Comic Book Artist #17

$6.95In The U.S.

THE ART OF ARTHUR ADAMS

GRAY MORROW & GEORGE EVANS TRIBUTES • ROUSSOS • KINSTLER

No.17Jan. 2002

Editor/DesignerJON B. COOKE

PublisherTWOMORROWS

JOHN & PAM MORROW

Associate EditorsCHRIS KNOWLESDAVID A. ROACH

CHRISTOPHER IRVINGGEORGE KHOURY

Contributing EditorsROY THOMAS

JOHN MORROW

NUMBER 17 CELEBRATING THE LIVES & WORK OF THE GREAT CARTOONISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS JANUARY 2002

C O N T E N T S

COMIC BOOK ARTIST™ is published 10 times a year by TwoMorrows, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-833-8092. Jon B. Cooke, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 USA • 401-783-1669 • Fax: 401-783-1287. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT the editorial office. Single issues: $9 postpaid ($11 Canada, $12 elsewhere). Six-issue subscriptions: $36 US, $66 Canada, $72 elsewhere. All characters © their respective owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © their respective authors. ©2002 Jon B.Cooke/TwoMorrows. Cover acknowledgements: Jonni Future, Para-Man ©2002 America’s Best Comics, LLC. Monkeyman & O’Brien, Shrewmanoid ©2002 Arthur Adams. Creature from the Black Lagoon ©2002Univeral City Studios, Inc. The Authority ©2002 Wildstorm Productions, an imprint of DC Comics. Longshot, The Mole Man, The Thing, Wolverine ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc. Godzilla ©2002 Toho Co., Ltd. Gumby©2002 Art Clokey. Arthur Adams ©2002 Joyce Chin. Why are you reading this? If you’re not a copyright lawyer, you really should think about getting a real hobby, y’know? First Printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

THE FRONT PAGE: LAST MINUTE BITS ON THE COMMUNITY OF COMIC BOOK ARTISTS, WRITERS & EDITORSAnother master goes to heaven, Deadman returns, and the vision of the late Gray Morrow ..............................1EDITOR’S RANT: A QUESTION OF CHARACTERSYe Ed goes on a tirade about the dilution of comic-book icons, DK2, and hope for the future............................4COCHRAN’S CORNER: THEN THERE WERE GIANTSColumnist John Cochran gets the skinny from Greyshirt writer-artist, Rick “Comicon.com” Veitch! ..................5CBA COMMUNIQUES: THE TORONTO AND FRENCH CONNECTIONSVortex compatriots Dean Motter and Ken Steacy clarify the X-factor, and other missives & missles....................6CBA COMMENTARY: LARRY IVIE ON COMIC BOOK ARTIST #14The artist/writer responds to issues raised in our “Tower Comics: Years of Thunder” issue ..............................10MICHELLE’S MEANDERINGS: WHY CAPTAIN VIDEO COMICS DIDN’T FLYOur newest columnist looks back at the old George Evan’s comic featuring one of TV’s first sci-fi stars ..........13CBA COMMENTARY: ALEX TOTH—’BEFORE I FORGET’The master artist discusses art at face value and how a simple approach is always best ....................................18

T H E A S T O U N D I N G A R T O F A R T H U R A D A M S !

January 2002 COMIC BOOK ARTIST 17 3

ProofreaderERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON

Cover ArtART ADAMS

Cover ColorHOMER REYES, Our Hero!

TranscribersJON B. KNUTSONBRIAN K. MORRISSAM GAFFORD

Logo Designer/Title OriginatorARLEN SCHUMER

MascotWOODY by J.D. King

Issue Theme SongART FOR ART’S SAKE (Money for God’s Sake)10CC

ContributorsArthur Adams • Gray MorrowGeorge Evans • George RoussosEverett Raymond KinstlerJohn Fanucchi • Pocho MorrowMark Wheatley & Insight StudiosTerry Austin • Bob WiacekMichael T. Gilbert • Chris IrvingCarol Petersen • Dick GiordanoMarie Steinberg • Ray CuthbertRoy Thomas • William CainDan Reed • Steve CohenAlan & Pauline Weiss • Alex TothAlan Kupperberg • Michael NetzerTerry Austin • Sal AmendolaDave Gibbons • John R. CochranFred Hembeck • Michelle NolanHoward Chaykin • Dan KraarPaul Wardle • Steven A. NgVilmar Vogelaar • Andrew StevenKen Steacy • Dave StevensPatrice • Neil Polowin • Lance FalkLarry Ivie • MadScienceMedia.comIn appreciation of our friend & supporter

Terry Austinand dedicated tothe memories of

Dan DeCarloSeymour V. Reitand Ronn Foss

FRED HEMBECK’S DATELINE: @!!?*Our Pal Fred looks at the Marvel art of the late artist Johnny Craig....................................................................21

THE ART OF ARTHUR ADAMSARTHUR ADAMS INTERVIEW: THE ARTIST’S LIFE, FROM LONGSHOT TO JONNI FUTUREA discussion with the artist (and occasional writer) about his background, career and aspirations......................22HERO INDEX: THE ARTHUR ADAMS COMIC ART CHECKLISTThe “Unofficial Arthur Adams Web site” proprietor, Vilmar Vogelaar, contributes a thorough listing ................44

REMEMBERING GRAY MORROWIN MEMORIUM: “THIS WAS A MAN!”Christopher Irving takes a journey to find the humanity and artistry of the master known as Gray Morrow ......48PROFESSIONAL COURTESIES: FAREWELL TO THE MASTER

Testimonials and anecdotes about the artist from many of Gray Morrow’s friends and acquaintances................56GRAY MORROW INTERVIEW: SORCERER SUPREME

A short conversation with the artist on his memorable tenure as artist/writer/editor at Red Circle Comics ........62HORROR INDEX: RED CIRCLE COMICS CHECKLISTA thorough look at the short yet beautiful comics imprint helmed by Gray Morrow ..........................................64

GEORGE ROUSSOS: AN ARTIST’S LIFEGEORGE ROUSSOS INTERVIEW: ‘INKY’ SPEAKS!The late artist on his over half-century in the biz, from Golden Age Batman to modern-day Marvel ................66

GEORGE EVANS TRIBUTEGEORGE EVANS INTERVIEW: EVANS IN THE HEAVENS

A delightful career-spanning talk with the late, lamented comics artist and aviation buff ..................................82CBA TRIBUTE & PROFESSIONAL COURTESIES: GEORGE EVANS REMEMBERED

Artist/writer Michael T. Gilbert and other friends on the life of the wonderful EC artist, George E.....................94

EVERETT RAYMOND KINSTLER: COMICS AND BEYONDEVERETT RAYMOND KINSTLER INTERVIEW: THE ARTIST’S PANACHE (AND PORTRAITS A SPECIALTY!)Paul Wardle interviews the great portrait painter on his origins in comic books and the lessons learned..........104

Opposite page: T-shirt design of Monkeyman & O’Brien by Arthur Adams. Courtesy of John Fanucchi & the artist. ©2002Arthur Adams. Below: Yep, we’re apesh*t over Monkeyman & O’Brien! Here’s a pin-up of the pair by their creator, ArthurAdams. Courtesy of John Fanucchi and the artist. ©2002 Arthur Adams.

Please send all letters of comment, articles and artwork to: Jon B. Cooke, Editor, Comic Book Artist, P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204

Phone: (401) 783-1669 • Fax: (401) 783-1287 • E-mail: [email protected]

N E X T I S S U E — T H E C O S M I C C O M I C S O F T H E 1 9 7 0 s !

Visit CBA on ourWebsite at:

www.twomorrows.com

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Adam

sA career-spanning chat with the celebrated artist/writer on his comics

Conducted by Jon B. CookeTranscribed by Jon B. Knutson

Let’s face it: Arthur Adams, since blasting onto the comics scene like a neutron bomb with hislimited series Longshot back in the 1980s, is a creator of enormously fun comics. From thatrefreshing debut to his memorable three-issue run on the Fantastic Four (#347-349) to his creator-owned Monkeyman and O’Brien to his present-day (and some say personal best) work on“Jonni Future” in Tom Strong’s Terrific Tales (not to mention Ye Ed’s fave AA work, The Creaturefrom the Black Lagoon), Arthur’s artistry remains eminently entertaining and pleasing to the eye.But few Arthur Adams interviews seem to exist, so we cover pretty much his entire career in thefollowing three-hour interview, which took place via telephone on November 15, 2001, and wascopyedited by the artist. Special thanks to John Fanucchi for his spectacular and herculean assistance in gathering and contributing art for this feature. Special kudos also, to Joyce Chin.

Comic Book Artist: Where are you from, Arthur?Arthur Adams: We’re not going to film out of sequence? [laughs] Where am I from? That’shard to remember; after all, I was very young when I was born. That’s complicated. I was born inHolyoke, Massachusetts, many, many years ago. My dad was in the Air Force, so we actuallymoved around quite a bit until I was about five years old, when we moved to a little town calledVacaville outside Travis Air Force Base in California. My dad found some way to keep us stationedthere was the rest of his 20-year Air Force career. It’s just 50 miles from here where I am rightnow, in San Francisco, California.CBA: You were born in 1963?Arthur: I was!CBA: You’re probably the youngest guy I’ve ever interviewed for the magazine! [laughter]Younger than me!Arthur: Bruce Timm isn’t that much older than me! I mean, he’s old, but….CBA: Bruce is one of the few exclusively contemporary guys I’ve interviewed [in Comic BookArtist Special Edition #1]. He was born around 1961, I believe.Arthur: That sounds about right, he’s about 40, right? Man, he’s old. [laughter]CBA: Hey, I’m almost 43, so watch it, dude! [laughs] Did you get into comics at a young age?Arthur: Yeah, I’d always liked comics, I think my interest really started when my dad came backfrom one of his trips overseas, and he brought with him the first Marvel Treasury Grab-Bag, thathad in it a Ross Andru Spider-Man/Human Torch story, a Wally Wood Daredevil/Sub-Marinerstory…CBA: Had that holly wreath on the cover?Arthur: Yeah! I think it was a Buscema cover, maybe inked by Romita. But yeah, it’s a bunch ofthe super-heroes running forward, and then on the back cover, it’s them running away. It also hada real nice Gene Colan/Bill Everett Black Widow story, and my favorite was the two-parterFantastic Four and the Avengers versus the Hulk!CBA: By Stan Lee & Jack Kirby! Was this your first real exposure to super-heroes?Arthur: The first time I really noticed. I’m sure I must’ve seen them before, but this was the firstone I really got jazzed about. I’m sure I’d seen all those old Marvel cartoons… I must’ve seensome comics, because my mom once a month would go to the thrift shop and come back with ahay-bale of comics, a big pile wrapped in twine. About half of them would be romance and warcomics, and those would get tossed aside, and the other half would be super-hero and monstercomics.CBA: The good stuff!Arthur: Yeah! It was the stuff I liked. I now wish I’d kept some of those war and romancecomics, those would’ve been pretty interesting to see now.CBA: Did you see the Marvel reprints of the old Atlas monster stories? Where Monsters Dwell,Creatures on the Loose…Arthur: Oh, yeah, sure! I love that stuff! When I first started Monkeyman and O’Brien, I had the Marvel reprint book they did, Marvel Monsterworks, with Walt Simonson’s cover as inspiration. “Van Doom’s Monster” was my favorite! It was about a big wax monster, and it didn’treally make much sense, but it sure was cool! [laughter]CBA: Did you start drawing at a young age?Arthur: Oh, I’ve always drawn. I don’t remember ever not drawing. My mom has some drawings around the house—don’t ask to see those!—and I drew everything! Mostly I drewdinosaurs, King Kong and monsters. I was crazy for all those monster movies, the CreatureFeatures every Saturday.CBA: Did you draw your own comics as a kid?Arthur: You know, I was not intending to do comics when I was a kid. I wanted to be a paleontologist, because I just thought dinosaurs were the coolest, I was really into dinosaurs, so I


Opposite page: Unless otherwise noted, all the art contributions in this section are courtesy of JohnFanucchi and Arthur Adams. John gathered these treasures from numerous sources and we profuselythank him, Arthur and all who contributed to this herculean effort. This melange of Adams’ trademarkcharacters appeared as cover for the French mag, Comics Box #34, last summer. All characters ©2002 theirrespective copyright holders. Right: Whether or not Arthur says he never previously cared for the characterbefore rendering it, when it’s all said and done, perhaps Adams will be best remembered for his spot-onrendition of children’s TV character, Gumby, in two Specials drawn for Comico in the ’80s. Courtesy ofBob Wiacek, here’s the clay-based hero by Arthur. Gumby ©2002 Art Clokey. Art ©2002 Arthur Adams.

