Comic Book Artist #6

Man-Thing, Sise-Neg, Dr. Strange ©1999 Marvel Entertainment.

No.6Fall 1999

$5.95In The U.S.

ROMITA SEVERIN COCKRUM BRUNNER MCGREGOR RUSSELL SUTTON THE PRISONER

THE MARVEL BULLPEN: 1970-77

COMIC BOOK ARTIST™ is published quarterly 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 02892-0204USA 401-783-1669 • Fax: 401-783-1287. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT the editorial office. Single issues: $5.95 ($7.00 Canada, $9.00 elsewhere). Six-issue subscriptions: $30 US, $42 Canada, $54 elsewhere. First Printing. All characters are © their respective companies. All material is © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © their respective authors. ©1999 TwoMorrows/Jon B. Cooke. PRINTED IN CANADA.

CBA #5 CORRECTIONS: CBA’s most profound apologies go toLen Wein. Not only did his and Mark Hanerfeld’s photo comeout terribly, and the last line of his interview get dropped(which was supposed to say: “Home is the place that, whenyou go there, they have to take you in.”), but THREE proofingsfailed to catch the greatest faux pas, ye editor’s characterizingSwamp Thing as Len’s “nadir” as a writer. That landmark serieswas, of course, precisely the opposite: ST was Len’s zenith as ascribe, in my humble opinion. My American HeritageDictionary is ever closer, by my side. Sorry to R. Gary Land forhis uncredited Alex Toth “Black Canary” contribution on pg.61—Dennis O’Neil told ye ed at SDCC that he wrote the initial script for that story but it was substantially changed byAlex. Apologies to Scott McAdams for failing to mention hisMoldoff art contributions from last issue’s A/E section. Meaculpa to Robert Knuist and Jim Higgins who also contributedart to CBA. Arnie Fenner’s wife and collaborator is Cathy, not“Carol” as misnamed in the letter column last issue—sorry, CF!Keith Craker tells us the Rudy Nebres art on pg. 96 was “orig-inally in an early Creepy and reprinted in the ‘Best of’ issueCreepy #50.” Mart Gray informs us that the Kaluta rough onpg. 88 was not an unused concept but was finished as a cover,“I would guess, at around Secrets of Haunted House #14.”

EDITOR’S RANT: MY TURN ON THE CENTURYYe Ed ruminates on the spirit of collaboration, nostalgia, and Steranko’s History of Comics ....................2

SMALL PRESS SPOTLIGHT: GOOD-BYE, CHUNKY RICE—HELLO, CRAIG THOMPSON!Charles Hatfield reviews the debut graphic novel of one hot, up-and-coming cartoonist..........................3

PUBLIC SERVICE: THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMIC ARTEditor John A. Lent makes the pitch for his latest addition to comics scholarship, IJOCA ........................4

CBA COMMUNIQUESSkeates on his interview, Infantino & Orlando on Bat Lash, and letter bombs from our readers ..............5

PINCHERA’S PIX: MR. SATURNOur resident cartoonist begins his new series: Candid shots of superfolk in everyday life ........................6

FRED HEMBECK’S DATELINE: @!!?*Fabulous Fred regales us about Steve Gerber and the writer’s, umm, Giant-Size Man-Thing ....................9

JOHN ROMITA INTERVIEW: SPIDEY’S MAN

From nefarious kick-backs at ’50s DC to the chaos of the ’70s Marvel Bullpen, JR Sr. spins his tale! ....10

MARIE SEVERIN INTERVIEW: MORE THAN “JUST MARIE”Cartoonist, colorist, cover designer, caricaturist, and the heart of the Bullpen, Marie talks Marvel ........22

DAVE COCKRUM INTERVIEW: BLACKHAWKS, X-MEN, AND JOHN CARTER OF MARS

Fan artist turned fandom favorite artist, Dave chats about his mutant Marvel past ................................28

RETROGAZE: WEIRDNESS ON THE PLANET OF THE APESChris Knowles looks at the wacky fun of Doug Moench’s b-&-w monkey business ................................32

TOM SUTTON: “I WENT APESH•T!”Chris Knowles’ mini-interview with the artist on his outstanding Planet of the Apes work ....................35

FRANK BRUNNER INTERVIEW: OF DOCTORS & DUCKSThe artist discusses his work on Dr. Strange, Howard the Duck, and his days at the House of Ideas ......36

P. CRAIG RUSSELL INTERVIEW: THE VISUAL POETRY OF PCRA conversation with the artist, from Dan Adkins assistant to coming into his own on “Killraven” ........48

DON MCGREGOR INTERVIEW: MCGREGOR’S RAGE!Finally! The McGregor interview reveals the verbose one’s thoughts behind T’Challa and Killraven ......60

PHANTOM BOOKS DEPT.: THE PRISONER

THE PRISONER THAT NEVER WAS

Tom Stewart investigates the unpublished Marvel adaptation of McGoohan’s cult TV show............76

NONE OF SIX—INSIDE THE PRISONERSteve Englehart remembers his participation in Marvel’s version that never came to be ..................78

DEAN MOTTER ON THE PRISONER THAT WAS

The premier artist/designer shares his recollections of the DC adaptation that did see print ............79

SECRET ORIGINS OF THE DIRECT MARKET

Part one of Bob Beerbohm’s ground-breaking essay on the real background of the comic book biz........80

CLOSING ARGUMENT: DAN RAEBURN’S THE IMPThe best discovery of ye ed’s Summer of Convention Hell, Dan’s annual magazine is wicked fun! ........92

N E X T I S S U E — M O R E ’ 7 0 s M A R V E L M A N I A !

Visit CBA at our NEW Website at:www.twomorrows.com/comicbookartist/

All letters of comment, articles and artwork, please mail to:

Jon B. Cooke, EditorComic Book Artist, P.O. Box 204West Kingston, RI 02892-0204

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

NO. 6 CELEBRATING THE LIVES & WORK OF THE GREAT CARTOONISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS FALL 1999

C O N T E N T S

10 COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6 Fall 1999

Conducted by Jon B. CookeTranscribed by John Morrow and Jon B. Knutson

What can you say about John Romita Sr.? Jazzy? Well, that’spushing it, but I found the artist to be a regular guy who treatsannoyances like Ye Ed with courtesy and consideration, andone (as you’ll find) who speaks quite frankly as one ofMarvel’s premier artists in the ’60s and ’70s. Tellingly,he’s still married to his childhood sweetheart and (if theaxiom is true that the character of the parent isrevealed in the manner of the child) he’s agood father—just look at the gracefuldemeanor of his talented son, JohnJr. The old man is a gentleman.John was interviewed viatelephone onMay 19, 1998,and the artistcopyeditedthe tran-script.

Comic BookArtist: You startedworking as a ghost for Atlas?John Romita: Yes, back in 1949. One of myfellow high school graduates from the School ofIndustrial Arts and I met on the subway once. I wasdoing artwork for Coca-Cola; someone else would dothe main painting, and I would do little associated piecesfor both sides of the displays. I tried to use the same colors as the painters on the Coke bottles and Coke glasses; I could do the Coke logo in my sleep. [laughter]

So I saw him on the train, and he said, “How’dyou like to pencil for me?” He was an inkerwho couldn’t pencil. He gave it up in acouple of years, but he was prettygood, and he certainly had a lot ofcontacts; more than I did. He wasworking for Stan Lee, but Stan waslooking for pencilers. He must’vebragged to Stan that he could pen-

cil and ink if he needed it,and then he got cold

feet. So I penciledfor him for sixmonths to a year.The first one wedid was a gang-ster story, 1920smobsters withmachine gunsand old limou-sines. I was sopressed for time Ifaked a lot of it,and it was pretty

weak. Stan was turning out 50 titles a month, and he just wanted tofill pages.

I kept working for Stan through this guy for close to a year, andthen I got drafted. That was the end of that.CBA: I’m familiar with your comic strip influences; Caniff, Sickles,Raymond, Foster. Did you admire any comic book artists?

John: Oh, Jack Kirby, from the time I was tenyears old and first noticed Captain

America Comics was handleddifferently than any otherbook. The only line ofbooks that cameclose to Kirby’s stuff,wherever he was,were the Charlie Birobooks, which I thinkare a forgotten gem inhistory. He was quite aguy. He was almostdoing what StanLee was doingyears later,without beingnoticed.CBA: You

came back fromthe Army….

John: Actually, I was sta-tioned at Governor’s Island in New York

Harbor. I was doing recruiting posters, believe it or not. A friend ofmine was there, and he told me, “If you’re going in the Army, andyou don’t go to Georgia for training, give me a call when you’realmost finished with Basic Training.” I did, and he said they werelooking to fill the place of some guy who was getting discharged. Allhe could do was put in for me; his captain was the art director. Koreawas a year old when I went in. The guys I trained with did go toKorea; I had been slated to go to Germany, and I was almost rootingto go, because I figured it would be a great experience—but I could-n’t say it out loud because my mother and my girlfriend Virginiawould’ve killed me. [laughter] The chances were a million to one, butsure enough, I got the call to go to New York. I spent a year-and-a-half doing recruiting posters, and while I was still in uniform, I startedworking for Stan Lee.CBA: So your wife Virginia was your first sweetheart?John: Oh, yes. We grew up together. I’ve known her since she wasnine years old and I was eleven.CBA: Where was home?John: In Queens, right on the Nassau County border. I movedthere because of Carmine Infantino; he was a buddy of mine. I gothis brother into Governor’s Island. Just before I left, I was a StaffSergeant, and I got Jimmy Infantino in the same way my buddy hadgotten me in two years earlier. Later Carmine told me, “Anything Ican do, let me know. You want to work for DC? I’ll give you a coupleof editors.” So he gave me the romance editors’ number; he didn’tgive me Julie Schwartz’s number. [laughter] I was given entrée to DC;at the time he called up Stan Lee and said, “Any work you’ve gotyou were putting aside for me, give it to John Romita, because I owe

John Romita Sr.: Spidey’s ManYakkin’ with Marvel’s (de facto) ’70s Art Director

CBA Interview

Right: Spidey promotional illo bythe Senior One. This was used to

guide “the huge facade cut-out forthe Marvelmania restaurant,” sezMr. R. Courtesy of Mike Burkey.

Spider-Man ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Below: Ever diligent, here’s JR SR. at work in the ’70s

in this unabashedly swiped pic from FOOM #18.

