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STAR*REACH! No. 164 May 2020

WHERE THE SUPER-POWERED JUSTICE LEAGUE FAILED...

AND HE DID IT WORKING ALONGSIDE ADAMS KANE DILLIN TUSKA BUSCEMA STARLIN CHAYKIN BRUNNER & MANY MORE!

Helped Save the Comics Industry!

BONUS: WELCOME TO

RURAL HOME COMICS

TM & © DC Comics.

82658 00404

COUNTRY! WHAT? YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF THE GREEN TURTLE CAPTAIN WIZARD & THE BOGEYMAN?

mike friedrich

Interactive Catalog

2020

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CONTENTS American Comic Book Chronicles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Companion Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Digital Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Comics Artists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Modern Masters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Jack Kirby Publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Magazines:

Jack Kirby Collector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Draw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Write Now (and “how-to” books) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Comic Book Creator/Comic Book Artist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Alter Ego . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Rough Stuff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Back Issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 RetroFan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 BrickJournal (LEGO® magazine) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

respective owners.

All characters TM & © their

Pop Culture Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 LEGO® Publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

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You’ve probably heard that Diamond Comic Distributors closed in March, leaving small publishers like us with no way to get our publications to comics shops. Then, our distributor for the Barnes & Noble bookstore chain also closed without warning, just as our new issues were about to go on sale. The end result is, we took a huge loss by printing and shipping tens of thousands of copies of six new magazines and our Anniversary book that distributors are not paying us for, and having to dispose of the unsold copies. We hope distributors and stores will eventually reopen, but until then, mail order and digital sales are TwoMorrows’ lifeline, to ensure we stay in business. We have bills to pay on all those existing publications, and plan to keep publishing new ones. So if you’re able to help, please: 1) Purchase our World of TwoMorrows 25th Anniversary book, which is available now in Softcover, Ultra-Limited Hardcover, and Digital Editions. If you’ve enjoyed the material we’ve produced for the last quarter-century, you’ll love learning how we made it happen all these years! 2) Download our new, easy to use 2020 Digital Catalog at: https://www.twomorrows.com/2020InteractiveCatalog.pdf and order some books and mags online. Best of all: We’re currently offering 40% off most magazines! And we’re fully operational and shipping worldwide (my wife Pam and I are packing and mailing all the orders due

to North Carolina’s stay-at-home mandate). If you have trouble ordering online, we’re happy to take your order by phone or email. 3) Pre-order copies of Alter Ego #164, Back Issue #120, BrickJournal #62, Comic Book Creator #23, Jack Kirby Collector #79, and RetroFan #9, all of which will be shipping by mail over the next few weeks. Or please consider: Since BrickJournal #62 and #63 and RetroFan #9 and #10 (and possibly later issues) will not be sold at Barnes & Noble, now is a great time to… 4) Subscribe or renew your current subscriptions! The next issues of all six of our magazines are ready to go to press, and by subscribing, you’re helping us maintain a regular release schedule for your favorite titles. In 1994, I founded TwoMorrows Publishing with the publication of The Jack Kirby Collector #1. I didn’t start out by selling through comics shops or bookstores—only by mail order and subscriptions. And I’m prepared to keep working that way indefinitely, regardless of when stores and distributors reopen. So stay safe, and together, we’ll keep the World of TwoMorrows spinning for another 25 years! John Morrow, publisher TwoMorrows Publishing 919-449-0344 www.twomorrows.com

Vol. 3, No. 164 / May 2020 Editor

Roy Thomas

Associate Editor 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, Bill Schelly

Proofreaders

Rob Smentek William J. Dowlding

Cover Artists

Neal Adams & Dick Giordano

Cover Colorist Unknown

With Special Thanks to:

Heidi Amash Gary Groth Richard Arndt Walt Grogan Bob Bailey Dr. Kurt Hemmer Jean Bails Spud Hilton George Wilson Alex Jay Beahm Sharon Karibian Christopher Boyko Jim Kealy Nick Caputo Mark Lewis Mark CarlsonAlan Light Ghost Art Lortie R. Dewey Cassell Jim Ludwig Shaun Clancy The Morisi Family Comic Book Plus Brian K. Morris (website) Will Murray Comic Vine Barry Pearl (website) Trina Robbins Brian Cremins Bob Rozakis The Dillin Family David Saunders Doug Ellis Tom Sawyer John Fahey Carl Shinyama Shane Foley Dann Thomas Mike Friedrich Anthony Tollin Janet Gilbert Joe Vucenic Grand Comics Qiana Whitted Database (website)

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CONTENTS Writer/Editorial: Streets Paved With Gold And Silver (Ages) . . 2 “I Wanted There To Be Comics That Had A Young-Adult Sensibility” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Writer/entrepreneur Mike Friedrich tells Richard Arndt about DC, Marvel, & Star*Reach.