Arthur: No, not at all. I’ve probably been way too wishy-washy.I’m hoping I’m getting to be less so as I get older, but…CBA: Do you see issues within the comics field that perhaps youshould address more?Arthur: Gosh, no. I just want the comics industry to do well![laughs] When various companies are doing too much of one particular book, I understand why they’re doing it, but I don’t necessarily think it’s a good idea. And then subject matter, like whenMarvel was doing all the Punisher books, that bugged me, because Ihated those. I thought they were pretty unpleasant, too much glorification of a guy with a gun. But you know, now I really like thenew Punisher series, [laughs] and I don’t know why! Maybe becauseit’s written with more of a sense of humor, and I think thoseother issues were kind of humorless, at least for me. For awhile, I was worried about things in comics gettingtoo violent and women being too objectified. Butyou know the stuff I’m working on right now?[laughs] This Authority stuff? We’ve actually hadto tone the stuff down temporarily because ofthe [Sept. 11] attack, we’ve pulled back on theviolence on the first and second issues. Whoam I to say things are too violent, whenI’ve just drawn something that’s really horrifyingly violent here?I’m actually thinking about anew series that’s going tobe really objectifyingwomen, let’s justleave it at that![laughs] HaveI men-tioned

that I’m not very smart? “I’m not very smart.” [laughter]CBA: Do you feel that, perhaps, the difference is there’s an injection of humanity within your work?Arthur: I think almost anything is okay as long as there’s somesense of humor to it. In the second chapter of “Jonni Future,” theuniverse is invaded by moth-women, and the description says, “they are kind of cute, but they’re just eating everything… rocks,vegetables, animals, people, everything… ” Why moth-women wantto eat everything, I don’t know. [laughter] I really like what SteveMoore and Alan Moore are doing with the series so far, and I’mamazed they’re able to get as much story into eight pages and stillmake it relatively comfortable to draw. The moth-women are kind of

terrifying! They’re outrageously shapely, but have these horrible buggy heads [laughter]…CBA: As long as you’re not aroused by them![laughs]Arthur: No, no, no, no! [laughter] It’s just thatpeople are going to look at this and go, “Oh myGod, what happened?!?” [laughter] There’s millionsof these moth-women invading the solar systemeating everything, so Jonni tricks them by

igniting this magnesium asteroid, so it’sburning brightly, so all the moth-women are attracted to it, andof course, they all die

horribly! [laughter] Theyall fall into it, andthey’re exploding,and there’s flameseverywhere…I’m thinking,“This is

Above: Arthur Adams obviouslyhad a blast drawing three issues of

Fantastic Four—#347-349—all written by Walter Simonson—

where he got to visualize a new FFteam, featuring the then-hot properties Ghost Rider, Hulk,

Spider-Man, and Wolverine. Thestoryline, involving a ton of AtlasKirby monsters and the Mole Manobviously resonated with the artist

as he continued to explore likethemes in his own Monkeyman &

O’Brien tales. The “MonstersUnleashed” story arc was alsoquickly collected by Marvel, as

was almost all of Arthur’s work forthe House of Ideas, but the lack inshared royalties from those tradepaperback books by the publisher

has prompted the artist to shyaway from major commitments

with Marvel. ©2002 MarvelCharacters, Inc.

Right: A circa-1989 Arthur Adamsself-portrait in a detail from his

cover for Ron Goulart’s The GreatComic Book Artist, Volume Two.

©2002 Arthur Adams.

30 COMIC BOOK ARTIST 17 January 2002


much editorial interference in your career? Did you ever have to domuch redrawing?Arthur: No, next to none. The only editorial interference I got thatcropped up a couple of times was just inconsistent deadlines. That’sbeen a major problem. There’s one DC job I did where the writer andeditor didn’t like my storytelling on one page, so they cut up thepage and rearranged the panels, and I wasn’t crazy about that, Idon’t think it made it a better page. But no, nothing, really nothingabout changing anything radically. Scott, who just called earlier, I’djust sent him the latest “Jonni Future,” he was going on about howhe liked it all except for one panel, where he thought I did a bad jobon Johnny’s butt. [laughter] I told him to send me back the page,and I’d fix it.CBA: Did you view the experience of Dave Stevens with “TheRocketeer” with any interest? Did you think, “Hmmm… I’d like togo that route.”Arthur: Every couple of months I get a call, “So-and-so is interested in doing Monkeyman as a cartoon.” Several years ago,Disney couldn’t quite decide between Mighty Joe Young andMonkeyman and O’Brien as a live-action movie, and they finallywent to Mighty Joe Young, because they’d already bought the rights.Also, there was a finished, more complete story.

CBA: You got pretty close, then?Arthur: Yeah, supposedly! This is all through Mike Richardson.Thank goodness Mike has the patience to deal with all that stuff,because we had one meeting with an animation company who wastrying to talk us into dealing with them, doing Monkeyman as a cartoon, and so we sat down, and they’re asking us, “What’s therelationship between Ann’s sister, Oneiko? Clearly, they don’t looklike each other.” “Oh, they’re half-sisters, Oneiko’s the illegitimatedaughter of…” “Oh, no, no, no! We don’t want to hear about that,that doesn’t leave this room!” “Well, okay… Her name, Oneiko,actually means ’devil-child.’” “Oh, no, that never leaves this room!We’ll never talk about that again!” [laughter] All right, I don’t reallyneed to be involved with this that much!CBA: They’re taking all the fun out of it! [laughs] Obviously,Image arrived like a bombshell on the industry…Arthur: Oh, absolutely.CBA: …these guys sold millions of copies of books…Arthur: They did! And you know what? One of my ex-girlfriendshad a comic book store at the time, and you know what’s unfortu-nate? It got associated too much with guys who were only buyingcases of books with no intention of ever looking at any of them.That’s not why I’m into comics. Just so that some guys can come intoa store, pull up a whole giant stack of comics to look for the onewith the straightest spine? That’s crazy! [laughter]CBA: Then put them in a slab!Arthur: Yeah! Why are you doing these things?CBA: Polyurethane them. [laughs] The greed factor really tookover comics for a period.Arthur: Oh, it was crazy! I might’ve been working on TheCreature, when I was asked if I’d like to make up something formyself. I said, “No, no, I’ve got to work on The Creature From theBlack Lagoon.” [laughter] Which is, like I said, the only book I’vedone that’s actually lost money for the publisher.CBA: These guys at Image were making millions…Arthur: They’re making millions, and I did this book that sold likecrap.CBA: Did your standard of living rise as time went by, through the’80s?Arthur: Oh, sure! But I hardly live like an adult. [laughter] Like Iwas saying, I don’t drive. I’ve never driven—I don’t want to drive!For the longest time, I had no furniture; just a bed, drawing chair andtable, and then just a pile of pillows on the floor and a TV, and thenshelf after shelf of books and toys. Things are only better nowbecause my wife had furniture! [laughter]CBA: Now she takes care of you, eh?Arthur: Well, she has furniture, let’s leave it at that!CBA: Your wife’s an artist?Arthur: Yeah, Joyce Chin, she’s drawn a bunch of stuff. She drewWynonna Earp for Wildstorm years ago, and she drew the Xenacomic book, first for Topps, then a little bit for Dark Horse.CBA: How did you meet her?Arthur: Strangely enough, we met at the San Diego convention,after I’d broken up with my ex of some period of time. Like I said,my ex had a comic book store, and was also—and presumably stillis—Asian, [laughter] and I set myself a rule, “I’m not going to go outwith anyone involved in comics or another Asian girl,” because I’dbeen with my ex for six years, and everyone (Diana Shutz) assumed Ionly liked Asian girls—she was the only Asian I’d ever been out with![laughter] “Okay, fine, I won’t go out with an Asian girl, no oneinvolved in comics, and so I can talk to her, she can’t be under 25.”[laughter] So, I was at San Diego, and I met Joyce, and at the timeshe was 24, drawing comic books, and Chinese! [laughter] But thatseems to have worked out okay.CBA: How long have you been married?Arthur: We’ve only been married for about a year, but we metand started going out five-and-a-half years ago.CBA: What was the genesis of Monkeyman and O’Brien?Arthur: Erik called up and asked if I’d ever made up anything, andI hadn’t. When I’m working, I just think about the things I loved as akid, and still love. The first thing that came to mind was King Kong. IfI’d had any sense then, I would’ve made up Cavegirl, [laughs] butinstead, I made up Monkeyman and O’Brien. It’s as simple as that. I

Above: Arthur’s pencils to hisdelightful “Li’l Danger Girl” story,“Delusions of Grandeur,” from theDanger Girl Special Edition. Okay,so it’s cheesecake. But it’s reallycute cheesecake! Danger Girl ™&© 2002 J. Scott Campbell.


Compiled by Vilmar Vogelaar with Jon B. Cooke

[Snagged (with permission) from Vilmar’s incredible“Unofficial Arthur Adams Web site,” what follows is thecollector’s stunning list of the artist’s work, from comicsto soda cups, trading cards to video games. While a tadincomplete, we think it’s certainly the most thoroughindex to date. Thanks to John Fanucchi for his help. VisitVilmar’s site via the Internet at: <http://home01.wxs.nl/~vogel716/ArthurAdams/ArthurAdams.html>(Any corrections? Please send ’em in!)—Ye Ed.]

