker.] Name: William (“Bill”) Bossert (b. 1918) (artist; writer) Family in Arts: Father-in-law (Alex Blum, artist); wife (Toni Blum, writer) Commercial Art & Design: Art director—advertising agency Comics Studio (Shop): Eisner & Iger (p)(i) 1939; Iger Studio (p)(i) 1940-c. 1942 MAINSTREAM U.S. COMIC BOOKS: DC Comics (a.k.a. National): Sgt. Rock backup feature (w)(a) 1985 Fiction House Comics: Captain Terry Thunder (a) 1940-42; Ghost Gallery (a) 1941 (unconfirmed by Bossert himself) Fox Comics: Captain Kidd (a) 1940

Echoing Thunder The undated color Bossert illustration at right of Captain Terry Thunder and his supporting cast was found recently among the effects of the artist Bob Powell by his son John, who kindly sent a scan of it on to us. Bill may not have drawn the Fiction House feature for very long, but it clearly made an impression on him and others. [Art ©2011 Bill Bossert.]

Featuring interviews with Jules Feiffer, Paul Levitz, Roy Thomas & Carmine Infantino Contact: Jay Pereths Essentials Media LLC 917-805-3263 jaypareths@juno.com

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Kooky DC Krossovers— Part 2 by Michael T. Gilbert

Funny Business! The line between reality and fiction was always a bit fuzzy at DC. One month Lois Lane might canoodle with singers Pat Boone or Perry Como, while Superman would sip champagne with Hollywood stars Ann Blyth and Orson Welles the next. This media cross-pollination worked both ways. In real life, DC’s Hollywood connections gave life to movie and TV versions of Superman, Batman, Congo Bill, and other DC properties. National/DC got on the Hollywood bandwagon early. Their 1939 series, Movie Comics, featured a bizarre mix of traditional comics and photo-novellas of current movies. When that title failed to take off, they tried again in 1950 with Feature Films, a new title that featured graphic novellas of popular movies, including Bing Crosby’s Riding High, and Fancy Pants with Bob Hope and Lucille Ball. The series folded after four issues, but Bob Hope’s comic book career flourished. DC launched his own title that same year, and The Adventures of Bob Hope proved to be a major success, lasting 109 issues from Feb. 1950 to Feb. 1968. DC followed with other comics devoted to famous stars. Television shows like Ozzie and Harriet, Jackie Gleason, Dobie Gillis, and Phil Silvers’ Sgt. Bilko all had their own titles. Even

Calling All Costumes—And Diana Prince! Clockwise on this page & opposite one: Jerry meets The Flash in Adventures of Jerry Lewis #112 (June 1969); Batman in AOJL #97 (Dec. 1966); Superman in AOJL #105 (April 1968); Wonder Woman in AOJL #117 (April 1970); Alfred E. Neuman and Bob Hope in AOJL #89 (Aug. 1965). [©2011 DC Comics.]

Kooky DC Krossovers—Part II

Bilko’s dimwitted army buddy, Pvt. Doberman, rated one, as did pop stars Pat Boone and Alan Ladd. (Earlier, Western stars Jimmy Wakely and Dale Evans—Mrs. Roy Rogers—had briefly starred in series, as well.) But the most enduring of DC’s Hollywood franchises began in July 1952 with the debut of The Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, though poor Dean was dropped from the title with issue #41 (Nov. 1957) when the real-life team broke up in July 1956. Clearly, DC knew who was the star of that World’s Finest team! Thanks to beautiful Bob Oksner art and clever scripts by Bob Haney and others, The Adventures of Jerry Lewis continued for an impressive 124 issues before the laughter stopped in May 1971. Towards the end, DC tried to perk up sagging sales with Kooky Krossovers between Jerry and Superman, Batman, The Flash, and a noncostumed Wonder Woman. The Adventures of Jerry Lewis #89 even featured a Kooky Kameo by his old DC rival, Bob Hope! “What are you doing in my comic book?” Jerry asks Bob angrily. “You think I’d be here if I could have made ‘Superman’ or ‘The Doom Patrol’?’” he answers. Snap! That issue’s Wizard of Oz parody, “Wizard of Ooze,” also included a visit by Mad’s maddest mascot, Alfred E. Neuman. And why not? DC’s parent company, Warner, owned that, too. One final tidbit: Perhaps inspired by their DC comic, Jerry and Dean played comic book creators in their 1955 movie Artists and Models, creating kooky characters like Bat Lady, Vultureman, and Zuba the Magnificent. DC must’ve have been very proud!

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Sugar & Spice & Everything... Super! Of course when it comes to Kooky Super Krossovers, let’s not forget those cute li’l tykes, Sugar and Spike. Why should Jerry Lewis have all the fun? Sheldon Mayer’s precocious kids mostly kept clear of super-heroes, but cameos of Superman and Batman did sneak in occasionally. And Spike was actually “Superman for a Day” in Sugar and Spike #32 (Jan. 1961)—if only for a symbolic splash! Kooky!

Sugar and Spike—And Everything They Like! Clockwise from top left: Sugar and Spike #32 (Jan. 1961); cover to S&S #80 (Jan. 1969); Hawkman and Wonder Woman pin-up from S&S #91 (Sept. 1970); the kids watch the Batman TV show in Best of DC Digest 29 (Oct. 1982). [©2011 DC Comics.]

Kooky DC Krossovers—Part II

Love Is... A Kooky Krossover! You find Kooky Krossovers in the strangest places—even love comics! Young Romance began a “Miss Young America” contest in the mid-’60s, inviting readers to submit photos and brief bios. Two winners in each issue received portraits of themselves drawn by Jazzy Johnny Romita, later to be printed in the comic. In May 1965, Young Romance’s sister mag, Falling in Love, ran with the idea, and published a story starring Janie, an alleged contest winner.

“The Girl Who Won the Miss Young America Contest!” appeared in Falling in Love #75 (May 1965), with art by Gene “The Dean” Colan. On a dare, Plain Jane, er, Janie enters DC’s contest, but instead of her own photo, she sends a pic of her smokin’ sister Fran. Oh, Janie! Naturally her entry wins. Janie’s mom demands that she write an

Twice-Told Colan! (Left & directly above:) Gene’s cover and splash for Falling in Love #75— plus (top right) a few interior panels from the same story. What “boss” threads! Writer unknown. [©2011 DC Comics.]

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

It Pays To Advertise! Boy, those DC artists (or was it their editors?) sure loved to plug all the company’s romance titles! The Colan panels above and at right are from Falling in Love #75, and showcase Girls’ Romances, Heart Throbs, Girls’ Love, Falling in Love, Young Love, Secret Hearts, Young Romance—and even Wonder Woman! (Below:) Heart Throbs #100 (Feb.-March 1966) also included a nice gooey selection! Artist & writer unknown. [©2011 DC Comics.]

apology to Young Romance, but it’s too late to stop publication. Worse, a guy, Pete, sees Janie’s picture (her sister’s, actually) and writes to her asking for a date. He includes his hunky photo. Don’t worry, Hunky Petey doesn’t read love comics; his sister showed him her copy. Pete, a man of discerning taste, was engrossed in a copy of Mad at the time. Grab him, Janie. He’s a catch! Against all logic, she accepts and they agree to meet. But she’s terrified that he’ll be repulsed when he sees the “real” her. Janie needn’t have worried. When they meet, he looks nothing like his photo, either. Pete confesses that it’s a photo of his brother Hal. “He’s much betterlooking than me,” he stammers. Our two lovebirds laugh, love, and live happily ever after. Oddly enough, both Janie and Pete look hotter than the phony photos they sent, so there’s actually no logical point to the entire story. But then, who needs logic when we’re talking Kooky Krossovers? And besides, who wants to see homely people kissing in a love comic? Ick! Next: A/E #100. Expect something extra-special! Till next time...

Comic Fandom Archive

The Rudi Franke Interview A Talk With One Of Fandom’s Finest Early Fan-Artists Conducted by Bill Schelly, CFA Editor

Transcribed by Brian K. Morris BILL SCHELLY: Let’s start with your date of birth.

Introduction

he Comic Fandom Archive has devoted several columns to the fandom activities of Marty Arbunich (Yancy Street Journal) and Bill DuBay (Voice of Comicdom), two fans from San Francisco— but they were only two of the four members of their grandly named publishing enterprise, Golden Gate Features. The others were Barry Bauman and Rudi Franke. Now it’s Rudi’s term in the CFA spotlight. Rudi Franke’s first fanzine effort was Heroes’ Hangout, a popular zine of the mid-1960s. Later in the decade, he succeeded Bill DuBay as editor and publisher of Voice of Comicdom. More than a fanzine publisher, Rudi was one of early fandom’s most talented artists, whose contributions appeared in many fanzines besides those of GGF, such as Star-Studded Comics and The Buyer’ Guide for Comic Fandom.