©1977 Marvel Comics.

him.” Stan said, “You don’t have to beg me to give work to JohnRomita; I’ll give him all the work he wants!” [laughter] I think thatwas the first time Carmine realized I was not just a little schnook.[laughter]

Carmine and I were buddies, and he taught me a lot. He was ahell of a help to me when I was young. He showed me how to drawwomen. He said I was doing too lumpy a silhouette, and he wasright. He said you need to get a very compact, simple silhouette, andput the details inside. That was one of my turning points. That’s whyI was able to do romance stuff.CBA: So you went in uniform to Stan’s office?John: Yes. I remember Morrie Kuramoto used to always remark,“Who the hell is that guy in uniform coming up here all the time?”But I didn’t get to know anybody; I was always so quick to get backon duty. I had a Class A pass, so anytime I wasn’t working I could gouptown.CBA: At that time there were no staff artists at Atlas, right?John: No, there was a production department; letterers and colorists.I remember Morrie and Artie Simek were up there, and a couple ofother guys. As far as I know, there weren’t any artists up there. Theyhad disbanded in 1947. Gene Colan told me there was an overnightmassacre; they were all let go.CBA: John Buscema told me that Martin Goodman discovered awhole closet full of inventory material that would never get used,and fired the whole group.John: That was the nature of the business; that was not uncom-mon. Everybody had the same specter hanging over them; an editorwould buy the stories, and he would pile them up for emergencies.He was keeping artists busy so he could always call on them. Thepublishers never understood that. Inventory was a natural thing.When I was nineteen, an editor named Steve Douglas paid me $200

for a twelve-page story; it was very generous. That was like eightweeks pay, and he never used the story. When I went in there, heput it on top of a pile on his desk that was about a foot tall; five-pagers and six-pagers that he was never going to use. He put iton top, just as a gesture, and said, “I’m not going to use it,but it’s here in case I need it.” He supported artists during allsorts of slumps. He was a wonderful guy.CBA: What was the Spring of ’57 like? Did you think itwas all over?John: I thought I would never be in comics again. I could-n’t believe I got work at DC. When Stan pulled a westernbook out from under me in the middle of a story, I figured, “That’s it.” I never got paid for it, and I toldVirginia, “If Stan Lee ever calls, tell him to go to hell.”[laughter] I’m glad I never did that. [laughter]

We were watching the Senate Committee hearings;everything sounded as though this was the death knell.The bells were tolling; I had been expecting itsince the mid-’50s, because I thought televi-sion had killed the golden goose.

That was the 10-year cycle GeneColan feared. When he came back intothe business again at Marvel, he said,“I was there in ’47 when they cut ourthroats. I was there in ’57 when theycut our throats. I don’t want it to happenagain.” I told him I thought it was going to be dif-ferent this time, that ’67 was not going to be the prob-lem.CBA: Gene worked with you at DC on the romancebooks, right?

Above: John’s original sketches forhis character, The Prowler, origi-nally named “The Stalker.” Thanks

to Mike Burkey. Prowler ©1999Marvel Characters, Inc.

Left: Mary Jane Watson in repose by John. From a1975 portfolio. Courtesyof Al Bigley. Mary Jane

©1999 MarvelCharacters, Inc.

Fall 1999 COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6 11


John: Yes, he was there for the same reason I was. We were look-ing for work. I always felt a little like an outsider there, because I wasa little bit shy. I would not push myself on anybody. I also tell every-body I used to pass through the flat files that had all the original art-work of all my favorite artists: Kubert, Gil Kane. All the sensationalstuff I could’ve had—just open the drawer and take it out—and Iwas too afraid and too ashamed to admit that I would do that. I justdidn’t want to be pushy; I regret every minute of it. [laughter]CBA: What editors did you work for on DC’s romance line in the1960s?John: Zeena Brodie was there when I first started. Phyllis Reed hadthe longest tenure. Then I worked for Jack Miller for the last year orso.CBA: Did you ever try for an editorial position at DC?John: Phyllis Reed was leaving, and she did want to put me up foreditor of the romance section, but I’d be losing my own top artistwhen I came in. [laughter] I was doing all the major stories, the coverstories. We would do a cover, then write a story about it.CBA: Who were most of your writers?John: I was working a lot with Bob Kanigher’s stuff. He compli-mented me one day in the elevator; he liked what I was doing withthe romance stuff. In my stupid naiveté, I said, “I hope you don’tmind I made a few changes in the stories.” He almost went through

the roof of the elevator! [laughter] He said, “What the hell are youtalking about?” I swallowed hard and said, “Sometimes I’d add apanel, or take out a panel and do double duty with your copy in onepanel.” He just tore me apart before we got to the lobby. He shred-ded me. [laughter]CBA: Were you ever interested in writing?John: I do think about it, but every time I try it, I tie myself up inknots, because my writing process is so long and drawn out that Iwould never get it done. I’m too much of a perfectionist, and itwould not flow out of me quick enough to make a deadline.CBA: Did you catch wind of nefarious things like kickbacks?John: Actually, Jack Miller was very blatant about it. After beingwith DC for about seven years with all the women editors, I neverhad the slightest hint of kickbacks, or any kind of seamy underside.Jack Miller takes over, and the first Christmas he had me at his deskto talk about a script, and there were gift certificates on his desk, tobe signed by artists. I was too naive and stupid to even know what itwas about. I asked one of the other artists about it, and he said,“Oh, did you give him one? Did you sign one?” It was like a $100gift certificate for Macy’s. I said, “No.” I didn’t even know what itwas for. He gave me one, but I just put it down, going, “Oh, that’sinteresting.” [laughter] I was such a stupid kid. I don’t know why hekept giving me work; I guess I was regarded as one of the top menin the romance department. I think he probably was pissed off at meafter that. [laughter]

I never heard about it at Marvel; Stan Lee was above reproach,but I heard about it at other places. An editor at DC started tellingguys he was investing in an art studio, and he wanted us all to workfor him. He was dangling big money in front of us, and he had meconned into thinking I was going to illustrate a book on the AmericanIndian with him. I was even giving him samples; that’s how stupid Iwas. What he did was say he needed a little money to get off theground with the project. I was getting about $360 for a 15-page job.DC’s practice at the time was to give you a script and a check for thejob at the same time; the editor said, “What I want you to do is writeme out a personal check for $360 after I pay you for this, and thenI’ll pay you for the next job—it’ll really be for this one.” I swallowedthat. It went that way for about six months, and sure enough, theday after Christmas 1964, he died. I went into the office, and there’sabout half a dozen guys all with sweat beads all over their foreheads.Some of those guys were $2000 into the company, and as far as thecompany knew, the artists and that editor had pulled a scam. Theydidn’t treat me badly; I paid them back the money—I did the artworkfor it, I think. Other guys, they said, “If you don’t lay a check for$2000 on the desk right now, we’re gonna have the police come.”CBA: At some point, the romance work started drying up. Wereyou eager to move on?John: A few months later, they said, “We’ve got so much inventory,we’re just not going to buy any more artwork for a while.” I was toostupid to say, “How about taking me into Julie Schwartz and intro-ducing me?” I did know a few of the production people and some ofthe editors, but I never got an offer from them, so I went over toStan Lee. I always had a feeling somebody was keeping me out ofthe adventure department.

About two weeks after I left DC, I was assigned to do Daredevil.I got a call from George Kashdan asking me if I wanted to doMetamorpho. Ramona Fradon just had left it, and I regretted it; I hada handshake deal with Stan, and I think they would’ve paid memore. Only my foolish, naive honor kept me from telling Stan I’mgoing back to DC. So I stayed with Stan; I guess I did the right thing.CBA: Why did you work over Kirby’s breakdowns on those firstDaredevils? Was that a request from Stan?John: I had inked an Avengers job for Stan, and I told him I justwanted to ink. I felt like I was burned out as a penciler after eightyears of romance work. I didn’t want to pencil any more; in fact, Icouldn’t work at home any more—I couldn’t discipline myself to doit. He said, “Okay,” but the first chance he had he shows me thisDaredevil story somebody had started and he didn’t like it, and hewanted somebody else to do it. While I was up there turning in acover, he asked me to sort of sketch out how I would work out thiscertain page of Daredevil. So I sketched it out quickly in pencil andhe loved it. He said, “Wanna help me out? How about penciling this

Above: John was romance artistsupreme at DC before joining theMarvel Age of Comics. Here’s hiscover for My Love #4, the artist

taking another spin with the lovey-dovey stuff—this time for

Stan. Courtesy of Jerry Boyd.©1970 Marvel Comics.

Conducted by Jon B. CookeTranscribed by John Morrow

Marie Severin started in comics as a colorist for the EC ComicsBullpen, sharing an office with genius Harvey Kurtzman. Then shewent on to become, along with Flo Steinberg, the heart and soul ofthe Marvel Bullpen. The artist is a superb caricaturist and highlyunderrated cartoonist. Still working in the biz, Marie was inter-viewed via phone on June 16, 1998, and she copy-edited the finaltranscript.

Comic Book Artist: You left Marvel and Atlas in 1957.When you came back, how'd you hear that they needed help?Marie Severin: In 1964, I needed help! [laughter] After I leftMad in the early ’50s, I went up to Atlas, with Stan, Joe Maneely,John Severin, Bill Everett, and all those guys in the bullpen. Therewere a lot of really nice guys in and out; in those days they dressedup. The didn't look like hobos. [laughter] They wore ties and shirts,sports jackets. No sneakers, none of that. This was the ’50s. Youcould leave the office and go into the Plaza and still look okay.

I left Stan when everything collapsed. It was the aftermath ofwhen comics sales went down. They flooded the market, as every-body knows. I think they had 600 titles. Everything just died. Stan

had to decimate, and it was just awful for him. He must'vebeen miserable.

I had a friend at the Federal Reserve Bank, and theywanted to put out a book about the automated check

system; those funny numbers you see at thebottom of checks. So I did a comic bookon that, and I wanted it to look reallynice, so I had my brother John do the

final illustrations. At the time it wasthe most-printed comic bookevery published.CBA: Was it cartoony?Marie: Yeah. I did the lay-outs for it. Producing a comicfor the Federal Reserve Bank islike working for the CatholicChurch. [laughter] You had to

go through committeeand be sterilized andlooked at and turnedover and redone. Ihave infinite patience,

and when I finally got itokayed, I had John do it,and it really came out anice-looking book.CBA: So you didthe breakdowns, and

he did the finishes?Marie: Yeah. I did the production on the whole thing. John's art-work was more finished than mine, and who better to do it? It wasreverse nepotism, [laughter] but I wouldn't trust anybody else withstuff like that.