# STORY TITLE (WITH OTHER CREDITS) PAGES DATE

ABRAMSFIVE FABULOUS DECADES OF MARVEL COMICS (HARDCOVER)

by Les Daniels (reprints X-Men Annual cover) 1 1991AC COMICSFEMFORCE T-SHIRT

Autumn T-shirt design (art from 1985) 1987?FEMFORCE PORTFOLIO1 Bobcat pin-up (AA pencils, inks by John Beatty) 1 1987ADVENTURE COMICSLIVINGSTONE MOUNTAIN1 How to Draw the Art Adams’ Way! 2 1991

(written by Steve Moncuse)AMERICA’S BEST COMICSALAN MOORE’S TOM STRONG COLLECTED EDITION (HC, TPB) nn Reprints Tom Strong #4 2000

TERRIFIC TEE T-SHIRTReprints Tom Strong’s Terrific Tales #1 cover 12/01

TOM STRONG4 An Untold Tale of Tom Strong (AA pencils, 8+cov 8/98

inks by Al Gordon, written by Alan Moore)TOM STRONG’S TERRIFIC TALES1 Jonni Future: The Halfway House (written by 8+cov 11/01

Steve Moore; Jonni Future created by Steve Moore & AA)

TOM STRONG’S TERRIFIC TALES PROMO POSTERReprints Tom Strong’s Terrific Tales #1 cover 10/01

AMERICAN COMICS GROUPFAT FURY SPECIALnn Cover 1998AWESOME ENTERTAINMENTLIONHEART1-2 Covers 9/99, 1/00BASEMENT COMICSCAVEWOMAN: PANGEAEN SEA0 Cover (alternative version based on PSM #35 cover) 10/01ART ADAMS’ CAVEWOMAN PRINTnn Print of the above image 8/01BLACK BULLGATECRASHER5 Cover 12/00BOWEN DESIGNKONGZILLA RESIN STATUEnn Origin comic by AA included with sculpture 5/98MAN-BAT RESIN KIT

AA designs (unreleased) Man-Bat sculpture 1998CALIBREALAN MOORE'S SONGBOOKnn Reprints Negative Burn #18 11/98NEGATIVE BURN18 Alan Moore's Songbook: "Trampling Tokio" 4 1994

(written by Alan Moore, starring Godzilla-like monster)CALLIOPE COMICSCALLIOPE COMICS PRESENTS: MUSINGS3 Pin-up ??CHAOS! COMICSLADY DEATH: THE RAPTURE1 Cover 6/99

PURGATORY: GODDESS RISING1 Cover (AA inks, pencils by Joyce Chin) 8/99CLIFFHANGERCRIMSON TRADING CARD SET

One card, three variants (reprints Crimson #2 cover) 2001DANGER GIRL SPECIAL1 Delusions of Grandeur (a Li’l Danger Girl Tale)17+covs12/00

(Written by AA, Hartnell & Campbell; three variantcovers plus a European cover version, all by AA)

COMICOCOMICO BLACK BOOKnn Gumby & Pokey pin-up 1 1987FISH POLICEV2#5 Pin-up (reprinted from Fish Police V1#5) 1 4/88V2#17 Fish Sticks (written by Steve Moncuse) 5 6/89GUMBY'S SUMMER FUN SPECIAL1 Gumby's Summer Fun Special + two pin-ups 46+cov 7/87

(written by Bob Burden)GUMBY SUMMER FUN SPECIAL PROMOTIONAL POSTER

Promo poster for Gumby Summer Fun Special 1987GUMBY'S WINTER FUN SPECIAL1 Gumby's Winter Fun Special + two pin-ups 40+cov 12/88

(written by Steve Purcell)OBLIVION1 Cover 8/95COMICS & COMIXTHE TELEGRAPH WIRE19 Cover (Longshot & Rocket Raccoon jam w/M. Mignola)2/85COMIC IMAGESARTHUR ADAMS COMIC IMAGES

45 trading cards reprinting AA’s Marvel artwork 1989GHOST RIDER II

One card (reprints “New” Fantastic Four image) 1991X-MEN COVERS II

Two cards (reprints X-Men Annual #9 & #10 covers) 1990MARVEL FIRST COVERS II

Two trading cards (Longshot & Classic X-Men covers) 1991DARK HORSE COMICSALIENS: HAVOC1 Havoc (written by Mark Schultz) 1 6/97

(also one sketch of rejected page)ALIENS SPECIAL1 Reprints Aliens: Havoc (in the same month?) 6/97ANIMAL CONFIDENTIAL1 Cover (Sam & Max) 1992ART ADAMS' CREATURE FEATURES (TRADE PAPERBACK)nn New front and back covers (reprints Creature from 8/96

the Black Lagoon, Godzilla Color Special, Negative Burn#18, San Diego Comic Con Comics #2, and Dark HorseInsider #27, all relatively scarce editions)

ART ADAMS' MONKEYMAN & O'BRIEN (TRADE PAPERBACK)nn Reprints MM&O’B stories from Hellboy: Seed 137 1997

of Destruction #1-4, MM&O’B #1-3, and AA story inLivingstone Mountain. Includes new front and back cover,three pin-ups and eight pages of sketches

THE ART OF COMIC-BOOK WRITINGnn To include new eight-page story forthcoming

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER1 Cover (plus “gold foil” variant cover) 10/986 Cover (AA & Joyce Chin pencils, AA inks) 3/99

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER POSTERSReprints Buffy the Vampire Slayer #1 cover 1998Reprints Buffy the Vampire Slayer #6 cover 1999

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: REMAINING SUNLIGHT (TPB)nn Reprints Buffy the Vampire Slayer #1 cover 3/99

CLASSIC STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE1 Cover 8/92

CLASSIC STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE (TRADE PAPERBACK)nn Cover (reprints Classic Star Wars #1 cover) 1993

COMICS’ GREATEST WORLDV4#2Cover (Hero Zero) 9/93

DARING ESCAPES1 Cover 9/98

DARK HORSE CLASSICS: TERROR OF GODZILLA1-6 Covers 8/98-1/99

DARK HORSE COMICS11 Cover (w/Godzilla, Predator, James Bond, Aliens) 7/93

DARK HORSE EXTRA1-3, 5-7 Faux MM&O’B Sunday strip (pts.1-6) 7-9/ 11/98-1/99

DARK HORSE INSIDER2 Monkeyman & O’Brien pin-ups 2 1992

(AA & Geof Darrow Jam, mini AA & GD interview)27 Trapped in Lair of the Shrewmanoid (MM&O’B) 4 3/94

DARK HORSE LEGENDS PROMOTIONAL CARDOne trading card (Legend creators as snowmen) 1994

DARK HORSE PRESENTS48 Enclosed Aliens trading card 2/91

(AA pencils, inks by Steve Moncuse)80 Tortorus (Monkeyman & O’Brien) 10+cov 12/93100-5 I Was the Alien (Monkeyman & O’Brien) 8 8/95118 Gorhemoth the Garbage Heap That Walks Like a Man

Part One (Monkeyman & O’Brien)8+cov 2/97

119 Gorhemoth the Garbage Heap That Walks Like a ManPart Two (Monkeyman & O’Brien) 8 3/97

DIVISION 131 Cover 9/94

GHOST HANDBOOK1 Pin-up 8/99

GODZILLA COLOR SPECIAL1 Target: Godzilla! (AA script & pencils, break- 24+covSum/92

downs by Randy Stradley, inks by Gracine Tanaka & Steve Moncuse

GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS1 Cover 6/952 Cover 7/953 Cover 8/954 Cover and pin-up 1 9/955 Cover (AA breakdowns, inks; pencils by 10/95

Steve Moncuse)6 Target Godzilla! 2 (AA breakdowns, inks by 24+cov 11/95

AA, T. Ishida and D. Rivera; cover breakdowns and inks by AA, pencils by Steve Moncuse)

7 Target Godzilla! 3 (AA breakdowns, inks by 24+cov 12/95AA, T. Ishida and D. Rivera; cover breakdowns and inks by AA, pencils by Steve Moncuse)

8 Target Godzilla! 4 (AA breakdowns, inks by 24+cov 1/96AA and various; cover breakdowns and inks by AA, pencils by Steve Moncuse)

GODZILLA PORTFOLIO1 Godzilla pin-up 1 1988

GODZILLA VS. HERO ZERO1 Cover (AA mentioned in story & has cover cameo) 7/95

GRENDEL: WARCHILD (TRADE PAPERBACK)nn Grendel pin-up 11/93

HELLBOY: SEED OF DESTRUCTION1 Who are Monkeyman & O'Brien? (part one) 7 3/942 Who are Monkeyman & O'Brien? (part two) 7 4/943 Who are Monkeyman & O'Brien? (part three) 7 5/94 4 Who are Monkeyman & O'Brien? (part four) 7 6/94

(AA self-portrait, page seven, announcing MM&O’B series)

HELLBOY: SEED OF DESTRUCTION (TRADE PAPERBACK)nn Hellboy pin-up 1 10/94

LEGENDS ART PRINT (NEW YORK COMICCON 1994)Jam art print by all the Legend creators 1994

MADMAN YEARBOOK 1995nn Small pin-up (reprints Madman X card) 1995

MARTHA WASHINGTON GOES TO WAR5 Enlist pin-up 1 11/94

The Arthur Adams Comic Art ChecklistVilmar Vogelaar’s exhaustive listing of just about all of the artist’s work

Hero Index

“His life was gentle, and the elementsSo mix’d in him that Nature might stand up

And say to all the world ‘This was a man!’”

—Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius CaesarAct V, Scene V

“He was a man,” Alan Weiss said of Gray Morrow over thephone. “He was a man.”

But how does one find the man imbued in the core of eachpiece of his work? Gray Morrow was an illustrator in the classic veinof Alex Raymond, Mac Raboy, and Lou Fine. Rather than going theroute of impossibly-muscled super-heroes punching it out in impossi-bly revealing costumes, Morrow drew real people in believableclothes. They were movie serial characters imposed on a comics

page. No gross exaggeration.In “Recollections”, Morrow’s contribution to

Streetwise, he cited his childhood influences, and hismove to New York as a young man. He and a friendhad met Basil Rathbone in the park one day. Still,

“Recollections” was just that: a series of anec-dotes and some details about Gray’s life andcareer. But what does it tell about the manhimself?

Now, Gray is dead, and thesearch for the true man behind

the artwork begins. It is not aneasy search, but one thatbegins with all his lovedones.

Pocho Morrowstands at the door ofthe cabin she andMorrow shared ontheir 14 acres ofland. She is anattractive woman,tall and with astrong build. Short,curly auburn-redhair frames herface. The A-framecabin is swarmingwith artists andfriends, somelegendary, whocradle drinks andwander through anicotine hazecaused by ciga-rettes and pipetobacco.

It is noon on achilly day, and theMorrow home is the resultof a six-hour car drive start-ed in Richmond, Virginiaand ending in Kunkletown,

Pennsylvania. Their cabin is off the road and back in the woods. The mood in the cabin is festive, despite the reasons for gather-

ing. Pocho had always promised Gray an “Old Scottish Wake,” or (asPocho put it) an “extravagant party” with all his friends. Here AngeloTorres, Alan Kupperberg, Sal Amendola, Ernie Colón, Mark Wheatley,Alan and Pauline Weiss, and others stand to reminisce aboutMorrow, exchanging anecdotes and shop talk. Two strangers fromVirginia are quickly welcomed.

A gallery of character drawings line the upper part of the livingroom wall, showcasing many of Gray’s influences and childhoodheroes, all drawn in a period when an injury had kept Gray out ofwork. The Face, Spy Smasher, Lone Ranger and Tonto, Green Hornet,the Golden Age Green Lantern, Green Llama, Captain America, IronMan, Superman, Mandrake, Starman, Sandman… all drawn inMorrow’s realistic style and vibrantly colored, adorn the walls. It’s awonder less-established and prolific photo-realistic artists like AlexRoss can be successful in today’s comics market, yet Morrow hasbeen absent from comic books for years.

It is Alan Kupperberg that shows Gray’s studio. An orange tiger-striped cat sits outside the garage. The studio doorknob has a brasshandle in the shape of a naked woman over it.