RUDI FRANKE: November 17th, 1939. BS: The first thing I want to ask you is, where did you grow up and what did your dad do for a living? FRANKE: I was born November 17, 1939. I grew up in the Oakland area—that’s the Bay Area here—and my dad was a baker. He had a bakery for himself in around 1956, ’57, ’58, and I helped out there a little bit.

Somehow, Rudi and I never got together for an interview until January of 2009, in conjunction with my research for my latest book, Founders of Comic Fandom. I’ve wanted to chat with him for a long time, so it a great pleasure to be able to talk to him at some length about his participation in those halcyon days of fandom. —Bill.

A Host of Hosts Rudi Franke during his high school days (a photo later printed in several Golden Gate Features publications) and as a teacher in the late ’60s or early ’70s—flanking his “creepy” cover for the comics apa-zine Capa-alpha #61 (1969). This artwork bears evidence of the considerable craft and artistry that he brought to fandom in the 1960s. Photos courtesy of Rudi. [Comics characters TM & ©2011 respectively by Marvel Charcters, Inc.; Gold Key and Charlton or their successors in interest; DC Comics; Warren Publishing or its successors in interest; other art ©2011 Rudi Franke; .]

Comic Fandom Archive

where they visited me when I started junior high school. 5448 Foothill Boulevard, right about in the middle of Oakland. There are two main streets for Oakland going towards the downtown area. One is Foothill and the other is East 14th. BS: When you met Bill and Marty, you had already begun a career as an art teacher, right? FRANKE: Yes. First I was going to be a math teacher, mainly for practicality purposes. It was during the Sputnik time, and I thought, “Boy, you get Math and you’ll have a job where you won’t have to worry about anything.” I did about two years of that. I took a couple years of Calculus and I could do it, but I didn’t enjoy it. I thought, “Life is more than this.” So when I transferred over to San Francisco State, I started pursuing an Art degree. They didn’t teach you drawing very much, but they did teach you about color and design, things that you could apply later on. So it was good training that way.

San Francisco, Open Your Golden Gate… The GGF gang in the 1960s. (Left to right:) Bill Dubay, Marty Arbunish, Rudi Franke, Barry Bauman. From Bill Schelly’s 1997 magnum opus The Golden Age of Comic Fandom.

BS: What got you interested in comics? FRANKE: My parents had a rooming house, and there was a kid there that had loads of comics. I can remember Fiction House Comics and those fantastic covers. He had all kinds of those. I used to look at his books. Then I used to go to thrift stores, like one in downtown Oakland that had coverless Fawcett comics, so I got a lot of those. I never knew what the covers looked like, because they were always torn off—I guess because they were supposed to be returned to the distributor. Then came Mad #4 in 1953. It hooked me on EC Comics, and it was all over after that. I started collecting EC comics and I finally finished a complete collection about in 1957. I also collected newspaper comic strips. The first ones would have been Hal Foster and then Alex Raymond. I liked the serious stuff, but later on in life, I got to appreciate George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, and that sort of thing. BS: When did you begin drawing and how did that develop? FRANKE: I think I always liked to draw. I had trouble with my eyes when I was quite young, and the eye doctor had a machine you looked through, and you had to copy drawings. He had a lot of Mickey Mouse stuff there, so I would copy Mickey Mouse. I had to go about every day of the week for a couple of years, so it got to be that I could trace Mickey without even looking at the images. I’d get it pretty close. That and my discovery of Wally Wood’s EC stuff got me started. I never was very good, but I practiced and practiced. I graduated from high school in 1957, and then I went to what they called Oakland City College—it might have another name now—and then transferred over to San Francisco State and got a teaching degree. BS: Let’s back up from that. You grew up in Oakland. You didn’t grow up in the same house that Bill [DuBay]and Marty [Arbunich] saw, did you? FRANKE: No, I lived in East Oakland and moved over to that house

Later, I taught high school. I started out doing substitute teaching in Oakland, and I taught Math because I had a lot of Math background. But then I got into Art, until about 1975. About that time, there was an opportunity to teach Photography, which is also an art. I didn’t know anything about it, but it was kind of like a time for a change. I did the art on the side for myself. BS: There were high school classes in Photography?

FRANKE: Yes, oh, yes. I had one of the most popular programs. More would take Photography than Art. The schools I taught at were all in San Jose. One was Overfelt; that was a year. Next I taught at Andrew Hill High School up until about 1989. Then I taught at a really large high school which was called Independence High School. It had about 55 to 58 hundred kids. That was where I was teaching when I retired in 2002. The nice thing about teaching is that it gave you the summers off, and I could do my drawing and stuff like that and get involved with the fanzine contributions. BS: OK, back to the early 1960s... how did you first find out about comics fandom? FRANKE: It was through Barry Bauman. I’m trying to think back when I first met Barry, and the best I can come up with was about 1961 or ’62. He went to the same high school I did—Friedmont High School—though I had already graduated. One day, Barry came to my house. My mom answered it and said, “There’s a comic fan outside.” He had heard at school I was interested in comics. Barry was quite interested in all my EC comics. He was probably seven or eight years younger than me. So he was this young kid. But boy, was he very bright, a shrewd collector. [chuckles again] Anyway, we met and then I went over to see his collection. He had a lot of early DC comics, and had almost a complete collection of Batman comics. So we traded comics. Then what happened is he had gotten a hold of some Alter Egos, and I think he showed me the first, second, and third issues. Soon after Barry and I met, we visited Ronn Foss, who was living in California at the time, I think in a little place off highway 80 called Fairfield. He struck me as quite mature. He had this pipe he would smoke. He told us he was going to be taking over Alter Ego. He was in the process of preparing his first issue. [NOTE: A/E Vol. 1, #5, came out in spring 1963. —Bill.] Ronn told us of a collector in Sacramento that knew of this big book store that had a whole lot of Golden Age comic books. It took some time, because that collector didn’t want to give away the name of the place. It was the Liberty Book Store in Sacramento. The owner had a collection that had belonged to his son. I guess the son wasn’t interested in the comics any more. And in the store, he had a

The Rudi Franke Interview

huge closet that was just filled from floor to ceiling with old comic books. But he wanted fifty cents apiece for them!

and I don’t think we probably made more than 100, 125 copies of those things in those days.

BS: Which was a fair amount back then, and it would add up.

BS: This is before the photo offset.

FRANKE: Yeah. Even though Barry was much younger than me, I just let him do all the talking. He got the man down to 40 cents apiece. We hadn’t come by car, so we were loaded down with shopping bags full of comics on the Greyhound bus back to Oakland.

FRANKE: Yeah. We did ditto with photo offset. It was kind of alltogether.

BS: It’s like hitting a gold mine. FRANKE: It was! When we got back, we took all of the comic books and spread them out, and then we’d flip for them. Whoever got the first flip would get the first comic and the second person would take two, and they’d keep going like that, back and forth, until we had split them up between us. Well, we naturally went back there a couple more times and cleaned out the [Liberty Book Store].

BS: That’s right. I have one, I think, that is a mix of ditto and offset pages combined. Someone told me that the Heroes’ Hangout name came from the fact that you or Barry had an attic, or some kind of area, set aside for your collection. You called that place the “Heroes’ Hangout”

BS: Could it have been, like, a thousand comics, do you think? FRANKE: Oh, easily. A lot of them had stickers on them that said, “Liberty Book Store.” But a lot of them didn’t. We left some there, some of the funny stuff, because we weren’t interested, but he had the really thick Fawcett Comics—America’s Greatest, I believe—and not just one, but five or six copies of that. And they were all in pristine condition. There were loads of DC and Marvel comics. It was just fantastic. When we were done, Barry and I both had quite a few old comics. Later, I sold them to Barry before I went into the Navy Reserves, so he got my Golden Age collection. That was in 1965. BS: You had become a fanzine publisher by that time. FRANKE: I had about, I guess, three issues of Heroes’ Hangout done when I went in the Navy. It’s hard to remember the dates exactly…. From October to September ’65, I know I was stationed in New Jersey. BS: How did you meet Marty and Bill? FRANKE: Well, before I met them—about the same time that we met Ronn Foss, probably in late 1963—I met Roger Brand. And he was very interested in comics and in drawing them. I think he lived in Pittsburg, California. Barry and I went to his home, and on his walls he had an Alex Raymond Flash Gordon [original], a very early one, maybe about 1935 or ’6. He had a very early Al Williamson piece, which we published on the back cover of [our fanzine] All-Stars. Roger collected comic books by certain artists, like Simon & Kirby and Lou Fine. BS: I know he contributed to Heroes’ Hangout. He did that strip called “Super Hero” in HH, as well as other illustrations. “Super Hero” was one of the best early strips to appear in fanzines. How did you get to be a fanzine publisher?