But the bank wasn't exciting work. I did some film strip work, butthey thought I was too comic-booky. So I left there, and I thought I'dgo back into comics until I got into something else. I went up toHarvey Comics, and they gave me the runaround. I didn't like tobacktrack, but I figured I'd go see what Stan was doing—and I nevergot out of the office. [laughter] I went in to Stan with this portfoliowith all this stuff in it, and Stan never looked at it. "Marie, Marie!Oh, this is great! Look Solly, it's Marie! Give her some work; we needsomebody on production." So I started doing their production, andSol was happy. Then I started doing some corrections, and all of asudden they had a one-person production department, because Icould correct some of the art. I was not a Gene Colan or a Jack Kirby,but I knew enough about it to do some corrections. The Bullpen wasjust Sol and Flo Steinberg and myself. Morrie Kuramoto would comein, and so would Artie Simek to do the lettering.

Then the comics started to grow, and the next person who camein was John Romita, then John Verpoorten came in out of the clearblue sky. He started doing a lot of the production stuff; becauseDitko had left, I started doing “Dr. Strange.”CBA: How'd you get that job?Marie: They had nobody else to do it. I was never that ambitious;

More Than “Just Marie”The Glorious Artist Marie Severin Talks Up Marvel

CBA Interview


Right: In the late ’60s/early ’70s,Marie designed many covers for

Marvel. Here’s a rejected CaptainAmerica layout circa 1971.

Courtesy of R. Gary Land. Cap©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.Below: Possibly Marie’s apex at

Marvel was her collaboration withbrother John Severin on Kull the

Conqueror, one of the mostexquisitely produced books of

Marvel’s line. This is one of theplates from the Severins’ Kull

portfolio. Courtesy of the artist.Kull ©1999 The Estate of Robert E. Howard.


I never came into the office saying, "Ooh, I want to do Dr. Strange."I said, "Okay, I'll do that," or "Gee, you need a correction? Okay."It's a job and I got paid, and it was a man's world and subject matter,and I wasn't pushing it. One time Esquire magazine wanted Kirby todo a spread on comics and the college culture, because the collegekids were into comics, and the dope culture was just beginning to getnoticed. Stan or Sol—I don't know which—decided they didn't wantKirby taken off what he was doing, because he was essentially doingall the major stuff, and they didn't want him to lose any time doingthis Esquire stuff. I'm sure he would've been delighted and charged alot more than I did, but I went over to Esquire representing Marvel.They gave me a page to do, which I brought in the next day, andthey were delighted and gave me a five-page spread. I thought,"Gee, that's nice, and it's freelance!" Martin Goodman saw it, andsaid, "What is she doing in production? Give her artwork to do." Sothat's when Stan said, "Oh, okay." So I started doing art as well asdesigning covers and whatever.CBA: Before you did Dr. Strange, how much finished art—pen-ciled and inked—had you had published?Marie: Just fill-ins, letter pages, stuff like that, even at EC. I wasn'tdoing stories; I just had learned along the way. I was following somany people and looking at their stuff and handling it at Marvel, Isuddenly discovered when they asked me to do it that I wasn'tafraid, and I just did it.CBA: You were doing inter-office cartoons, so they knew youcould do humor. Did they just not consider you for the work?Marie: They didn't know where to put it; and also, Stan isn't thatfunny. I mean, he's funny, but he's no Harvey Kurtzman. Well, whois? [laughter] That's no insult to Stan. I think if Harvey had seen whatI started doing, then he'd have found somewhere to use me.CBA: You and Harvey shared an office at EC, right?Marie: Yes. I did some cartoons for office parties and stuff, but Iwas not skilled and ready to jump into stories, and I never evenapproached anybody to do that. My stuff was very amateurish. I hadan essence of something, but I wouldn't even approach it. My tech-nique was hardly perfected; I don't think I ever perfected it. [laugh-ter] They knew I had a talent, and some things I excelled at.

When you're surrounded by guys like John Severin, Davis, Wood,Craig, etc., you know your place! [laughter] I hadn't really worked atit. I was not as good as those guys.CBA: Other than just assimilating what was around you, did youhave any direct influences? Did you check out other cartoonists?Marie: Sure. You must recognize the best storytellers and try tounderstand them. I always communicated with people all my life, andI'd write letters to somebody and draw a little cartoon on the enve-lope. My brother had done this, and I thought it was very funny.When I was in grammar school, I thought everybody drew, becauseat home everybody could do this stuff, so I didn't think it was unusu-al. It was when I went to school that I realized only one or two peo-ple in the classroom could do stuff like that. When you are in thefield, the background you came from, your education, and means ofcommunication all come together—then you see how techniqueswork. Some cartoonists are pure genius.CBA: Did you work on your high school yearbook? Did you docartoons for that?Marie: Some. It was a Catholic school, so I wasn't about to be thatrambunctious anyway. [laughter] You did holy pictures and portraitsof other kids.CBA: I've heard how unbelievably small the bullpen office was.You were literally shoulder to shoulder.Marie: It was disgusting. [laughter] Thank God we were all cleanand bathed. [laughter] No windows—we were stuck in this littlematchbox; but that's the way it was at Marvel in the early days.When we moved again, bookkeeping and all the advertising peoplehad windows, and the art staff was stuck in the middle. [laughter] Itwas so annoying. When they offered me a [freelance] contract atMarvel many years later, I said, "When? When can I leave?Please…" [laughter]CBA: Do you remember when Roy Thomas arrived?Marie: Yeah! I thought, "Who is this little guy? [laughter] Gee, hemust be good, because Stan is surrounding himself with productivepeople, so he must be okay." Roy was a riot. He was so young and

such a fan, and I had my doubts; but of all of them that came, hewas the pick of the bunch. He was the first and the best. He kneweverything about comics, and besides being absolutely obsessed withcomics, he could write. He really could write, and he had respect forthe stuff. I really liked working with Roy.CBA: You did hit it off with Flo, right? Did you guys socialize?Have lunch?Marie: She's great. Oh yeah, we had lunch a lot. She was a funnylady. She had the same attitude toward comics that I do. "Aren'tthey funny? Aren't they weird? These people; what are they doing?These fans are a riot!" [laughter]CBA: Do you remember when the fans started showing up at theoffices, bothering you guys?Marie: In the beginning, it wasn't bothering. I remember the firsttime I really knew things were beginning to move. Flo had a littlesculpture on her desk: "Look what I got from the fans! They gave hethis award!" It was a little statue—nicely done. "And the mail iscoming in like crazy!" Stan was beginning to be very happy, becausehe was getting some respect from the industry, because his bookswere beginning to sell!CBA: Who were you working with on the Dr. Strange stories?Marie: I was very lucky in that Stan worked closely with all theartists. Gene Colan would develop a method of taking a taperecorder in, because if he missed something in the conversation withStan, he'd call Stan and ask him, and Stan wouldn't know what hewas talking about. Stan created so quickly, it was just out of his head."Next, please." [laughter] It's just wonderful, the juices he revs up.Me and Romita and Trimpe were the last ones he had time to usethe old method on. At that time, he'd talk a plotwith you, and you'd make notes andcome back with it sort of layedout. Maybe he'd type some-thing up, I forget. You'dcome back with arough layout andnotes in the marginand he would goover it, standing allthe time by thedrawing board.Panel by panel,inch by inch, hewent over it quickly,

Above: Marie tells us this was agag cartoon she drew for a pro-posed (but never realized) collegenewspaper syndicate venture fea-turing Marvel’s beloved charactersby Stan Lee. The Man pennedthe ’toon’s risque gag line: “12bucks to find out she’s only got avitamin deficiency!” Courtesy ofthe artist. Dr. Strange ©1999Marvel Characters, Inc.

Below: Marie even includes car-toons with her change of addressnotices! I received this one, a cari-cature of the artist herself, afterher move to Long Island last year!Ain’t she sweet? ©1999 MarieSeverin.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke

Dave Cockrum got his start as a fan artist way back in the ’60s andbroke in the field as Murphy Anderson’s assistant at DC Comics. Aftera memorable run on “The Legion of Super-Heroes,” Dave went on tothe House of Ideas where he co-created, with Len Wein, The New X-Men, the franchise that went on to give Marvel enormous financialsuccess in the following decades. Dave was interviewed via tele-phone in July, 1998, and he copy-edited the transcription.

Comic Book Artist: You were involved in comics fandomquite a bit. What did you do?Dave Cockrum: The fanzine I did the most for was calledFantastic Fanzine which was published by Gary Groth (who now actsas a super-critic against comics in The Comics Journal). He was a bigfan in those days. I also did some work for a tabloid called EnterpriseMonthly and stuff for Buddy Saunders and the Star-Studded bunchin Texas. CBA: You invented characters and had an eye on creating heroes….Dave: I had a huge stable of my own characters. It’s a story thatLen Wein loves to tell about the creation of the New X-Men; thefamous “Dave’s Comics Super-hero Sketchbook.” I had this hugesketchbook filled with characters I had come up with. Len keepsremembering that I took the X-Men drawings out of that book butthat’s not actually true. I made them up separately, but I did havethat book of characters. That’s one of the things I loved to do: inventcharacters.CBA: Who were the greatest influences in your drawing?