Judging by his garage studio, it is obvious that Morrow was theartist’s artist and, had he been born 20 years earlier, may have beendeemed as legendary as an Alex Raymond or Chester Gould. It ischilly in Gray’s studio. Inexpensively framed on the walls is a virtualmuseum of cartoonist’s original work: a few Toth pieces, a SekowskyWonder Woman page, a female portrait drawn by Alex Raymond, aswell as a Certa and Belfi Straight Arrow strip, among countless otherpieces of art. Bookcases inhabit the room, filled to overflowing withreprint books of Foster’s Prince Valiant, C.C. Beck’s Captain Marvel,Raymond’s Flash Gordon, as well as pulp magazines and variousreprint editions. A series of identical black, metal file cabinets featurea painstakingly collected “swipe” file, the yellowing folders neatlylabeled by typewriter. All types of costume helmets and props laythroughout Gray’s studio. It is painfully obvious that Gray had thegood fortune to grow up in a time where the daily adventure stripwas in vogue. In today’s society of instant gratification and shortattention spans, one can imagine that his abilities were too great toreally be appreciated by today’s limited audience.

His drawing table sits, flanked by an army of art supplies as wellas another bookshelf, with some blank comic strip pages, the gridspre-drawn, and dialogue scrawled out in pencil. One almost expectsMorrow’s dramatic figure to walk in, take a seat back at his table,and continue drawing the next installments of The Body. A letter onInsight Studios letterhead, dated April 2001 and placed near a per-sonal computer, tells of the Gray Morrow: Visionary book.

Joe Brozowski leans back on an old green sofa, smoking a ciga-rette, chatting about the shortcomings of Doc Martin’s colored dyes,and the six-strip Tarzan binge he and Gray went on one day.

“I went over to his place to hang out and drink, and he hadabout five or six weeks of the Sunday strip to do,” he would recall aweek later. “I got to his place fairly early in the day. We poured afew Scotches and said ‘We’ll do all six strips before the night is overso that we can go out drinking.’ We made it.”

Admiring the great cache of supplies Gray had accrued, exam-ining pens and brushes set up in a series of caddies and homemaderacks, there is a slight yet unrealistic hope to find the one magic penor brush that will channel all of Gray’s innate drawing ability, lettinganyone draw like a master.

Gray Morrow: 1934-2001

“This Was a Man!”A journey to discover the artist who was Gray Morrow


Below: The photos which illustratethis article are almost all courtesyof Gray Morrow’s very sweet andlovely bride, Pocho, who also gra-ciously shared her memories of herartist husband with Chris Irving inhis poignant essay here. Our heartgoes out to her in these difficultdays and, in appreciation of herspouse’s impact on the field andher boundless generosity, we inturn will donate a portion of the

profits from this issue to theMorrow Estate. Gray astride his

horse in an undated photo.

Gray’s cool demeanor got Weiss the first time he met him,introduced by Neal Adams in the 1970s, while at DC Comics.

“Gray, I believe, was working on an ‘El Diablo’ page,” Weisssays of the strip he would eventually take over. “Neal introduced us,and I was trying not to gush too much, but was explaining how Iwas impressed with his research. When he did historical pieces,Westerns particularly, the costuming was so accurate. He didn’t justlimit himself to the one cowboy gun. I’m sure he gave El Diablo

Smith & Wessons, and he’d use these old Adams, andaccurate clothing that fit people accurately. I wasgoing nuts as to how impressed I was. Gray justcocked the eyebrow, smoking his pipe, and said‘Well, that’s the fun.’ That’s about as detailed ananswer as it gets. I’ll never forget it, along withhis advice to never put all your eggs in onebasket, which was valuable advice.”

Shortly after the dispensing of some ofGray’s belongings to the “inner circle” offriends at the wake, Gray’s ashes werespread over the pond in the backyard. Itwas an interesting experience for Weiss:

“It was a very surrealistic scene forme, but kind of nice. We all put on ourcoats, and she read her poem, which shehad written about Gray. It was this sweet,simple little poem, and she could barely getthrough it without breaking into tears. Sheput the brave face on and said ‘Okay, that’smy poem. It might be stupid, but I wanted toread it to everybody. Now we’re all goingto go outside and have a little ceremonyof spreading the ashes.’

“It was Gray’s wish that hisashes be put into a Scotchdecanter. She brought that out.Here we were, this quiet bunchof artists and weirdos walking out

in the woods, right at dusk. I don’tthink anyone hardly spoke, and it wasalmost single-file, since we were walk-ing through the branches. Sterankohad his trench coat almost cape-likeover his shoulders. We walked out bythe side of the pond. I don’t remem-ber what Pocho said. I think she waspartly addressing him directly, andpartly saying ‘We know that he’s nothere, these are remains. He’s upthere.’ She took a handful and scat-tered them over the waters and any-body else who wanted to do that coulddo that. Most of us did, but some didn’t.Everybody would take a handful and saya little something, and then scatter theashes over the pond. In my mind, itstruck me how fitting it was for Gray,whose birthday was the same asmine: March 7, and I said ‘How fit-ting that, as a resting place, thewaters for a fellow Piscean. Ride on,partner.’ It was strange, I don’t think

I’ve ever done anything like that before,but it was okay, it was nice. Again, weknew this was all symbolic, and that thespirit was elsewhere. We trooped backin and continued to party, but by thenit was more a question of peoplesaying goodbye and making theirrounds. We were among thelast batch of folks to leave.

“She says how she’s beenthinking about last Sunday ever

since, and what great friends Gray had, and how much respect theyhad for him, and what high regard they had for him. It wasn’t justthe inside batch there, but people all over the world who really lovethis guy and love his work. I’d say he was a pretty damned successfulartist, given all that.”

The phone conversation continues leading back, naturally, toGray and his status as a comic book artist. “You have this bittersweetirony: Does it take a guy having to leave the planet to get properrespect and have a tribute issue done?” Weiss points out. “Howmany of us artists are going to have to get their tribute after they’renot actually able to see it? [Although] I’m not assuming that hecan’t.”

Unfortunately, it seems Morrow’s career took a usual path forthose most revered and talented in the comics field: Be greatlyadmired within professional circles, yet not widely appreciated untilafter you’re gone.

The day before Thanksgiving, a bit more than two weeks afterGray’s death, Pocho sounds tired. She has a pumpkin pie in the ovenfor her family, and has to leave the phone after five minutes to get itout of the oven.

“I met Gray in 1981,” Pocho remembers. “There was a houseon the front of the street in New Jersey. Upstairs was Ron Wagner,who was studying at the Kubert School, and downstairs was my girl-friend Cecilia and her husband who I knew from the CornerstoneTheater that I was involved with at that time. Gray was in a smallhouse that he rented behind us. We’d heard he was some artist, wasvery quiet and always wore a dark hat, smoked a pipe. You’d neversee his face because he was always looking down at the ground orreading something. We always used to call him ‘The Old Man Artist.’

“One summer, Cecilia said ‘Why don’t we go to the pool?’There was a pool over there to use. I was sitting down at the poolwith Cecilia and, all of a sudden, there was a splash in the pool.Somebody slammed under the water and surfaced right in front of usand said ‘Hi, my name is Gray Morrow. Nice to meet you,’ and askedfor our names.”

Pocho laughs as she deepens her voice to imitate her late hus-band, and a hint of the woman from last Sunday’s wake surfaces.

“Cecilia said ‘I live here, and this is my girlfriend Pocho. Nice tomeet you.’

“He invited me out that night, but I couldn’t go because Icouldn’t find a babysitter for my daughter. He figured that I didn’twant to date him and wasn’t interested. But I was interested, butcouldn’t get out to Cici’s house until two weeks after I’d first methim. Then, love blossomed when I went to the studio, saw what hedid, and had a great time with him. He was a real gentleman, won-derful person, and we started dating a long time. We dated sevenyears, until one day I bought a ring to propose to him. We went outto dinner at the Mountain View Restaurant in Dover, New Jersey. Igot down on my hands and knees in front of the whole restaurant,proposed to him, and he said yes.”

As seems to be habit with her, Pocho read Gray a poem as sheproposed. They married on April Fool’s Day, 1988, since nobodythought they’d ever get married. They got the cabin in January, andshe moved in with Gray in March. Like many artists, Gray had hisown routine, where he worked “eight days a week.”

“He’d get up every day for his definite first cup of black coffee.Then his second cup, and third. In the meantime, he’s in the ‘library’if you catch my drift, and he’d read for an hour. He’d love to readfour to five books a week. I’d go to used bookstores constantly forhim. Then, after that at ten o’clock, he’d go to the studio and work.Sometimes, I’d go and get his favorite tobacco at the store, or anewspaper or magazine if he needed it for some swipe. Then it wasback to work again. He’d finish around six o’clock, eat dinner, andthen it was back to work for an hour or two. In the meantime, he’dlike to take breaks and watch a half an hour of black-&-whitemovies. He loved old, antiquated, black-&-white! Mysteries, andCharlie Chan movies, old swashbuckler movies… he loved them all.”

It seems that Gray Morrow led an existence where he was for-tunate enough to divulge in his fantasies, childhood and otherwise.Perhaps that is why the Tarzan strip was among his favorite projects.Perhaps that is also why his being dismissed from the strip this past


Below:When the artist was hospitalized for a spell, Gray

humored himself by drawing full-body portraits of his favorite

adventure characters, rendered infull-color. The innumerable

pictures were framed and remainlined on his studio walls to thisday. Pocho sent us this provoca-tive image of the Golden Ageheroine, The Black Cat.

Art ©2002 the MorrowEstate. Character ©2002

Lorne-HarveyProductions.

Dick Giordano


compiled by Alan Kupperberg & Mark Wheatley

Michael NetzerartistBearing a gentle soul and armed with a potent measure of grace, youdecorated an industry of the creators you touched with your gentle-manly warmth and uncompromising honor for the truths you knew.This essence of the man in you found its expression in every piece ofart you produced. With it you touched the chords of harmony andbeauty in an industry drunken with the images of brash power andwanton thirst for violence.

You were the one who walked softly amongst us and carried astick too big for us to see. Your quiet manner was no indication ofthe inner power you showed in fending off the calls to put aside yourvision of peace and harmony for the one of drama and chaos thatlined the pages of our lives. You were a hopeful light that shined in adark and fearful world… but you knew no fear.

Have peace, our friend, andthank you for the inspiration youleave an industry that mourns nothaving heard your call.Perhaps, with your passing,we'll remember the bettersides of the creative spir-it. Perhaps, in yourremembrance, we'llseek the bettersides of our souls.

Dick Giordanoartist/editor(The following was intended to be included in Gray Morrow:Visionary, the coffee table book that celebrated his art and career. Ina letter asking me to write “a few kind words about my art, mypaintings, my stories and comics,” Gray concluded with a request tosend my text to his Tarzan co-writer, because “if I had to read thisstuff you’re going to write about me, I’d be much too embar-rassed…!” That was Gray. Anyway, I missed the deadline, I guess(although one was not given me) and I felt badly. Still do. But I’ll feela small bit better if I can belatedly tell the world.)

Memory fails! Did I meet Gray Morrow and first see his won-derful, illustrative work when I edited for DC Comics in the late ’60s?I really can’t remember.

What I can recall is that Gray drew things as they actuallylooked but with style and grace, very much like my heroes AlexRaymond and Hal Foster drew… and very much like I wanted todraw. I can’t remember the precise circumstances, but shortly aftermeeting Gray, I was offered a story to ink that Gray had penciled.The pencils were beautiful and I couldn’t wait to start inking! Alas, Ijust wasn’t up to it. I absolutely destroyed his work (I felt), and it wasmy last such experience.

