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GEORGE BRENNER & A NEVERPUBLISHED
GOLDEN AGE STORY BY
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May 2017
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Vol. 3, No. 146 / May 2017 Editor Roy Thomas
Associate Editors Bill Schelly Jim Amash
Design & Layout Christopher Day
Consulting Editor John Morrow
FCA Editor P.C. Hamerlinck J.T. Go (Assoc. Editor)
Comic Crypt Editor Michael T. Gilbert
Editorial Honor Roll Jerry G. Bails (founder) Ronn Foss, Biljo White Mike Friedrich
Proofreaders Rob Smentek William J. Dowlding
Cover Artist & Colorist Paul Gulacy
With Special Thanks to: Alarm Clock William Lampkin (website) Barbara Levy Rob Allen Mark Lewis Aluir Amancio Art Lortie Heidi Amash Jim Ludwig Michael Ambrose Ralph Macchio Richard J. Arndt Pablo Marcos Jean Bails Sam Maronie Josh Baker Mike Mikulovsky Terry Beatty Dusty Miller Christopher Boyko Doug & Debbie John Brenner Moench Eliot Brown Brian K. Morris Bernie & Lucille Mark Muller Bubnis Jim Murtagh Nick Caputo Skye Ott Mike Chomko Pappy’s Golden Age Shaun Clancy Comics Blogzine Jon B. Cooke Barry Pearl Chet Cox John G. Pierce Comic Vine (website) The Quality Companion Pierre Comtois Companion Leonardo de Sà (website) Jay Disbrow Gene Reed Shane Foley Four-Color Shadows Max Roberts Robotplastic (website) Apocalypse Stephan Friedt (website) Martin Gately Randy Sargent Janet Gilbert Cory Sedlmeier Anthony Gillies Keif Simon Don Glut Jeff Taylor Grand Comics Database (website) Dann Thomas Rhett Thomas Great American Steven Thompson Comic Book Anthony Tollin Stories (website) Toni Torres Arnie Grieves Dr. Michael J. Paul Gulacy Vassallo Gary Henderson Ted White Sean Howe Jonny Quest Cartoon Who’s Who in DC Comics (website) History (website) Steven G. Willis Jim Kealy Bill Wray Mike Kooiman
This issue is dedicated to the memory of
Ken Barr, George Brenner, Daniel Keyes, Ethan Roberts, & Paul Ryan
Contents Writer/Editorial: Golden Threads Among The Silver . . . . . . . 2 The Rising & Advancing Of A Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Doug Moench talks to Richard Arndt about his early-’70s career in comics.
The Clock Strikes! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 A son’s remembrance of creator George Brenner, as related to Mike Kooiman.
The Golden Age Super-Hero That Never Was! . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Marvin Levy’s 1942 “Bill of Rights”—never before published!
Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! The EC Variants?. . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Michael T. Gilbert asks—did EC publisher Bill Gaines authorize gruesome alternate covers?
Comic Fandom Archive: Ted White On Comics – Part 1 . . 68 The beginning of Bill Schelly’s interview with one of the early true comic book fans.
Tributes to Daniel Keyes, Paul Ryan, Ken Barr, & Ethan Roberts . . 75 re: [correspondence, comments, & corrections] . . . . . . . . . 80 FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America] #205 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 P.C. Hamerlinck presents John G. Pierce’s parade of South American Marvel Family covers. On Our Cover: When we asked celebrated longtime Master of Kung Fu artist Paul Gulacy to suggest an illustration by himself for this issue centered around the early work of Doug Moench, he sent us scans of a number of wonderful commission pieces he’s done in recent years. This was the pick of a lusciously-drawn and -painted litter. Thanks, Paul! And thanks to photographer Eliot Brown for the photo of Doug Moench. [Shang-Chi, Nick Fury, & Black Widow TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; Fu Manchu TM & © Estate of Sax Rohmer; other art © Paul Gulacy.] Above: Writer/artist George Brenner’s “The Clock” was the first masked-hero feature created for comic books, appearing in such titles as Comics Magazine Company’s Funny Picture Stories, Vol. 1, #2 (Dec. 1936). Courtesy of Mike Kooiman’s blog “The Quality Companion Companion.” [TM & © The respective trademark & copyright holders.] Alter EgoTM is published 6 times a year by TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Roy Thomas, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Alter Ego Editorial Offices: 32 Bluebird Trail, St. Matthews, SC 29135, USA. Fax: (803) 826-6501; e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Six-issue subscriptions: $65 US, $102 Elsewhere, $29.70 Digital Only. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © Roy Thomas. Alter Ego is a TM of Roy & Dann Thomas. FCA is a TM of P.C. Hamerlinck. Printed in China. ISSN: 1932-6890. FIRST PRINTING.