The Hawkman Brand FRANKE: We looked at Alter Ego and thought, “Let’s try something like this.” The idea just came to Barry and me. We didn’t know anything about printing processes at that time, so there was the whole learning curve. We were terrible with ditto. I mean, the copies bled all over,

Heroes’ Hangout #5 (1965) sported this Hawkman cover drawn by Roger Brand, Rudi’s friend and frequent contributor to the fanzine. Roger (seen in a photo from the fanzine Gosh Wow #3, Summer 1969) later became a well-known underground cartoonist. The zine’s cover blurb echoes the one Ronn Foss had devised for his and later issues of Alter Ego, Vol. 1 (“Featuring Comic Heroes of the Past, Present, and Future”). Photo taken by John Benson at the 1968 SCARP Con. [Hawkman TM & ©2011 DC Comics.]

Comic Fandom Archive

and then used it on the zine. FRANKE: Yeah, that was Barry’s bedroom. He painted it black, like a Bat-Cave. On the floor, I painted a Batman for him. He had his collection up there, on the second story of his house. BS: Were you corresponding with other fans around the country? FRANKE: I didn’t do too much of that, because I was more interested in the art. Barry would do that. I started collecting original comic art at this time. I learned a lot about comic art that way. BS: What did you prefer? Drawing in ink or working on ditto masters at that time? FRANKE: Oh, ditto masters I hated; but ink, we didn’t know very much about. So it was just learning to do what you could, in the medium that felt most comfortable. You just wanted to be able to express yourself in some way at that time. Inked work is what I mostly did. BS: Whereas Bill DuBay got to be really into the ditto masters. FRANKE: Oh, he was excellent with them. He would learn about to get those plastic screens. He would take the pencil and you could get like a zip-a-tone effect. BS: Right, a texture by putting them underneath. And color dittos? FRANKE: Color dittos, yeah. BS: So now we’re ready to talk about how you met Marty Arbunich and Bill DuBay, who were best friends. FRANKE: One of them, Marty or Bill, must have contacted Barry. We went to visit them shortly after that. That was around Christmas of 1963. They The JLA (Justice League Of Ama-Heroes) followed by coming over to our area next. Mostly we The cover of Fandom Presents (Dec. 1964) was penciled by Bill DuBay and inked by Rudi Franke. met in San Francisco, probably at Bill’s place. When It was a sort of artistic encyclopedia of the already-numerous heroes created by comic fandom’s we played basketball, Marty gave them the edge, amateur artists up to that date. [Characters TM & ©2011 the respective copyright holders; art TM Rudi Franke & Estate of Bill DuBay.] because he was very, very tall. We had a lot of fun. And before long, we started contributing to each within a convention. We [comics fans] would meet anywhere we could, in other’s fanzines. They were publishing a whole lot of fanzines. the hallways, whatever. I remember seeing original artwork that people BS: I think, at that point, they were only doing Fantasy Hero, but then had gotten from writing letters to DC comics. One person would have a they started Yancy Street Journal and the others. They did a zine that whole story, and others would have individual pages. So there was trading had the summaries of all the amateur heroes: Fandom Presents. going on, and back-and-forth. They had auctions, and Virgil Finlay artwork was being sold for a dollar a page. FRANKE: We kind of did that together. Bill had the idea for that, and I guess he and Marty had collected a lot of the artists together. It was a big BS: It wasn’t long after that you guys started working on All-Stars, a project… over a hundred pages. sort of “answer” from Golden Gate Features to the Texas Trio, who had converted their amateur comics fanzine Star-Studded Comics from BS: And then came Fantasy Heroes’ Hangout. ditto to photo offset printing in early 1964. How did that great front cover by Steve Ditko come about? FRANKE: Right. We had talked about pooling our talents. We did that together, around August 1964, I believe. FRANKE: Either Bill or Marty came up with the cover idea, and then I BS: That was about the time of the 1964 Worldcon in San Francisco, over Labor Day weekend, wasn’t it? FRANKE: They had some science-fiction conventions on the Oakland side, too, but I think this one was in San Francisco. We all went to it. At that time, we met Larry Ivie and Don Glut, and our friend Steve Perrin was there, and several other comics fans. It was kind of like a convention

did a crude drawing of what we wanted to see. Marty ended up sending it to Steve Ditko. Ditko said it was pretty pathetic drawing—he said it in a kind way—and sent us back the cover with a note saying “Here’s how you should do it.” BS: That cover was Ditko’s best piece of art for any fanzine at any time. And Marty still has it.

The Rudi Franke Interview

Giving Voice This issue of the Golden Gaters’ Voice of Comicdom (dated May 1969), featuring an interview with fan-favorite editor and artist Dick Giordano, with a caricature by his then-fellow DC ed Joe Orlando, graced many a stack of fanzines. Interviews with professionals were extremely popular with fans then as now. Nice Rich Corben logo! [©2011 the respective copyright holders.]

FRANKE: Yeah, I had it at one time, and I traded it to Marty. BS: All-Stars was a wonderful fanzine. It had a great collection of amateur strips, such as “Belle Starr” by Ronn Foss. Wasn’t your “Sorceress” strip in there? FRANKE: No, that’s something I did for Voice of Comicdom. I think I was supposed to have something in All-Stars, but I just couldn’t get it together. My teaching was my priority, so some fan activities suffered. BS: You were an adult with adult responsibilities, not a teenager in high school with time on his hands. It’s completely understandable.

FRANKE: Those guys really had the publishing bug. I enjoyed it, but I just couldn’t put that much time into it. And I think they were also involved in high school with their school newspapers and stuff like that. They went to a Catholic high school. BS: You were obviously putting effort into improving your artwork at this time, and you were producing some impressive stuff. Those early “Sorceress” episodes that you did were nice. FRANKE: I did something for Star-Studded…. BS: There was a “Doctor Weird” strip called “The Castle on Demon Mountain” in Star-Studded #16, but that wasn’t published until 1969.

Comic Fandom Archive

Maybe doing complete, multi-page strips wasn’t your thing at first. FRANKE: Until a little bit later, yeah. I just maybe did a panel, or like a daily strip. Mainly, I was doing a lot of spot illustrations. BS: You had a more mature style than what one usually saw in the fanzines. It was obvious you had talent and that you had an artistic point of view—which was maybe a little more illustrative. FRANKE: Yes, although now I do cartoony stuff. BS: Did you have any ambitions to make a living as an artist? Maybe even giving up teaching? FRANKE: I had made my mind up that I wasn’t going to make any money as an artist or anything like that. Teaching was more stable. To be continued in Alter Ego #101—after our big 100th issue special. Rudi Franke is one of some 80 fans (and 10 pros) who are profiled in my latest book, Founders of Comic Fandom, now available—see ad below. I have to say that writing this book was a very special experience because I had the chance to finally interview a whole lot of fans for the first time, and many others in greater depth than before. And I’m hoping to meet many more this summer at the 2011 Comic-Con International in San Diego, which will be celebrating fandom’s 50th anniversary. See you there! —Bill.

Ditko Delivers! (Left:) Steve Ditko’s cover for Golden Gate Features’ All-Stars #1 (1965)—which Bill Schelly calls the Spider-Man artist’s “best piece of art for any fanzine at any time.” The Gaters added tones of red to the black-&-white art. [©2011 Steve Ditko.]

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In Memoriam

Kim(1921-2010) Aamodt

“Proud Of His Career And Life” by Jim Amash

imball Ellsworth Aamodt was a North Dakota native who went to Hamlin University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, before becoming a Navy Pilot during the Second World War. After the war, he continued his studies at New York University, meanwhile writing short stories. In 1950, his good friend Walter Geier talked Kim into writing comics, saying, “The money grows on trees,” though Kim remarked, years later, “I’m still waiting to find that money on the trees.”

Walter Geier introduced Kim to Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, and he began writing stories for Black Magic, Young Love, and Young Romance. In our interview published in Alter Ego #30, Kim (and Walter, too) described the writing process for the team of Simon & Kirby as: “[They] wrote the plots” [orally] when the writers came in for assignments; then Geier and Aamodt would go home, separately writing their stories from those basic plots. Kim remembered Simon and Kirby this way: “Joe was on the ground, and Jack was on cloud nine,” giving Kirby most of the creative credit for the plots. Kim wrote for them for approximately two years, before plying his trade at Standard Publications, where he chiefly wrote romance stories, many of which were illustrated by Alex Toth. Toth considered Aamodt one of the best writers with whom he worked; and, considering Alex’s penchant for complaining about or rejecting most of the scripts he was handed in his career, that was some compliment! Kim also scripted a few stories for Dell Publications, though he wrote much more for Timely’s horror and crime stories under editor Al Sulman. He also wrote for confession magazines, and when comics were navigating the stormy seas of the 1950s Senate investigations and competition from television, Kim went to work for the Yachting Publishing Corporation for the next fifteen years as an editor/writer. His later years were spent copyediting and proofreading for various publishing houses until he retired a few years ago. Kim told me he had planned on returning to writing, but as far as I know, he never did. I found Kim to be a fun, straight-talking man who was proud of his career and life. His last years were filled with illness, but there was to be one final special moment for him. Roy and I were contacted by a former Navy cadet named John McGuire, who had become friends with Kim during their basic training in 1942; but later, separated by the war, they lost contact. John had become aware of our interview in Alter Ego and hoped we could help him contact his Navy buddy. It took some doing to re-locate him, but before long John was able to meet Kim, and they had a very good, emotional reunion, sharing memories of their time together, and the years that passed in between. Three weeks later, Kim passed away, but as John told me, “I’m glad we had that last meeting. I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.” I’m sure Kim did, too.