While at DC, I was able to get Gray to do some work for me(never enough; he was always busy elsewhere). He beautifullydesigned and illustrated a number of introduction pages for theromance titles I edited. These intro pages were to create a mood, likea frontispiece, for the material that followed. Gray’s work was oftenthe high point of the issue. Later, he created the montage-like graph-ics for an illustrated text feature I experimented with, I believe, in oneof my romance titles. Again, Gray brought more into the work that Icould have anticipated. They were stunningly different, well thoughtout and beautifully executed.

In the years since then, Gray’s and my paths have not crossedvery often but I always followed his work… and wished I was half asgood!

Alan WeissartistI met Gray Morrow up in the DC offices, in the small, windowless,practically airless art-o-graph room. It must have been 1970. NealAdams introduced us. Gray was working on an “El Diablo” page.

I babbled something about how I’d admired and studied hiswork since I’d first seen it years earlier in the Warren magazines. Iwas particularly impressed with his Westerns. His extraordinary atten-tion to costumes, detail, and firearms demonstrated an obvious lovefor the genre. I asked him about all this comparatively “above-the-call-of-duty” research.

Gray paused, puffed on his pipe, cocked one eyebrow, cool-wise, and softly replied, “Well, that’s the fun, isn’t it?”

Gray’s art always exhibited that element of fun, and more. Hiswork radiated a quality of lively adventure best described by WilliamS. Hart as “The Thrill of it All!”

Through the years, it was my great pleasure to work with Grayon at least a handful of occasions. Though many may have beencloser, I think he considered me a friend. We could always talkcomics, cowboys, babes and swashbucklers. Calling to invite me tohis annual summer bash, he’d always genially add, “Wouldn’t be thesame without you.”

Farewell to the MasterHis peers & friends discuss Gray Morrow: The man & his artistry

Professional Courtesies

Below: Israeli artist Michael Netzer(formerly known as 1970s’ DC

artist Mike Nasser) contributed thisportrait of Gray exclusively for this

tribute. ©2002 Michael Netzer.

EDITOR’S NOTE:It is with profound appreciationthat CBA offers its gratitude to

Mark Wheatley, Alan Kupperberg,and all who so quickly came to ouraid in this quickly-prepared tributeto Gray Morrow. In testament to

how well the man was loved by his peers, this section came

together so seamlessly yet with anabiding passion. Our hat’s off tothese good friends of Gray.—JBC



As generous, smart and kind a man as Gray Morrow was, he wasone tough interview as most of my questions were longer than hisanswers. When I spoke to the artist in March 2001, I had hoped tokill two birds with one stone by discussing both his Warren contri-butions (for The Warren Companion) and his short but very sweetstint as editor of Archie Comics’ Red Circle imprint in the mid-’70s.While afterwards Gray was kind enough to help flesh-out hisWarren answers in writing for the aforementioned book, I asked if it

would be possible to visit him at his studio so we might have afuller discussion of that short-lived but significant comics line. Hegraciously agreed to have me as a guest and I suggested I’d comea’callin’ sometime in the Fall or Winter. Sadly that was never meantto be. Here is our conversation regarding Red Circle.

Comic Book Artist: I talked to you briefly about Charlton,and I had a mistaken impression that you had a studio when youwere packaging Space: 1999. That wasn’t necessarily so?Gray Morrow: I was pretty much a lone wolf.CBA: Around the same time, the Red Circle account came along?Gray: Yeah.CBA: Can you tell me the genesis of that?Gray: Well, I don’t remember who or why they called me in, butthey did. I met with Richard Goldwater [of Archie Comics], and hisart director, Victor Gorelik. They asked me if I could put together apackage for them. I wasn’t sure if I could or not, but I said, “Whynot? I’ll give it a shot.”CBA: Were you living in New York at the time?Gray: In Brooklyn.CBA: You brought in a lot of superlative talent to work on the RedCircle books. What were your inspirations, what did you want toachieve with the books? Were they knock-offs of the DC mysteryline, or were you reaching back to the EC’s, only within Code con-straints?Gray: Well, I guess I was thinking more in terms of old movies andradio shows. That’s what I was trying to emulate.CBA: Who was [frequent Red Circle writer] Marvin Channing?Gray: Marvin was a friend of Alan Barber. Alan is a sort of a superfilm buff, like Leonard Maltin. He did several books on series-typemovies, like The Thin Man, movies of that ilk, etc. He’s also donebooks on the old serials, or chapter plays. I used to visit him, andhe’d run one of these things for me, sometimes two or three! I’d beup until four or five in the morning. [laughter] Where was I goingwith that? Oh, Marvin was a friend of Alan’s, and Marvin was a highschool teacher who had literary aspirations. One thing lead to anoth-er, and he showed me some of his scripts, and they were printable.CBA: Did it just go through the grapevine that you wanted topackage material for Red Circle?Gray: Well, I called up people I thought were the best in the field,like Alex Toth. CBA: How did you know Alex?Gray: I met him up at DC’s offices.CBA: Was it fun to work on the Red Circle stuff?Gray: Oh, yeah! It was a chance to have some control over theproduct, and do something that I always wanted to try. Take a shotat writing scripts myself, I had no training as a writer, but found out Icould tell a story, after a fashion. CBA: You had a total approach for the books, for the initial issuesthat were coming out, you emulated a red circle on the cover, youhad all the illustration taking place within a circle. The look of thebooks had some resemblance to Marvel, though just in very superfi-cial ways—having a bar across the top, stuff like that. Was that insti-tuted by the publisher, or were you looking to perhaps catch a littlefrom the Marvel comics that were extremely popular at the time?Gray: Not that I’m aware of, no.CBA: So, you were handed the book Chilling Tales of Sorcery,Sabrina the Teen-Age Witch was on the cover, and they just said,“Go to town with it, and produce a book for us?”

The Sorcerer SupremeGray Morrow on the glorious—if short-lived—Red Circle line

CBA Interview

Below: Many a comic fan (at leastthose on or near the East Coast)first caught a glimpse of Gray

Morrow’s wonders to come in RedCircle Comics through this b-&-wline reproduction of his Chilling

Adventures in Sorcery #3 cover inan ad trumpeting the shortlivedline’s arrival in the 1973 SeulingNew York Comic Art Convention

souvenir book. ©1973 ArchiePublications, Inc.


Horror Index

Compiled by Jon B. Cooke

BLACK HOOD1 Unpublished Cover: ?“Black Hood” Gray Morrow/Gray Morrow 8“It’s Murder to Beat the Odds” Marv Channing/Al McWilliams 5“Life’s Not Like a Comic Book!”Gray Morrow (plot) Neal Adams & Dick Giordano (story & art)10“Black Hood Hits a Sour Note”Marv Channing/Alden McWilliams 4Notes: Did not see print during Gray’s tenure, but was publishedin Archie’s Super-Hero Special Comics Digest #2 (1979) and (sans“Black Hood Hits a Sour Note,” which was probably intended forthe non-extant Black Hood #2) in Blue Ribbon Comics #8 (1984).

CHILLING ADVENTURES IN SORCERY 3 October 1973 Cover: Gray Morrow“…Cat!” Gray Morrow/Gray Morrow 6“A Stab in the Dark” (text fiction with illo) ?/Gray Morrow? 1“Missing Link!” Gray Morrow/Gray Morrow 5“Immortality Factor” Gray Morrow/Gray Morrow 5“Haunted Gallery” Gray Morrow/Gray Morrow 6“Essays into the Supernatural” Phil Seuling/Gray Morrow 1Notes: First two issues were Archie Comics-style horror stories toldstraight but drawn in the Dan DeCarlo humorous style(!), hostedby Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. Those two issues sported thelengthy title Chilling Adventures in Sorcery as Told by Sabrina, andappeared in September and October 1972 respectively, one year

prior to the Morrow relaunch. Red Circle Comics Group publishedby Archie.

4 December 1973 Cover: Gray Morrow“Suicide… Maybe” Vincente Alcazar/Vincente Alcazar 6“Loophole” (text fiction) ? 1“Horripilate Host” ?/Dick Giordano 6“Golden Touch” Gray Morrow/Gray Morrow 5“A Thousand Pounds of Clay” Don Glut/Vincente Alcazar 6Essays into the Supernatural: “The Witch!”

Gray Morrow?/Gray Morrow 1

5 February 1974 Cover: Gray Morrow“The Two Thieves of Baghdad”

Gray Morrow & Larry Hama/Vincente Alcazar 6“Esmé” Vincente Alcazar/Vincente Alcazar 8“Barometer Falling” Gray Morrow/Gray Morrow 5“The Choker is Wild” ?/Vincente Alcazar 6Essays into the Supernatural: “Dragons” Phil Seuling/Gray Morrow 1Notes: “Esmé” is signed “Vincente Sarrano.” Title changes to RedCircle Sorcery with #6.

MAD HOUSE95 September 1974 Cover: Gray Morrow“The Terrible Trident” Don Glut/Vincente Alcazar 6“The Happy Dead” ?/Doug Wildey 6“The Night of the Leopard Men” Don Glut/Carlos Piño 6

“Take Care of Your Little Brother!”Marv Channing/Vincente Alcazar 4“Two Glass Bottles” (text fiction) 1Note: Title changed from Archie humor mag Madhouse Glads.Includes half-page house ad drawn by Gray Morrow.96 November 1974 Cover: Gray Morrow“Never Bother a Dead Man” Marv Channing/Jesse Santos 5“Essays in the Supernatural” Marv Channing/Sal Amendola 1“Demon Kiss” Bruce Jones/Bruce Jones 7“No Respect for the Dead” (text fiction with illustration)

Marv Channing/Gray Morrow 1“The Devil’s Matchmaker” John Jacobson/Sal Amendola 4“The Gentlest Dog on the Block” ?/Vincente Alcazar? 5Note: John Costanza, letterer on “The Devil’s Matchmaker.”Includes half-page house ad drawn by Gray Morrow.

97 January 1975 Cover: Gray Morrow“The Vampire Hunter” Marv Channing/Frank Thorne 6Essays in the Supernatural: “Zombies”Marv Channing/Gray Morrow 1“Cellar Dweller” ?/Gray Morrow 6“Heaven’s Not for Losers” Ralph Alfonso/Alden McWilliams 5“The Earth Children” (text fiction with illustrations)

Marv Channing/Gray Morrow 2“Too Mean to Die” Marv Channing/Carlos Piño 5Note: Becomes Archie-style humor title. Includes half-page housead drawn by Gray Morrow. “The Vampire Hunter” is thinly-veiledSherlock Holmes pastiche.

Red Circle Comics ChecklistThe complete index to the 1970s Gray Morrow-edited titles

All covers ©

1973-75 Archie Publications, Inc.