Dave: Guys whose work I really loved were WallyWood, Gil Kane, Murphy Anderson,and Joe Kubert. A little later, JackKirby because I hadn’t seen hiswork until Marvel started up. Ididn’t discover Will Eisneruntil later but I just lovedhis stuff, too.CBA: You obviouslycollected comics forsome time….Dave: I started inthe ’50s, but every time

I blinked, my folks wouldtake the books and

burn ’em. I started collectingwhen Fawcett was still publish-

ing Captain Marvel, and I havevery strong memories of Captain

Marvel Junior.CBA: Were you attracted to themore realistic style of Mac Raboy’swork?Dave: I loved C.C. Beck’swork but when I first startedworking in comics, DC hadrevived the Captain Marvelstuff, and I openly agitat-ed to do CaptainMarvel Jr. because I

loved Raboy’s art. That was just before I quit DC and went toMarvel. Had I stayed, I think that I would have been the regular artistfor Junior.CBA: There was another comic in the ’50s that you liked a lot:Blackhawk.Dave: Oh God, I’m a major Blackhawk fan. I had an opportunityto do the book at one point, but because there was a $30 a pagedifference in my Marvel rate and my DC rate, I couldn’t afford it. Itwould have been giving away every third page for free. So I settledfor doing some covers and two back-up stories. Dan Spiegle endedup doing it. I’m kinda sorry.CBA: What is it about the group you liked?Dave: I dunno. I just always enjoyed them. I first discovered themin the ’50s, when they were flying jets, but I went back and boughtthe older Quality issues. I have nearly a complete run of Blackhawk.It’s the only book I still actively collect.CBA: When did you first have professional aspirations?Dave: Real early. Drawing was something that I always could doand I started drawing super-heroes early on. I also wrote letters tothe comics. When Marvel first came on the scene, there was a timewhen I wrote a letter to every Marvel book, every month. (Then Irealized that it was too much work and I would right one letter thatwould address all of the books.) I met my first wife through the letterpage of Fantastic Four #34. At the time, they were publishing fulladdresses and she read the letter and became interested because Iwas a sailor. We exchanged letters, she comes to California, and weget married!CBA: Did you draw fan material during your time in the Navy?Dave: Yeah. I was stationed in San Diego and later Guam. I woulddraw in all of my spare time, even drawing cartoons for the ship’snewspaper. I got out in 1970 and came straight to New York, just intime for Phil Seuling’s convention in July. I met all kinds of professionalsthere and then went up to DC first—but their attitude was that I wasclose to professional quality but just on the wrong side of it. AndMarvel wasn’t ready for me yet, so Neal Adams sent me over toWarren. So that was where my first professional stuff appeared. Itwould have probably benefited me if I had stayed on and done morestuff for Warren because I was learning black-&-white techniquesthat I later quit using.CBA: You had a real strong inking presence with a heavy use ofblacks.Dave: Yeah, I was imitating Neal Adams and Dick Giordano. AtMarvel, they just wanted me to ink but I wanted to pencil. I clam-ored about it and finally they just let me go ahead and pencil. (I’vebeen a penciler for so long, that I’ve pretty much lost my feel for ink-ing.)CBA: You went over to DC from Warren?Dave: Yeah. I started doing background inking, first for TonyDeZuniga (who was doing a lot of House of Mystery and stuff likethat). They weren’t running a stable yet, at that point. He was okayto work for, but his wife, Mary, was something else. She looked atmy stuff and said, “Ehhh! Ten years, maybe, you might make it.” Istayed long enough to work on five or six issues, but MurphyAnderson needed a background inker for the work he was doing onCurt Swan’s Superman and Bob Brown’s Superboy. He also got the“John Carter of Mars” strip, which I desperately wanted to help outwith (being a John Carter fan all of my life) but Murphy wouldn’t letme touch that. He’d say, “This is mine! Go away!” I worked forMurphy for about a year in a downtown Manhattan studio. It was

Dave “Blackhawk” CockrumThe Marvel Days of the Co-Creator of the New X-Men

CBA Interview


Below: Dave’s seminal creation,Nightcrawler, depicted in way-cool

horrific fashion. This illustrationappeared in a 1975 art portfolio.

Courtesy of Al Bigley.Nightcrawler ©1999 Marvel

Characters, Inc.

by Chris Knowles

Quick! Name an artistically successful and challenging movieadaptation in comics. Take your time, now. Having trouble? Okay,name a comics series based on a licensed character or concept thatwasn’t just a slapdash cash-in or just a serialized toy commercial. It’stough, right? Well, this is a bit of a trick question. For my moneythere’s been only one truly memorable licensed comic book and itwas published in magazine format. Oh, now the lights come on outthere. Yes, folks, I am referring to Doug Moench’s gonzo demolitionof Planet of the Apes.

The Planet of the Apes movie series in many ways was the pro-totype for Star Wars. Not thematically, of course, but commercially.Back in the ’70s, you didn’t have the kind of vertical integration ofmedia and manufacturing that exists today, so licensing arrange-ments were often haphazard and muddled. Disney was the mostaggressive in marketing their concepts—and had been from veryearly on—but by the ’70s, they didn’t have anything really worthlicensing. Star Trek continued to spawn all sorts of spin-offs and tie-ins, but without new episodes to promote the line, the merchandisingwas low-key by today’s standards. It was Planet of the Apes that wasthe original model for today’s instantaneous licensing blitzkriegs—butunlike today, when boatloads of merchandise are readied before the

movie is even finished, the Apesavalanche didn’t start until sixyears after the release of the firstfilm.

The story goes that in1973, CBS ran Planet of theApes as the movie of the weekon the night of a blizzard orsome such and it garnered thehighest ratings in the network’shistory. Battle for the Planet ofthe Apes had been released thatsame year and didn’t dazzleanyone, but apparently the kidswere hungry for a new obses-sion and Planet of the Apes ,with its fashionable dystopi-anism, fit the bill. Soon yourlocal K-Mart was bursting withApes-junk of every conceivablevariety, most of it as shoddy and

miserable as most of the other junk that was peddled to kids inthe ’70s by aging and miserable schlock merchants. One particularitem that springs to mind was the hollow plastic Cornelius doll that

came, of course, with a parachute (proof positive that some ineptproduct manager didn’t even bother to actually watch the Apesflicks). Not all of it was lousy—there are few 30-something guys outthere who don’t have a warm spot somewhere in their hearts forMego’s Apes action figures—but most Apes merch was rubbish.However the era’s laxity in trademark protection also allowed ayoung comics writer immersed in radical politics and theCounterculture to take the Apes concept on the kind of rocket rideunimaginable in this day and age.

Planet of the Apes was not published as a standard comic. Itpremiered as part of Marvel’s late and unlamented black-&-white

magazine line. In the early ’70s,publishers were placing theirbets on horror and Kung Fu toget their circulation up andMarvel released most of theirexcursions in those genres in theformat they cribbed from JimWarren. Unfortunately they usu-ally didn’t utilize their A-list tal-ent on the books and most ofthe titles were short-lived. Theidea with the POTA mag was to

sandwich articles on the films between Ape funnies and fill whateverpages remained with advertising.

A Few Apes up his SleevePlanet of the Apes started simply enough. Under the helm of

Tony Isabella, POTA #1 featured a relatively straightforward adapta-tion of the first Apes movie drawn by Marvel stalwarts George Tuskaand Mike Esposito. Charlton Heston didn’t allow his likeness to beused for the adaptation so Tuska drew Colonel Taylor looking likeTony Stark on a bad hair day. It was the opening feature that provid-ed a portent of things to come. “Terror on the Planet of the Apes”was Moench’s concept of the Apes mythos. The themes of racialwarfare in the films was made explicit and the villain of the piece wasGeneral Brutus, a gorilla with a double life. By day he was the localPeace keeper, mouthing Nixonian law and order platitudes and bynight he was the murderous grand dragon of the Klan-like ApeSupremacists who murdered and terrorized the docile human popula-tion. The protagonists were Jason, a embittered human whose par-ents were murdered by Brutus, and Alexander, a Roddy McDowallianchimp.

Not content with this tableau of racism and murder, Moenchthen introduced a mutant race of drones who bred human-apehybrids as slaves and were themselves in the service of a bunch ofgiant talking brains. The brains were using Brutus to do God-knowswhat and supplied the Apeists with futuristic rayguns to facilitatemore efficient human killing. The Brains themselves were par forMoench’s course. One spoke in a typical portentous ’70s Marvelfashion, another spouted his pronouncements in rhyme and yetanother spoke in a Yancy Street tough guy dialect. Why is anyone’sguess.

Moench collaborated with Mike Ploog on Terror. Ploog, former-ly an assistant of Will Eisner, pulled out the stops and showed off theconsiderable facility he developed under the tutelage of the master.After a last-minute hatchet job by inker Frank Chiaramonte on #4,Ploog began to do his finished art in soft pencil which gave the seriesa lush and moody look, reminiscent of the Filipino artists. On one ofPloog’s off-issues, Moench took the opportunity to riff on both Jack

Weirdness on the Planet of the ApesExamining Doug Moench’s “Gonzo Demolition” of POTA

Retrogaze


Above: Commingled human/apegypsy tribes? Why the hell not?Writer Doug Moench was justwarming up! From POTA #6.

Planet of the Apes ©1999 20thCentury Fox Film Corp.

Below: Wonderful example ofAlfredo’s mastery of tonal art.From POTA #7. POTA ©199920th Century Fox Film Corp.

Below: Portrait of Frank Brunner in the ’70s.

Photo taken from the book,After-Image: The Art of Frank Brunner (1978). Courtesy of the artist.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke

Frank Brunner was almost immediately a fan-favorite artist when hecame into his own as artist on “Dr. Strange” in the early ’70s, join-ing the ranks of Steve Ditko, Gene Colan, and Barry Windsor-Smithas a top artist on the Master of Mystic Arts. After a relatively shortstay at Marvel, Frank went on to do distinguished work in animationdesign (notably on the X-Men cartoon series). He was interviewedby phone on July 22, 1999 and the artist copy-edited the transcript.

Comic Book Artist: Where are you from?Frank Brunner: Brooklyn.CBA: Did you get into art early, when you were young?Frank: Well, I grew up in a very poor neighborhood, and I got mybreak while in junior high school in Brooklyn, and attended the HighSchool of Art and Design. This was when I was about 15 years old.CBA: When did you get interested in comic books?Frank: From the first comics I read in the late 1950s.CBA: What comics were you into?Frank: First I was into the Barks kind of stuff, Donald Duck, BugsBunny. Then I went on to other things, like Batman and Superman.Actually, my favorite first “serious” comic book I read was Turok, Sonof Stone. I was reading Uncle Scrooge and Turok around the sametime.CBA: Were you too young for the ECs?Frank: Yes. So, when I found out I’d missed them, well, I ranaround to every second-hand store, and got as many as I could, later

on.CBA: What particular artists were

you keyed into?Frank: Immediately, all of themhad something. I guess at thetime, fine artists like Wally Wood,Frazetta, Williamson, andKubert. CBA: When did you realizeyou could draw for a living?