The Forgotten Super-Heroes Of 1944-45 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Mark Carlson-Ghost on the untold story of Rural Home Publishing & other true crimes.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! The PAM Papers (Part 6) . . . . . 65 Michael T. Gilbert spotlights more of artist Pete Morisi’s voluminous correspondence.

Mr. Tawny’s Shadow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 P.C. Hamerlinck presents Brian Cremins on the day Otto Binder met Walter B. Gibson.

On Our Cover: Many of Mike Friedrich’s early-1970s issues of Justice League of America were blessed in having powerful, oft-symbolic covers by Neal Adams. A case in point: that of #88 (March 1971), whose dialogue we’ve altered to our own purpose in order to recognize the importance of Mike’s 1974 publication of the first true “ground-level” comicbook, Star*Reach, and the many titles that came after it. Inks by Dick Giordano. Thanks to the Grand Comics Database. [TM & © DC Comics.] Above: If there is one super-hero who more than any other stands out from the pack of late-WorldWar-II comics companies who played hide-and-seek with the paper-supply restrictions of the U.S. War Production Board, it would be Chu Hing’s “Green Turtle.” Here, as a sneak peak of what you’ll see in Mark Carlson-Ghost’s long article this issue, is the final page of the Turtle’s timeless tale from Rural Home’s Blazing Comics #1 (June 1944). Thanks to Comic Book Plus website. [© the respective copyright holders.] Alter Ego TM 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: $67 US, $101 Elsewhere, $27 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.

Streets Paved With Gold And Silver (Ages)

writer/editorial

t’s funny how often the original, two-decades-ago “mission statement” of this magazine pokes its grizzled head out of the mists of fogbound history, to remind me of precisely what I had in mind in 1999 when I let publisher John Morrow and Comic Book Artist editor Jon B. Cooke talk me into abandoning flipbook status in CBA to revive Alter Ego as a separate title.

The aim was to divide A/E between dealing with the so-called Golden Age of Comics (my own special area of interest) and the equally so-called Silver Age (which was, if anything, even more my area of expertise, since I’d become a professional part of it in 1965). The issue you hold in your hands is split nicely between Golden and Silver matters. We start with Silver—with Richard Arndt’s splendid interview with Mike Friedrich, who was a prominent fan in the early ’60s and who by 1967 was writing and selling scripts to DC Comics for such top features as “Batman,” The Spectre, and Justice League of America. By the early 1970s, he moved on to Marvel and Iron Man, “Ka-Zar,” et al.—and by the mid-’70s he had launched his own publication, Star*Reach, which can lay claim to being the first true “independent” comicbook. It’s this progression, from fandom to the “Big Two” hero publishers to becoming a publisher/editor himself, that makes Mike’s journey so fascinating and important. Perhaps less “important” to comicbook history as a whole, but no less fascinating, are the subjects of the Golden Age portion of this issue: the often fly-by-night publishers who, during the last year or so of World War II, somehow managed to locate legally forbidden caches of newsprint on which to print material as varied as “The Green Turtle” (one of the most unusual super-heroes of any comics age) and “Pussy Katnip,” among many other funny-animal antics. Mark Carlson-Ghost has researched the hell out of that brief era, and we suspect you’ll be as spellbound by the resulting article as Roy Thomas ' Always-Timely Comics Fanzine

MARTIN MAN OD GOPRE SENTS

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MARVEL COMICS No. 165 (1939-1971)

AND THAT MEANS YOU’RE GONNA SEE PLENTY OF: STAN LEE JACK KIRBY JOE SIMON BILL EVERETT CARL BURGOS LLOYD JACQUET SYD SHORES JOE MANEELY STEVE DITKO JOHN ROMITA DICK AYERS DON RICO ALEX SCHOMBURG MARIE SEVERIN WILL MURRAY ROY THOMAS & MANY MORE!