The Great “Inky” RoussosThe late artist’s final interview on his 50 years in comics

CBA Interview



George Roussos—nicknamed in the ’40s “Inky” for his expert use ofthe brush—was a very dear and sweet man whom I befriended afew years ago. I called him for an interview for The Jack KirbyCollector and ended up phoning him on a semi-regular basis just toshoot the breeze, because underneath what many viewed as a gruff,no-nonsense exterior, was a thoughtful, considerate man with noillusions about his life and work. I had the honor of visiting Georgeand his wife Florence in their Long Island home, and we shared awonderful dinner together at a local steak house in the Spring of1998. George passed away in 2000 and I miss him terribly. Thisinterview was conducted in two sessions by phone, on May 11 and

Nov. 26, 1997.—JBC

Comic Book Artist:When did you start working incomics?George Roussos: In1940. I worked prior to that,when I was in school, but thatwas my first job. I worked in theSpanish department, and I didcorrections, putting the panels…sometimes the drawing was off,so I had to correct the lettering.Then, in 1940, I got in with DC Comics.CBA: Working for Bob Kane?George: At first, I workeddirectly for Bob, but since we[the art assistants] produced thestuff fast enough—and he wasvery slow—they decided to haveus go into the office severalmonths later.CBA: You went to work onstaff at National [DC Comics],right?George: I think it was calledNational, right.CBA: At Bob Kane’s, youworked alongside JerryRobinson?

George: Yeah, Jerry and I worked together in the Times building,the old building.CBA: So you were both quite young.George: Yeah. CBA: Did Jerry have a lot of input on the stories?George: Not on the stories, no. Just with the inking of the figures. Bill Finger was the author, the one that really shaped thestrip. Bob had rough ideas, but Bill was the man behind Batman.CBA: When you went over to National, who were you working for?George: When we went there, there was only one editor, and hewas Whit Ellsworth. Murray Boltinoff was the assistant editor. CBA: What were your duties?George: Doing the same thing as I did before: Backgrounds and

lettering on Batman, and Jerry was doing the figures, and Bob wouldsend the pages in. This way, by having us work in the office, he kepttabs on us and what was going on.CBA: Did you go to school for art?George: No, I just practiced on my own. I got the job because Iknew so much about comics. I used to practice at home, and I would write letters to syndicated newspaper strip artists. I reallywanted to go into syndication, though I never did. So, I got replies to my letters, but I didn’t have enough experience to fill any job theymight have, so I lost out. I did receive several good scripts I couldwork off of. What was the question, primarily?CBA: Why comics? Why did you want to get into comics?George: [laughs] That’s a three-pronged question. [laughter]Well, I knew there were three forms of art in my time which don’texist today. One was comics, which needed less education in drawing and so forth, and I liked telling stories, developing charactersand the satire that’s involved with it, stuff like that. Then you haveillustration, and I knew the work wasn’t as productive as comics.With comics you’d finish one job, and there’s always another one.With illustration, you have to wait for another story to be written,and the editor would call you in, and so on, and you had to be pretty well-polished and know how to paint. The third, of course, isfine art, which requires that you sleep out in the cold and eat once amonth. [laughter] Being an orphan—I had lost my parents at a veryyoung age—I took the practical solution, the obvious one, which was comics. CBA: Did you grow up in New York?George: Originally I was born in Washington, D.C. I was raisedproperly in Greece, went to school there, came back, and lived inNew York pretty much the rest of my life, except when I worked oncomics in England for a while. Being an orphan was the reason Iwent to work in comics. But I found out I’m more naturally adaptedto fine art. Most artists try to be fine artists, to me it’s natural, but Icould never allow it to take over, because of the economics involved,and I didn’t have the backbone to be… it requires quite a bit of character to be a fine artist.CBA: Did you admire comics when you were a kid?George: Yes, in a way. Mostly it was from the practical point ofview. I wasn’t as crazy as most of the people are toward it.CBA: When you got in the business, what did you think of itwhen you were there?George: When I was a kid, I suppose I thought it was okay. Youdid the crazy things that most kids do, you were interested in thisartist and all that, and you want to meet people, and blah, blah,blah… and all that, but didn’t realize my potential, which I neverdeveloped anyhow. [laughs] So, I could do a reasonably good job. Infact, I proved my point very easily… I might’ve told you we workedwith a [real-life] character known as Bob Wood, on “TheTargeteers.” I could dramatize with my art, I suppose, because of my background. In other words, what makes certain things is thebackground that you have, and that reflects on your work, and minewas rather dramatic, so drama has been almost the thing that pulledme through throughout the career.CBA: In those early years, did you like working on Batman? Didyou like the character?George: I liked it, but it’s hard for me to explain… at thismoment, I see it in such an odd way, you know? I would imaginethat the reason I worked in comics was mostly economic. I needed ajob, and that was the emphasis, primarily, on whatever I did. That’s

Above: George Roussos’ first jobin the comics field was as a back-ground man in Bob Kane’s New

York studio, where “Inky” workedside-by-side with Jerry Robinson(whose chore was to ink figures).Courtesy of Roy Thomas, here’sthe team’s effort for the cover of

Detective Comics #45 (Nov. 1940).©2002 DC Comics.

why I’ve never succeeded likethe others did, because theythrew themselves totally into it. I never did that.CBA: Didn’t you work incomics for the last 56 years?George: Yes. Comics andcomics and comics. [laughter]Then I worked for 20 years atthe same time I freelanced, Iworked for General Electric. I dideducational comics for them.CBA: When was this?George: 1945, if I’m not mistaken. There was a newspaper double-spreademphasizing how comics were so effective with young people,and General Electric decided thiswas the best way to get theirmessage across, so we did 20different booklets, which theygave away for free to the variousschools. The publication went asfar as Ceylon, they had to bedone in different languagesaccording to the country. CBA: So what were you doingon those books?George: On those, I did thecomplete job. A fair job, nothingto write home about.CBA: Do any of those stillexist? Do you have them?George: I have some ofthose, yes. They’re ordinary. Iwouldn’t worry about them toomuch. [laughs] The reason Iapologize, in a way, is that Inever ducked into it like theother fellas did, and therefore, I felt my work was always not quite as adequate as itshould’ve been.CBA: Was there any art formyou were particularly interestedin—not necessarily one youworked at?George: Actually, I drifted. Idid a painting many years agowhich gave me the clue to my fate if I had the backbone. The painting included an artist’s drawing, and it was similar to Vermeer’swork. I was looking outside the window, trying to draw… do youknow the Vermeer painting, where an artist is painting at a canvas,and there’s a woman posing with a trombone or something like that?The figure of the artist has no paints, used as a symbol, more or less,to create the dimension and so forth… a lot of things go into it.Anyway, there’s a window in front of my drawing table, and it’s all inblue, and the high buildings represented success in the future, andeverything was blue, there was nothing that was realistic. On theextreme right of the painting, there’s a shadow cast from my draw-ing board leading to a very weird door that’s off-shape, unique, nottotally square, just weird and angled. In other words, I was showingyou that’s the uncertainty, trying to go consciously to the future—which was comics, syndication, etc.—my unknown character hasbeen pulling me into this other direction. This is the interpretation Igive, and I was very happy with that. That was the clue to the wholething. It’s a rough little painting. Anyway, that gives you an ideawhat my feelings were.CBA: Have you continued to paint?George: I’ve done some things, but not too many, no, because ofthe time element. I have a particular one that I like very much, that I

did on the cheapest paper you could possibly find. The art paper we drew comics on was protected by two sheets of the cheapestpossible paper, about 20” x 40”, some weird size. I said to myself,“If I’m a decent artist, I can make that cheap paper come alive.” So Itook the paper, and worked on it… [laughs] and the painting turnedout to be one of the finest I ever did. I framed it and everything.Well, I did this scene of a ship that’s sailing, with the gray clouds upthere—always the uncertainty and always brooding, the every dayoccurrence—and a ship is going, fighting the elements of the water,but the water was done in deep green, because the landscape, whichreflects the registration below, and it’s very deep. When you look atmy water, the way I interpret it, I give it volume and weight. Mostpeople do a very beautiful shape, things with the whitecaps onthings, but I don’t do that. I don’t go into that. I try to express thedrama of the water and try to get this tremendous dimension. So,when I saw that later on, I said, “My God, there’s a possibility I may be good one day.” [laughter] That gives you an idea of mypeculiarities, okay?CBA: Your considerations were always economic?George: Always. Being an orphan, I was raised in an orphanage.CBA: How old were you when you lost your parents?George: Quite young. I was in the orphanage for four years, and

Above: Wonderful 1941 photo ofyoung George Roussos at hisdrawing table. Note the Batmancover proofs and Prince Valiantstrip behind the artist. Courtesy ofMarie Steinberg, George’s beloveddaughter.



George Evans was one of the sweetest, dearest men I have ever hadthe pleasure to spend time talking to. I only met him—through theInternet—a year ago January, but I was immediately charmed by hisfriendly demeanor and just plain niceness. We spoke on Jan. 16, 2001, and though I had originally intended just to discuss his Warrencontributions (for The Warren Companion, in which small portions ofthe following initially appeared), he proved such a captivating personality that we covered his entire glorious career. He copyeditedthe final transcript. A generous, loving, and vastly talented man,George’s spirit soars in heaven, having passed away on June 22, ’01.

Comic Book Artist: George, where are you from?George Evans: I was brought up in Pennsylvania, about 65 to70 miles north of where I live now in Mount Joy, in a place calledColdmont. But I was actually born in a little mining town about 30miles above that. There I spent the first nine years of my life, aroundcoal mines, coal miners, and that was about all!CBA: And you’re about to have a birthday, right?George: I am, indeed… 81.CBA: Congratulations!George: [laughs] Thank you, I was in World War II, and whoexpected the way things were, that I’d get to this point?CBA: Did you draw as a child?George: Yes, I did. A lot. I remember things I could do by the time I was four. When I had an ear infection—it was chronic until anoperation at about age 12—and every winter, it would flare up and I’dbe house-bound. We didn’t have all those computers [laughter] andrecord players and DVDs and things like that, so they bought me

watercolors, crayons and a lot of paper! The reading material atthe time was newspapers, and the best part of them—thenand now—were the comic strips. CBA: What comic strips were you drawn to?George: Wash Tubbs, Boots and Her Buddies, Frecklesand His Friends… it was mostly NEA stuff, because they serviced the small-town papers.CBA: You enjoyed Roy Crane’s work?George: Oh, I loved Crane then! I bought a whole set ofthe books that reprinted his stuff, enjoyed them all overagain, and took another trip back to childhood!CBA: That’s truly wonderful stuff.George: It is!CBA: And early on, you were how old when CharlesLindbergh made his historic transatlantic flight?George: Seven.CBA: Do you remember it?George: Oh, that made me the aviation nut I’ve stayedall my life! Oh yes, he was my hero, really. They had a songabout him, and all the rest, and yes, he became my hero.CBA: Possibly today’s generation might not understandhow a seemingly simple flight can make the pilot an international hero. Why was Lindbergh considered theimportant figure that he was in the 1920s?George: Like King Arthur, Robin Hood and all the restof them, he was just a simple guy. While everybody elsewas trying, with big money financing them and all the rest,here comes this simple kind of fellow who makes a deal with

an aircraft company to build him a special airplane, accordingto his specs, and he made it! He was the Big Hero, took the

chance, put his life on the line, gambled and won! Radio was prettyprimitive at the time, but if you’d read about it, they followed it, and I

remember hearing people around this little town—only a coupleof them had the old battery radios—and the word got out,“Hey! Lindy made it! Lindy made it!” and for a seven-year-oldkid, that was marvelous stuff to hear that a guy had that kind of guts!CBA: Your interest in that flight led to a lifelong interest inaviation?George: Yes, it did, and I have it to this day. I still love

Evans in the HeavensA final, glorious interview with the great EC aviation artist

CBA Interview

Below: George Evans drawing and dreaming in a self-portraitcommission rendered for a fan.Courtesy of the artist. ©2002 the Estate of George Evans.