He Kept ’Em Flying Kimball (“Kim”) Aamodt—seen at left as a US Navy pilot during World War II, and above in his passport photo, taken in 2003. Since neither in A/E #30 nor since have we been able to identify any specific stories which Kim scripted for Simon & Kirby or Standard, we’ve opted not to include any comics illustrations with this brief tribute.

In Memoriam

John(1924-2010) Belcastro

“Two Different Names… Perhaps… Living Three Different Lives”

by Roy Thomas

ohn Belcastro died on September 23 of last year. During his 86 years, he became well-known in two different businesses, under two different names… perhaps, in a sense, living three different

lives. “Johnny Bell” was his usual byline on the comic book stories he drew after his service in the US Navy during World War II and attending New York’s School of Visual Arts. He worked for the Iger comics shop from 1952 to 1954. During that period, most of his art appeared in Fiction House comics (in such features as “Captain Wings,” “Clipper King,” and “Suicide Smith”) and in Quality Comics (“T-Man”), as recorded by the online Who’s Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999. However,

John Belcastro And “Johnny Bell” John Belcastro in his World War II Navy days—and having a great time at his 86th birthday party on Aug. 25 of 2010. In between, he drew such comics as the tale at left, which appeared in Fiction House’s Fight Comics #85 (Spring 1953). Repro’d from a scan of the original art provided by Jeff Singh; scripter unknown. Photos retrieved by Michaël Dewally. [©2011 the respective copyright holders.]

during 1953-54 he also drew for Harwell Publications’ Horrific, while in 1952 he is reported to have penciled for Weird Terror, a title published by Comic Media Publications in the UK. The Who’s Who also lists Belcastro as drawing a syndicated strip titled Adventures of Captain Tov, but gives no other details. The Albany [New York] Times Union stated on Oct. 4, 2010, that “after the fall of the comic book industry” (i.e., after the coming of the Comics Code by the turn of 1955, an era in which many comics publishers, including Fiction House, closed their doors), he returned to Albany. For more than three decades he was the “resident artist” of Tobin’s First Prize Meat Packing Plant, “painting caricatures on their company trucks.” Later he launched his own firm, Jack Bell Commercial Art, using a variation on his real name not unlike the one he’d used for his comics work. In this capacity John Belcastro is reported by the Times-Union to have “lettered” (and most likely drawn) signs for many businesses in the New York state capital. He and his wife Mary had five children. In the online Guest Book signed at his funeral, his grandson Scot Asher relished the memory of spending time with Belcastro in his youth, saying it “has given me an appreciation for some simple things I carried with me into adulthood, like a good martini, Sinatra, seafood, and of course art.” We who did not know him personally will have to be content with his art.

re:

Friday Pasty Brown instead of Patsy Brown.” Hey, Jim—maybe I just think “Pasty” is a much more interesting name! Next up, reader Tony Arena gets a bit… “uptight”: Dear Alter Ego: I just want to make an observation about the Steve Skeates interview. SKEATES: Take the term “uptight,” for example—someone at DC had obviously heard the term, yet had no idea it was a putdown! Therefore, DC actually advertised (within every comic it put out during a particular month) one of its teenage-humor characters as being “cool, hep, and uptight!” SCHWIRIAN: Oh wow! I remember that ad. I thought it was meant as sarcasm. In defense of DC, I would like to say that it is in no way true that the term “uptight” was always considered to be a putdown in the 1960s. In 1966 Stevie Wonder had a #3 hit (at age 16) with a song entitled “Uptight,” and the lyrics go, “Baby, everything is all right! Uptight! Outa sight!” In that context, “uptight” was clearly not at all negative, but very positive. In the hip vernacular of the ’60s, “uptight” simply meant “not relaxed,” and that can be either negative or positive depending on the context. In the Stevie Wonder context, “Uptight” was about feeling excited and electric, and I believe it was in that sense that DC used the word when describing a character as “cool, hep, and uptight.” That’s not to say the “stuffed shirts at DC” weren’t, in fact, stuffy or out of touch. I would have no way of knowing. I can agree that the word “uptight” today (close to forty years later) has lost its positive meaning. Tony Arena Right on, Tony! Before your e-mail arrived, I was gonna say much the same thing—except I’m mostly familiar with singer Nancy Wilson’s recording of Stevie Wonder’s song, which I saw her perform in person circa the late ’70s… nor did she apologize for the use of the word “uptight.” John G. Pierce, author of numerous A/E and FCA pieces, wrote this re the Skeates interview:

ope, George Tuska didn’t draw the above illo of our “maskot” Captain Ego—Shane Foley did, using a layout of one of our featured artist’s most famous co-creations (and figures), from the splash page of Hero for Hire #1 (June 1972). But we’re pretty sure George wouldn’t mind. [Captain Ego TM & ©2011 Roy Thomas & Bill Schelly; created by Biljo White.] Now, hurriedly, into our comments on Alter Ego #84 and its coverage of Silver-Age-plus writer Steve Skeates (which was then continued in our sister mag Back Issue! #33) as well as other matters… and we begin with this composite of two e-mails from another Steve, last name Cohen: Hi Fellas, I am delighted with Alter Ego #84. I’ve been a fan of Steve Skeates for a long time, and really enjoyed Part One of the interview with him— and I’m not saying that just because Steve is a friend of mine on Facebook. Ha ha. But apparently I had better fill the holes in my Skeates collection, since I have none of the Abbott and Costello comics he wrote. They sound good. In the excellent interview with Charles Sinclair, I will quibble that the name of the Batman producer noted by Mr. Sinclair and Jim Amash as “Harvey Horowitz” also often has his last name spelled as simply “Horwitz.” Steve Cohen Before Steve sent his last-paragraph addendum to an earlier e-mail that had called the “Horowitz” spelling an outright error, interviewer Jim had replied to him: “I’m afraid I get the blame for the misspelling. I usually don’t miss that stuff. I guess I’m even with Roy, since he called Nick Carter’s girl

Dear Roy— I’m glad to see a writer in the spotlight for a change. While I certainly don’t mind reading interviews with artists, and I’ve certainly done my own share of them, my real preference is to delve into the minds of those who actually crafted the stories…. That said, when I returned to reading comics in the early ’70s (after a semi-hiatus during my college years), Steve was one of the writers who had come to the fore in the interim, and one of those who made me question my return to comics. As a conservative, I absolutely hated the leftist approach (however awkward it now seems) in comics. I note that Steve apparently hasn’t had occasion to change his viewpoints much over the years. His sneering attitude toward conservatives makes me wonder how many conservatives he has actually met. (The Steve Ditko variety, with its roots in Objectivism, is something altogether different.) Still, I give the guy credit for having talent. And I do lament that he wasn’t permitted, for instance, to add some nuances to the characterization of The Dove. The Sinclair interview was yet one more with a writer, a definite plus for this issue. It is always good to learn more about one of the true greats of the field, Bill Finger. And it is always nice to read the reminiscences of a person who can actually remember what happened so long ago. (Not that I fault those who can’t.) Good grief, he even remembered Bill’s favorite drink?! Esalen and The X-Men: I really have to wonder what place this article, which was more of a puff piece for a pseudo-religion than anything really dealing with comics and super-heroes, could legitimately have in A/E. Don’t get me wrong. People have the right to practice and

re:

believe what they want, within reason. And they have the right to write about their beliefs. And trust me, Roy, over the years, I’ve been very grateful that you have allowed me to utilize Bible quotes and references to the Christian and Jewish faiths in my articles at times, when you could easily edit them out…. [But] this article just really didn’t seem to fit with the overall thrust of A/E…. [Concerning a remark in the sidebar of that article on p. 58, concerning Captain Marvel:] I would disagree with the contention that his powers comes “from within.” Rather, I see them as coming “from above.” The word “Shazam” functions as a kind of one-word prayer, just as Green Lantern’s oath (as Jim Steranko pointed out years ago) operates as a kind of prayer to bring power. But there’s still an essential difference between Cap and Superman. While Superman is a Messiah figure (I’d have to give some thought to Ramona Fradon’s contention that he is a modern-day “pop Gnostic Savior”), Captain Marvel and GL operate more as believers who pray and are given power, instead. Not that there aren’t plenty of examples of heroes whose powers come from within… but I wouldn’t see Cap as one of them. John G. Pierce Sheesh! Why don’t you tell us what you really think, John? No, but seriously, folks… we’re hardly looking for universal approval of everything