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writer/editorial
Golden Threads Among The Silver A
Yeesh… I didn’t mean for this writer/editorial to get so gloomy. I just wanted to point out, in the course of these few hundred words, that I’m devoted—and I think A/E’s contributing editors will join me in this—to finding creative and worthwhile ways to keep the Golden Age traditions of this magazine alive and strong, even while those we interview will perforce be either Silver Agers—or the surviving spouses or kids of those who formed comics’ Golden Age.
s many folks reading these words will be aware, Alter Ego, Vol. 3, was launched in 1999 to celebrate the so-called Golden and Silver Ages of comic books.
That means from the latter half of the 1930s (and particularly since the 1938 debut of Superman) through some harder-to-pindown date between 1970 and maybe 1975. Despite my own personal close connection to the Silver Age—or perhaps because of it—I’ve tended to stress the Golden Age, preComics Code era, which remains my major area of historical interest. And I’ve had co-conspirators: Jim Amash, who’s conducted more A/E interviews than anyone else to date, was primarily interested in artists who’d come of age in the ’40s, even if their careers sometimes stretched into the 21st century… Michael T. Gilbert, keeper of the Comic Crypt, had similar inclinations… and P.C. Hamerlinck’s FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), by virtue of its very title, deals largely with a company that published nearly all its comics between 1939 and 1954. Of A/E’s regular departments, only Bill Schelly's Comic Fandom Archive has generally been concerned with occurrences in the 1960s and after. Nowadays, as the number of surviving comics creators from the ’40s and even the ’50s has dwindled down to a precious few, I (as well as A/E’s current interviewer-in-residence, Richard Arndt, and a handful of more occasional contributors) find myself adjusting to a world in which even those who entered the comics field in the 1960s, at the height of the ostensible Silver Age, are ageing, with some disappearing from our midst. E. Nelson Bridwell, perhaps the first fan-turned-pro of that era, passed away in 1987… Archie Goodwin, who by 1965 was editing Warren Publishing’s Creepy, left us in ’98… and that number can only grow as we move everfurther from thinking of ourselves as living at “the turn of” the 21st century.
This issue is a case in point. Our lead feature is Richard's dynamic interview with major writer Doug Moench, whose comics career only began circa 1970, roughly the time some people say the Silver Age was turning Bronze… yet we’ve backstopped it with two Golden Age pieces we think equally important: Mike Kooiman's talk with John Brenner, the son of artist/writer George Brenner, creator of comic books’ very first masked avenger… and the first-time publication of a story scripted and drawn in 1942 (yes!) by the late Marvin Levy, who was interviewed in A/E #75. Add to that the 1950s-related matter of this issue’s “Comic Crypt” and the 1940splus South American art and adventures of The Marvel Family covered in FCA—and you’ll see why the Golden Age, no less than the Silver, is still very much alive here in Alter Ego. And why not? After all, academic historians still study the Peloponnesian Wars as ardently as they do the Korean police action… and if I’d been a young man of independent (or even dependent) means back in 1964, today I’d probably be poring away over Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and pondering Osiris, Isis, and Horus instead of the six gods and heroes whose initials make up the 1939-vintage word “Shazam.” Everything old is new again… even as it gets older… and older…. Bestest,
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The Rising & Advancing Of A Spirit
3
DOUG MOENCH Talks About His Early Years In Comics Conducted & Transcribed by Richard J. Arndt
D
oug Moench began his comics career in 1970, writing horror and mystery stories for Warren, Skywald, and DC Comics. In 1973 he began working for Marvel Comics, writing first for their various black-&-white magazines and then for such color comics as Master of Kung Fu, Astonishing Tales (“Ka-Zar” and “Deathlok”), Werewolf by Night, Frankenstein, and others. He co-created Moon Knight with artist Don Perlin and wrote two superior original series for the Planet of the Apes franchise—“Terror on the Planet of the Apes” and “Future History Chronicles”—with artists
Mike Ploog and Tom Sutton. With Ploog he also created Weirdworld. In addition, while at Marvel he worked on licensed characters such as Kull the Destroyer and Doc Savage. After leaving Marvel, Moench worked for many years on “Batman,” creating several new villains for the Dark Knight’s mythos, including The Black Mask. With frequent collaborator Paul Gulacy, he has worked on such acclaimed titles as Master of Kung Fu, Batman, Six from Sirius, and Slash Maraud. This interview was conducted by phone on October 3, 2015.