at me and said, “I was the bastard!” [laughter] The three of themgathered behind Bob Lubber’s taboret and watched him. Bob was agenius with a brush! I swear to God, he could do four pages a day ina working day of “Captain Wings” or whatever Planet stories he wasdoing, and they were watching in fascination and somebody movedand almost upset Bob’s taboret with the India ink bottle on it, and hisfinished pages leaning against the bottom of it, and he let out a blastand said, “I’m gonna take you son-of-a-bitch and hold you out thewindow and let go!” [laughter] We were on the third floor. When Alcorrected me, I said it was one of the other guys, but Al said, “No,that was me he was talking to, and you know, I thought he wasgonna do it!” [laughter] CBA: Al was only a teenager, right?George: He was, and yet, the stuff he showed around there wasmighty, mighty good. If he had applied himself to do whole picturesand some background, I’ll bet he could’ve got work up there. But Alloved to do the swordsmen and the dinosaurs and the pretty girls, sothere were all these graceful, animated figures doing this and doingthat, and beautiful girls, well-stacked… but they were hanging inlimbo, you know? Not in settings. He wouldn’t bother with back-grounds and the like. He would call in Frazetta or Angelo Torres—theycalled themselves “The Fleagles”—and often he’d call in GeorgeEvans, and among us, we’d get the thing finished, do the back-grounds or things he didn’t like to draw. I would kind of needle himabout it. “Come on, Al, come on! You’ve got such great stuff here,start to do your own backgrounds and geez, you’ll be top of theheap!” He would get on the phone every now and again and say,“Can you give me a hand with this?” and what it would be is pedestrian kind of backgrounds, somebody walking the streets, somebody climbing a stairway or whatever, and I’d give him a hand,as he often gave me a hand, and when John Prentice, recognizinghow great he was with figures that looked derivative of AlexRaymond—which is what John was doing with Rip Kirby, the follow-on of Raymond’s Flash Gordon—and he took Al down to Mexico.Then, I guess, with no other place to go to get scripts to do work, hehad to buckle down and do whatever Prentice assigned him to, andI’ve read in The Al Williamson Sketchbook where he credits John withpushing him to be the success he is.CBA: To get some discipline?George: Yes, to get discipline. Exactly so.CBA: The Fleagle Boys were pretty wild, right?George: From what they tell! [laughter] I was “Old Pa,” they didn’t call me granddad, but in a sense you could feel it. Just like inthe Air Force, we had a 28-year-old guy, and everybody called him“Pop!” [laughter] I would’ve been a “Pop” if I habituated with theFleagles. CBA: When did you get married?George: Oh, I got married while I was in the service in the ’40s. Iguess I’d been in a year and got married on furlough. No, it was sixmonths before the end of the war.CBA: Being a comic book artist, generally speaking, can be a verysolitary life, where freelancers work in their own home studios…George: You’re right.CBA: …but you guys were able to maintain a social aspect. AngeloTorres, Al, Frank… the Fleagle Boys, and you were always aroundthese guys to some degree. Was that gratifying?George: Oh, it was gratifying, but that’s not quite the way it was.Al and I got together a lot. If I were going into the city I might callhim and say, “I’m going to be in New York, let’s have a hot dog orsomething,” or if he were going into the city, he’d call and ask,“When are you going in again?” and we’d meet often in that way.And again, we’d see each other at publishers where we were bothdoing work, like at Fawcett and then later at EC. I didn’t know Angelountil long after. I had met Frank Frazetta, but he moved out near to uson Long Island then when we bought the Levitt house. After Al Cappchopped him off at the knees [dismissing Frazetta as a ghost on L’ilAbner], I get a phone call, “This is Frank Frazetta, remember me?” Isaid, “I’ll never forget Frank Frazetta.” He said, “Do you have anywork I could help you with?” By God, I was stunned, I really was! Idid have work that he could help with, because I’d gotten to working

with Dell and Gold Key and they were giving me whole books to do,so for a period of time, Frank worked with me [The Frogmen #1 and2, material CBA will examine in our forthcoming Gold Key ish]. I penciled the stuff, he inked it, and up to the time that we left LongIsland, I would occasionally still get a letter from some comic collector,some fan of Frank’s, asking, “Do you have any of the books Frankworked on with you? Do you have any of the original art Frank didwith you? Do you have any stories to tell about working with Frank?”So he has made his name! [laughter] You know, the nice part about itis, people tell me still that he remembers it with pleasure, and I sure do.CBA: Back in the late ’40s, did you know Wally Wood at all?


Above: Zowie! Was George good,or what? A page from RangerComics’ Evans strip, “Tiger-Man,”from a gorgeous stat made of theoriginal art, and snagged fromJerry Bails & Hames Ware’s thirdvolume of their 1970s Who’s Whoof American Comic Books. ©1948Flying Stories, Inc. Below: Evansalso worked on Captain Video.Cherce panels from #1. ©©2002the respective copyright holder.


by Michael T. Gilbert

Living in LevittownGeorge Evans was a friend of mine. We never met, but becamefriends through letters and Christmas cards and e-mails, over a 15-year period. Three months before his death, I spoke to him on the phone for the first and only time, and we were chatting by e-mailonly a week before he fell ill. I didn’t live close enough to visit him,and I regret not having the pleasure of shaking his hand in person.Still, I feel I knew him. George’s humor and unaffected warmth madeyou feel like you were his pal and always had been. When he passedaway on Friday, June 22, 2001, the victim of leukemia, the comicindustry lost a true friend and a dyed-in-the-wool comics fan.

George and I first began corresponding in 1985. I was diggingup classic horror stories for a comic I was putting together, and wroteto him for permission to reprint one of his. George replied with along letter, brimming with warmth and humor. We began trading letters. When I first began writing him, I was surprised to discoverthat George lived just a few blocks from my family’s house inLevittown, Long Island. Though I didn’t know it, we were neighborswhen I was growing up. George was lucky I didn’t find out untildecades later. Even as a teenager, I was a huge George Evans fan,and there’s no telling what this “wannabe” cartoonist might havedone to meet one of his idols. Last year, George told me of a won-derful opportunity I’d missed decades earlier. Here’s his description ofa huge party he and his wife Evelyn put on back in the late ’50s:

“Al Williamson, wife, bro-in-law Alex and Roy Krenkel were outto our home for a barbecue. Our kids had friends all around town ofcourse, and somehow word spread. I counted 17 assorted kids whowith our guests first-invented ‘Calvinball’ and closed all our street.We kept sending for more dogs, buns, drinks ’til the stores closed!After dark parents came searching, I guess by instinct. When wemoved away—rather, Ev visited after—one of the little (then) neighbor girls now with five of her own told us in the most

wonderful awed voice, ‘That party with Al and Alex and Roy was themost wonderful thing in my life. If you are still in touch with them—please—tell them!’ They became kids themselves for that time. (Well,hell—Al will be a kid forever, God bless him!) I, of course, was stuckroasting wieners all night! (Hey—how come you didn’t get to come’round??? All the best, George”

Oh, to have stumbled onto that party! That didn’t happen, butI’m grateful I did stumble onto George’s comics.

Hooked On EC!I first fell in love with George’s work in 1965, thanks to a series ofBallantine Books paperbacks. From late 1964 to ’66, Ballantine published five EC collections, reprinting stories from the old EC line ofcomics—comics many consider among the best ever done. AndGeorge Evans was one of EC’s finest artists.

Ballantine’s The Vault of Horror featured the Evans-illustrated“Curiosity Killed…”— a black comedy about a henpecked husbandand a wife who pecked once too often. Nobody drew henpeckedhusbands and battle-axe wives more convincingly than George.George himself commented on this in a recent e-mail: “…though I’ddone reams of science-fiction for a lot of publishers, I wasn’t lockedto it and EC quickly typecast me in the ‘lowly, average guy’ horrorstuff ’til airplanes came up….”

George’s deceptively ordinary “lowly, average guy” horror reallyknocked me out. I was particularly impressed with his take on the AlFeldstein-scripted “Blind Alleys,” reprinted in Ballantine’s Tales fromthe Crypt book. That creepy tale about a man who tortures blindmen—and the wall of razors they erect as payback—still gives methe creeps. George’s realistic, understated art made the story trulychilling. Apparently director Freddie Francis thought so too. In 1972,“Blind Alleys” was one of the comic stories he adapted for a movieversion of Tales from the Crypt.

George’s understated realism was also displayed in theFeldstein/Evans adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s classic story, “The Small Assassin,” reprinted in Ballantine’s The Autumn People collection. Bradbury’s tale of a newborn baby born with supernaturalintelligence and a desire to murder his parents would have seemedridiculous drawn by a lesser talent. But it became frighteningly realunder George’s pen.

From then on, I was hooked on EC—and George Evans. George’s art appeared in almost all the EC titles. The stories he

illustrated for Tales from the Crypt, Frontline Combat, Two-FistedTales, Weird Science-Fantasy, Piracy, Valor and Aces High werealways first-rate. Whatever the subject matter, his amazing attentionto detail made every story utterly convincing. And his covers! Georgecrafted exciting, well-researched eye-catchers for books like AcesHigh and Piracy that brought the past to life. Then, shifting gears,he’d draw shockingly violent covers for Shock SuspenStories andCrime SuspenseStories. As a teenager, I studied his pictures of murder and mayhem with gory fascination.

Beyond ECOnce I started recognizing his style, I began seeing more and moreGeorge Evans art. His illustrations for Gold Key’s Twilight Zone andBoris Karloff comics in the early ’60s displayed a light, comic touch.George’s art on these was perfect for stories of very ordinary peoplein quite extraordinary situations.

Going further back, I uncovered some spectacular horror stories

Evans RememberedMichael T. Gilbert on the life & loves of the former EC artist

CBA Tribute

Above: American gothic redux.September 1941 photo of GeorgeEvans and Evelyn Roadarmel (laterEvans). This beautiful couple were

married for over 50 years, andremaned together until George’spassing. Courtesy of the Evanses.


he’d drawn for Fawcett Comics in the early ’50s, shortly before joining EC. George’s eerie stories for Strange Suspense Stories,Worlds of Fear and This Magazine is Haunted were every bit theequal of his more famous EC tales. The Fawcett movie adaptationshe illustrated were also impressive. George had fun at both companies and it showed.

By the mid-’50s, both EC and Fawcett were essentially gone,victims of the Comics Code and declining sales. George then foundwork at Gilberton, publishers of Classics Illustrated comics. Both heand fellow EC artist Reed Crandall were well suited to the material.Together and separately, they drew numerous excellent adaptationsof famous novels. Their versions of Romeo and Juliet, The ThreeMusketeers and such were truly classics—illustrated! The pay wasnever great, but that didn’t stop them from doing top-notch work.George discussed it in an e-mail last September:

“Classics Illustrated did pay low but no page was more thanfour panels, many less, and I lightened up on blacks for speed. Plusat a given point where we clashed over authenticity—they lost—andgave me a $5 raise per page! Pays to get your back up sometimes!”

As this post suggests, George was a lifelong history buff. Heparticularly loved drawing planes, the older the better! His aviationillustrations became the standard in the field and a George Evanstrademark. Planes were in the picture as early as 1946, when hebegan his comic career drawing features such as Air Heroes at FictionHouse. In 1955, EC created the title Aces High to showcase hismatchless depiction of WWI biplanes. George repaid them with someof his finest work.

