Issuu

MERRY CHRISTMAS fr om Roy Thomas ’ Fawcett-Happy Comics Fanzine

With Art & Artifacts By:

ALEX ROSS JACK & OTTO BINDER KEN BALD • VIC DOWD BOB BOYAJIAN MARC SWAYZE • C.C. BECK EMILIO SQUEGLIO JOANNA PANG of ISIS KURT SCHAFFENBERGER BILL WARD & MORE!!!

6.95

In the USA

No.55

December 2005

Vol. 3, No. 55/ December 2005

™

Editor Roy Thomas

Associate Editors Bill Schelly Jim Amash

Design & Layout Christopher Day

Consulting Editor John Morrow

FCA Editor P.C. Hamerlinck

Comic Crypt Editor Michael T. Gilbert

Editors Emeritus Jerry Bails (founder) Ronn Foss, Biljo White, Mike Friedrich

Production Assistant Eric Nolen-Weathington

Our Annual Fawcett Festival!

Cover Artists & Colorists

Contents

Alex Ross Alex Wright

And Special Thanks to: Richard Kyle Neal Adams Andy McKinney Heidi Amash Joanna Pang Atkins Jim Mooney & Richard Atkins Matt Moring Bob Bailey Brian K. Morris Ken & Kaye Bald Albert Moy Bill Black Will Murray Frank Brunner Don Phelps Orlando Busino John G. Pierce Bob & Gail Warren Reece Boyajian Alex Ross Frank Brunner Alex Saviuk Nick Caputo Dorothy Nick Cardy Schaffenberger Dewey Cassell Ernie Schroeder Vic Dowd Joe & Betty Sinnott Michael Dunne Emilio Squeglio Shane Foley Jim Stanley Dave Fontaine Marc Swayze Jenna Free Dann Thomas Janet Gilbert Mort Todd Matt Gore Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. Gary Groth Dr. Michael J. Vassallo Jennifer Hamerlinck Hames Ware Russ Heath Alex Wright Mark & Stephanie Rodrigo M. Zeidan Heike Rodriguez Zelis Shayna Ian Tom Ziuko Adele Kurtzman

This Issue Is Dedicated To The Memories Of

Otto & Jack Binder

Writer/Editorial: Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!. . . . . . . . . . . . 2 See You On Groundhog Day!

My First Shazam! Painting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Alex Ross reveals the story behind this issue’s colorful Marvel Family cover.

“I Did Better On Bulletman Than I Did On Millie The Model . . . . . . . 5 Ken Bald on drawing comic books (for Fawcett, Timely, et al.) & comic strips.

“I Thought That Comic Books Would Never Last” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Vic Dowd relates what he feels is “the typical cartoonist’s story.”

“Comics Weren’t My Main Goal In Life” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Even so, artist Bob Boyajian accomplished plenty at Fawcett & the Binder shop.

Comic Crypt: John Stanley, Part III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Michael T. Gilbert completes his tribute to the great Little Lulu writer/artist.

Leonard Darvin Speaks—About The Comics Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Bill Schelly presents Part III of our coverage of the 1966 New York comicons.

A FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) Spectacular! . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 P.C. Hamerlinck showcases a 1973 conversation between Jack & Otto Binder, a “real- life Marvel Family”—Joanna Pang of TV’s Isis—Marc Swayze—a Captain Marvel Christmas—& more!

A Brand New 1943 Pin-Up Calendar & Christmas Cards From The Pros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Flip Us! About Our Cover: Super-star artist Alex Ross clues us all in—on p. 4. [Art ©2005 Alex Ross; Captain Marvel TM & ©2005 DC Comics.] Above: A panel penciled by Golden Age artist Ken Bald from Bulletman #9 (Nov. 13, 1942). You’ll see a lot of art from this story in this issue! [Restored art ©2005 AC Comics; Bulletman TM & ©2005 DC Comics.] Alter EgoTM is published monthly 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. Single issues: $9 ($10 Canada, $11.00 elsewhere). Twelve-issue subscriptions: $60 US, $120 Canada, $132 elsewhere. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © Roy Thomas. Alter Ego is a TM of Roy & Dann Thomas. FCA is a TM of P.C. Hamerlinck. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

My First Shazam! Painting The Story Behind This Issue’s Cover Art By Alex Ross Artist Alex Ross supplied this photo of himself, hard at work, as usual.

his issue’s cover is the first fully-finished painting of The Marvel Family I ever attempted. Done as an art swap with my good friend, artist David Williams, it represented my enthusiasm toward these characters, as well as my trying to impress someone. In 1992-93, at the age of 22, I was changing careers from advertising to comics full-time by beginning my work on the series Marvels. Already I had fooled around for years with my revisionist look for DC’s “Marvels,” planning an approach that I would hopefully be able to put into print one day.

for Michael’s features are more like Freddy Freeman’s than Billy Batson’s. Topping it off was the (then) modern spin of model Kathy Ireland as Mary Marvel. Ireland’s features seemed not unlike the Captain’s thick-eyebrowed, puckish-nosed look that I presumed would be helpful in conveying their sibling status. I dressed up The Marvel Family with more muted colors: Venetian red and slate blue with shiny gold fabric, inspired by the Tom Tyler movie serial costume.

This illustration was meant to crystallize a visual twist by going back to the characters’ roots, as well as updating the physical believability. Chief to my inspiration was that a more tangible human representation of Captain Marvel would be his original basis, actor Fred MacMurray. In his youthful prime, when the likeness with ol’ Cap is quite clear, and dressed in the earliest Whiz Comics #2 (actually the first issue, of course) costume, MacMurray seemed, to my mind, the ideal Captain Marvel. Thinking of my childhood influence of the Shazam! TV show, I wanted to put an idea into effect by casting Michael Gray in the Captain Marvel Jr. role. This seemed to me to be appropriate,

Most of these graphic ideas wouldn’t really see fruition in my future comics work, as my first use of The Marvel Family appeared in the future-based Kingdom Come series. Therein, Mary and Freddy were radically changed, and while Captain Marvel followed through with a lot of my original design intent, I had been warned of DC’s hesitation toward direct celebrity likenesses, and dropped the exact homage to the late Fred MacMurray. This painting ultimately proved to be a footnote for my own creative development and creative potential applied to these beloved characters, of whom I still hope to make greater use one day.

Marvel-ous Photos Alex says these photos of Kathy Ireland, Fred MacMurray, and Michael Gray were among those used as the basis of the faces on the painting which currently this issue of Alter Ego. [Photos ©2005 the respective copyright holders; art ©2005 Alex Ross; Marvel Family TM & ©2005 DC Comics.]

“I Did Better On Bulletman Than I Did On Millie The Model” Golden Age Great KEN BALD On Drawing Comic Books, Comic Strips, And Lots More! Interview Conducted & Transcribed by Jim Amash

en Bald is remembered by comic book fans for his selfassured, illustrative style. A graduate of Pratt Institute, Ken simply outdrew most of his peers during his career. Not many artists can go from art school to being art director at a place like the Jack Binder studios as easily as Ken did. Ken’s style lent itself to various genres—a must in those days of ever-changing trends. If an artist couldn’t go from drawing super-heroes to romance or crime stories or Westerns, he soon found himself unemployed. Ken never had that problem. He could change styles effortlessly and effectively: from Captain Marvel to Millie the Model, to newspaper strips like Dr. Kildare and Dark Shadows, and to illustration. To most observers, it appears that there’s nothing Ken couldn’t do—except hide from us when we came a-callin’. This interview’s about the only way we could get this inveterate athlete off the basketball court! Take ten, Ken! —Jim.