we print in A/E. Although we generally avoid political comment in this mag, that’s not always possible… and we felt Steve had a right to vent his opinions; that’s not to say we necessarily agree, or disagree, with any particular one of them, of course. As for the piece on the Esalen conference attended by Ramona Fradon and Ye Editor and wife Dann, among others, it was indeed a bit off the beaten trail for this venue, but I invited Jeff Kripal to summarize that firstever seminar on comics and science at the famous Big Sur retreat… and since Ramona and the Thomases (as well as Chris Knowles and Arlen Schumer) were dealing mostly with comics images from the Golden Age through the early 1970s, we felt it fit snugly within A/E’s four-color franchise. And—see? Wendy Doniger’s analysis of Superman vs. Captain Marvel got your own grey matter stirring, just as intended. It got Ye Editor thinking, too… but though I suspect I disagree with you somewhat re Captain Marvel and Green Lantern, I’ll let it pass in the interests of space. For his part, Mark Trost, editor/proprietor of the online site Blood ’n Thunder (www.geocities.com/poppubs.), deals below primarily with the pulp-mag outfit Popular Publications: Roy: Just finished the latest (#84) great issue of Alter Ego, and found a rare factual error. In Ron Frantz’s “De Fuccio Papers, Part III,” Harry Steeger is identified with Raphel De Soto as being a pulp artist. In fact, Steeger was De Soto’s boss as the founder and publisher of the legendary pulp imprint Popular Publications. Steeger started the pulp group—which outlasted and often outclassed most of the competition—in 1931 with the creation of Dime Detective, Dime Mystery, and Dime Western. For comics fans, Steeger is important, for, under his creative guidance, Popular introduced such seminal heroes as The Spider, Operator #5, and G-8. Steeger is also acknowledged as the creator of the “weird menace” genre. Few pulp publishers were more influential than Popular. Frantz mentions that he obtained from DeFuccio a still-unpublished interview with Steeger. I dare say, such an interview (particularly by DeFuccio) would be of great interest to Alter Ego readers. While Steeger did a few interviews late in life, any unpublished ones would be a find. Everyone wonders why Popular was just about the only major pulp publisher which refused to get into comics (since all the important comics publishers started in the pulps). Steeger is on record as saying that, while his partner and business manager—a man named Goldsmith, I believe— constantly urged him to start a comics line, he refused because, believe it or not, he was somewhat of a culture snob. He thought comics were just too kiddie-oriented and lowbrow, while his blood and thunder pulps at least were designed for adults and had some literary merit. Mark Trost Always good to learn salient facts about pulp magazines, Mark, since they were a very powerful influence on the comic books of the 1930s and ’40s, and even beyond. And we only wish that “factual errors” were quite as rare in Alter Ego and other comics-history publications as you say! But we keep trying…. Now, John M. De Mocko asks re the Skeates interview: Roy—

I Won’t Fight—Don’t Ask Me! Steve Ditko’s dramatic cover for Showcase #75 (June 1968), the first “Hawk and Dove” issue. For more on this controversial series, read (or re-read) the interview with its writer, Steve Skeates, in Alter Ego #84… still available, wherever back issues are sold. Thanks to the Grand Comics Database. [©2011 DC Comics.]

Was the interview an actual conversation, or a written Q&A? It read like a submitted, long-distance Q&A. The interviewer (John Schwirian) asks his incredibly grammatical questions, and interviewee Steve Skeates responds at his longwinded best. (Hey, Mr. Skeates, I think I know what happened to all that verbiage you say editors Giordano and Orlando used to cut from your comic book scripts. You scooped it up off the editorial floor and dumped it into this interview!).... It’s a good thing Dick Giordano knew where to cut the excess verbiage. Otherwise, we’d never have noticed how beautiful Jim Aparo’s artwork was…. And that drivel about Mr. Skeates emphasizing “Aquaman’s more liberal political attitudes”?? Hey, he’s a bloody sea king!!! Get it? He’s royalty! He’s already

[correspondence, comments, & corrections]

a full-blooded elitist who knows what’s best for everyone else!! John M. DeMocko Steve Skeates’ interview sure seems to have elicited its fair share of comment, pro and con… which just makes us all the happier that we ran it. But yes, Aquaman Chronicles editor/publisher John Schwirian informs us that most of the interview was indeed conducted by e-mail, though the initial part of it was done by phone. Mark Lewis, whose drawings have often graced the pages of FCA in particular, writes: Dear Roy— I enjoyed the Steve Skeates interview a lot more than I expected! To my knowledge, I think the only work of his that I recall reading would be some of that early Plop! material. He made a fun, lively, and entertaining interview subject, and (much as I’ve commented regarding Roy’s recollections), I found his honesty refreshing. Some very interesting behind-thescenes revelations…. The last installment of the DeFuccio Papers [in FCA] also had some good bits. It was sad to read how Frantz and DeFuccio had fallen out in later years, but Frantz is right about the fact that, over time, minor bad stuff seems to matter less and you mostly remember the good aspects of relationships like that. Which is as it should be. Mark Lewis Before we move on from the Steve Skeates interview, here’s a note from a guy who has a right to speak last concerning that interview, because his name is—Steve Skeates: Roy, John, and everyone else, too— It’s sad and more than a little frightening, watching the destructive onslaught of senility, the unraveling of a once-fine mind, and it’s especially disconcerting when the brain under observation happens to be one’s own! Yet, there I am (on page 7 of John Schwirian’s mammoth interview with yours truly) clearly stating that Dick Giordano “was the only Charlton editor I ever dealt with,” whereupon, a mere seven sentences later, I start talking about my working relationship with Sal Gentile once he became the Charlton editor! After a mere 3½-hour search of my rather ramshackle office, after (that is to say) finally locating my copy of John’s fine book The Official Biography of Comic Book Writer Steve Skeates, I can now see, in black&-white, the original version of my statement: “Until he was replaced, Dick Giordano was the only Charlton editor I ever dealt with!” Looks like I’m not losing it, after all. Whatever! My main point here should oughtta be that, outside of that one minor faux pas (which most likely most folks shrugged off as being but a slip of the lip), I love the way the interview comes off, especially all those great illustrations surrounding it! So, one bigfat thank you, one and all! Steve Skeates And thanks for being a part of Alter Ego, Steve. Always a pleasure to hear from you. Next, Robin Kirby points out, re his e-mail that was printed in issue #84: Roy— A slight typo seems to have crept in… hopefully not my fault. When talking about the Landscape format comics that featured those panoramic posters, they actually ran during 1976-77, not 1966-67 as printed there, which of course rather contradicts the 1972 start date of the first UK comic, the wonderful Mighty World of Marvel. Hey-ho, these things happen…. Robin Kirby

Taking A Spider In Hand John Newton Howitt’s cover for Popular Publications’ pulp mag The Spider (May 1936). In their fine 1998 study Pulp Culture: The Art of Fiction Magazines, authors Frank Robinson & Lawrence Davidson take note that “Huge green hands were all over the pulps.” [©2011 the respective copyright holders.]

The typo was entirely Ye Ed’s fault, Robin. Sorry about that. We look forward to your finishing your book on the Marvel reprint comics of the United Kingdom, so we can publish it in A/E. Alyssen Bills informs us: Dear Roy— In the interview with Charles Sinclair, the still on page 37 is from the fine film noir Fallen Angel, directed by Otto Preminger, and not from a television series called Foreign Intrigue. That’s Dana Andrews in the foreground, with Linda Darnell in the background as the movie’s inevitable femme fatale…. Oh, and I very much enjoyed the interview with Steve Skeates in your current issue—what an interesting and amusing fellow! Alyssen Bills Thanks for catching our goof, Alyssen. Pierre Comtois and several other readers pointed out the same thing. My misreading of an online site, alas… but even in such a small image, I should’ve recognized Dana Andrews, star of Laura and Curse of the Demon! Lee Boyette, author of our recent series on the Centaur Comics Group, pointed out the very same misidentification of that 1945 movie still, adding: Dear Roy— …Percy Killbride [later “Pa Kettle”] is seen in that still, as well…. On page 87 [in the “re:” section], there is a comic cover—Detective

re:

America #5 in 1961), that character predated the TV villain of the same name and perhaps deserved a mention.

Shaz-URRK! Since both Steve Skeates’ Aquaman artistic collaborator Jim Aparo and the original Captain Marvel are mentioned in this letters section, this is as good a place as any to try to clear up a minor mystery… by spotlighting two different versions of a cover done by Aparo for the newszine The Comic Reader featuring the World’s Mightiest Mortal. (Left:) A black-&-white scan of the original art of the cover of TCR “#101,” featuring the prominent blurb “New Artist on Captain Marvel!”—surely intended to indicate that Jim Aparo was taking over art chores on the “Shazam!” feature circa 1973—which he never did. Thanks to Brett Canavan for the scan. (Right:) That art, however, finally appeared on the cover of TCR #179 (dated Sept. 1979), half a dozen years after #101—and obviously lacks the “New Artist” blurb. Thanks to Chris Khalaf. Anybody out there got any info on this? (We’ll bet someone does!) [Shazam hero TM & ©2011 DC Comics.]