November 2019

we are. It’s almost like finding a whole new comicbook “age” in between the Golden Age and what’s sometimes called the Atomic Age of Comics. These two lengthy pieces take up most of the air in the issue, since our recent forced cutback from 96 to 80 interior pages. But we still found room for Michael T. Gilbert’s “Comic Crypt” (mostly Silver Age-related this time around)—and for Brian Cremins’ article on Golden Age comics/pulp scribes Otto Binder and Walter B. Gibson in P.C. Hamerlinck’s FCA. And wouldn’t you know, these two features, too, are almost equally divided between the 1940s/50s and the 1960s/70s points of focus of Alter Ego. That’s not to say that some future issue isn’t likely to be top-heavy with Golden Age-connected contents, while the one after that may deal almost entirely with the Silver—but if the history of heroic comics is your meat, you should be happy with either outcome. Even so, we do feel two real lacks this issue, due to those missing 16 pages: One is the contributions of the late Bill Schelly, whose “Comic Fandom Archive” has been an A/E mainstay for the past twenty years. But Bill, who passed away far too young last September, will be remembered—and not for the last time—in our very next issue. Additionally, the length of our two lead features, both scheduled back when we had slightly more pages, has sadly forced the delay of both our John Broome installment and letters about A/E #155 until next time. But maybe we can “double up” therein and get back to being only a year or so behind schedule!

Bestest,

165

COMING IN JUNE

MARTIN GOODMAN

The Man Who Founded Marvel Comics!

• Luscious cover painting of Timely/Marvel Comics’ original publisher by DREW FRIEDMAN! • “Merry MARTIN GOODMAN”—discussed and dissected by WILL MURRAY, utilizing a neverpublished 2009 interview with STAN LEE about his “peerless publisher”! With art & artifacts by JACK KIRBY, JOE SIMON, BILL EVERETT, CARL BURGOS, PAUL GUSTAVSON, JOE MANEELY, DON RICO, SYD SHORES, STEVE DITKO, JOHN ROMITA, JOHN BUSCEMA, DICK AYERS, NEAL ADAMS, JIM STERANKO, & numerous others! • A celebration of the life and legacy of the late BILL SCHELLY—A/E’s Comic Fandom Archivist in residence and author of major biographies of HARVEY KURTZMAN, JOE KUBERT, OTTO BINDER, JOHN STANLEY, & JAMES WARREN! Conducted by his friend and colleague JEFF GELB, with salutes to Bill from many fans and pros alike! • Plus—FCA—JOHN BROOME—MICHAEL T. GILBERT, & MORE!!

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“I Wanted There To Be Comics That Had A Young-Adult Sensibility”

Writer/Entrepreneur MIKE FRIEDRICH On DC, Marvel, & His Own Star*Reach Interview Conducted & Transcribed by Richard J. Arndt

Mike Friedrich in a photo that appeared in Alter Ego [Vol. 1] #11, the single issue of this magazine he co-edited and published, back in 1978. In terms of the comicbook industry: during the latter 1960s and the 1970s, he was first the writer, and later the publisher, of noted comics, including scripting the likes of DC’s The Spectre #3 (March-April 1968; art by Neal Adams) and Marvel’s Iron Man #51 (July 1972; art by George Tuska & Vince Colletta)… and editing and publishing Star*Reach #1 (April 1974; cover by Howard Chaykin). Thanks to Art Lorite, Barry Pearl, and the Grand Comics Database, respectively, for the art scans. [Spectre art TM & © DC Comics; Iron Man art TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; Star*Reach art TM & © Howard Chaykin.]

NTERVIEWER’S INTRODUCTION: Mike Friedrich was one of a number of comicbook scripters in the mid-to-late 1960s who got their start as professional writers while still teenagers. Joining the ranks of Jim Shooter, Cary Bates, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Willi Franz, and Gerry Conway, among others, Friedrich’s first published script was for an issue of Batman. Over the next decade, his work appeared in such titles as DC’s The Spectre, The Witching Hour, and Justice League of America. In 1971 he moved to Marvel, where he worked on Iron Man, Marvel Feature (starring Ant-Man), Captain Marvel, and Sub-Mariner, among others. In 1974 he began to transition from writing mainstream comics to his own self-published “groundlevel” comicbook Star*Reach, an anthology title that presented some of the best writers and artists of the 1970s producing comics material that the mainstream publishers wouldn’t publish at that time. More than any other title, Star*Reach—and Friedrich’s swiftly following related titles—laid the foundation and set the stage for the explosion of independent publishers and comics that appeared in the 1980s, an explosion that continues to both transform and influence the comicbook market of