Doug Moench presides over pages he wrote for the two comics companies for whom he did the most work during the first half of the 1970s: Warren Publishing’s Creepy #54 (July 1973), with art by Rich Corben—and Marvel Comics’ Master of Kung Fu #25 (Feb. 1975); pencils by Paul Gulacy, inks by Sal Trapani. Thanks to Nick Caputo & Shane Foley for the scans. [Creepy page TM & © New Comic Company, LLC; MoKF page TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]
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The Rising & Advancing Of A Spirit
“What The Hell Is That?” RICHARD ARNDT: Thank you for agreeing to this interview. Could we start out by learning something about your early life? DOUG MOENCH: Born in Chicago. My mother was born and raised in Scotland. She met my father when he was stationed there in World War II. He brought her home after the war. RA: What memories do you have of your early comic book reading? MOENCH: My earliest memories are of reading the “Uncle Scrooge” and “Donald Duck” stories by Carl Barks. Those stories remain some of my favorites of all time. I don’t know if I actually have a memory of the EC Comics or have just convinced myself after the fact. I would have been very, very young to have read them when they were first published. However, I seem to remember being fascinated by the EC books. I didn’t really buy comics at that time because I was too young. Didn’t have any money, but I used to sit on the floor in the corner store and read them all. I also liked Tomahawk. I remember a Bugs Bunny Annual that really held me spellbound. The annuals, I guess from Dell, were really long at the time. RA: Yeah, they didn’t run any ads in their books. Even their regular-size comics were a full 52 pages when you started reading. MOENCH: Lots of pages. The annuals were square-bound, nice and fat. I don’t remember when Atomic Mouse was being published, but that would have been a favorite, too. What year would that have been? Would you know? RA: It certainly was the 1950s or early 1960s. [INTERVIEWER’S NOTE: Atomic Mouse was published by Charlton from 1953-1964.] MOENCH: If it was the early 1960s, that’s what I remember reading around age twelve or so. Yeah, good book.
comics were kid stuff and it was time to grow up. I just went cold turkey. That period of not reading comics lasted only a couple of months, because one day I went to a different mom-and-pop store than my usual one. This one was where I used to get a Coke and French fries all the time. I’d slather ketchup all over the fries. It was a great time. I remember doing this one day and I glanced around at the magazine racks, which was where the comics were also kept. Remember, I no longer had any interest in comics but something caught my eye. It was a logo where the words seemed to talk about an adventure comic but the style of the logo suggested a humor comic. I thought “What the hell is that?” It was The Fantastic Four. It looked like it should have been a funny comic, but Fantastic Four sounded like something totally different. I went and picked it out and it was Fantastic Four #1. I read it while I was eating my fries, and I bought it to take home. I was hooked all over again on comics. In fact, more than ever! After that book, I don’t know what came next—“Thor” in Journey into Mystery or maybe “Iron Man” in Tales of Suspense. There was a whole bunch of things coming, it seemed, very fast— “Spider-Man” and on and on. I got really, really into comics then.
“There Was This Guy Named Don Glut…” RA: How did you get your start as a writer? I know you were writing before you began to write comics… MOENCH: Well, early on, I wrote for the school newspaper, but I was into comics way before I started writing for publication. I wrote a letter to [Amazing] Spider-Man and it was published in the letters page. This was when they still published your address with your letter. There was this guy named Don Glut, who became one of my good friends. He saw this letter in SpiderMan, and whenever he saw anyone with a Chicago address on the Marvel letter pages he would look them up in the phone book and call them.