Also, though Charles Sinclair refers to 77 Sunset Strip producer Roy Huggins as “a son-inlaw of Jack Warner or something like that”— this may be true, but Huggins was also the creator of 77, transplanting his detective Stu Bailey from his novel The Double Take. I don’t think Mr. Sinclair intended any derogation of Huggins, but I thought it should be emphasized that Huggins was no nepotism hire; he earned his success and later went on to create such series as The Fugitive, Run for Your Life, and City of Angels, and to cocreate The Rockford Files…. And yet another tier of art from [the unpublished “JSA” tale] “The Will of William Wilson” has been found! The arc

Picture Stories #4—bylined “Gus Ricca.” Actually, this is Rodney Thompson. It is signed, underneath the second finger of the hand holding the magnifying glass.

of the universe seems to be righting itself!

On page 86, “Lee Boyette” is mentioned in a letter from Jerry DeFuccio to publisher Ron Frantz. There was a misunderstanding, and I wish to offer apologies to Ron Frantz and the family of Jerry DeFuccio. Jerry wrote and asked me to send two black-&-white Photostats of the cover of DPS #4. I was to hand-color one of them. When Ron’s book Fantastic Adventures #2 was published, I thought it was the cover that I had done. I now know that was not correct.

Well, we haven’t uncovered any more of that lost “JSA” art in the past year or so, Mike—but hope springs eternal.

Lee Boyette That’s why we have this letters/e-mail sections, Lee—to correct errors and misconceptions that slip by us all from time to time, in even the most well-intentioned magazines and books. Longtime pro writer and editor Mike W. Barr had this to say about the Charles Sinclair interview: Hi Roy— It was good to finally be able to put titles to some of the episodes of 77 Sunset Strip that he and Bill Finger co-wrote, as well as to hear how they got to write a pair of Batman episodes. But, though Finger probably never wrote the villain who was called, alternately, King Clock or The Clock King (perhaps most famous for his appearance in Justice League of

Mike W. Barr

We wanted to mention, too, that Michael Vance, whose invaluable volume on the American Comics Group was reprinted back in A/E #61, has just seen his most recent book published. It’s titled Weird Horror Tales: The Feasting, from Cornerstone Book Publishers, and is the second of a trilogy of novels written in the style and tradition of the pulp magazines of the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s. For more info, go to www.cornerstonepublisher.com. Send those bouquets and brickbats, via postman or cyberspace, to: Roy Thomas 32 Bluebird Trail St. Matthews, SC 29135

e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com

And don’t miss our 100th issue—which coincidentally comes out 50 years to the month after Jerry Bails’ Alter-Ego [Vol. 1] #1 in March of 1961! We’ll celebrate A/E’s first half-century… and Jim Amash will drag me (allegedly) kicking and screaming into an interview about my 1980s work on All-Star Squadron, Infinity, Inc., and other titles at DC Comics.

"The Greatest Collection of Interviews in the History of Comics!"

First of 11 volumes (compiling the entire 150 issues of David Anthony Kraft's celebrated COMICS INTERVIEW magazine! 680 pp.—incredible photos & illustrations Available in hardcover & paperback

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somewhat different circumstances.

FCA EDITORS NOTE: From 1941-53, Marcus D. Swayze was a top artist for Fawcett Publications. The very first Mary Marvel character sketches came from Marc’s drawing table, and he illustrated her earliest adventures, including the classic origin story, “Captain Marvel Introduces Mary Marvel (Captain Marvel Adventures #18, Dec. ’42); but he was primarily hired by Fawcett Publications to illustrate Captain Marvel stories and covers for Whiz Comics and Captain Marvel Adventures. He also wrote many Captain Marvel scripts, and continued to do so while in the military. After leaving the service in 1944, he made an arrangement with Fawcett to produce art and stories for them on a freelance basis out of his Louisiana home. There he created both art and stories for The Phantom Eagle in Wow Comics, in addition to drawing the Flyin’ Jenny newspaper strip for Bell Syndicate (created by his friend and mentor Russell Keaton). After the cancellation of Wow, Swayze produced artwork for Fawcett’s top-selling line of romance comics, including Sweethearts and Life Story. After the company ceased publishing comics, Marc moved over to Charlton Publications, where he ended his comics career in the mid-’50s. Marc’s ongoing professional memoirs have been a vital part of FCA since his first column appeared in FCA #54 (1996). Last time we re-presented Marc’s 5th column—from FCA #58 (1997)—in which the artist wrote about Pete Costanza, turning out Captain Marvel artwork, and playing in a music combo formed with other Fawcett artists. In this issue we re-present the last pre-Alter Ego Swayze column—from FCA #59 (1998)—wherein the artist reminisces about editors Ed Herron and Rod Reed, the creation of Mary Marvel, the ball games and get-togethers with members of the Jack Binder shop, and his newspaper comic strip aspirations. —P.C. Hamerlinck.

I liked Eddie Herron. His contribution toward the success of Captain Marvel cannot be overstated. He had come at the right moment, shortly before Bill Parker left and at a time when the very character of Captain Marvel was being formulated. I’ve read where he was a talented writer. He certainly knew good writing when he saw it. He was a serious student of the comic book business and he was extremely market-minded. Rarely did he pass a newsstand that he didn’t step in and re-arrange the comics section so the Fawcett books got at least their fair share—maybe more—of the display area. It was Herron who suggested that whenever possible in planning cover art we position Captain Marvel toward the left edge. He had observed a growing tendency among dealers to display the comic books in a lapped-over arrangement where only that section of the cover was visible. Physically, Herron was a giant of a man… energetic, dynamic… he fairly radiated enthusiasm. I’m convinced that if it’s possible for a human being, a grown man, to love a comic book hero, Eddie Herron loved Captain Marvel as much as did our young readers. Earlier in the year Herron had approached my desk and without a word pulled up a chair. Then, leaning forward, he began in hushed tones to describe “a new feature character—a little girl about Billy Batson’s age.” He paused and looked around cautiously. “To start off,” he continued,

e were surprised upon arriving at work one morning to find that a wall had been constructed separating the area occupied by the non-comics group and a section intended for the comic book artists. It was a bit of a mystery in that it included a wide, arched opening through which we passed freely and frequently.

There were conjectures as to the purpose of the wall, but most logical was that the need for privacy may have been recognized. An occasion where a Fawcett comic book featured Captain Marvel lifting a corner of the cover was followed shortly after it hit the newsstands by a competitor magazine with their hero peeling back the cover. Pure coincidence, possibly, but food for thought. For our part, I am absolutely positive the idea originated in our camp because it was my own… as was the art (Whiz Comics #38, Dec. 1942). Almost as sudden as the appearance of the wall was the disappearance of Eddie Herron. Little was said around the office except that he had been called into the military. Later accounts of the period were that Otto Binder and John Beardsley took over as co-editors for about a month. I was not aware of it. It was thirteen years before I saw Eddie Herron again… at Charlton Publications in Derby, Connecticut… briefly, under

A Real Page-Turner Marc Swayze’s cover/concept for Whiz Comics #38 (Dec. 1942) was, according to the artist, “followed shortly after it hit the newsstands by a competitor magazine with their hero peeling back the cover.” Pure coincidence or not, Swayze is “absolutely positive” the idea originated from his drawing board. [Shazam hero TM & ©2011 DC Comics.]

We Didn’t Know... It Was The Golden Age!

or twenty, fully developed—but not one their own age! The situation in which Mary originated was busy, busy, busy. Nobody in 1942 was drawing the Captain Marvel character but C.C. Beck and yours truly, and much of Beck’s time was spent assembling and directing his team. By the time I left for the military at the end of the year, aside from doing Captain Marvel story art regularly, I had drawn the first two or three Mary Marvel stories, often with the assistance of Beck’s group for secondary characters, and had rendered Mary Marvel on the covers of Wow Comics #s 9 and 10 plus the covers of Whiz Comics #s 37, 38, and 39, and Captain Marvel Adventures #19. My script writing had stopped completely months previously. When Rod Reed took over as executive editor of Fawcett’s comics there was little or no change at my desk. Work-wise, Herron had left me alone, Reed left me alone. There was this difference, however… where Eddie had held himself somewhat aloof from the crowd, Rod Reed was one of the gang.