Frank: When I realized I couldn’tdo anything else! [laughs] I didn’thave any interest in doing anythingbut draw. As a matter of fact, when Iwent to the New York School ofVisual Arts briefly, they asked what Iwas doing there. They saw what Iwas doing in the comics, and theysaid, “Get out of here!”CBA: What, they didn’t sup-port comics?Frank: No, they just felt Icould make a living. They said,“You don’t need to be hereunless you’re trying to learnsomething about existentialart.” By the way, it was atSVA when I first met BurneHogarth, one of the founders

of the school. I showed him aTarzan-like story I was working on

called “Carnak.” He looked at the pencils with

interest, then put them down, looked up at me and (with a deepsigh) he said, “This is very good, but don’t do comics! It’s all over; ithas no future!” He looked very serious. Interestingly enough, a fewyears later, when he was rediscovered in France, he quit the schooland was drawing Tarzan again!CBA: The first work I recall seeing of yours was in the fan pages ofthe Warren black-&-white horror books. Frank: Yeah, those were my little drawings that were at the bot-tom of my letters which I’d draw on whatever paper I had lyingaround.

CBA: Was that your first published material?Frank: I would say so, yes.CBA: When did you discover fandom? Were you a frequent contributor to fanzines?Frank: It sort of happened at the same time. I was a comic bookfan, and I’d go to the earliest conventions and see all the old GoldenAge stuff, whatever; when I started drawing, it was for fanzines.CBA: Do you recall who you hung out with at the shows?Frank: Who did I hang out with? Not particularly. They werefriends I’d met in school and college who were also into comics.There was a kid who was a class behind me who became a writer fora while, named Bill Mantlo, who went to the same school. But wedidn’t really hang around that much together. CBA: Did you start seeking work from the mainstream comics?Frank: Actually, I’d intended to become an underground artist. InNew York at the time, there was an underground Sunday comicssupplement that was part of the paper, Gothic Blimp Works. It wasin color. I was out to get a feature in there. When I looked around, in

Of Doctors and DucksInterview with Artist Frank Brunner on His Marvel Days

Right: Frank pitched this risqueone-page (unpublished?) strip to National Lampoon

in the early ’70s. ©1999 Frank Brunner.

CBA Interview



1969, suddenly the whole underground scene had gone to the WestCoast. I then went to National Lampoon, where they’d publishedsome pretty weird stuff, and I almost got a strip going for them.Lampoon happened to be in the same building as Marvel at the time,and I remember my experience very vividly. I was going to the officesof National Lampoon trying to sell this one-page strip for theircomics section. Anyway, when I went up there, nobody was laugh-ing, they were all dead serious. I was hearing from other offices, peo-ple shouting, “Is this funny?” Then I went downstairs to visit Marvelfor a while, because I knew Marie Severin and a couple of the otherartists down there, but they were on the floor, rolling around on thefloor laughing! And I thought, “Maybe this is where I should beworking!” I remember what they were laughing about, too. It wasan issue of Amazing Spider-Man; Romita had just done the cover,and the character was holding his head down, and I guess it was thedeath of Aunt May, or Mary Jo, or whoever—holding his headdown, before John put the spider-lines in the head, it looked likeSpidey was holding a large grapefruit in front of his face, and every-one was just hysterical.CBA: Do you recall who you dealt with at National Lampoon?Frank: Yeah, Michael Gross. Strangely enough, I didn’t know hisname was Michael Gross when I first visited the office. I had a stripcalled, “Gross Tales from the Drive-In,” and so, I showed him thisstrip, and then I realized, “Oh, my God, his name is Michael Gross!”He tried to act like he was not too thrilled with it because of the con-cept, but I knew it was the title of the strip. Then Gross told me thisother weird story; he said, “You know, we had Frazetta do a recentcover. Well, I did a cover, too. And you know what? I offered totrade original covers with Frazetta, and he turned me down!” Thisguy was not on the same planet with the rest of us! CBA: What was the name of the other strip you tried to get in theLampoon?Frank: Oh, yeah, it was “Smash Gordon,” obviously a satire ofFlash Gordon.CBA: Whatever happened to that stuff?Frank: It wound up being published in Castle of Frankenstein andthe last installment appeared in Marvel’s b-&-w Unknown Worlds ofScience Fiction #1.CBA: You were obviously submitting to Warren, and to…Frank: Yeah, it’s a long and winding trail. Actually, I still have a10-page story I’d done for Warren just out of high school, that wascommissioned while he was on vacation, or out of town, or some-thing. He saw it, and he rejected it. Then, I went to work for Web ofHorror, they obviously liked my work. And the funny thing is—or notso funny—the way things worked out, Web ceased publication afterthree issues, and we all, Bernie Wrightson and Mike Kaluta andeverybody had stories that were sitting on the shelf! So, I went outthere to Long Island where Cracked magazine, the parent publisher,was located.CBA: Robert Sproul?Frank: Yes. I’ll tell you a little story about that—stories within sto-ries. Sproul only allowed Web of Horror to be published because hewanted to keep Terry Bisson as editor of Cracked. Terry was prepar-ing to leave unless he could start a horror magazine, so they allowedhim to do Web. The guy had a good idea, because Warren’s bookswere going down the tubes really fast at that time, and Warren hadlost all his original artists from the first 10 issues or so, and was justreprinting that stuff and some awful new art! So, it was a good timeto get in, and Web was kind of popular. I sold my first story to TerryBisson that I wrote and drew, called “Santa’s Claws.” I wrote it on aChristmas Eve, and it was about a vampire pretending to be SantaClaus. Terry bought that, and I thought, “Well, I’m off and runningnow!” Of course, like I said, three issues and Terry, for some reasonor another, decided he was going to move to California and becomea flower child. Immediately, Sproul cancelled the book, regardless ofsales. Anyway, I went out to Long Island, I retrieved a lot of the art-work for a lot of the guys on my own, and then I heard through thegrapevine that Warren was interested in hiring the artists from Webof Horror, so I went over to the office and I sold him a story that wasoriginally intended for Web, and did some more stories for him.CBA: Overall, how was your experience at Warren?Frank: I remember one time I brought in a story, and there was a

climactic scene where the monster is confronting thisgirl he’d been chasing, and Jim looked at the pencilsand said, “You know, I’ll bet you $5 you can do thisbetter.” He then took out his wallet and showed me a$5 bill, and I said, “Fine, you’re on,” because $5 actu-ally meant something in those days. I went home, redidit, brought it in, and he said, “You know, I think youwon the bet,” and he takes out his wallet and there’snothing in it! Then he calls in his editor, who wasBilly Graham at the time, and borrows the $5 fromhim to give to me!CBA: I’ve heard he did that a lot to poor Billy.Frank: I heard Jim did a lot worse things to peo-ple; sometimes if he didn’t like their artwork, he’dtake out a stamp that said “Bullsh*t,” and he’d stampit right over the artwork.

Basically Jim had a Hugh Hefner complex—exceptthat he was no Hugh Hefner! That job was taken. At aconvention, somebody overheard me calling him a bastard, andhe confronted me with it. He said, “I heard you called me a ‘bas-tard!’” And here I am, sitting there trying to get work from him! Ilooked at him, and said, “I think I was misquoted!” At the sametime, while I’m sitting there, he gets a phone call from Ralph Reese,and Ralph had just finished a job for him, and was bringing it down-town in a taxi; he was right outside the building, calling him to say

Above: Frank ‘s portrait of “TheDoctor as I see him.” FromAfter-Image. Below:Commission piece. Courtesy ofthe artist. Dr. Strange, Howard©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.


Conducted by Jon B. CookeTranscribed by Sam Gafford

Beginning as an assistant (of sorts) for Dan Adkins in the early ’70s,P. Craig Russell very quickly flowered as an artist during his stay atMarvel. His astonishingly sensitive work matured in dramatic fashionin those years, particularly as collaborator with writer Don McGregoron the series “Killraven.” [Please note that in this interview and thenext—with McGregor—the terms “Killraven,” “War of the Worlds,”and “Amazing Adventures” are used interchangeably to describe thes-f series.] The artist was interviewed by phone on July 21, 1999 andhe copy-edited the final transcript.

CBA: Let’s get right down to it: Craig, where are you from?Craig: Wellsville, Ohio. Across from the tip of the panhandle ofWest Virginia.CBA: When were you born?Craig: October 30th, 1951.CBA: When did your interest in comic books begin?Craig: Oh, as a little kid. You know, we had the Walt Disneycomics and the Harvey comics. You know, Casper and Hot Stuff—allthat sort of thing. So I had little kid comics when I was a little kid,and then Archie comics when I was in elementary and junior highschool. Then one day, I was at a friend’s house and he had #3-14 ofFantastic Four. (So this would have been about 1963, I suppose.) Isat down and started reading those and I was hooked big time!CBA: Yeah? Were you familiar with Kirby’s work?

Craig: At the time, no, it was the stories!And, of course, Kirby’s artwork but I wasn’tconscious of it at the time. I wasn’t sittingthere and thinking, “What great art-work!” I was just reacting to it. It wasabout that time that I started becominginterested in the artists who drew thebook and discerning styles; you know,detecting one from the other.CBA: Were you drawing all this timein childhood?Craig: Oh, yeah. Not obsessively,but it was certainly a pastime that Ienjoyed. It seemed that from third

grade on, I was always the kid in theclass that could draw and I always got alot of attention. That’s real positiveenforcement for a kid.

CBA: Did you do comic strips andstories as a kid?