Writer/Entrepreneur Mike Friedrich On DC, Marvel, & His Own Star*Reach

today, even though Star*Reach itself expired in 1979. This interview was conducted via telephone on April 14, 2016. RICHARD ARNDT: Thanks for agreeing to do this, Mike. Start us off with your early life, would you, please? MIKE FRIEDRICH: I was born in Oakland, California, and went to high school there. Then I attended Santa Clara University, circa 1967-1971. I sold my first comic story a couple of months before I graduated from high school. In fact, writing for comicbooks is what paid my way through college. My first sale was a ten-page “Robin the Boy Wonder” back-up story. I sold it in May of 1967 and used that money to fly to New York for the first time in my life. That story ran in Batman #202 [cover-dated June 1968]. That wasn’t the first story of mine that saw publication, but it was the first one that sold. They held onto it for a while before they published it. ARNDT: I have your first published story as the lead tale in Batman #200 [Mar. 1968].

ARNDT: That’s the one that I remember. I was just looking at the covers of those two anniversary comics and I don’t recognize the Batman cover at all, but the Detective Comics one, with Batman holding up the two comicbooks—Detective Comics #27 and Batman #1—is the one that I read at the time and remember well. FRIEDRICH: I remember having a lot of fun writing that. I didn’t have to worry about creating the plot, which was always my problem, because it was already done. I could just riff off of the original storyline and try to make it interesting. I had fun with that story. ARNDT: Now the “Spectre” story featured the re-introduction of Wildcat, who hadn’t been seen in fifteen years or more at that point. That, I would think, would have been kind of a big deal also. FRIEDRICH: At that point, Julie had been slowly reviving the 1940s characters in various forms. There had been several team-ups in Showcase. The Spectre had just gotten his own title. I was not a big Wildcat fan, but I’d enjoyed the character from the Justice Society comics that I’d collected. I thought Wildcat was the most interesting unused character at that point. To me now it seems kind of weird to

FRIEDRICH: That’s not quite correct. It was The Spectre #3 [Mar.Apr. 1968], which came out on a Tuesday, and then Batman #200 came out on Thursday the same week. [laughs] ARNDT: So distributors delivered magazines and comics twice a week in the late 1960s? When I was working the bookstores in the mid-1970s, books and magazines came out every Tuesday, to be put out on Wednesday morning. I’m pretty sure that’s how they’re still doing it today—even on the Internet. FRIEDRICH: I have no idea how the distribution system worked anywhere. In the area where I was living at the time, they delivered new comics on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In other markets they may have been released on the same day, so it was still pretty close to a simultaneous publication of The Spectre and Batman. The Batman #200 story was my second story accepted, and the Spectre #3 story was my third sale. I sold both of them in the summer of 1967. I was still very much a novice at learning how all of this worked. From then on the stories came out pretty much in the order that I wrote them. ARNDT: Was it a big deal writing the story for the 200th issue of Batman? Nowadays it would be quite a special event. FRIEDRICH: I think that was the first time DC made a big deal about that type of thing. Julie Schwartz was the editor, and he guessed that fans would appreciate anniversary issues. He was taking advantage of the fact that this comic fan was now writing for him, and that was why he assigned me the issue. It was purely for that reason. I don’t remember if he gave me any guidelines on the story. I’m pretty sure that I was the one who suggested using The Scarecrow as the villain, but I don’t think that there was anything, except possibly the cover, that really pushed it as an anniversary tale. Less than a year later, I was asked to write the 30th-anniversary issue of Batman appearing in Detective Comics [#387, May 1969]. That was very purposefully done. That was also Julie’s suggestion. It was an update of the original “Batman” story from Detective Comics #27 [May 1969]—“The Case of the Chemical Syndicate,” with that first story being reprinted in the back of the book. The original story was only six pages, but it had a lot of panels, so it wasn’t that difficult to redo it as a 17-page updated version.

Rockin’ Robin!