Meet The Shazam Girl The immediately-approved, very first sketch samples of Marys Bromfield and Marvel came from the brush of Marc Swayze after editor Ed Herron requested that the artist craft “a cute little girl about Billy Batson’s age.” Swayze modestly says that putting the character together “was no big deal,” but logically and creatively he saw to it that the heroine bore some resemblance to Captain Marvel by integrating the dark hair, the squint, and the pug nose to her features. [Shazam heroine TM & ©2011 DC Comics.]

“we’ll call her Mary Bromfield. Then when she speaks her magic word she’ll become….” Eddie finished with, “From that description, can you whip up a character sketch?” He knew I could—he was already replacing his chair against the wall. I wasted no time on research or preliminary drawings because I was certain there would be more sketches—maybe many more—before final approval. There were none. Someone said later that Mary Marvel was modeled after Judy Garland. Nonsense! She was just my idea of—as Eddie Herron put it—“a cute little girl about Billy Batson’s age.” Putting Mary Marvel together was no big deal. I felt she should bear some resemblance to Captain Marvel, so I leaned on such features as the dark hair, the squint, and the pug nose. I did raise and feminize the brows and modify the squint into what I had hoped to be the laughing eyes of a pretty young girl. There was no reason against using the color scheme of Captain Marvel’s costume. I made a few minor modifications—a belt with buckle, notched boot tops… both of which were abandoned before the first story was inked. The short sleeves remained, although the puffed shoulders came and went and came again. Mary’s costume, by the way, was not that of a cheerleader, as has been said, but more the outfit of a tennis player. The multiple pleats of the cheerleader outfit would have given us fits. Probably would have given modest little Mary fits, too. The count against Mary Marvel was two strikes from the start. How she lasted in the Fawcett line-up for ten or eleven years is a mystery. Where were the company masterminds when they presented to their reading public a young super-heroine… in books published for boy readers? I’ll bet the little rascals would have gone for one about eighteen

All In The Family Marc reports that, in 1942, only he and C.C. Beck were drawing Captain Marvel, and by the time he left for the military at the end of the year—aside from doing Captain Marvel story art regularly—he had drawn the very first Mary Marvel stories as well as several covers, including Wow Comics #9 (Jan. ’43), featuring merry Mary’s debut in that title. [Shazam chracters TM & ©2011 DC Comics.]

Whenever the word got around to Rod that we were going out to bowl, it was “Count me in!” Rod and I assembled the first Fawcett baseball team, Rod recruiting among the editors and freelancers and I the staff artists. Together we came up with what looked like a pretty formidable roster—on paper, that is. What could be done on the diamond remained to be seen. Wendell Crowley was business manager at the Jack Binder shop at the time and was frequently at the Paramount Building picking up scripts and delivering art. When he was told we had arranged our first game with his bunch, to be played in Englewood, New Jersey, wives invited, beer on the losing team… he laughed… “Great!” he said. “We’ll murder you!”

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

had something in common and we were out of it. This time, however, the waiter, laughing, translated Fern’s greeting: “Hello. Goodbye. I love you so much I hate to tell you!” Once when we were returning from lunch Fern excused himself and entered a storefront along 42nd or 43rd Street. It was a Western Union office. When we trailed in after a few minutes the clerk was turning from his keyboard to Fern. “Ten dollars worth of I LOVE YOUs ends on I LOVE,” he said. “So I’m throwing in an extra YOU on the house!” Fern had sent a telegram to his fiancée across town.

The Syndicate Jungle Marc Swayze’s first effort towards comic strip syndication was titled Judi, the Jungle Girl, covered in depth back in AE #74/FCA #133. The artist thought that Judi stood a chance due to the lack of jungle girls on the market at the time—but the project never made it into the funny papers. [Judi the Jungle Girl TM & ©2011 Marcus D. Swayze.]

Rod volunteered to pitch, by preference. He was executive editor! I volunteered to catch… not by preference but by necessity. Nobody else was dumb enough to get back there with nothing but a mitt and a stupid grin. One of the wives had agreed to call balls and strikes—from behind the pitcher, not behind the catcher! As the game progressed, my thoughts of “helping” the lady call the game vanished. I had been repeating to myself something like, “It doesn’t really hurt anybody. I’m doing it for my pal out there sweating away on the hot old mound. I’ll just keep snatching that pellet right over here into the strike zone… there!” It’s a philosophy that’s been among catchers from way back: if it’s near being a strike, help it out a little! But it wasn’t working on this lady. She was on to my moves from the very first pitch. And she was laughing at my attempts to fool her. Also my pleading. To make matters worse, Rod had begun to laugh with her. After a few innings I went to the mound and called Rod aside: “Do you enjoy losing? This woman is killing us! What are you laughing at? I want to win this game and if she doesn’t… if she continues… Why the hell do you keep laughing?” I was no use. I stuck it out and don’t even remember the final score. When the game ended Rod came up and said, “I want you to meet my wife!” As you might have guessed, she was the umpire. Kentuck… Tucky… Edith Reed knew baseball about as well as we did. She carried a scorebook when she attended pro games and maintained it as accurately as a sportswriter. She certainly knew where the strike zone was… and wasn’t! Those two, the Reeds, became my dearest friends and remained so the rest of their lives. They were our guests a number of times and always made our visits to their home a pleasure. That ball game, and others we played, cemented lasting friendships between the Fawcett and Binder groups. They also acquainted some of our editors and writers with members of the non-comics staff… Jack Rindner, Vic Capalupo, Eddie Richtscheid, and others. And, oh yes, Fernando Martinez. We of the mortal world are blessed to have among us some people who enjoy hearing others laugh. My father was like that, and my brother. So was Fernando Martinez. Fern was a layout artist and I can’t recall what magazines he worked on, but he was always present when a gang of us got together. He spoke knowledgeably of a number of subjects, apparently, and his affluence with foreign languages was impressive. Whatever the nationality of any restaurant we attended, Fern was always able to toss off a jovial greeting with the waiter… in his native language. This went on until one day we were in a Greek café and as the waiter approached Fern spun a streak of Greek in him… smug like… as though he and the waiter

I have witnessed, participated in, and enjoyed outbursts of hearty group laughter in a number of places with various people… musicians, ball players, students… in army barracks, on campuses. All such occasions have been worth remembering but one stands out above all the rest. It followed one of our ball games, again with the Binder bunch, where we met later for our beer party at the spacious, two-story studio of the Jack Binder shop in Englewood. On the ground floor the drawing tables had been folded away and chairs arranged to accommodate the two squads, 30 or so guys. The taps on the beer kegs were working well and flowing freely. The wives had retired to the upper floor to prepare sandwiches and whatever. A few stories were told and a lot of neighborly chatting carried on, and then one member stepped to the center of the room to spin a yarn. It was Fernando Martinez. The tale Fern began is about a duck hunter who forgets having taken a laxative earlier. Out in the duck country, in ankle-deep water, he is hit by the urge. He searches hastily and finds one paper napkin in his pocket. He leans his gun against a stump, squats in the water, does his business, begins to clean up… and the ducks fly over. The story ends as the hunter grabs his gun, looks around excitedly for a dry spot to park his now partly-used paper, pops it in his mouth and takes aim. That’s the story. But Fern never got that far. In telling it he leaned his gun (a broom) against a nearby stump (a chair) and, carefully watching any sign of game, lowered his pants and squatted in the imaginary water. I had no idea what suddenly caused Fern to freeze. The laughter began behind Fern, directly across from me and spread both ways around the circle. I was seated with my back to the door from the stairs and Fern was still staring straight over my head. So I turned. There stood the wives with their trays, their eyes wide, their mouths dropped open. And why not? A room full of men with one of their members squatting in the middle of the floor with his pants down…? During the entire 13 years of affiliation with Fawcett Publications I kept a secret… my goal was syndication. I was thankful and happy to be working with the company and the people, but my original purpose in being there was to be in New York City where the major syndicates were. Russell Keaton had said I was wasting my time as an assistant, that I should be “up there in the swim of things.” My first effort towards syndication was titled Judi, the Jungle Girl. Why a jungle theme? For one thing, I knew of no other jungle girl on the syndicate market and nothing of what was in the comic books… if there were any, other than those carrying reprints of newspaper comics. Another was that as a small boy I had read, or had read to me: Tarzan of the Apes. It left me so impressed I stopped trying to draw horses and began to draw apes and trees and vines. That background, with the help of reference books, was enough for a beginning. After all, Edgar Rice Burroughs had to start somewhere! I did the work after hours and kept it under cover, ashamed, perhaps, to show it. One morning Keaton came over to my desk. “I could tell you’ve been working on something,” he said. “And today I just couldn’t help it, I peeked… and it’s great! Do a couple more weeks of it and take it to ’em!” He was one of the most encouraging influences I’ve ever known.

In Memoriam

“GINNY” Fawcett Editor Virginia A. Provisiero [1923-2010]

by P.C. Hamerlinck

irginia A. Provisiero (known as “Ginny” to her many friends and acquaintances), once the editor of hundreds of Fawcett comic books during the 1940s and ’50s, passed away on May 3, 2010.