I don’t remember exactly when, but at one point, I started reading Superman and Batman. I remember I was tutoring a kid who lived down the block and his mother would, at the end of the tutoring session, take me into a room in their house that had magazine racks—wood ones, they were furniture. The racks had all these great comics in them. I don’t know if they were her husband’s stash or the kid I was tutoring’s older brother’s comics, but she would let me pick out comics on top of paying me money That Toddlin’ Town for the actual tutoring. I (Above:) Don Glut, 1960s. The Chicago writer provided the remember taking the Batman photo to accompany an in-depth interview in A/E #143. and Detective Comics all the (Right:) A 1964 snapshot of a quartet of Windy City time. Some of those comics comics fans. (L. to r.:) Doug Moench, unknown, Billy were pretty old. I knew they Placzek, & Alex Almarez. In a notation by the late Jerry were different from the Bails, the “unknown” person is listed as “dftric,” but that Batman comics I could buy at abbreviation hasn’t helped us ID him thus far. Thanks to the corner store. Jean Bails for the pic, of which Doug writes: “[The ‘Nov. I read everything! I read Herbie… you know, the fat guy who wore a toilet plunger on his head. To make a long story short, there came a point when I was twelve or thirteen and decided that
1964’ date] on the border makes me 16. Which means the Beatles and Ed Sullivan took months longer than I remember to work their radical transformation of me. Must’ve begun minutes after this photo was taken, however, because it took me three months to lose 70 pounds, and 1965 was my senior year in high school (graduated in January ’66, having started school a halfyear early back when that was still possible), and I know I was fully transformed for my senior year.”
I got this call out of the blue—“Is this Douglas Moench?” I go, “Yeah.” “My name is Don Glut, and Saturday I’m showing all fifteen chapters of The Adventures of Captain Marvel serial in my basement. And if you’ll pitch in a dollar, my mother will make popcorn! There’s six other people coming, and they’re helping to pay for the rental of the serial!”
Doug Moench Talks About His Early Years In Comics
5
time. Later people called us hippies, but I never thought of myself as a hippie. I was a long-haired guy who loved the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and what have you. I’d begun drifting away from comics again but was still reading them. I’d begun spending more of my money on records and chasing girls. However, Don’s news renewed my interest in comics once again. I sat down and wrote five stories—one a day, Monday through Friday. I put them all together in an envelope and sent them blind to Warren Publications. Then I forgot about the whole thing. I went back to my long-hair lifestyle, where I was having a great time in Chicago, except when idiots would want to pick a fight. [laughs] But, other than that… a great time!
Warren Pieces (Clockwise from above left:) Three of Moench’s earliest-published stories for Warren Publishing, which probably includes some of the five tales he sold the company on initial contact: Eerie #29 (Sept. 1970)—art by Jack Sparling. Eerie #30 (Oct. 1970)—art by Carlos Garzon. Creepy #37 (Jan. 1971). The art for this one is credited to “Don Brown,” which may be a pseudonym; that artist has only a couple of credits, both in black-&white horror comics of this period. Note the writing credit for “Douglass Moench.” Thanks to Gene Reed. [TM & © New Comic Company, LLC.]
This was when you had to rent the actual film reels and, I guess, a projector to see a movie at home. I said “OK.” I’d never seen The Adventures of Captain Marvel serial and I’d always wanted to. So I rode over to his house on my bike. Turned out that he was three years older than me or so. Enough to seem like a real pal but almost like an older brother as well. I remember he was old enough to drive at one point, and he called me up and said, “I’m going to pick you up in my mother’s car and we’re going to see this wonderful movie called Dr. No! It’s going to be amazing!” He was right. It was. He called me one day and told me that he’d sold a story to Warren Publishing, who published horror magazines—black-&white ones—called Creepy and Eerie. I said, “You’ve got to be kidding!” He goes, “No, no, no! They actually paid me and everything, and it’s going to be published.” I thought that was crazy. One of the things we did was sit around and read comics when the new batches came out and then, just for the hell of it, write little stories and show them to each other. Don was putting out a fanzine—a great fanzine—called Shazam! He was writing articles for that. So when he told me that he’d sold a story to Warren [chuckles]… well, I was so cocky at the time that I thought that, if Don could do it, then I could do it. I thought my writing was so much better. [much laughter] Mind you, the Beatles had changed everything at that time. I was by now this long-haired… we called ourselves “heads”… there were very few of us in Chicago at the
I get the mail one day and there’s an envelope from Warren Publications. All that’s inside of it is a check. I go “Wow!” It was a check for $125, and this was in 1968. I was over the moon. That
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The Clock Strikes!