In the ’70s, he did a stint on the high-flying Blackhawks forDC, and drew a number of air-oriented stories for their war titles.George’s love of planes spilled over to children’s books such as 1967’sThe Story of Flight and his proposed syndicated strip, The FlyingSwifts. Some of George’s last works included re-creations of his stunning Aces High covers. And of course, he took every opportunityto sneak airplanes into the various newspaper strips he worked on.And there were plenty of those!

See You in the Funny Papers… Familiar as I was with George’s comic book work, I was caught bysurprise when I discovered the extent of his newspaper cartooning

career. From 1961-73, Georgeghosted the syndicated Terry

and the Pirates daily strip, wherehis attention to technical detail

came in handy. At various times he alsoworked on Wash Tubbs, Dan Flagg, and

Rex Morgan, M.D. He even drew a flying sequence in Leonard Starr’sMary Perkins. George would also step in and give uncredited help onother strips when needed. In an amusing e-mail of June 27, 2000, hemade this wry observation: “It might interest you to know that atone given point I was drawing Secret Agent Corrigan for AlWilliamson; Al was drawing Big Ben Bolt signing Cullen Murphy’sname; and Murphy was doing Prince Valiant for Foster.”

In 1980, George began writing and drawing Secret Agent

Below: George and Evelyn Evans,venue unknown, 1987. Time era ofghosting George Wunder’s dailyTerry [and the Pirates], accordingto the artist’s caption. Photo byPaul Petersen. Courtesy of George.

Above: Though he never was ableto see his final printed piece,George wrote the introduction toMichael T. Gilbert’s latest Mr.Monster collection, as well as con-tributing the illo above. Courtesyof MTG. Mr. Monster ©2002Michael T. Gilbert. Art ©2002 theEvans estate.

George PrattCompiled by Michael T. Gilbert

The news of George’s death was passed to us by noted collector RayCuthbert via the Internet, who relayed the following informationfrom Wallace Harrington. One minor mistake in the original e-mailwas recently corrected by George’s daughter, Carol. Though Georgeinitially suffered a stroke, he didn’t have a heart attack. He died inhis sleep of leukemia.—MTG

Ray CuthbertcollectorIn case anyone did not catch the news… George Evans passed awaythis morning [Friday, June 22, 2001] at 3 A.M.

“After walking his dog in the early afternoon, Evans decided todrive into the town where he lives. En route he had a heart attack.His wife drove him home, and called an ambulance. After he enteredthe hospital and was treated for the heart attack, physicians learnedfrom routine blood work that he had an advanced form of leukemiaand all treatment was stopped.”—Wallace Harrington.

Bud Plantretailer/patronRe: George Evans, I hope that we can see some thorough retrospectives on his work to honor him, perhaps in the reborne CBM and from TwoMorrows… He is one of my favorite artists.

His EC work wasoften overshadowed byWilliamson, Woodand others, but likeReed Crandall, JackDavis and JohnnyCraig, he was aconsummate creator whoalways coulddeliver asuperbly crafted story.

I loved buyingsome of his

original EC stories asRuss Cochran was auc-

tioning them a few yearsago. Gorgeous, wondrous

work, from his forte, biplanetales in Aces High, to stunningcovers and stories in later ShockSuspense issues. And his Fawcettpre-Code work for titles likeThis Magazine is Haunted isjust gorgeous, as well as hismany stories from Fiction

House titles like PlanetComics and Wings, inthe late 1940s.

Go withGod, George.

George PrattartistI can’t believe George is gone!

Years ago, when I was still living in Brooklyn, Scott Hamptonand I made a sort of pilgrimage to see some of the EC guys. Angelo Torres lived down the street from me and as I was just beginning Enemy Ace, and Angelo being the big war fan that he is,he suggested I go see George Evans. I’d already hooked up withKubert and was teaching in his school (talk about my fanboy dreamscome true! Getting to hang around Joe Kubert! <grin>). Scott wasvisiting and we both got real interested in this idea because we didn’tknow if Evans was still, at that time, alive and well. Angelo insistedthat we should go see him and he gave me his number.

Well, I called him, shaking in my boots… this is one of myheroes, one of the best of the WWI air artists!… and we chatted forquite awhile. He was regaling me with stories about the necessity ofbeing factual with “those old kites!” We could have talked for hoursbut he said that we’d talk at length when Scott and I got up there.

Our first stop was at Al Williamson’s studio and home. I believeI’d already met Al once, but it was only briefly, but he welcomed usto his home and we all had an incredible day of digging through hisstudio and telling stories and sharing artwork. What I remember mostabout Al’s studio was the piles and piles and piles of Alex Raymondoriginal Rip Kirby and Secret Agent strips stacked on the floor. MyGod! Stacks and stacks of them, packed with that wonderful linework of Raymond’s! Also there were all those proofs of PrinceValiant! Wonderful!

He also showed, and allowed me to pore slowly over, his collection of The Sphere newspaper from England during the FirstWorld War. These things were jam packed with Matania paintingsand drawings. What a treat! And through all this was Al’s uniquebrand of humor that had us in fits. In Al’s home, of course, we got to see some great examples of the Golden Age of Illustration…Schoonover, Cornwell, etc. There was the bridge page of PrinceValiant, numerous Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim pages, as well as acouple of early Jeff Jones oils. A Clement Coll or two!

Well, stupidly we thought we’d only be at Al’s for maybe twoor three hours… something like that and the day totally got awayfrom us and we found ourselves still there until after dark. We weresupposed to be at George’s an hour or so earlier. Al got on the phoneand called him up and took the heat for keeping us there at his studio so long and George said they were going to wait dinner on us.

Scott and I hit the roads and overshot our turn by about twohours! We called George from a pay phone and explained what hadhappened and he was getting a little put out! <grin> Told us they’dbeen holding dinner and we apologized again and told him to goahead and eat and we’d get there as soon as we possibly could.

We finally pulled in around midnight, if memory serves, andGeorge and his wife Evie warmly invited us in. Their grandson Rogerwas there too and he was a big fan of the new stuff, work by Scottand myself. We told him what a fool he was… his granddad isGeorge Evans!!!! Yeah… but he’s just granddad. We had a greatlaugh over that and no one laughed harder than George himself.

I have been a massive fan of George’s work for a long, longtime. Scott, too. But the one thing we always found interesting abouthis work was the big eyes that his characters had. We couldn’tunderstand how everything could be so “on” about his drawing, butthat unique, little weirdness. We’d been talking about that in the car,too. Then, standing in front of the man all was made clear. George

In Praise of Geo. EvansTestimonials on the work & life of the artist extraordinare

Professional Courtesies


Below: 1990 self-portrait of theartist drawn during George Evans’years working on the newspaper

syndicated strip Secret AgentCorrigan. ©2002 the Evans estate.


Conducted and transcribed by Paul Wardle

In the 1940s many young artists applied for jobs in the burgeoningnew comic book industry, secretly hoping that it would lead to bigger things. For some, either because of a genuine love of the artform, or an inability to succeed in any other field, it became alifelong profession.

Though the going was slow for a number of years, EverettRaymond Kinstler eventually succeeded in the art world beyond hiswildest dreams. His works have hung in many galleries, and hisfamed portraits have included legendary figures in entertainment,politics, sports and the literary world, most of whom posed forKinstler in his Manhattan studio.

Born in 1926, Kinstler grew up in New York, and was alreadyworking in comic books by age 16. His illustration style, heavilyinfluenced by older illustrators like Gibson, Flagg, and Booth, was

perfectly suited to pulp magazines, and he was one of the few comicbook artists who successfully adapted the fine-line cross-hatching,and sketchy dynamics of pulp illustration to comics. With solid storytelling, as well as gripping intensity, Kinstler’s comic work wasequal in quality to Frazetta, Ingels, Wood and Crandall, yet becausehe never applied for work at EC Comics, he is not among thefamous names generally batted around when Golden Age comic artis discussed.

Among the comics publishers for whom Kinstler illustrated,were MLJ (Black Hood Comics), DC (“Hawkman”), Avon (manytitles), Ziff-Davis (Nightmare and others), Dell/Western (Zorro,Silvertip, Western Marshall, and others), St. John (also Nightmare)and Gilberton (The World Around Us).

In addition to pulp magazines and comics, Kinstler also painted numerous paperback covers, ranging from the sensationalistto literature. It was on these books that he began to develop thepainting skills that he had first displayed in school at The ArtStudent’s League, where he would later teach, occasionally returningeven to this day. Two scholarly books of his paintings exist, PaintingFaces, Figures & Landscapes and Painting Portraits.

The man’s energy and determination to do things his own wayin life, as well as work are excellent qualities for insuring continueddevelopment and Mr. Kinstler has somehow managed to retain theseideals without doing anything he would consider “selling out.”

I spoke to Kinstler by phone from his home in Connecticut ona Saturday afternoon in November, 1999. I was calling from anapartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where I was staying for the weekend. Though I was not able to visit his studio,Kinstler’s remembrances and observations were still inspiring, and Iwas glad to have the opportunity to get his thoughts about this portion of his varied career in print for posterity. I would like tothank William Gee and his sister-in-law Julie, and Walter Dickensonfor their help and support. Kinstler was to be the subject of a majorPBS documentary airing in 2001.

Everett Raymond Kinstler: I was born August 5, 1926 inManhattan, and I’ve lived there all my life.Paul Wardle: When did you move to Connecticut?Everett: My headquarters and studio is still in New York City, but[my wife and I have] a house in Connecticut, which we’ve had forthree years. It’s about an hour outside of the city, so that even whenI’m up here, I go back and forth.Paul: Now, I’m guessing when you were a child growing up, youwere a fan of the early newspaper strips and turn of the centuryillustrators. I know artists like Charles Dana Gibson and JamesMontgomery Flagg were big influences on your later work. Couldyou talk about what influence they had?Everett: The influences I had were twofold. They were the newspaper comic strips, namely personified by Alex Raymond’sJungle Jim and Flash Gordon; Tarzan, which was then [by] HalFoster, not Hogarth. I want to be clear on that. And right on intoPrince Valiant… again by Hal Foster. And thirdly, and equally important without question because he and I got to be good friends,was Terry and the Pirates, and I knew Milton Caniff quite well inlater years when he was doing Steve Canyon. Those were the threemajor influences I had with regards to comic strips.

I was also very devoted to motion pictures from the time I wasseven and eight, and able to go to the movies. One of the greatthrills of my life was in 1978-80, when three very famous movie

The Kinstler PanachePaul Wardle talks to the legendary artist on his comics art

CBA Interview

Below: A 1995 photo portrait ofrenowned portrait painter EverettRaymond Kinstler in his Westport,Connecticut studio, taken by TonyTriolo. ©1995 the photographer.

Below: A 1995 photo portrait ofrenowned portrait painter EverettRaymond Kinstler in his Westport,Connecticut studio, taken by TonyTriolo. ©1995 the photographer.

#17: ARTHUR ADAMSDiscussion with ARTHUR ADAMS about his career (with an ex-tensive CHECKLIST, and gobs of rare art), plus GRAY MORROWtributes from friends and acquaintances and a MORROW inter-view, Red Circle Comics Checklist, interviews with & remem-brances of GEORGE ROUSSOS & GEORGE EVANS, Gallery ofMorrow, Evans, and Roussos art, EVERETT RAYMOND KIN-STLER interview, and more! New ARTHUR ADAMS cover!

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Comic Book Artist #17