“Tarzan In The Elephants’ Graveyard Really Sparked My Imagination” JIM AMASH: Let’s start off at the usual place: when and where were you born?

graveyard really sparked my imagination. I took every art class I could in school, and luckily I turned out well enough so that one of my art teachers, Elsie Nourse, got me a scholarship for Pratt Institute. I did well enough at Pratt that they kept renewing my scholarship each year. In fact, I was number one in my class. JA: Before I ask you about Pratt, tell me about the cartoon contest you won. BALD: Oh, that was when I was little kid... about fifteen. I drew a heavy woman with a kid in her arms and three or four kids running around, while she’s ironing something. There was a load of dirty clothes waiting to washed in the kitchen. Back then, there was a popular song titled “Alone on a Night like This,” but I won’t sing it for you. The woman is singing “Alone.” That drawing won me five bucks. JA: I know that was a big thrill for you. [Ken agrees] Tell me about the friends you made at Pratt. I know Bill Ward was a fraternity brother. BALD: That’s right. Bill was a year ahead of us and was working at Jack Binder’s shop. He recruited a whole slew of Pratt students: Bob

KEN BALD: New York City, August 1, 1920. I was the oldest of five children. My father died in 1931, when I was ten. He was a policeman in Mount Vernon, New York, and worked the morning shift. He had what he thought was only a gas attack, and kept on walking. What happened was that he had appendicitis, and when he came home that Saturday morning, he collapsed in front of us. I was the oldest, and the youngest was my sister, who was ten months old at the time. I had two other brothers, one who was eight and the other, three. Another brother, Clifford, died at the age of four months. A couple of years later, doctors would have been able to save my father, but they didn’t have the knowledge to do so at the time. Unfortunately, my sister and I are the only ones left alive. JA: What got you interested in writing and drawing? BALD: I think most children like to draw. It’s only the ones who keep at it that get anywhere. I used to draw a lot of actors’ and actresses’ faces. Then I saw Hal Foster’s Tarzan in the newspapers, and seeing Tarzan in the elephants’

The Bald Truth Ken Bald circa the late 1940s, looking like he might be in a wedding party, in a photo sent by Dorothy (Mrs. Kurt) Schaffenberger to P.C. Hamerlinck some time ago— —while at right is one of the few Golden Age super-hero stories which has definitely been attributed to Bald, from Bulletman #9 (cover-dated Nov. 13, 1942). This art was restored, with grey tones added, by Bill Black and the gang at AC Comics, publishers of the most invaluable line of Golden Age reprint comics around. (See their comics ad on p. 34.) [Restored art ©2005 AC Comics; Bulletman & Bulletgirl TM & ©2005 DC Comics.]

Ken Bald On Drawing Comic Books, Comic Strips, And Lots More! move to New York, so we moved the studio to 507 Fifth Avenue. That was so much better for me, because I didn’t live in New Jersey and this was an easier commute.

Boyajian, Vic Dowd, Kurt Schaffenberger, Ray Harford, and me, among others, I’m sure. The five of us started at Pratt in the fall of 1938. We spent a lot of time together, doing things on weekends, like going to the Palisades. We’d all go out together with our girlfriends. In fact, three of us—Ray Harford, Kurt, and myself—married the girls we dated at Pratt. Of course, you know I married Vic’s sister Kaye.

Now, you know we were doing piecework on these pages. Very often, the artists would draw a back view of the characters. The Fawcett offices called us “The Backside Binder Studio.” It’s very easy to draw the back of a character in the foreground to hide details. That was a cute joke, but there was enough truth in it that we wanted to change that perception.

I played semi-pro football while at Pratt. I broke my leg just above my left ankle in my last year in high school, though it healed rapidly Dig My Grave Deep… Very Deep enough. Our football team was called the After the first Johnny Weissmuller-starring JA: What did you start out doing in the Binder Courtland Tigers, and we played throughout movie, Tarzan the Ape-Man, was released in shop? Westchester County—our home field being in early 1932, the Tarzan Sunday comics page Mount Vernon, though we played in the Bronx quickly picked up on the concept of the fabled BALD: I started out doing main figures, and I sometimes. We never made that much money. I “elephants’ graveyard,” as illustrated by think I made $4 a page for that. The art cost for played left half and cornerback; I wasn’t very Harold R. Foster. This panel is from the strip for an entire page was around $17.50. I had an heavy, but I was tall enough. I was also a kick 9-25-32. Thank Goro for those wonderful ability to get reasonable likenesses of people. I NBM/Flying Buttress volumes of the complete returner. My brother was a lineman and was may have done some secondary figures, too, but Foster & Hogarth years! [©2005 Edgar Rice bigger than me. We wore leather helmets and as we got busier, I concentrated on the main Burroughs, Inc.] didn’t have face guards until the last year I figures. For instance, I’d draw the Bulletman and played. I broke two ribs in my last game. We Bulletgirl figures, and other artists did the rest. Fawcett was our main practiced on Saturdays and played on Sundays. Then I graduated from account, and then we started producing a lot of work for Street & Smith. Pratt. By the way, my son made all-Ivy playing cornerback at the We did “Captain Marvel” and then, of course, DC sued Fawcett over University of Pennsylvania some thirty years later. that character. That suit dragged on for years and years.

“[Jack Binder] Treated Me As A Member Of The Family”

JA: How did you find out about the lawsuit? And what was the general reaction to it?

JA: Sports is a big topic in my family, too, as my brothers and I are all athletes. So, was Jack Binder the one who hired you?

BALD: I guess they just told us. We didn’t see any real comparison between the two. I suppose you could make every super-hero seem the same if you base it solely on their having super-powers. I did not think Captain Marvel was in any way a take-off on Superman. Billy Batson was a kid who said “Shazam,” and he was not like Clark Kent, a meek and mild adult who only needed to take off his business suit to become Superman.

BALD: Yes. He had a big home in Englewood, New Jersey. His brother Otto may have been living with Jack when I started working there, because I remember that Otto got married during my time at Binder’s. [NOTE: Photos of the Binder brothers appear in this issue’s edition of FCA. —Roy.]

JA: One of the things that was alleged was that some Fawcett artists used Superman art as swipes.

Otto was a great comics writer, and he also did a lot of science-fiction writing. He wrote wonderful comic book stories. He married a very pretty lady, but unfortunately they suffered a terrible tragedy [in the early 1970s]. Their 13-year-old daughter [Mary], who was the apple of their eye, was in high school. She was walking towards the parking lot, bent down to pick up a book she dropped, and some hot-rod kids came pulling into the space and killed her. Otto and his wife were never the same after that.

BALD: That was not true. I never saw that happen. But I was out of comics and into the service by December of ’42. I was only there from May ’41 until December ’42—less than two years. C.C. Beck had a formula for drawing Captain Marvel, so there was no need to swipe from Superman. If someone had swiped from Superman in the studios, I’d have known about it, and that did not happen while I was there. I don’t think C.C. Beck would have stood for that, either, and he more or less saw everything that was done on “Captain Marvel.”