39
A Son’s Remembrance of GEORGE BRENNER, Creator Of Comic Books’ First Masked Hero Conducted & Transcribed by Mike Kooiman
G
Interviewer’s Introduction
eorge Edward Brenner was one of the earliest comic book creators. His obscurity belies the notable fact that he created the first original masked hero for a comic book. This radar blip was called “The Clock,” a hero who, like his radio and pulp-mag predecessors The Shadow and The Green Hornet, wore a suit and hat and covered his face with a sheet-like mask. The Clock’s first two appearances were in two magazines that appeared in the same month: Funny Pages #6 and Funny Picture Stories #1 (Nov. 1936), both published by Comics Magazine Company. Comics Magazine was started by two defectors from National (DC), Bill Cook and John Mahon. (After a series of acquisitions, Comics Magazine Co.’s titles were eventually published by the Centaur group.) Jim Steranko’s History of the Comics, Vol. 2, noted that Everett “Busy” Arnold, founder of Quality Comics, had advised Cook and Mahon, and this is probably how George Brenner first met Arnold as well. Comics Magazine Co. began to fail just as Arnold was establishing the company that became known as “Quality.” A year later, Quality took on Brenner and “The Clock,” beginning in Feature Funnies #3 (Dec. 1937).
Brenner also created Quality Comics’ first masked hero, The Hawk (T. James Harrington II, a former football star and wealthy heir). “The Hawk” appeared in Feature Funnies #2, but when “The Clock” moved to Quality with issue #3, “The Hawk” disappeared after that lone adventure. Even the finale of The Hawk’s story heralded The Clock’s arrival next month. [For the record, comics’ first (externally) superpowered super-hero was Dr. Occult (New Fun Comics #6, Oct. 1935), and the first real super-powered hero was, of course, Superman (Action Comics #1, June 1938). Both these heroes were created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster—but neither of them wore masks, which soon became an equally important comic book tradition.] “The Clock” was Brenner’s first signed comic strip, though he had started out doing production work. He was an untrained storyteller, so it was his first foray. Brenner was a sports enthusiast who had briefly studied dentistry in college, but the Great Depression forced him, like so many comics pioneers, to take the job to help his family.
George Brenner in a “pre-1937” photo supplied by his son, John Brenner. This photo was taken during a card game with his friend Gerard Kane.
Setting “The Clock” Brenner’s feature “The Clock” debuted in two comics in the same month, both from Comics Magazine Company: Funny Pages, Vol. 1, #6, and Funny Picture Stories, Vol. 1, #1 (both Nov. 1936). The cover of the former is by Ellis Edwards; Brenner penciled (and perhaps inked) the latter. “The Clock” ran in 2-page installments in Funny Pages, Vol. 1, #6-11… and in 7-page stories in FPP, Vol. 1, #1, 3, & 5, before the latter title was changed, first to Detective Picture Stories, then to Keen Detective Funnies. Yeesh… only one caption into the interview, and we’re already exhausted trying to keep everything straight! [TM & © the respective trademark & Ωcopyright holders.]
Most would agree that he was a stronger storyteller than an artist, but Brenner’s work frequently showed flashes of brilliance. He presented novel characters and often delivered the unexpected. His creative
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A Son’s Remembrance Of George Brenner
contributions were largely over by 1943, when he graduated to editor-inchief at Quality, a position which he held through 1949. After that, he wrote freelance Westerns for about a year, and in 1951 he was recruited by Helen Meyer to be an editor at Dell. While researching The Quality Companion (TwoMorrows Publishing, 2012), I failed to uncover any significant information about George Brenner. My profile was pieced together with anecdotes from various Alter Ego interviews conducted by Jim Amash. After publication, I continued to dig and found some Brenner family information on Ancestry.com, including Brenner’s obituary: GEORGE EDWARD BRENNER, age 43, died on September 13, 1952, at his home in Greenwich, Fairfield County, Connecticut. He was born on September 28, 1908, in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York, the son of Walter Brenner, Sr. and Catherine Sheridan. His parents were natives of New York City, NY, and Ireland, respectively. He was a magazine editor and was survived by his wife, Grace Kane Brenner. Burial on September 16, 1952, at Holy Cross Cemetery, Brooklyn, NY. Informant - Mrs. Brenner.