Craig: No. At the time I

started working for Marvel Comics I had done maybe two dozencomic pages, tops. I did one story in college. I did a story for mybrother for Christmas once while I was in high school about the placewhere he worked, and a couple of things that I would start andnever finish; then my six-page portfolio application for Marvel. Sotwo or three dozen pages, I suppose.CBA: In one of the interviews you did with Comics Journal, youmentioned Dr. Seuss as an influence?Craig: Oh, definitely. I think that still comes out in my work fromtime to time. I responded to pictures from an early age whetherthrough Disney animation or Dr. Seuss or Carl Barks. All of thosethings had a real effect. But, yes, Seuss was one of the first oneswhere I was really affected by the drawings, really drawn in andemotionally affected by them. CBA: Was it the whimsy, the fantasy element that turned you on?Craig: Well, yeah. There’s an emotional sense to his work. The sto-ries I first read were… what is it? The 500 Hats of BatholomewCubbins and Bartholomew and the Oobleck. Those drawings so per-fectly captured that feeling—that fantasy dreamlike feeling. It drewyou into the story in a way that realistic drawings couldn’t do. CBA: Did you clue into fairy tales with the intensity that you ulti-mately showed them?Craig: Ah, I read some fairy tales when I was a kid but I didn’thave any big collections of them or anything. I didn’t have that manychildren’s books. I certainly have a lot more children's books nowthan I did then! We had the little Golden Books but not very manyfairy tales.CBA: Were you increasinglybecoming obsessed withart as you were goingthrough adoles-cence? Craig: In spurts.For days on end Iwould producedrawings andthen I would for-get it for a fewmonths and thenI’d play the pianoobsessively or I’dread

Craig Russell’s Visual PoetryFrom Dr. Pym to Dr. Strange: Talking with PCR

CBA Interview

Below: Craig shared with usthis treasured photo of Don

McGregor (left) and the artisthaving a talk at a mid-’70s

New York comic convention.


obsessively. It went from one interest to another but I always cameback to drawing. By high school, it was a fairly constant thing. I wasthe class artist—the guy who drew backdrops for the band concert ordid drawings for the school newspaper and the yearbook, anddesigned the sets for class plays, did banners for pep rallies, that sortof thing. So it was a real practical kind of application. Not much fan-tasy involved unless there was a fantasy element to the backdroppainting for the prom or whatever. So I was constantly involved thatway.CBA: When did you realize that you can actually make a livingdoing this? Were you conscious that you could actually get a job?Craig: Well, when I got a job at Marvel!CBA: [laughs] When it happened?Craig: [laughs] Yeah, when it happened. Exactly. Even then, I fig-ured I would be living in near poverty all my life! At that point I wasso slow! I never had much facility. There are certain restrictions, ofcourse, in comics that you have to draw certain pictures, you know,to connect the dots that you wouldn’t draw otherwise. Before that, Iwould only draw pictures that interested me. Not every single picturein an Ant-Man story really, really interested me. But you have to dothem! For the first time in my life I was being disciplined to producematerial that I would not do otherwise. And that’s good for training.You really stretch yourself. If you don’t, you just tend to repeat your-self over and over again, although you might become very good atit!CBA: What kind of challenges did you have in art school?Craig: Well, I went to the University of Cincinnati and got adegree in painting. The tone of the school was certainly very anti-illustration or any kind of representational drawing. Most of myteachers came out of the ’50s movement of abstract-expressionism.Not all of them but certainly most of them and they discouraged anystudy of anatomy which plagues me to this day! So I got very littletraining for aspects of drawing or draftsmanship which I could applyto comics. But I did get a lot of exposure to elements of drawingsuch as design and shape, the use of color, that people don’t getwho go directly into comics with no formal training.CBA: And when did you first meet Dan Adkins?Craig: I was, I think, a sophomore in college, so I was about 18 or19. He lived just outside of East Liverpool, Ohio. He’s from the samearea as me. My dad had met him after hearing about this artist thatlived out there and he needed some artwork for a sign or something—and he told Dan all about this son of his who had 5,000 comic booksin the attic and Dan told him to tell me to come out and meet himsometime; which is what I did. Dan told me that if I would work withhim that he could get me into Marvel Comics. I showed him mydrawings. I didn’t take him up on it right away. I did another year inschool and then took some time off in my junior year and startedworking with Dan.CBA: Were you familiar with his work? Craig: Oh, sure. I knew he lived in the area. I found out when Iwas a junior in high school. In choir, there was a kid there who washis paperboy and he said, “Yeah, I know Dan Adkins, the guy whoworks for Marvel Comics”—and I was just amazed that these peoplelived somewhere where ordinary mortals could meet them! So, yeah,I knew his work in Warren comics and the amazing stories he did inCreepy and Eerie, and I knew it from the Adkins and Wood storiesthat he did as Wally’s assistant, and his time as an inker at Marvel.CBA: Those “Dr. Strange” stories....Craig: Right, right. The “Dr. Strange” stories he did.CBA: Right. That’s outstanding stuff. What was he like?Craig: [laughs] Oh, my! We could spend the whole interviewtelling Dan stories! Everyone has a Dan Adkins story. If you just methim for five minutes, you had a Dan Adkins story! Well, he certainlywashed the stars out of my eyes as far as comic book artists being arace apart! [laughter] Although with Dan, he is a race apart! He wasa unique individual, very down to earth.CBA: He tended to swipe a lot.Craig: Oh, yeah. Almost everything had its source someplace else.That’s the way he was taught by Wally Wood. Woody swiped enor-mously but he had such panache and native ability that he turned itinto Wally Wood. His inking was so strong, no matter who he inked,it looked like a Wally Wood story. He’d ink Kirby and it’d look like

Wally Wood! So he was really able to absorb the sourcematerial into his drawing. Dan’s influences sometimescould stand out a little bit more. But his ink-ing style was so strong and when hewas really at his peak, eventhough he was pullingimages from all over theplace, it had a veneer thatgave it a consistency.CBA: Did you think thatwas his greatest strength—his inking or technicalfacility?Craig: Well, certainlytechnical facility, yeah.Those Warren stories,every single one wasan exercise, in a differ-ent inking technique. Thewash story. The Zip-A-Tone story. The cross-hatch story. CBA: Did Danalways have a lot ofassistants?Craig: No. Hewent through aperiod therewhen hemoved backfrom NewYork City,where he’dbeen for anumber ofyears, and Iwas the first onethat worked therewith him in his stu-dio, I think. ValMayerik showed upa few months laterand then therewas anotherkid whoshowed up,Mark Cursy. His name showed up inthe “Ant-Man” credits. He came fora little while. Then just about the time that Ileft to finish school, Paul Gulacy showed up. Dannever really considered us his assistants. We did verylittle assisting to him. He was sort of training us and sort of sponsor-ing us and acting as art director, you know, away from the Marveloffice for us. He’d do thumbnail layouts to show us how to tell astory. When we did the pencils on the story, he’d show us what toredraw and correct.CBA: Was he more of a teacher then?Craig: Well, yeah!CBA: What was he to get out of it?Craig: Just the camaraderie. Here he is, stuck out back in EastLiverpool, Ohio, and here comes somebody else who’s into comics.You welcome them! You’re not exactly awash in members of yourown profession out there—and he just enjoyed our company andhaving somebody else to talk to about comics. And he did have adream there, for a while, of having a studio there that would turnout material. He would do layouts, we would pencil it, he would inkit. Didn’t really happen. I was there temporarily. I always knew that Iwanted to go back to school. He had us all work on one Barry SmithConan that Smith had done the layouts on and then Dan’s studiowas supposed to do the finishes. Well, that was just a disaster! I readin that Smith interview that he’s never looked at it since for whichI’m grateful! The way it worked out was that Dan had me do back-

Above: Detail from Craig’ssplash page to AmazingAdventures #28, giving us aglimpse at the rapidly develop-ing design sense of the artist.Courtesy of Don McGregor.Killraven ©1999 MarvelCharacters, Inc.


Conducted by Jon B. CookeTranscribed by Jon B. Knutson

When I was a kid, my favorite comic book writer was DonMcGregor. Don’s stories, particularly the serials in JungleAction and Amazing Adventures, were multi-lay-ered, mature, and downright dense, packedwith verbiage and some pretty high falutin’vocabulary for kiddie funnybooks. They

were just about the only comics I advocatedfor close friends to read.Don’s a passionate guywho never spoke downto his readers, and I’mproud to call him myfriend. We spoke viatelephone in June 1998,and the transcript wascopyedited by Don.

Comic Book Artist: When did you firstbecome interested in comic books?

Don McGregor: When I was about four or five yearsold, I was actually on my way to kindergarten,and I remember going into the neighbor-hood variety store up in West Warwick,Rhode Island. In those days, they used tohang comic books from the ceiling onwires, and I saw all those comics hanging

up there, with all this color, with words andpictures. It was just this incredible treasure Iwanted to explore immediately.

I can’t recall a time when I didn’t read,and it was because of comic books. In thosedays, they believed people shouldn’t read

when they had the measles, thinking it wouldbe a strain on the eyes or something like that. I

got the measles and my mother read Dick Tracy tome, and having Dick Tracy read to you was just notthe same as reading it yourself!

The first comic book I ever picked up was aHopalong Cassidy comic book, #65. I was six, andmy dad gave me a dime allowance, and I went upand bought that comic book. When Dad camehome from work that night, he said, “What did youget with your allowance?” And I said, [excitedly] “Igot a comic book!” and I held it up in front of him.Dad said, “No son of mine’s going to read comic

books!” The next week, I get my dime, and what do youknow, next month’s Hopalong Cassidy had come out. I’m

sure I did not know a thing about comics coming out on a monthlybasis, or any other time frame. Well, without a moment’s hesitation, Iwas in there handing over my dime and marching out with Hoppy!When my dad came home, he said, “What did you get this week?” Isaid, “I got another comic book!” [laughter] And that ended myallowance for a while. So, from a very, very early age I loved comicbooks. And even though I was only in first grade, no one read those

Hoppy comics to me. I was reading them. Don’t ask me how.CBA: Did you gravitate towards any particular comics, aside fromHopalong Cassidy? Did you read the ECs, for instance?Don: I was very fortunate when it came to comics. I had an unclewho was a real jerk; he often treated other people terribly, but you

had to give him this: He had great taste in comic books. Sowhen I would go to my grandmother’s house, she hadthe comics up in her attic, and I spent a lot of hours upthere. He had a lot of the comics from the ’40s—JackCole’s Plastic Man, the old Daredevil Comics andthe “Little Wise Guys” stuff, Military Comics withthe Blackhawks—I mean, we’re talking aboutSuperman going back to the teens! So, I had a lotof that stuff, and I tease my mom to this day thatshe convinced me to get rid of those comic bookswhen I was about 13; I never would’ve had to worryabout what happened at Marvel Comics in the

mid-’70s if I had all those comic books, but that’s anoth-er story.

From the very beginning, I had a great deal of love—but notjust for comics—I also really loved film and books. It wasn’t myintent to become a comic book writer, I wanted to be a writer, peri-od. In the beginning, I was writing prose more than comics. Then,when I was about 16, I got ahold of my dad’s old 8mm Bolex cam-era, and I realized if I wrote the movie, and if I directed it, and Istarred in it, I always won the fights! It didn’t matter if the peoplewere six-foot-ten, and they would say, “But Don, I could kill you! I’djust pound you on top of your thick skull and lay you out on theground.” And I’d say, “Yeah, yeah, but you see, in the script here,right here in black and white, it says [laughter] I win! So, here’s howwe’re going to do it.” But better than that, you always got the girl!This was definitely preferable to real life! And I thought, “I’m goingto keep on doing this! This is great!” And I loved doing my ownstunts, and did a lot of crazy ones.