I’d double-date with Jack and his wife, and we’d go visit [main “Captain Marvel” artist] C.C. Beck, and sometimes Otto came with us. Jack had a lovely daughter, and his wife Olga was a sweet, great gal. Jack used to say... I think he came from Michigan or some place with a lot of snow.... “I ran barefooted through the snow to go to school. You guys don’t know what work is!” [laughter] He was a delight! Most guys liked Jack. He treated me as a member of the family. He made me the art director. We first started working in one of the downstairs rooms of his big home, and when he finished fixing up the top floor of his barn, we moved out there. We had close to thirty people working there. After a year, he thought it best to

JA: I agree, because the C.C. Beck I knew didn’t even like Superman, and he certainly drew better than Joe Shuster. I’d like to change subjects now and ask you about the softball games you guys played. You did that in New Jersey, right?

You’ve Gotta Be A Football Hero… Ken (at left) and his brother Walter in 1939. He says it’s “the year before our face guards.” Ouch! Photo courtesy of Ken Bald.

BALD: Right. In New York, we’d work late, but not as late as we did in New Jersey. We were all young then. We’d take a two-hour lunch and play during that time. After that,

“I Did Better On Bulletman Than I Did On Millie The Model! ”

7 Jersey. We’d play each other and, at times, we’d play the Fawcett team. It was fun. We were all young, and then the older guys came in and played with us. JA: Who were the good ball players?

Two Shopmeisters: Beck & Binder (Left:) Otto Binder’s note on this photo he sent Roy Thomas circa 1964: “On the left is Charles Clarence Beck, chief artist for Captain Marvel from the very start to the very end—1940 to 1953. He is now living in Florida and doing commercial art. That’s just a friend in the middle; on the right is Pete Riss, deceased some years ago, who worked in Jack’s art shop while it lasted, then did romance comics, Westerns, and such for Fawcett, Goodman, and several other old-time comics publishers.” Actually, Beck drew the first “Captain Marvel” story in 1939, though it was cover-dated Jan. 1940. (Right:) 1941 photo of the original “studio” in Jack Binder’s home, prior to its moving into the large barn in Englewood, New Jersey. (Clockwise, from lower left:) Vic Dowd (whose own interview follows this one)—Jimmy Potter (whose life was cut short in a training accident during World War II)—Bob Boyajian (his interview follows Dowd’s!)—and Ken Bald. We can’t be sure what feature the lads are drawing—but from the amount of flames on these pages, maybe it’s “Ajax the Sun Man,” a series none of the artists interviewed in this issue recalls ever drawing, but which ran for several years in Street & Smith’s Doc Savage. (We showed a sample of it in A/E #49.) Fawcett and longtime pulp-mag publishers Street & Smith were the Binder shop’s two chief clients. Photo courtesy of Ken Bald.

we’d work and then go have dinner in town. Sometimes we went back to the barn and worked until 11 or 12 o’clock. JA: Who came up with the idea for the softball teams? BALD: I think Fawcett did, so they could play the Binder team. [Writer and sometime editor] Rod Reed—whom I liked very much—got the Fawcett team together. We had been playing among ourselves in New

BALD: Well, if you asked Rod Reed, he’d have said I was Pee Wee Reese [Hall of Fame shortstop of the Brooklyn Dodgers. —Jim.] We weren’t outstanding, but were good enough. JA: I’ve read that Mac Raboy was a good ball player. BALD: Otto Binder said that, and you know, he was wrong. Mac did not play with us. Possibly Otto had Mac confused with me. I don’t know why he thought Mac played. JA: Did C.C. Beck play?

BALD: No, he didn’t. I knew Beck through Jack Binder and we did some of the “Captain Marvel” stuff, but I didn’t see much of Beck during that period. After the war, I saw Beck and his wife Hildy, who was very nice. I went out to dinner with my date and the Becks a few times before the war. I liked C.C. very much. Jack was a charmer, and I couldn’t have had a better boss. He was like an older brother, in a way. JA: Did everyone else feel the same way about Binder? BALD: No. No, but a lot of fellows really liked him. He had trouble with a couple of fellows. One fellow—I hesitate to give his name— didn’t like Jack and felt he was being taken advantage of. JA: Were there any practical jokers in the studio? BALD: Not really, because we were too busy. JA: Who was the art director when you started working there? BALD: Actually, Jack was. There were only five or six guys there then. But when the studio got bigger, a very nice fellow named Peter Riss became the art director. Pete didn’t like the job; he wanted to do his own stuff. That’s when Jack asked me to be become the art director. I thought the money was pretty good, and I could still do the main figures on the pages as well as drawing the covers.

“The Prestige Of Being A New York Studio” JA: So you were paid a salary for being the art director, but you also got paid for your other work.

We’ll Root, Root, Root For The Home Team We’ve run this photo of the Binder studio baseball team twice before—including just last issue—but couldn’t resist showcasing it again, this time with Ken Bald’s personal IDs of most of the players. Artist Nat Champlin told us in A/E, Vol. 3, #3, that he “set the camera on delayed action and jumped back into the picture”—and still managed to look nice and relaxed, third from the left, sitting! Unidentified by Ken in the photo are two of the standees: Dick Rylands (second from left) and John Westlake (on far right). Ken adds the info that this pic was taken “across the street from the studio—one of our two-hour lunch and softball breaks—1941.”

BALD: Oh, yeah! And when we moved to New York, the glasspaneled door read “Jack Binder Studios - Ken Bald, Art Director.” That was the office part for Jack, Wendell Crowley, and myself. The rest were in a great big room, and at one point, there were 35 artists in there. I was thrilled to see my name on that door. Now, the guy who had painted all this stuff on the door had just left, when the phone rang inside the office. I turned the door knob and pushed the door with my shoulder. The knob didn’t turn fully and the glass breaks and shatters on my feet! [laughs] I thought,

“I Thought That Comic Books Would Never Last” VIC DOWD Relates What He Feels Is “The Typical Cartoonist’s Story”

Interview Conducted & Transcribed by Jim Amash

his interview is a good example of why Alter Ego exists. Vic Dowd’s career has been documented, though not nearly as fully as it should have been. Beyond that, I’m often surprised at what unrevealed aspects of people’s lives are sitting there, waiting to be uncovered. I’m not just talking about new information on what comic creators did during their careers, but in the non-comics portions of their lives, too. I won’t spoil the surprise for you, because you’ll see what I mean when Vic talks about his war experiences. Around those events, Vic discusses his career at Fawcett and Timely—among other places—and the people he knew. And thanks to the wealth of material that Vic sent us, you get to see how well-rounded and versatile an artist Vic has been over the years. —Jim.

“It Was A Logical Progression” JIM AMASH: I’d like to know about your background and what got you interested in drawing.

(Above:) Vic Dowd before his painting “At the Cannons,” which was displayed at the Westport Arts Center in Westport, Connecticut, in 2003. Photo courtesy of Vic.

VIC DOWD: I was born in Brooklyn, New York, November 7, 1920. I was always drawing. My story is the typical cartoonist’s story. I grew up in a very athletically-oriented neighborhood, in that those were the days when kids played ball without parental supervision. I belonged to a neighborhood team, started playing stickball, and when we got older, we were playing softball and basketball... whatever the team sport of the season was, was what we played. But, as a little kid, my mother never had any problems with me because I liked to draw.

(Left:) Alas, neither Vic nor we have been able to positively identify any comic book work that was definitively his—but researcher Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., sent Jim Amash these two pieces of art from Super Magician #5 (May 1942), published by Street & Smith and starring “Blackstone the Magician,” into which the artist sneaked his initials and last name! The first detail, near the “C!” in case it doesn’t show clearly hear, says “V.C.D. &” plus another name we can’t read—while the second detail, now that it’s been magnified several times, clearly shows the name “Dowd” at the base of an object near the lady’s foot.