I happily blogged about this on “The Quality Companion Companion,” but abandoned hope of learning anything more. Brenner
“The Clock” Ticks On Two more Brenner “Clock” panels—precise comics (and companies) unknown. The one on the left appeared on Pappy’s Golden Age Comics Blogzine; the other was found on the Internet. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]
had died early, and by that time he was estranged from everyone at Quality Comics. (He had been fired in 1949.) I read no mentions of any children and assumed that, if any existed, they might have been very young at the time of his death. Then, one day, I received an unbelievable call from Brenner’s only child, John. To my surprise, John Brenner had been fifteen when his father passed away—which meant that he’d known his father very well. Our talks have helped complete the portrait of George Brenner, a Golden Age mystery-man in his own right. Thanks to John, we can share the colorful life and tragic fate of a notable comics figure—plus a rare piece of Quality Comics history! MIKE KOOIMAN: I was surprised to learn that you were fifteen when your father passed away. I’d read no mention of George Brenner having any children. JOHN BRENNER: I was born on August 15, 1937, in Brooklyn. Shortly after, maybe five years afterwards, we moved up to Greenwich, Connecticut, and that’s where we were up until the time my father died. And he died in my arms; he had a heart attack. He went in for a gallstone operation and it put a lot of stress on his heart. One morning, a couple weeks after surgery, he woke up and he was in distress. My mother went to get a neighbor because he was starting to flail and I sat down on the bed next to him and I held him, and that was it. He just sort of died in my arms. MK: When he got ill, was it prolonged? BRENNER: No, he had a sudden attack of gallstones. While he was in surgery, he had an asthma attack, and the clamps came off a couple of the vessels and created some additional problems for the surgeon. Afterwards, I can remember visiting him in the Greenwich hospital. He looked like death. He was in an oxygen tent, and then he pulled out of it, and they sent him home.
“Hawk”-ing His Wares A Brenner page of “The Hawk” from Quality’s Feature Funnies #2 (Nov. 1937). The character was clearly a doppelgänger of “The Clock,” who displaced him in the very next issue of FF. Perhaps there was some question at first of whether Quality could take over publishing “The Clock”—a query which, if it happened, was soon answered in the affirmative. Thanks to the Who’s Whose in DC Comics site. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]
I remember it was a hot summer night in September and he was sleeping upstairs. We had a screened-in porch in the front of the house. And it was so hot he said to my mother, “I’m going to go downstairs and sleep on the porch where it’s cooler.” There’s a bit of confusion about whether it was a heart attack or a blood clot that broke loose. He went down to the porch and about five in the morning went back up to bed, and that’s when all the problems started. He wasn’t able to make it to the hospital. MK: Can you tell me what you remember of his younger days? BRENNER: I remember him going down for his physical
The Clock Strikes!
During FDR’s First Term (Above, left to right:) George Brenner, c. 1934-35. John B. remembers his father as “ever-dapper,” “always a smartly dressed man.” George and Grace (Kane) Brenner in 1936, the year they were married. Photo probably taken in Brooklyn. Both photos courtesy of John Brenner. The only surviving piece of original artwork by his father that John owns is this pencil drawing of George’s best friend and brother-in-law, Gerard Kane. Kane was killed in an auto accident in 1937, so this is among GB’s earliest drawings. Based on photos of Kane he’s seen, John swears the portrait is “a dead ringer for him.” Thanks to JB for all three of these scans. [© Estate of George Brenner.]
because he was going to be inducted into the Army, conscripted. He failed the physical exam because he had asthma. You alluded [in The Quality Companion] to him going to Villanova but that they have no record of it. He actually went to Georgetown for his freshman year. He was dedicating himself to dentistry, but he realized he didn’t like it, so he switched to Villanova. That’s where he did play football. My father was a pragmatist, but I don’t think he was academically oriented. The effects of the Depression set in and he had to go home to help his mother and contribute to the economics of the family. He had two younger brothers [Allan, who lived to age 85, and Walter (“Buddy”), who died of a heart attack at 50]. He went to work for the New York Daily News as a cub reporter, for which he went back and forth between New York and Chicago for a certain time. He told me several times that, while he was at Villanova, one of his friends was Matt Capone, Al Capone’s brother. Matt Capone wanted my father to help him with bootlegging activities on summer break, but my father wouldn’t do it. The joke of that is
Grammar School Grad John Brenner with his mother and father upon the occasion of his grammar school graduation in 1951. Thanks to JB.