When I finally got to do scenes with Alex Simmons, a few yearslater, we had a helluva time! There actually exists footage of Alexswinging an ax at my head, me ducking down below it, and it chuck-ing into the tree over my head. Reason enough, for people whoalready consider me certifiable, to proclaim, “Ah ha! Here’s proofpositive!” We didn’t have fake props! At that time, what the hell didwe know about fake props? We hung off waterfalls, choking eachother! Well, that’s a whole other area we could explore.CBA: You didn’t pass on comic books at a certain age, like a lot ofother kids did, when they’re 13 or 14, obviously, because you wroteletters to Marvel Comics.Don: Well, there was a period when I got rid of my comic bookswhen I was about 13, 14; yeah, I kind of did. I wrote about thattransition time that faces all collectors in a Ragamuffins story, “ThePack Rat Instinct.” It was drawn beautifully by Gene Colan, and itwas due to appear in a number of different Eclipse comics, but itnever saw print. At the time, Dean Mullaney, the founder of Eclipse,said it brought tears to his eyes, and I had him hooked. I think any-body with that pack-rat instinct would relate. There wouldn’t be adry eye in the house at the end of that story. But that artwork hasbeen lost. I’ve been trying to track it down, I actually have my handlettered copy placement with the art, but it isn’t clear enough toprint, only good enough to show how beautiful those Gene Colan

McGregor’s Rage!Our Interview (finally!) with Writer Donald Francis McG.

CBA Interview

Right: The “Dandy One” in amid-’70s photo taken at a New

York comic convention.

Above: Billy Graham’s exquisitedepiction of the Black Panther in this detail from Jungle Action#17. Courtesy of Don McGregor.

©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.


were so supportive, because I certainly couldn’t have done it on myown. They were willing to put the time and effort into it—DannyCrespi was a beautiful man. For me, he and John Verpoorten oftenwere Marvel Comics! But the downside of doing these pages wasthat I actually got some writers pissed off at me.CBA: How so?Don: From their point of view, I could understand what they weresaying, although it didn’t change what I had to do. They said, “Don,you’re doing this stuff for Marvel for free, they’re going to expect usto be doing this kind of stuff.” The only thing I was concerned aboutwas that Jungle Action book; that I could hold it in my hand and livewith it, and 25 years later, if you’re asking me questions about it—even if I blew something—I could still say it was the best book I wascapable of doing at the time, given the situation that existed. And ifthat “Lorna of the Jungle” stuff was in the back of Jungle Action, Ijust couldn’t have lived with it! I would’ve been in agony all the time,so I was always trying to find a way around it. Yet, some writerswere really upset that I did it. But I said, “Whatever you guys dowith your books is fine, it’s got nothing to do with me. I’m only con-cerned with trying to put out the best book I can put out. I’m not incompetition with anybody, I just want to put out a book that I don’tfeel embarrassed about.” I love comics, and I saw so much stuff fes-tering in the comic book industry—the feeling that comic books were

a second-rate industry—and I didn’t feel that way. When it works,what an incredible business this is! You know, writing to me is justhard work, facing a blank sheet of paper and keeping it importantday after day, month after month, year after year, keeping itimportant—but the time it really is exciting and fun to me is whenthe artwork comes in, an artist brings it to life, and suddenly it’slike I’m five years old again, and I’m that kid looking in that storewindow and seeing those comic books hanging up there! I’m say-ing comics can be anything; look at this, this is great! And I’ll goout and fight again.CBA: You’ve still got that fight in you; you’re still a feisty guy.Were you perceived as a difficult writer?Don: I suppose that depends to whom you ask that question[laughs]. I think you have to take a look at the time those bookswere being done, and the reason they got to exist at all. Part of itwas that there were so many different titles, one editor couldn’thear every story pitch. (Later on, Marvel had a policy where writershad to send in a story synopsis, and they had a Junior Woodchucksquad go over every story before it ever got to an artist.) Therewasn’t time to do that—the editor was just too busy coming upwith covers or writing cover copy for the books, dealing with allthe business people, or whatever. So the virtue of those books, isno one had anything to do with those books but me and the artistsinvolved. Billy Graham had done only one book for Marvel. CraigRussell had only done one title for Marvel—when Marvel first putCraig on the “Killraven” book, it was because he had said in afanzine interview critical comments about what Marvel had doneto some of his artwork in a previous story. In those days, thereweren’t a lot of comic fanzines, and to do that kind of thing carrieda lot more weight than perhaps it would today, because you basi-cally had only a few places to sell material to. So, Craig wasn’t onanybody’s high list at that particular time! Now, that changed,because once he was doing the “Killraven” book—and everyonecould see Craig’s astounding, rapid growth as an artist, from bookto book; then they wanted him off the book!CBA: They wanted him on other stuff?Don: Another writer wanted him, and they were saying, “Youshouldn’t be wasting him on “Killraven”!” But thank God forCraig! He was very loyal and stayed with the book and it was awonderful working experience. I had wonderful people like BillyGraham and Craig to work with on those books, and that part ofit, along with the support from the readers, was the upside part ofthat time period as a storyteller.CBA: How did you get pulled into “War of the Worlds”?Because it was obviously going through so many creative teams?Don: Exactly. They were kind of ready to write it off, and I guessthey figured, as I said earlier, “Well, we can give it to Don, andwhen it dies, we can tell him we gave him a chance to write.” Idon’t think they expected those titles to get as much response

from the readers as they did. Initially, when I started to do that book,I felt when they gave it to me, this will kind of be my “comic book”comic book. I was putting so much into “Black Panther,” I didn’t fig-ure I could possibly find time to put as much time into “Killraven,”and of course, it immediately grew, with those characters. It becamemore complex.CBA: Do they really take on a life of their own, out of your con-trol?Don: Yeah, in many ways. CBA: I remember some fantasy sequences with Old Skull and theDisney cute animal characters! It was juxtaposed with such violence.Your work has a lot of anger and violence; a lot of rage. Don: Because it exists in the world; there’s also a lot of humor anda lot of sex! These things exist! What gets to me is they’re continuingto say, “Well, we don’t want you writing about this stuff!” I say,“Why do you want to ignore all the stuff we should be exploring ashuman beings and as writers?”CBA: You said that you started writing Killraven as a “comicbook” story, and you really ended up writing a complex, fleshed-outstory about characters.Don: Well, “Killraven” just kept growing in depth, and the idea ofwhat we could do, and then, when I started working with Craig,especially, then the possibilities just seemed endless, so it just kept

Above: Another Rich Bucklerpencil job, this one for the

cover of Jungle Action #6, Don& Rich’s first issue depicting the

Wakandan leader T’Challa.Courtesy of Don McGregor.Black Panther ©1999 Marvel

Characters, Inc.


by Tom Stewart

His face clouds. His speech becomes clipped, the words bit offand spat at the viewer: “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped,indexed, briefed, de-briefed or numbered! My life is my own!” Withthat, the man known only as Number Six, turns and stalks towardthe door. He doesn’t know where he is, where he’s going or howhe’ll get there; all he knows is he has to get out.

Thus begins one of the strangest—and most frustrating—seriesever broadcast by commercial TV, Patrick McGoohan's’ The Prisoner.Conceived in 1967 by McGoohan and script editor George Marksteinfor British television, as an allegory on modern society, politics andthe Vietnam war, The Prisoner’s 17 episodes hit the US airwaves in1968, as a Summer replacement for The Jackie Gleason Show. I sus-pect that CBS and the viewing audience thought they were about tosee a continuation of McGoohan’s previous series, Secret Agent. Theywere wrong. (Some claim that it was a continuation of Secret Agent,something McGoohan has always denied—but that’s another article).

In the first episode, we see Number Six angrily resign from anobviously top secret job (a running theme is how pissed Number Sixis throughout the series. He does everything angrily), go home andstart packing for a trip to a warmer climate. Unknown to him, he isfollowed, kidnapped, and awakes again in his own apartment... or soit appears. (First lesson of The Prisoner: Nothing is as it seems.)When the blinds are drawn, he finds not the streets of London, butthe strange, jumbled Mediterranean architecture of “The Village,” hisprison for the next 16 episodes.

Number Six finds he can only make local calls, local taxi rides,and get local newspapers. He is summoned to the “Green Dome” bythe apparent head honcho, Number Two, who asks the biggest ques-tion of the show—the reason why Number Six is held in theVillage—“Why did you resign?” Number Six makes a speech (ora-tions are another hallmark of the series), and storms out. He tries toescape, but is caught by the security system—a huge white ballcalled a Rover. Number Six is foiled for now, but time is on his side,and there is always tomorrow….

The series is basically a psychological cat-and-mouse gamebetween Number Six and the forces of the ever-changing NumberTwo (and that’s getting into the realm of over-simplification). NumberSix is a life-force, a caged animal, pacing back and forth, waiting forthe moment to strike out and win his freedom. Number Two is hiskeeper and chief tormentor—but who is the real prisoner?

The show played out its U.S. run on CBS in 1968, was repeatedin the Summer of 1969, then was gone—but hardly forgotten. It hasenjoyed a cult following that continues to this day (it’s saidMcGoohan is very tired of Prisoner questions). In the ’70s, during aspate of other TV and movie adaptations, Marvel Comics bought therights to do a comic book adaptation of the series, prodded by writerMarv Wolfman, who said, “I was a major fan of the series. I thoughtit’d be a wonderful comic to do.”

Marvel obtained copies of the original TV scripts—some withMcGoohan's’ own handwritten changes—and work was started withWolfman in place as writer. It was then Marv had to bow out.

Marv explained, “I would have loved to have written it myself,but when I became editor-in-chief I never believed I should do thingslike that… assign it to myself.” The script assignment then went toSteve Englehart, another Prisoner fan (see Steve’s sidebar article fordetails of his involvement). Art chores went to Gil Kane. The artistturned in his 17 pages, and Englehart hurriedly scripted them…

...and they were filed away. Unhappy with the first effort, publisher Stan Lee brought in his

old collaborator Jack Kirby for another try. Kirby was a master story-teller, and, at the time, was adapting Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A SpaceOdyssey for Marvel. If the King could put that movie of ideas intocomics form, why should The Prisoner be a problem? The feeling

The Prisoner That Never WasA Look at Marvel’s Aborted Prisoner Comic Series

What If Dept.