It was an uncle who alerted my parents to the fact that I had more than just a typical little boy’s interest in drawing. I was the class artist in grammar school, and it was suggested that I do more with it. I took art classes in high school, and by the time I was finished, I had a portfolio that got me into Pratt Institute. It was a logical progression; each school I went to told me to continue on.

Jim V., who’s kept a record of such things, says that this issue has “some of the best sneaks [of artists’ hidden names] ever to appear in comics!” He goes on: “1st page of ‘Blackstone’ is pure Binder Shop with many hands at work on the center-spread where background artist Clarence Rousch delivers yet another great sneak (oddly, spelling his name Roush!).” Unfortunately, neither Jim V. nor Jim A. has an actual copy of actual issue so we could show you the full pages that went with them, but hey—you do what you can! [©2005 the respective copyright holders.]

I was always interested in drawing. I used to read the newspaper strips and spend time looking at the rotogravure section, especially the Hearst rotogravure section. I was a fan of Alex Raymond’s work as far back as I can remember: both his Jungle Jim and Flash Gordon strips. I devoured magazines like The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, and the women’s magazines, for their illustrations. That was my art gallery. As I said, it’s a typical story for cartoonists of my generation. I made copies of the covers in the magazine sections of the Sunday newspapers. They’d be painted by well-known illustrators like McClelland Barclay and James Montgomery Flagg. As a matter of fact, I went to high school at Brooklyn Tech, which was a very good school, but was mainly turning out engineers. The reason I went there was because they had a very good art department. I took college preparatory courses all through high school, but the extra art was done after hours, so I couldn’t try out for the baseball team, which practiced at 3 o’clock. I

took an hour and a half every afternoon, drawing from a clothed model or drawing each other, if no model was available. I was always drawing people. My ability to draw people helped me get into Pratt. JA: I have a note here that says you grew up in France. DOWD: No, I spent my 9th birthday in France. My mother was French and was a World War I war bride. She married my father, who was IrishAmerican, and in the American Army. He was stationed in France in 1918, which was where they met and married. In those days, when a woman married an American, she automatically became an American citizen, which is very different from the way it is today. My mother spoke English, so she must have had a good education in France. Part of her training was—since these were the war years, and before America got into the war—that in school, she wrote letters to English

“I Thought That Comic Books Would Never Last” fighting men, whose names were assigned to her in school. That sharpened her English and kept up the morale of the soldiers. As far as my being in France, my grandmother was in France when I was a little boy, and we visited there a couple of times. I did live in France for a year and went to school, but I was happy to come back to the United States and rejoin my pals. Besides my ball-playing friends, I found a friend in Brooklyn, who liked to draw and paint. On rainy days, we’d do that together. We’d also go to the Brooklyn Museum—all of which kept us out of the pool hall. In my neighborhood, people played fair and fought fair—no piling on if a fight broke out. I think the movies and church influenced us to be honest people. My sister Kaye married Ken Bald. I didn’t meet Ken until I went to Pratt. We hit it off immediately, and we used to visit each other at our homes, which is how he met Kaye. Ken had a similar background, though he grew up in Mount Vernon. We had a lot in common.

“The Four Musketeers” JA: What was Ken like in school? DOWD: He was low-key, didn’t come on strong, but was very confident and good at what he did. We were equally friendly with Bob Boyajian and Ray Harford. We used to call ourselves “The Four Musketeers.” We met in our first year of Pratt, went to Jack Binder’s together, and stayed friends all throughout these years, though Ray Harford passed away a couple of years ago. Al Duca was there, too, though I lost touch with him after we worked at Binder’s.

year ahead of us in school, but he was a fraternity brother of Ken, Bob, and mine. We were in Alpha Pi Alpha. Bill did wonderful girlie cartoons, even in school. He’d cover the walls with full-page cartoons, with a nice, flowing line. He was a personable guy. He did layouts in Binder’s shop, and so did a wonderful artist named John Spranger. Then, there was a fellow named Clem Weisbecker—a real character from Greenwich Village—who was older than we were. He was a toughtalking New York-accented artist, who apparently did very good paintings of animals. What he did for Binder was to lay out the pages; they were rough and vigorous. Ken and I would rub the pages down with a kneaded eraser before we worked on them. I did main figures, someone else did secondary figures, and another person would do backgrounds. I was good at drawing pretty women, because, as I told you, I’d practiced drawing them from the rotogravure sections of the newspaper. Remember the Petty girls? I used to draw those when I was very young, and Petty drew perfectly-proportioned women, so I developed the knack of drawing them very early on. JA: Is there anything in particular you remember about Weisbecker? DOWD: I remember being amused by him. We used to take these long lunches, which wasn’t always good, because we were doing piecework. If you took two-hour lunches, you weren’t making any money. Being single, I didn’t care and would just work later at night. Ken and I got tired of commuting to Binder’s shop in Englewood, New Jersey, so for a while we rented a room near Binder’s.

Kurt Schaffenberger was there, but Ken got to know him better than I did. Kurt married young, Ken married young, so they socialized together. I didn’t get married until I was 30. Kurt and Dottie got married before Ken and Kaye did—in fact, Kaye was 18 when they got married. Kaye is three years younger than I am. She married Ken while he was in the Marines. JA: When you were at Pratt, did you have a particular art career choice in mind? DOWD: Yes. Ken and I... and I think Bob, too... signed up to take a class with Monty Crews, who was a professional illustrator, doing work for pulps like Blue Book. What happened was the pulps took a big hit when comic books came along. There had been some very good illustrators and writers working in the pulps, like Dashiell Hammett, Austin Briggs, and Ed Cartier. Both Ken and I wanted to work in pen and ink, or brush and ink, so pulps seemed to be the logical place for us to work. But the pulps were dying. Bill Ward was the one who got us to go to Binder’s. He had been a

No Clem—But Here’s The Bill It’s frustrating not to be able to run work by Golden Age artist Clem Weisbecker, who’s recalled in this issue by both Vic Dowd and the Binder brothers (see FCA section). Ye Editor recalls the late Gil Kane mentioning him as drawing “Captain America” stories for Timely during the early 1940s when Gil was briefly passing through Martin Goodman’s company—but, far as we know, no one has yet identified any stories to which he contributed. Bill Ward, happily, is another matter. He can be seen in a photo on p. 7, as well as in this tiny photo of “PFC Ward” from his World War II days. It’s surrounded here by: (Top right:) A strip done for the Army circa 1943, featuring “Ack-Ack Amy,” the prototype of his postwar “Torchy” done for Busy Arnold’s Quality Comics Group. [©2005 Estate of Bill Ward.] (Above left:) A “Bulletman” panel he drew for an issue of Master Comics, as retouched and grey-toned by Bill Black’s AC Comics for the b&w Men of Mystery #38 [Restored art ©2005 AC Comics; Bulletman TM & ©2005 DC Comics.] (Bottom right:) The first of four daily-style strips done circa 1990 for W.O.W. The World of Ward #1, published by Allied American Artists, “a division of Mort Todd Ltd.”—also the source of the “PFC Ward” photo. Note the reference to drawing “Captain Marvel” and to Fawcett editor Wendell Crowley! With thanks to Mort Todd. [©2005 Estate of Bill Ward.]

COMICS’ GOLDEN AGE LIVES AGAIN!