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The Golden Age Super-Hero That Never Was! MARVIN LEVY & The 1942 “BILL OF RIGHTS”
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Introduction by Roy Thomas
ne ambition of most fledgling comic book artists is, and probably always was, to “catch lightning in a bottle” by creating a feature that garners fame and at least a slight taste of fortune—like Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster with “Superman” in 1938—Bob Kane (albeit shortchanging Bill Finger) with “Batman” in 1939—and so on. Comics artist Marvin Levy (1925-2012) is remembered primarily for his humor work for Feature, Spark, Frank, Promotional Publishing, Pines, etc. (See his interview by Jim Amash in Alter Ego #75, and his tribute/obituary in #110.) Still, when he entered the field in the early 1940s, super-heroes were the name of the game; so he wrote and drew several such stories and submitted them as samples to comics shops like Funnies, Inc., and Harry “A” Chesler.
Marvin Levy in uniform in 1943, age 18½, while in training as a rifleman at Fort McClellan, Alabama.
illos for our letters section, for adding vintage-style tones to it. In fact, Sarge got so enthusiastic that he even composed and colored a sort of “cover” for what could’ve been an entire issue of Bill of Rights & Liberty Belle Comics, as seen below. After you peruse that—turn the page for the 75-years-late four-color debut of “Bill of Rights”…!
One such, done in 1942, was the ten-page origin tale of a patriotically garbed mystery-man with the clever masked monicker “Bill of Rights.” The name of his equally colorful ladyfriend, introduced in that same yarn, would turn out to have considerably more mileage: “Liberty Belle.” If a publisher had rushed 17-yearold Marv’s story into print, the DC heroine of that name, who’d debut in Joe Simon & Jack Kirby’s Boy Commandos #1 (Winter 1943) and who’s had a second life since her 1981 induction into the All-Star Squadron, might well have been forced to adopt a different secret identity! Back in 2007, Marv gave me his enthusiastic blessing to publish that story; but alas, I didn’t get around to it before he passed away. His widow, Mrs. Barbara Levy, has renewed that permission; and we’re pleased and honored to present the complete adventure here for the first time ever in print, as a tribute to the memory of a talented cartoonist. Oh, and since, like nearly all comic book tales of that era, “Bill of Rights” was meant to be printed in color, we’re thankful to Randy Sargent, who’s colored many of Shane Foley’s “maskot”
Marv & Barbara Levy in a cartoon (by Marv) that they sent Ye Editor some years back.
Mock-up cover of a Bill of Rights comic, done by Randy Sargent, utilizing the art of Marvin Levy. Colors by Sarge. [Art on this and succeeding nine pages © Mrs. Barbara Levy.]
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Marvin Levy & The 1942 “Bill of Rights”
P.S.: In 1941, for Lloyd Jacquet’s Funnies, Inc., shop, Marv Levy had also created a prospective (but likewise never-published) feature starring a hero called “Mann Mountain.” Who knows—maybe one of these days, we’ll toss that Golden Age goodie at you, to boot!
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Hot Chicks (Above:) This unpublished EC cover was painted in the 1950s by renowned Italian illustrator and comic book artist Walter Molino. Was it too horrifying even for EC? [Image © Estate of Walter Molino; CSS logo TM & © William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc.]