Ginny was born in Corona, New York, on May 29, 1923, to Frank Provisiero and Jeannette Labriola Provisiero; she was the second of their four daughters. She attended Public School 14 in Corona, NY, and Newtown High School in Elmhurst, NY, where she was valedictorian of her class. After graduation she went to work for a news publishing firm in New York for several years before landing a job at Fawcett Publications in April of 1943—marking the beginning of her 20-year association with the company. When she applied for employment at Fawcett, she was interviewed by editorial director Ralph Daigh’s secretary—who then informed her boss that Ginny, with her publishing experience and vivacious personality, would be a perfect fit within their comics division. Interestingly, prior to joining Fawcett, Ginny had never read a comic book in her life.

Honored Editor Comic book editor Virginia A. “Ginny” Provisiero, seen here on April 12, 1953, when her colleagues at Fawcett Publications threw a 10-year anniversary party in her honor. Executive comics editor Will Lieberson (on left) and letterer/art editor Al Jetter (right) can be seen in the background. This photo, and others from the event, first appeared in Alter Ego V3 #3/FCA #62. Ginny, whose favorite title to edit was Nyoka the Jungle Girl, once climbed onto a palm tree trunk to homage the cover of issue #10 (Oct. 1947). Artist uncertain; may be Bert Whitman. [Nyoka is a trademark of Bill Black/AC Comics; art ©2011 the respective copyright holders.]

When Ginny entered Fawcett’s Manhattan offices for her first day of work, she stepped into a busy and energetic comics department during the industrious wartime period. Rod Reed was the comics’ editor-in-chief; other editors there at the time were Will Lieberson (soon to take over Reed’s position), Stanley Kauffman, Jane Magill, Barbra Heyman, Mercedes Shull, and later, after the demobilization of the Jack Binder shop, Wendell Crowley. Ginny’s earliest assignments were re-writing scripts submitted by freelancers of the World War II hero Spy Smasher. Once Barbra Heyman left her helm at Fawcett, Ginny was handed more editorial responsibilities; when Jane Magill resigned, Ginny moved up the ladder even further and instantly became the editor of two of Fawcett’s top titles—Whiz Comics and Master Comics—in addition to Spy Smasher (later and very briefly Crime Smasher), Golden Arrow, Ibis the Invincible, and Nyoka the Jungle Girl; and when Mercy Shull bid her own adieu, Ginny inherited even more books with widening genres to which to apply her editorial expertise, including This Magazine Is Haunted, Beware Terror Tales, Strange Stories from Another World, Worlds of Fear, Down with Crime, and Western titles Six-Gun Heroes, Hopalong Cassidy, Bill Boyd, Tex Ritter, and Rocky Lane. Ginny revealed, in our 1998 FCA interview, that both Reed and Lieberson gave her complete creative freedom, but she credited the collaborative efforts of numerous gifted individuals which attributed to the success behind Fawcett’s comic books. “The circulation of the books I was editor of was very high,” she said. “I had good writers and good artists and

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

Ginny Gallery Over the following three pages, we present a cover gallery showcasing just some of the comic books edited by Virginia A. “Ginny” Provisiero during her ten-year tenure in Fawcett’s comics department [Shazam heroes, Crime Smasher, & Ibis TM & ©2011 DC Comics; other characters TM & ©2011 respective copyright holders]:

with her over the phone in 2007: “We had a ball catching up,” he said. “We remembered most of the same people from Fawcett. But what she really remembered were all those office parties!” Ginny worked at Fawcett Publications for over 20 years. On April 12, 1953, Fawcett threw her a 10-year anniversary party (as seen in the photo essay in A/E V3#3)—and on her 20th anniversary, they gave her a party and a wristwatch celebrating her long service to the company. She had prolifically edited comics for ten years by the time Fawcett, in lieu of costly legal battles with National, decided to pull the plug on the whole department in 1953. “I was disappointed and unhappy when Fawcett decided to cease publishing the comics,” Ginny said in 1998. “I felt as if I were losing some good friends.” After the comics disappeared, Ginny worked briefly on Fawcett’s Woman’s Day magazine, but she really didn’t care for it. Ralph Daigh then moved her over to True Confessions magazine, where she remained as one of its editors for the next ten years until Fawcett sold the title to MacFadden Publications; she subsequently left Fawcett to follow the magazine to its new publisher. But, after the many years of commuting from Long Island to New York City, she decided to leave MacFadden to do editorial work for a technical publishing company in Garden City, NY.

Whiz Comics #78 (Sept. ’46), featuring Captain Marvel, Ibis the Invincible, et al. (cover art: C.C. Beck).

we all worked together to make our comics the best.” She specifically remembered C.C. Beck and admired his “great job on Captain Marvel”; she also had pleasant memories of artists Jack Binder, Carl Pfeufer, Pete Costanza, Kurt Scharffenberger… and of writers Jon Messman, Joe Millard, and Otto Binder. Ginny said she enjoyed working on all the comic books assigned to her, but that Nyoka the Jungle Girl was always her clear-cut favorite out of the whole bunch. “I had fun putting her in the jungle doing all the heroic things a man could do,” Ginny recalled. “I tried to put her in challenging situations without regard to her being a female, and enjoyed doing that. We girls weren’t sissies!” Ginny admired the character so much that she once dressed up as Nyoka when the comics’ editorial department put on a skit for a New York City advertising convention with her fellow Fawcett employees Will Lieberson (in magicians’ attire), Dick Kraus (decked out as a singing cowboy), and Wendell Crowley (who appeared in a Captain Marvel—or “Lt. Tall Marvel”—costume). In Alter Ego, Vol. 1, #3 (Winter 2000), Ginny kindly shared photographs from that particular day with FCA readers. Fawcett production artist Emilio Squeglio remembered Ginny, back in FCA #124 (in A/E #65), as “an excellent editor… and she was cute! I used to have a crush on her when I first started at Fawcett.” Emilio had lost touch with Ginny since the Fawcett days, but had the opportunity to chat

Master Comics #93 (July ’48), with Captain Marvel Jr., Bulletman, etc. (cover by Kurt Schaffenberger).

In Memoriam—Virginia “Ginny” Provisiero

In 1968, Ginny and her youngest sister, Frankie, moved down to Ft. Myers, Florida, and sought out new career opportunities. Ginny worked temporarily at the Lee County Hospital blood bank but, not finding it challenging enough, changed careers again and took a job with Farm Bureau Insurance Co. She enjoyed the insurance business and soon obtained her seller’s license, going on to become an insurance agent for nearly twenty years. At the time of her retirement she was working as an agent for State Farm Insurance. Ginny remained active during her retirement and loved to travel. She and Frankie with family visited Scotland, England, Italy, Switzerland, New Zealand, and other destinations. While vacationing in Tahiti with family, Ginny once recalled the time she playfully reenacted for them one of her favorite Nyoka covers (#10) by climbing onto a fallen palm tree. Ginny did not marry. She lived with Frankie and her family until her 84th year, when Ginny was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and had to be moved to an assisted living facility. She developed cancer of the esophagus and lungs, and finally succumbed to her illness at age 85; she passed away while a resident of Carington Manor in Crestview, FL, on May 3, 2010, with her family by her side. “Ginny is greatly missed by her friends and family and will never be forgotten,” her sister Frankie recently told FCA. “She left a lasting impression on her family

(Top row left:) Down with Crime #7 (Nov. ’52). Artist unknown. (Top row right:) Crime Smasher #1 (Summer ’48), a one-shot featuring the post-WWII escapades of Alan Armstrong, formerly Spy Smasher (cover by Carl Pfeufer). (Bottom row left:) Golden Arrow Western #6 (Spring ’47), with artwork by a young Bernard Krigstein. (Bottom row right:) Hopalong Cassidy #10 (Aug. ’47, cover by Carl Pfeufer).

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]line

and friends, and everyone is honored to have known her.” Ginny had a shining persona, and was enthusiastic and supportive of FCA, once remarking that reading each issue brought back for her many warm memories of, as she affectionately referred to them, “those crazy, creative days when we sat around and thought up story plots and ideas and how to best present them.” Her tenure at Fawcett, which spanned twenty-plus years of her life, brought her much joy and contentment with a publisher she once described as “a decent and caring company”… a perfect fit for a decent and caring lady. (Top row left:) Ibis the Invincible #6 (Spring ’48, cover by Schaffenberger). (Top row right:) Strange Stories from Another World #5 (Feb. ’53), with cover painting by Norman Saunders (Bottom row left:) This Magazine Is Haunted #9 (Feb. ’53), cover by Sheldon Moldoff, who also created this and other horror titles for Fawcett. (Bottom row right:) Worlds of Fear #10 (June ’53), with its infamous cover painted by Norman Saunders.

[Many thanks to Ginny’s sister, Frankie Odler, and to Shaun Clancy.]

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