MINUTE MAN BLACK TERROR AVENGER PHANTOM LADY CAT-MAN DAREDEVIL CRIMEBUSTER CAPTAIN FLASH MR. SCARLET SPY SMASHER SKYMAN STUNTMAN THE OWL BULLETMAN FIGHTING YANK PYROMAN GREEN LAMA THE EAGLE IBIS The above is just a partial list of characters that have appeared in AC Comics’ reprint titles such as MEN OF MYSTERY, GOLDEN AGE GREATS, and AMERICA’S GREATEST COMICS. Virtually all issues published to date are available at $6.95 each. To find over 100 quality Golden Age reprints, go to the AC Comics website at <accomics.com>. AC COMICS Box 521216 Longwood FL 32752

COLLECTOR PAYING TOP DOLLAR FOR “ANY AND ALL” ORIGINAL COMIC BOOK AND COMIC STRIP ARTWORK FROM THE 1930S TO PRESENT! COVERS, PINUPS, PAGES, IT DOESN’T MATTER! 1 PAGE OR ENTIRE COLLECTIONS SOUGHT! CALL OR EMAIL ME ANYTIME!

330-296-2415 mikeburkey@aol.com OR SEND YOUR LIST TO:

MIKE BURKEY

P.O. BOX 455 • RAVENNA, OH 44266 CASH IS WAITING, SO HURRY!!!!!

Frank is now accepting art commissions for covers, splash panels, or pin-up re-creations! Also, your ideas for NEW art are welcome! Art can be pencils only, inked or full-color (painted) creation! Contact Frank directly for details and prices. (Minimum order: $150)

Visit my NEW website at: http://www.frankbrunner.net

ATTENTION: FRANK BRUNNER ART FANS!

Previously Unpublished Art by Frank Brunner. With thanks to Michael Dunne.

Please add $1.50 postage & handling per order.

“Comics Weren’t My Main Goal In Life” Nevertheless, Artist BOB BOYAJIAN Talks To Us About Life At Fawcett & The Jack Binder Shop Interview Conducted & Transcribed by Jim Amash

ob Boyajian may be an unfamiliar name to most of A/E‘s readers, but don’t blame Bob for that! He only worked for Jack Binder’s shop, which supplied several comic book companies (including Fawcett) with art and stories, for a little over half a year in 1941. Then he was sent to work directly for Fawcett, where, again, he worked only for half a year. The policies of both places didn’t allow artists to sign their work, and if not for a combination of the records Jack Binder kept and the memories of those who knew him, Bob might have totally faded into comic book obscurity. But you know us—we’re not about to let that kind of thing happen if we can help it! So now Bob tells his story for the first time. Hey, his comic book career might have been short and sweet, but it’s worth remembering, both for its own sake and for the light it sheds on other events and personalities. —Jim. APOLOGIA from the Editor of Alter Ego: Somehow, in the 11th hour, as this interview was being prepared for publication, I discovered that, in some manner, photocopies of several pieces of Bob Boyajian’s later, non-comics art had been mis-filed, and they could not be located in time for inclusion with this interview. Since Bob had been unable to send any comic art that was specifically his, we’ve instead illustrated this section with related work. We offered him the option of our postponing publication of his interview till a later date, when those photocopies have been found or replaced—but, because of his friendship for Ken Bald and Vic Dowd, he preferred that it still be included in this issue, so we’ve done the best we can. I want to take this space to apologize personally to Bob for the mis-filing—and assure both him and A/E’s readers that, as soon as the missing work is available, we’ll run a special section spotlighting it! —Roy.]

“Pratt Institute Was Where I Met Ken Bald, Vic Dowd, And Ray Harford” JIM AMASH: Let’s start off with my basic opening questions, which are: where and when were you born? And tell me about your time at Pratt Institute. BOB BOYAJIAN: I was born in New York City, January 17, 1922. Pratt Institute was where I met Ken Bald, Vic Dowd, and Ray Harford. We were classmates, studying illustration. We were allowed to leave school before Commencement, but we did graduate. Jack Binder, who

A Man For Many Seasons Bob Boyajian in a photo taken in 2003 by wife Gail Boyajian—and an ad from (and for) Fawcett’s comics, many of which were produced by the Jack Binder shop for which he worked, and on some of which Bob worked. [Restored art ©2005 AC Comics.]

had a shop out in Englewood, New Jersey, and was an artist himself, was an agent who got work from various comic book publishers. A lot of us went straight from school to Binder’s shop. Kurt Schaffenberger was with us at Pratt and, unlike me, he stayed in comics. Bill Ward was a year ahead of us at Pratt and was the one who told us about Jack Binder. I believe we started at Binder’s in May of 1941. The war was coming and we all knew we’d be in the service before long, so working for Binder sounded like a pretty good idea. Jobs were hard to find then, because employers were afraid to hire men who might be drafted at any time. So this was a chance to earn some money, and I think we were all single then. I lived with my folks in New York City and made the commute opposite from most of the commuters in the morning. I think that was true of the others, too. JA: Did Binder do the actual hiring? BOYAJIAN: Yes. And it was all piecework. We weren’t paid salaries. We got paid by how much work we did. We worked upstairs in his barn, and there was as many as 18 to 20 of us there. When I started there, I was doing everything that came my way. It was an assembly-line process. Someone, usually Jack’s brother Otto, started by writing a script. Then someone laid out the pages, and

Bob Boyajin About Life At Fawcett & The Jack Binder Shop He was in his late 30s and came from Chicago. Ken knew him better, because he [Ken] became the art director at the shop before he went into the service. I remember that it was hot in the summer time and terribly cold in the winter. Binder installed a couple of fans for the summer months. In the winter, he put in a wood stove. The first guy in was supposed to start it. We worked in our overcoats because it took until noon before the place got warm enough to take them off. JA: Pete Riss was Binder’s art director before Ken was. What do you remember about him? BOYAJIAN: He was a Russian. He’d tell us Russian stories, but was very low-key and hardly ever raised his voice. He gave up the art director’s job and became a regular shop worker. I don’t think Pete was the kind of guy who enjoyed bossing people. He was quite a good comic book artist. Kurt Schaffenberger was more outgoing. JA: Even though I’ve interviewed Ken Bald, I’d like to hear your impressions of him. BOYAJIAN: He was a terrific art director and a marvelous artist. He’s a very good friend. He’s always had a great work ethic. I remember while he was doing the Dr. Kildare newspaper strip, he was also working as an illustrator. And he’s still working, doing television storyboards. He’s just amazing! JA: Did you get to know Otto Binder? BOYAJIAN: Not really, though he’d come to the shop every once in a while with his scripts. He worked at home. Bob Butts was also a classmate at Pratt. He was a hard-working, quiet man. I don’t think he was the type to have wanted an art director’s job. He was quiet in school and on the job.