Chic Stone

Wow! Looks like Mike was lucky enough, with his very first professional sale to Batman #202 (June 1968), to work with “Batman” co-creator Bob Kane! Okay, okay—so actually, despite the then-omnipresent signature, Kane’s artistic “ghosts” on this occasion were penciler Chic Stone and inker Joe Giella. But that’s not a bad pair to start out with, right? Thanks to Bob Bailey. [TM & © DC Comics.]

“I Wanted There To Be Comics That Had A Young-Adult Sensibility”

And Now For Something Completely Earlier… Neal Adams around the time he first entered the comicbook industry circa 1966.

Two stories by Mike F. that apparently came out, at least some places, on Tuesday and Thursday in the very same week (yes, that’s right—back then, comics hit the stores twice a week, not just once—they were a mass market then, remember?)—two months before the first story Mike had sold to editor Julius Schwartz appeared: the Neal Adams-drawn “Prologue” to The Spectre #3 (March-April 1968), and the lead tale in the giant-sized Batman #200 (March ’68), again drawn by Stone & Giella as “Bob Kane.” Thanks to Art Lorie & Bob Bailey. [TM & © DC Comics.]

put The Spectre and Wildcat together in the same comic, but I managed it somehow.

I mean, it’s really a Wildcat story guest-starring The Spectre. The Spectre doesn’t even show up until the second half of the story. ARNDT: You were working strictly for Julie Schwartz at this point? FRIEDRICH: For the first year, yes. I was going to college and needed to concentrate on that. I’d only been in New York that first summer, between high school and college, and so I was just working for Julie. I’d been introduced to [Superman line editor] Mort Weisinger, but there was no chemistry there. I was also introduced to the other editors, but I wasn’t trying to work for them. I was only eighteen years old. Also, I was totally a Julie Schwartz fan. It was my fan sensibility that was motivating me at that point. I had no sense of trying to have a career writing comics or anything like that. It was really very… present time… just the idea that this would be a fun, and fannish, thing to do. So I then wrote a couple of stories during my college freshman year. I did a “Green Lantern” story that featured the Golden Age Green Lantern and the contemporary one in a team-up. Then I did that Detective Comics re-do. Then I went back East again, between my freshman and sophomore years, and DC really treated me royally at that point. In the meantime, Carmine Infantino had

Julius Schwartz Taken during fan John Fahey’s visit to the DC offices in 1965. First appeared in A/E [Vol. 1] #9.

become the new editorial director. They decided they wanted to use me to help promote a younger, hipper readership. Little did they know! [laughs] I was then actually asked to write for all the editors.

By that second summer DC had hired Dick Giordano and Joe Orlando. So I did my first stories for them. I wrote a Challengers of the Unknown for Murray Boltinoff. I helped relaunch The Phantom Stranger for Joe Orlando. I did a Teen Titans issue for Dick Giordano. And I did a few more stories for Julie, who, although he’d helped set up all this work for other editors, was, I think, a little resentful of all these other people using me. The Julie stories were, at this point, back-up stories—“Robin” and “Batgirl” tales. I think I wrote the “Batgirl” stories first, and then started up the “Robin” stories. I kept going with the “Robin” stories because I was more comfortable with him. I never quite understood what “Batgirl” was all about. By my third year I was much more independent. I was a couple of years older and there were now some contemporaries of mine working for DC. Gerry Conway, Marv Wolfman, and Len Wein were starting to get regular writing work. I needed to do more of my own assignment-getting, instead of having the editor bring them to me. I was doing about half to two-thirds of my work for Julie and the other third for Dick Giordano.

The Forgotten Super-Heroes Of 1944-45

The Untold Story Of RURAL HOME & Other True Crimes by Mark Carlson-Ghost Lindsay L. Baird The legally and ethically challenged publisher of Rural Home Comics (and probably a behind-the-scenes presence in several other WWII-era comics publishers as well, if the truth be known)—plus artwork featuring three memorable, yet somehow almost totally unremembered, super-heroes of the year 1944 and, at least in terms of cover dates, early ’45. Baird photo courtesy of David Saunders. (Clockwise:) Maureen Marine attacks a Hitlerian octopus on the cover of Blue Circle Comics #3 (Sept. ’44); art possibly by Harold Delay. The Duke of Darkness in a dramatic splash by underrated artist John Giunta, from Triple Threat Comics #1-and-only (Winter 1945). (The Duke’s the one at bottom, facing a Nightmare-ish foe, Mr. Slumber.) El Kuraan, on the splash of his introductory story in Red Circle Comics #3 (March 1945). There were apparently just two tales of this early Muslim comicbook hero. Artist and writer unknown. Courtesy of the Comic Book Plus website. All comic art accompanying this article, unless otherwise indicated, was provided by author Mark Carlson-Ghost. [TM & © the respective copyright holders.]