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TED WHITE On Comics Part 1 “The Boy With 10,000 Comic Books!” Introduction by Bill Schelly
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orn in 1938, Ted White was a central figure in science-fiction fandom and fanzine-publishing since he was a teenager, ultimately winning a Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 1968. Beginning in the 1960s, he wrote or co-wrote over a dozen SF novels, such as The Jewels of Elsewhen (1967), No Time Like Tomorrow (1969) and Trouble on Project Ceres (1971). As a youth, however, Ted was a fervent comic book fan, and has done a lot of interesting things in comics fandom, much of it in the 1950s and 1960s. Since comics are our bailiwick at A/E, I asked Ted if he would agree to an interview focusing exclusively on his comics-related interests and achievements. Happily, he agreed, and we had two long interview sessions by telephone in November of 2014. (Apologies to Ted for the time it has taken to get this into print!) Among the topics we discussed for this multipart series were the story about him in the Washington Daily News in the early 1950s, titled “The Boy with 10,000 Comic Books!,” his writing “The Spawn of M. C. Gaines” (the second installment of the “All in Color for a Dime” series in the fanzine Xero), his involvement with EC fandom, interviewing Stan Lee for Castle of Frankenstein magazine, writing the 1968 paperback book Captain America: The Great American Gold Steal, and editing Heavy Metal magazine in 1979 and 1980. We begin, however, with a discussion of Ted White’s boyhood as a comic book reader and collector. This interview was transcribed by Brian K. Morris, and was checked by Ted before publication. BILL SCHELLY: I see that you and Superman were thrust into an unsuspecting world in the same year, 1938. TED WHITE: Yeah, I don’t know when in 1938 “Superman” was first published. Do you know? BS: Yeah, I believe it came out in April of 1938. Action Comics #1 is dated June. What day were you actually born? WHITE: I preceded it by a couple months. I was born on February 4, 1938. BS: Okay, so what that means to me is that you started becoming conscious of comics and things like that toward the end of the World War II. WHITE: I tried to remember exactly when I first became aware of comic books. I was aware of other kids having comics, and we kids
“Men Of Tomorrow” – 1938 Edition Ted White was Guest of Honor at the 2016 PulpFest in Columbus, Ohio. Photograph: William Lampkin. Special thanks to Mike Chomko of PulpFest. Ted and Action Comics #1 debuted within a couple of months of each other, in February and April of 1938, respectively, although Action #1 is dated June. [Cover TM & © DC Comics.]
traded them around among each other. There was no real sense of ownership. You just got it, you read it, and then you passed it on. BS: How about if we get a little family background before we get into the comics, just to “set the scene,” as they say? WHITE: Sure. What would you like to know? BS: Where did you grow up? WHITE: I grew up in Falls Church, Virginia. I was born in Washington, DC, but lived my entire childhood in Falls Church. It was a very small town, semi-rural. The street in front of my house in my earliest memories was two dirt ruts with grass growing between them. My family bought 50 acres of land with two other families and split it in thirds. We had the middle third. And up the hill, there was a family that had the upper third, and then down the hill there was a family that had the bottom third, and theirs was a farm, complete with cattle. When I was little, one of the first things I learned to do as a toddler was to climb a tree if a cow got too close to me, because I didn’t want to get stepped on. BS: What did your father do for a living? WHITE: At the time I was born, he worked at the general store in Falls Church, which subsequently became a hardware store and still exists. But somewhere around 1940 or thereabouts, right before World War II, he went to work for the Navy Yard in their photo
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The Once & Future Mickey (Left:) The “Mickey Mouse in the World of Tomorrow” storyline to which Ted White refers originally ran in the newspaper Sunday comic strip from July 31 to Nov. 11, 1944 (as generous supplier Art Lortie informs us), and was later reprinted in Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories from Dell, where Ted read it. (Below:) Seen here is a page from a later chapter, in WDC&S Vol. 6, #11 (aka #71), Aug. 1946. Script by Bill Walsh; art by Floyd Gottfredson; inks by Dick Moores. Apparently this is the first storyline in which Mickey gave up wearing his original trademark short pants. One minor correction to Ted’s memory bank: It was an invisible cloak, not a jacket, that Mickey donned to go into the future. [TM & © Disney Productions.]
lab. He was a photographer. Once in a while, he’d bring me home photographs of torpedoes or bombs or things like that, just for me to look at. BS: And what about siblings? WHITE: None. I was an only child and, frankly, I was always kind of happy about that. BS: Where would you have gotten your hands on comics, in terms of buying them from a store around there? WHITE: Of course, the first ones I got my hands on were from neighborhood kids. But we had a center of town where the general store was. There was a drug store and a movie theatre and a fiveand-dime and other stuff like that. And both the drug store and the five-and-dime had good comic racks. And the grade school that I went to is just up the street from all of that. So when I would get out of school in the afternoon, I would just walk down a block to the drug store and maybe get myself a five-cent Coke or something and browse the comic books. BS: Very convenient. WHITE: I remember one time, I was parked in front of the comic book rack in the five-and-dime, sitting on the floor, reading them, and I became aware that someone was standing over me. I looked up and it was my mother, who was very angry that I had not come home from school. BS: Well, the comics were just too compelling. What were the first comics that you remember reading? WHITE: I know that some of the earliest comics that made a strong impression on me were from the early ’40s. I was probably a few years old when I saw them. They were Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories with the “Mickey Mouse” serials. There was a “Mickey Mouse” serial where he puts on this jacket, and it puts him in the