A Golden Arrow For A Golden Age Boyajian, who drew the “Golden Arrow” series in Whiz Comics briefly, at some time between 1942-44, may or may not have drawn this story from issue #33 (Aug. 1942), featuring the archer who fought crime in an Old West setting. But, as it happens, Ye Editor owns a coverless copy of one of those giant Xmas Comics that Fawcett put out during the war years, which includes the contents (minus covers) of entire issues of Captain Marvel, Spy Smasher, Bulletman, Wow Comics, and Whiz Comics—so we thought we’d give it a shot. What say, Bob? Recognize this work as yours? [©2005 DC Comics.]

someone, usually Kurt Schaffenberger, lettered the pages. Then someone would pencil in the main figures, and someone else drew the backgrounds. Three people usually inked the pages: one would do the main characters, someone else the secondary figures, and a third inked the backgrounds. I started out at the lowest level as a background penciler. Gradually, I worked myself up. We did a bunch of features, and I eventually had one all to myself, which was “Golden Arrow.” We didn’t work on “Captain Marvel” at Binder’s, which is why Ray Harford and I eventually went over to work in Fawcett’s art department. They obviously needed help, and Jack Binder wanted to stay on Fawcett’s good side, so he sent us there. I did “Captain Marvel” covers. JA: Did you do “Golden Arrow” at Binder’s? BOYAJIAN: Yes, pencils and inks, but I only did a few stories. When I went to work directly for Fawcett, I stopped drawing the feature. He was a back-up feature in Whiz Comics. JA: What do you remember about Jack Binder? BOYAJIAN: He was something of a character. He had a checkered career and had done some art, though I never saw any that he had done.

“The Fawcett Gang” JA: I’d like to throw a few more names at you to see what you remember about these people, starting with Vince Costello. BOYAJIAN: He was a classmate, too. We all wanted to be illustrators and doing comic books was pretty close, so we were willing to do it temporarily. JA: Ray Harford. BOYAJIAN: He was a close friend of mine. I was the best man at his wedding. We both served in the same outfit in the war, as did Vic Dowd. We were in the camouflage outfit. Ray was born in 1920, and was just short of turning 80, when he died in 1990. I actually heard about the birth of his son before he did. I got a Vmail from my mother, who saw his mother, and got the news. My V-mail got to me before Ray’s got to him. There was a fellow who wrote scripts. His name was Wendell Crowley, and he was a very tall guy. I think he only had one good eye. He was at Binder’s, but later went to Fawcett and eventually became the Captain Marvel editor. Al Duca went on to quite a different career. He wasn’t in comics too long. He invented a kind of acrylic paint and had an association with MIT, developing methods of casting sculpture. He had a nice career as a painter, too. He was from Boston, and I think he went back there after the war. Al was at Pratt with us, and he was quite a character. He did a marvelous imitation of Groucho Marx. He did not go into the service, but I don’t know why. Al and I went back to our 45th reunion at Pratt, with

“Comics Weren’t My Main Goal In Life”

our wives. I saw him shortly before he passed away, which was in 1995. JA: You remember Dick Rylands? BOYAJIAN: Yes, he was briefly at Binder’s. After the war, he was an art director at an ad agency in Rochester, New York. I’m not sure he was at Binder’s long enough to do more than roughing out the pencil work. JA: John Westlake. BOYAJIAN: He was a classmate—an interesting guy, who was older than me. He went to Harvard first, and Pratt afterwards, before going into comic books. He later became a big shot at World Publishing in Cleveland. I lived in Ohio for a time; we got together a few times. JA: Jimmy Potter. BOYAJIAN: He was killed in the service, flying airplanes. He and Ken physically tried each other. [laughs] I remember one afternoon at Binder’s, playing football in the yard. Whichever one of them got the ball, kept trying to get past the other one. Poor Jimmy went into the service early, and some poor student froze on the controls and they were killed. I think that happened before I went into the service. JA: Sid Davignon. BOYAJIAN: I think he came to Binder’s after I left. He came from Lake Placid, New York, but beyond that, I know nothing about him. He’s not in the Pratt Alumni book, so he must be dead now. JA: Another classmate, I see! Okay, how about Nat Champlin? BOYAJIAN: After the war, he got a graduate degree in art and taught at some big university. He was an outgoing guy, and I have the feeling he thought of comics as just an interim job. Most of us didn’t come back to

Hail, Hail, The Gang’s All Here! Even if we may have run this photo before, we wanted to run this version which was sent to us (with IDs) by Bob Boyajian. Back row, incl. seated on couch: Samuel Hamilton Brooks—Dick Rylands—an unidentified woman and boy—Otto Binder. Middle row l.r to r.: behind Al Duca, who’s the mustachioed guy seated in the front/middle of the photo: Ken Bald—Bob Boyajian—Bob Butts—Vic Dowd—Jack Binder—and (with glasses, behind Kurt Schaffenberger, who’s playing his accordion) John Westlake.

comics. He was a year behind us at Pratt. He was the one who took some of the pictures of the Fawcett gang. Samuel Hamilton Brooks was a year behind us at Pratt. I don’t think he went into the service. He turned out to be a pretty good advertising artist and I believe he did editorial cartooning, too. He was a Southerner and we used to make fun of his accent. I can’t remember just what he did at Binder’s. André LeBlanc was at Binder’s. He was quite a good artist, and also quite a character. He was very assertive—a little pushy. JA: What do you remember about Bill Ward? BOYAJIAN: He was a year ahead of us at Pratt. He was a good cartoonist, even in school. I think he mostly did layouts at Binder’s; he was more at the creative end of the job. I don’t know whatever became of him. JA: He stayed in comic books for along time, and did girl cartoons for magazines for many years. He loved drawing wellendowed women. BOYAJIAN: [laughs] I’m not surprised. He did that at school, too.

You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby! Fawcett Publications wouldn’t have allowed Bill Ward to draw his trademark voluptuous, big-busted gals in this “Bulletman” story. Still, there’s just a hint of one in his Susan (Bulletgirl) Kent in panel 1, don’t you think? This retouched story was printed in b&w in AC Comics’ Golden Age Men of Mystery #7 (1998), and can still be viewed at their website; see ad on p. 34 (we’ve said that before, but it bears repeating). [Restored art ©2005 AC Comics; Bulletman & Bulletgirl TM & ©2005 DC Comics.] The later full-out Bill Ward cartoon at right, from the late 1940s or 1950s, was reprinted in W.O.W. The World of Ward #1 (1990), published by Mort Todd’s Allied American Artists. [©2005 Estate of Bill Ward.]

JA: Figures! Do you remember the ball games? BOYAJIAN: Yes. We had a lot of fun doing that. Somewhere, I have a picture of that. Vic Dowd and Ken were good ball players...I was fair. If I find that picture, I might be able to remember more.

A Real-Life “Marvel Family” A 1973 Talk With Golden Age Artisans Jack & Otto Binder Interview Conducted by Richard Kyle

A/E

EDITOR’S NOTE: Recently, our ofttimes (and valued) contributor Will Murray contacted Alter Ego about a three-decades-old audio tape that was in the possession of my 1960s fandom colleague Richard Kyle. The tape contained a by-mail “interview,” with questions sent via mail by Kyle to artist Jack Binder being answered by the latter on July 29, 1973—and, later in the tape, also by his writer brother Otto. Between them, the two siblings had drawn and written many fine stories in the 1940s and early ’50s for Fawcett, as well as for other companies; Otto wrote many, probably most, of the classic “Captain Marvel” tales from 1941 onward. In addition, until World War II drained away much of his work force, Jack also operated a comics shop/studio which supplied artwork to various companies, as noted in previous issues of A/E.