The Untold Story Of Rural Home Comics & Other True Crimes

upply and demand. That’s the simplest explanation for the explosion, back in 1944, of short-lived super-hero features— and the equally short-lived companies that published them. Almost all of the heroes have names only the most diligent students of comicbook history will recall: Maureen Marine, The Duke of Darkness, and El Kuraan, to name but a few. They were a quixotic bunch, and only a few of them deserved a longer shelf life on the newsstands than what they got. But what they lacked in pedigree, the character concepts often made up for in sheer inventiveness. However, equally interesting is the story behind these heroes, the men (and at least a few women) responsible for the raft of new publishing ventures in the closing years of World War II. Rural Home, Spotlight, William H. Wise: the list is long. And there were more than a few shady real-life characters in the narrative about to unfold. The most important thing to understand about this brief period in comicbook history is that stringent paper quotas were set by the U.S. federal government early in 1943. But the demand for comicbooks remained the same. In an era of world war, if anything, the desire for escapist fantasies increased. So do the math. Reduced product on the newsstands, and the same or increased demand, meant that just about everything on sale sold out. In short, there were huge profits to be made by anyone able to create product. And not everyone was particularly scrupulous about honoring a law on paper use that, on the face of it, seemed very challenging to enforce. The backstory of this influx of offbeat, short-lived heroes (and publishers) is largely untold. Established stars like Superman and Captain America would just have to make room. The Green Turtle, Purple Tigress, and a raft of often ill-conceived wannabes were on their way.

The L-241 Paper Limitation Order After the attack on Pearl Harbor, what unfolded during the subsequent months prompted regulations limiting the amount of paper used in publishing. For one thing, the supply of available pulp paper was down, due to fewer (undrafted) men to cut down the trees and fewer (rubber) tires for the trucks that were needed to transport that lumber for processing. At the same time the wartime need for that paper dramatically increased. “Paper is a war weapon,” Batman somberly explained in 1944 in a one-page public service announcement in Detective Comics #86. “It’s used to make countless military items like parachute and bomb bands, containers for army rations and for shells, war maps and naval charts and many other battle necessities.” True enough, but it became apparent to the federal government that the biggest publishers of books, magazines, and newspapers were able to buy up most of the remaining available pulp for paper. This left smaller publishers—or less well-healed larger ones—out in the cold. As such, the government instituted paper conservation measures on January 1st, 1943. Policies allotted companies new quantities of paper based on their volume of consumption during the base rate year of 1941. Each existing publisher could utilize only a notably smaller percentage of paper than they’d used in that year. There were also separate regulations for publishers of newspapers, magazines, and books. They were covered under Limitation Orders L-240, L-244, and L-245, respectively.

The Butler Did It! Jerry Robinson, then an art “ghost” for Batman co-creator Bob Kane, drew this DC public service announcement featuring Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred and a couple of masked employers. [TM & © DC Comics.]

An important caveat was that there was a small-publisher exemption, spelled out in Limitation Order L-241, which addressed the regulation of commercial printers. As long as a small publisher notified the War Production Board afterwards, and didn’t use more paper than allowed, they would not be considered in violation of the legal limit. Any excess usage would need to be made up by the printer who allowed it. For comicbook publishers finding themselves under paper use restrictions for the first time, the impact on their schedules was almost immediate. The first sign of modified schedules appeared in comicbooks cover dated March 1943, which makes sense if you remember that the dates on comicbooks were usually two or three months ahead of the actual calendar. Some under-selling titles were canceled on the spot, and some others were reduced from monthly to bimonthly status. As restrictions grew tighter, the total number of pages in most comicbooks was reduced from 64 (not counting covers) to 56 or even 48. Not everyone, however, was content to play by these new rules. As will be seen, certain packagers tried to find ways around these limits, sometimes seeking a surrogate publisher who had not used his entire allotment and who was willing to use it on the packager’s behalf. This could be legal, but only if the surrogate publisher notified the WPB in triplicate within one month of the transaction. A second strategy was to seek out individuals who were not actually publishers but who were willing to put their name and