Below: Page 5, the title page, ofGil Kane’s pencils to Marvel’s

unused adaptation of The Prisoner. Layouts by Joe Staton. Courtesy of

David “Hambone” Hamilton. Art ©1999 Gil Kane. The Prisoner

©1999 ITC Entertainment, Inc.

by Robert L. Beerbohm

PrologueCarmine Infantino, the distinguished artist turned editorial

director of DC Comics (1968-72) and then publisher (1972-76),made some pretty definitive statements in the recent past regardingthe rationale behind canceling certain comic book titles before theadvent of the direct sales market. Interviewed in Comic Book Artist#1, asked why he cancelled certain books, Infantino explained, “Badsales. What most people don’t realize is that we had to be concernedfor distributors. [Independent News Distributors was] part of ourcompany… They came to us and told us that these books, after acertain point, started to lose money and we should consider droppingthem. That didn’t only go for Jack [Kirby]’s books but some othertitles as well. It’s a business!” In a letter to the Comic Buyer’s Guide#1128, Infantino wrote: “No publisher in his right mind would everdrop a profitable publication… Those decisions are dictated by thedistributor on [the basis of] actual sales figures.”

It may be Infantino has been unfairly maligned for years by fac-tions within comics fandom who believe politics play a bigger role inthese cancellations than simple business information. With this article

(excerpted in partfrom my forthcomingbook on the history

of the comicsbusiness), Ihope to shedlight on thesepoints and pro-vide contextfor a policythat, in hind-

sight, was fun-damentally

flawed.Distributorsales figuressupplied toInfantino by

IndependentNews wereoften probably

inaccurate and, with increasing regularity, possibly fraudulent. Thepublisher was doing what he was hired to do, and deserves substan-tial credit for a new, innovative era of creativity at DC, even whensome may disagree with some of his judgment.

It was thegrowing frustra-tion by the NewYork City-basedcomics publisherswho, upon dis-covering theextent of thefraud, led themto participate inthe creation ofthe direct salesmarket a quartercentury ago.Please bear withme as it is not an easy tale to tell. I have included a personal andanecdotal perspective to add a human element to this tale. Therewere many levels at play, and I apologize in advance if some of theseconcepts are difficult to follow in this, an abbreviated portion of myforthcoming book.

There is no doubt in my mind that Infantino, whom I respect agreat deal, believes the decisions regarding the fate of Kirby’s FourthWorld and other critically-acclaimed series of the early ’70s were, infact, based on sales figures; however, as we will see, those figureswere highly suspect at best, and most likely entirely bogus. It isimportant to note again that Infantino was referring to sales figuressupplied to him by Independent News—wholly-owned by DCComics—which serviced an independent distributor (hereafter, “ID”)market consisting of over 900 independently-owned wholesalers cov-ering often small geographic areas. Evidence suggests many IDs suf-fered from widespread fraud—a situation that directly led to thedirect sales market as we know it today.

Current publisher of DC Comics, Paul Levitz, wrote to me, “It’spossible the extreme fan interest in some of the late ’60s/early ’70stitles actually worked against their success and even survival in twoways: 1) for new launches, the enthusiastic fan purchases may haveboosted the apparent ID sell-through of first issues in a way thatmade publishers overprint subsequent issues, pushing down sell-through and ultimately hurting the titles and, 2) because fan saleswere often “cash table,” they were the most likely sales to be unre-ported through the distribution system—and therefore the more fansales, the lower apparent net sales.

“It’s hard to envision a scenario in which Carmine—or any con-temporaneous exec—could have spotted these problems and adjust-ed their thinking for it,” continued Levitz. “So if they’re valid scenar-ios in large enough numbers (and that’s where I question yourlogic—a typical launch issue had a 300,000 or more print order inthat period, so you would need 30,000 copies or more of fan sales tohave a meaningful effect—probably a fair number on a few launches,but not on many) it might explain some of the behaviors.”

Infantino told me, “I started Kirby’s books—New Gods, ForeverPeople, Mr. Miracle—out at 350,000 copies on their first issues. The

Secret Origins of the Direct MarketPart One: “Affidavit Returns”—The Scourge of Distribution

Deep Background

Below: Neal Adams sketch depicting the attitudes of a certain

Cimmerian and his water fowlfriend about big shot magazine dis-

tributors. This mid-’70s drawingwas done for… well, we’re notsure! Art ©1999 Neal Adams.

Conan ©1999 Conan Properties.Howard the Duck ©1999 Marvel

Characters, Inc.

Right: Carmine Infantino at the1971 Disneyland Convention.

Vincent Davis photo from Graphic Story World #2, July 1971,

Richard Kyle, editor.



first issues [were reported by Independent News as] selling 50-51%.The second [issue] did 44%, the third 42%, and so on—their salesreports were coming in and going down fast. [The Kirby titles] werereally collapsing like hell and, by the fifth and sixth issues, the peopleupstairs began to get on my back going, ‘Hey, we’re losing moneyhere.’

“There was a phenomenon going on Inoticed back then,” Infantino continued. “Wewould… print 675,000 [copies of a Supermanissue] and get a minimum of 58% sell-through;yet we would put Jack’s books out and get 40-42% sales. In the past, I have been accused ofhaving two sets of books on Kirby’s titles; that Ikept one set for me and one set I handed to DC.This is absurd. Independent News [and] the DCaccountant would come in, [and] we would thengo over the numbers. I had nothing to do withgetting the numbers, you understand? That’s howwe had to operate; that’s the only way we couldoperate.”

A Couple of Fandom MythsIn the Comics Buyer’s Guide, Peter David

was pretty much on the mark when writing in hiscolumn, “It was the advent of Phil Seuling and thedirect market that pretty much saved the [main-stream] comics industry.” However, David goeson, “Suddenly, comic books became high-profititems for the publishers because they could print exactly what wasneeded to sell [the print run].”

That latter assertion needs to be qualified. In truth, David’s“suddenly” took almost 10 years of hard labor beginning with lessthan 500 or so loosely organized, highly-dedicated comics fans-turned-retailers. More than 20 years ago, the few of us who openedthe first comic book stores expanded the distribution method forunderground comix. Undergrounds were published by alternative andhighly-independent creative people who took the fan movement ofthe 1960s to a new level of achievement.

In another recent issueof CBG, publisher WilliamTucci announced a “new”print-to-order policy for hisbooks and posited this oncomics history: “Speculatingon comics makes for an unsta-ble marketplace for retailersand publishers. The direct mar-ket was founded on the basisof retailers knowing what theyneed to order and publishersknowing what they need toprint. The industry has gottenaway from that in the last fewyears…. ”

To those who came in late,these remarks by an alternativepublisher of today may carry con-viction, but they are ultimatelybased on inbred misunderstandingsof the origin and development ofthe direct sales market. To the extent that weacknowledge the late Phil Seuling as one of thefounders of the direct market, Tucci’s remarksare revisionist. Seuling was one of a numberof early advocates of speculation. He taughtothers how to gamble on comics for theexpress purpose of supplying still other spec-ulators and dealers with the necessary toolsand means of making a comfortable living. Any conception thatthe direct sales comic book market was not about speculation is seri-ously flawed. This will become obvious as we trace the history of themarket since the late ’60s.

Drops in the market had occurredbefore, but in the 1960s-’70s there was anew element that had devastating effects onthe creative output of the industry. Thatnew element was a growing combination ofgreed and fraud.

Many unscrupulouslocal ID distributors, fueledby the demand by comicbook dealers for certainissues, abused the old“consignment” system. Thesystem was a century oldand, by the late ’60s, fraudwas rampant. It was knownto some that the Mafiahad infiltrated the maga-zine distribution business.This combination of greedand dishonesty led manylocal distributors to reportcertain issues by the morepopular artists destroyedthat had instead been soldin large lots to local entre-preneurs via the ID’s backdoor. The accountingmethod was known as

“affidavit returns” (where distributors sign anaffidavit stating unsold copies were destroyed).

Bestsellers Go Belly-UpNeal Adams is one of the single most

important pioneers in the last 30 years whofought the backward practices of the comics industry andended up with more arrows in his back than darn near any-

body else out there. He is to be revered for what hiscontributions to the comics field beginning in thelate ’60s—and then for many years. Adams,artist/co-creator of the critically-acclaimed GreenLantern/Green Arrow series, discussed the sad taleof fraudulent accounting in his Comic Book Marketplace#40 interview. When interviewer Arlen Schumer asked,“Why was Green Lantern/Green Arrow cancelled?” Nealreplied, “…Because it wasn’t selling. Before the age of thecomic book store [i.e., the direct sales market], [certain]

dealers became aware that they could goto their local distributor and buyquantities of particular comicbooks. As a comic book mightbecome more popular, like‘Deadman’ or GL/GA, they could goand buy as many as they wanted,and the local distributor would reportthem as being ‘destroyed.’ SuddenlyGL/GA [was] not only not selling, butsales [were] even dropping a little! Soanything you would think was makinga splash, wasn’t making a splash.GL/GA got all kinds of attention, articlesin Newsweek, articles everywhere.Everybody in the industry knew aboutthis. Yet it didn’t sell.”

Infantino told me, “In the begin-ning, GL/GA was doing well. I was goingaround the country doing radio interviews,TV shows. GL/GA #76 did exceptionallywell.

“It was only in the #80s when thereported sales began to fall,” continued

Infantino. “I only went around [to regional distributors] with the veryearly issues. Then it began to die. We found out then that first issues

Above: Jack Kirby’s extraordinaryFourth World titles whose fate isstill hotly debated in fan circles.©1999 DC Comics. Above left:Jack Kirby at the same DisneylandConvention. Photo by VincentDavis. Reprinted from GraphicStory World #2, July 1971, RichardKyle, editor. Left: The controversialGreen Lantern/Green Arrow run byDennis O’Neil and Neal Adams—victim of affidavit return fraud?©1999 DC Comics. Below: NealAdams at a mid-’70s comic con-vention.

COMIC BOOK ARTIST #6 Unpublished and rarely-seen art by, features on, and interviewswith 1970s Bullpenners PAUL GULACY, FRANK BRUNNER, P.CRAIG RUSSELL, MARIE and JOHN SEVERIN, JOHN ROMITASR., DAVE COCKRUM, DON MCGREGOR, DOUG MOENCH,and others! Plus never-before-seen pencil pages to an unpub-lished Master of Kung-Fu graphic novel by PAUL GULACY!Cover by FRANK BRUNNER!

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Comic Book Artist #6