Our thanks to P.C. Hamerlinck for making this long-lost interview a part of this issue’s FCA, even though it meant delaying for a month or so a pair of shorter pieces originally planned for this issue, including the second part of his talk with Michael Uslan and a piece on Fawcett artist Emilio Squeglio, whose interior-cover drawing was still used this time around. Both those pieces will appear in the next couple of issues. P.C. and I wish to thank both Richard Kyle and Will Murray for making available this valuable first-person addition to Golden Age history, to Brian K. Morris for transcribing the interview from a most-unclear tape, and to both Richard and Jim Amash for going over the transcript to try to make this printed version as accurate as possible, since many words on the tape are basically unintelligible. We’ve tried to indicate places where this is the case. A/E readers with additional information or

Transcribed by Brian K. Morris speculations are invited to send them to us for a future “re:” section. And now, we’ll let Richard himself tell you of his involvement in the interview, which has been edited somewhat for ease of reading. —Roy. INTRODUCTION: In 1973, Jerry de Fuccio, then an associate editor of Mad, a sometime comic book writer, and a lifelong comics fan, was planning to write a book about early comic book artists. His idea was to publish re-creations by the artists of their original Golden Age work, and to accompany the new drawings with interviews and profiles. Paul Gustavson, Fred Guardineer, Frank Thomas, Tony DiPreta, and others contributed. Jack Binder was one of the contributors, as well. I conducted his interview for Jerry—by mail—at a time when I was editing the magazine Graphic Story World. Despite many plans, Jerry’s book never came to be. This is the first publication anywhere of this once-lost interview. —Richard Kyle.

“I Will Proceed To Answer Most Of Your Questions” JACK BINDER: This recording, made this 29th day of July 1973, especially for Richard Kyle. Richard, I was certainly glad to receive your letter. And I was greatly impressed and particularly happy that, even though we have never met, you have remembered us and said that we had a great impact on you and gave you so much enjoyment. I have gone over your letters several times and I will proceed to answer most of your questions and give you as much information as possible about the people you’ve made requests about.

A Man And His Art Jack Binder (on left) with fellow artist (and one-time employee) Pete Riss, circa 1950. This photo, one of a number sent by Otto Binder to Roy Thomas in 1964-65, was first printed in the 1997 trade paperback Alter Ego: The Best of the Legendary Comics Fanzine. On the back, Otto wrote that Riss “was one of Jack’s mainstays in his art shop, staying to the very end and doing inking for countless jobs.” That “end” came in 1943, when the World War II draft had decimated the shop’s personnel. Although FCA’s own Marc Swayze visually designed Mary Marvel for her 1942 origin, and though C.C. Beck, Kurt Schaffenberger, and others drew her in “Marvel Family” tales, it’s Jack Binder more than any other artist who is identified with the look of the World’s Mightiest Girl for most of her Fawcett career. This drawing for the cover of Mary Marvel #5 (Sept. 1946) is repro’d from the 1976 edition of Maurice Horn’s World Encyclopedia of Comics. The entry on “Mary Marvel” notes that, artistically, “Jack Binder handled the strip with a verve and style rarely seen in his work. Known more for his organizational talents rather than his artwork, Binder constantly produced clean, pretty, and interesting interpretations. His backgrounding and panel details struck an aesthetic balance between C.C. Beck’s cartoonish ‘Captain Marvel’ and Mac Raboy’s illustrated ‘Captain Marvel Jr.’” Yeah, that’s about how we’d rate it. [©2005 DC Comics.]

A Real-Life “Marvel Family” [NOTE: At this point, Binder mentions several items he’s sending Kyle, including Photostats of the original art of two Winsor McCay Little Nemo Sunday pages (reduced to H size)—a McCay editorial cartoon done for Arthur Brisbane, famous early editor for the Hearst newspapers—a stat of the original cover McCay did for a How to Draw book (for which Jack Binder had done the layouts and Bob McCay, artist son of Little Nemo’s creator, the inking)—two Photostats of original work by Gill Fox—a full-sized unpublished “Other Worlds” illustration by JB himself—and “three Sunday page layouts in full color, done at the [Harry “A”] Chesler syndicate where I did the layouts for Little Nemo when we [Binder & Bob McCay] tried to revive it,” with the latter inking. The final item being sent— “two pieces of broadside advertising regarding Bob McCay and his father and his family”—Jack said was the only copy he had, so should be returned; Kyle was invited to keep all the others, though alas, he no longer has them.] You want to know if I was influenced by movies, by films, in my approach towards illustrating comics. My only approach was simply to tell a story without taking away from the story itself, not to overembellish with artwork, or to over-embellish into drawing a lot of unnecessary things. In other words, I tried to get right down to the nitty-gritty of what was going on in a particular panel and to somehow give a smooth and good continuity. We weren’t influenced by anything but our own need for doing the comics, and getting them out so that we wouldn’t miss a deadline; and also by the fact that we were so excited about this being our own work and our own creation. Except for following the general storyline or story plot as a script indicated or requested, we were on our own on how to best illustrate this particular panel and the story matter in it. I feel that today’s comics, or so-called comics, are too close to being just pure illustration. They don’t seem to have that simple approach to getting directly at the essence—or, as I term it, the nitty-gritty—regarding what I consider good storytelling.

Otto’s stories in that, also. And of course, when I came to New York, I started doing magazine illustrations for Street & Smith and for Ned Pines [publisher of the Standard/Thrilling pulps and later of the Thrilling/Nedor comic book line]. I did a feature called “If,” featuring the great people who influenced the world as scientists and so forth. I did those for quite a number of years. And through all of this, with the discipline and the need for doing saleable work, work that was acceptable to the publisher, for which he spent money—we, of course, had to extend ourselves and do the best we knew how. In magazine illustrating, I usually read the story and chose, or picked, my own spots to illustrate. So there again, we have to use good judgment and satisfy the editor and, in the final analysis, the reader as well. But the movies were far out of my mind in those days.

“Shop Talk” You ask about the great storytellers and shop talk about storytelling at Chesler’s. Well, beginning with Charlie Biro: Biro was a very intense, very sincere person, and he had a secret ambition of becoming, aside from being an artist, a radio announcer and an actor. He took part, even while he was at Chesler’s, in various plays and readings, I think he did finally wind up at one of the studios as a scene designer. [NOTE: According to Jerry Bails’ Who’s Who in American Comic Books, from 1962-72 Biro was a graphic designs artist for NBC-TV.] I don’t recall anything about his formal education background, but I do know that he mentioned the fact that he had worked in the animation field. I’m not sure whether he said Disney, or whether it was one of the other animation studios that were in existence at the time, but I do know that Charlie was an excellent animator, because I worked for, oh, about six months for Charlie Biro and Bob Wood [at Lev Gleason Publications]. [Tape pauses.]

The questioning in your letter about what I was influenced by in my work—you probably realize that I had 2H years at the Art Institute of Chicago, and that I studied under J. Allen St. John and his like, and also studied Life [Drawing] under George Poole [sp?]. I studied Perspective under Miss Lacey [sp?] and Graphics under Phipps. I took Color Theory under Shook [sp?], and took a special Anatomy course with Filbrick [sp?]; and of course Life Drawing and Cast Drawing [i.e., drawing from plaster casts], and Painting, and so forth, took up much of our time while I was a student. And, of course, you realize that after my year and a half in the copper and steel engraving business, which went bust, as you probably know from Steranko’s History [of Comics], I spent seven years away from the art field, but found my way back into it again by starting to do magazine illustrations for Farnsworth Wright for Weird Tales [magazine]. I illustrated a number of

Have Boomerang, Will Travel! One of the key art jobs of Jack Binder’s early comics career was the very first story of “The Daredevil,” in Silver Streak Comics #6 (Sept. 1940), from Your Guide Publications. This splash page with his byline has been repro’d from Alan Light’s 1970s black-&-white reprint. [©2005 the respective copyright holders.]

Gill Fox, I think, was with us, too, at the [Fleischer] studio on Broadway. I recall in particular one humorous incident. I had charge of the inking and opaquing department, and occasionally I helped out in the composing room. And I recall, particularly, this film we did for the government at the time—it gave people an idea of the farmer. The government wanted to stress that agriculture was so very necessary and very important in our country. So anyway, this one scene showed a farmer in a wheat field. He had his wheat all in bags and he was tossing them onto a truck. Well, there’s someone who hadn’t gotten to the background man, so that truck [drawn there] was completely out of scale. And here was this farmer pitching sacks a mile a minute, and when we had put it into the composing section, there was a truck about the size of a toy truck standing beneath this great big pile of sacks of wheat hanging in mid-air. And this was about 12 o’clock, because they had a deadline to meet. I think it was the next day that that film was to be completed and

Super-Hero Sidekick Joanna Pang of “ISIS”

by P.C. Hamerlinck

oanna Pang once solved problems with a high school teacher (who also happened to be a powerful, white-skirted super-hero), but throughout her career the actress/dancer has accomplished her own fair share of amazing feats.

Raised in the California bay area, life as a performer began very early for Pang. She literally grew up at the San Francisco Ballet School, where her mother taught for many years. By the time she was five years old, Pang had landed her first professional dancing job. At 12, she acted in her first movie (an Ann Margaret film, Once a Thief). She soon pursued musical theatre with her brother Joey. With dancing in their blood, the two talented siblings became regulars as a ballroom dance team on a daily San Francisco TV program, The Ted Randal Show (later becoming Dick Stewart’s Dance Party). “It was similar to American Bandstand,” Pang said. “One time we won a dance contest that the show held, and our prize was a TV set, which was really a big deal!” As a result of their contest victory, The Lawrence Welk Show contacted the Pang kids and invited them to perform live during one of Welk’s Bay area concerts. What Welk hadn’t realized was that Pang and her brother were on TV every single day in the Bay area, causing a tremendous reaction from the hometown crowd during their performance at the concert. Welk was so impressed by the Pangs that he flew them down to Los Angeles to appear twice on his television show... until Welk deemed the duo “too young” to be regulars on the show. “Our family was excited when we appeared on Welk’s show,” Pang said, “especially since it was my grandmother’s favorite TV program.”

group, but was soon changed to a high school setting with problematic students and situations providing the show’s lesson-oriented, plot-driven drama. “They never really defined my character,” Pang said of the Cindy Lee role. “I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to be just a student, or a teacher’s aide, or, most likely, just one of those overly-enthusiastic students who gets involved in everything and always wants to help the teacher. It was never clear because some episodes I called the teacher Andrea Thomas by her first name, then other episodes I’d call her ‘Miss Thomas.’ But, with Saturday morning TV shows, you shoot very fast and don’t have a lot of discussion about the characters ... so you sort-of make up your character’s own background and history.” Isis’ simple, formulaic scripts didn’t bother Pang. “At the time I was doing Isis, I was thrilled to be doing a national TV show,” she said. “I enjoyed working on Isis, loved my part, and didn’t really delve into the writing of the scripts, nor did I want to try to change things. I think every actor who does a TV series thinks that it can always be better, but I just tried to do the best job I could with the script.” The part of Cindy Lee wasn’t much of a stretch for Pang. “I think the character was very much like me,” she said. “Cindy was positive, upbeat ... she always wanted to help. Sometimes she would do something with good intentions but it would somehow end up causing some kind of trouble, and then Isis would have to fly in and rescue her or her friends. But, basically, I am pretty much like that person, so it was easy for me to play the part.”

Relocating to New York City and aspiring to break into theatre, Pang’s path instead led to more TV gigs, including dozens of commercials. She became a regular on the CBS children’s program The Patchwork Family, and appeared in and narrated a children’s Chinese opera for CBS Festival of the Lively Arts. Her work for CBS caught the attention of an executive in charge of the network’s children’s programming. “He told me there was a new Saturday morning series starting out in Los Angeles,” Pang said, “and asked if I’d be interested in flying out there for an audition. Since I’d already done a lot of children’s television, I jumped at the opportunity. Two days later I was on a plane to L.A.” On the very same day of her audition for Isis at Filmation Studios, Joanna Pang landed the part of Cindy Lee. Joanna Cameron (Isis/Andrea Thomas) and Brian Cutler (Rick Mason) had already been cast for their parts and weren’t present during Pang’s audition; the show was already in pre-production. “Once I was cast, we started shooting a few weeks later,” Pang said. “In the interim I flew back to New York, packed up my things, and headed back to California for Isis. It all happened pretty fast.” A spin-off from the successful Shazam! liveaction series, the original concept for Isis involved detective-based storylines and a youth crime-solving

Super-hero Sidekick Even though many of her scenes on Isis were with Joanna Cameron, Pang didn’t really get to know the actress who portrayed the leading role. “A lot of us didn’t get to know Joanna that well,” Pang said. “She didn’t have a lot of free time on the set because either she was portraying Andrea or she was in makeup and wardrobe getting ready to change and become Isis. However, I did become friends with a girl named Jill who was the stand-in for Isis. My best friend from the series was Brian Cutler, who was like a big brother to me. Brian and his wife were just great, and I loved spending time with them and their two children. The entire crew was good to work with, particularly two of our directors: Arthur Nadel and Hollingsworth Morse, a tall, wise old whitehaired man who always wore a cowboy hat.” Both men also directed several later episodes of Shazam!

71 the second season of Shazam!). To this day, Pang herself still doesn’t know the reasons why she wasn’t asked to return for Isis’ second season. “Shortly after filming the first season, I flew back to New York,” she said. “When time came around to get ready to do the second season, I hadn’t heard from anybody so I called my agent, who also didn’t know what was going on, but said he would look into it. It took him several days to get any answers, but when he finally called back he said that they weren’t going to use me for the second season and that no one really gave him any reasons why. Maybe he got the standard ‘going in a different direction’ answer. I had been very happy on Isis and the show had gotten very good ratings. I don’t really know what happened.”

Pang returned to television work in New York City: more commercials … from Lee Jeans to Dr. Pepper, as well as performing a skit with Gilda Radner on NBC’s Saturday Night Live. She also found time to do a few films, including Don’t Miss the Boat, the Showtime network’s first original movie. She then began to go out on tour with several theatre productions, Pang made occasional personal Isis In A Crisis including South Pacific, The appearances during the height of Joanna Pang’s character Cindy Lee receives help from Captain Marvel and King and I, and Sayonara. Isis’ popularity. One event in Isis, on this page from Shazam! #25 (Sept-Oct. 1976). Art by Dick Giordano. particular was the Cherry While she was doing a [©2005 DC Comics.] Blossom Festival held in Medford, production of South Pacific in Oregon, which she still fondly Virginia, politicians from remembers: “The people in Medford had called CBS and asked if I could Washington, D.C., came to see the show, and afterwards invited intercome up and be the grand marshal of their festival’s parade. It sounded ested cast members—including Pang—to a private tour of the White like a lot of fun, so I told them I would be there. My mother accomHouse. “We arrived on a Saturday morning,” she recalled, “and they panied me when I flew up there. As we landed I was looking out the first showed us the press room, and Isis happened to be playing on the window and I turned to my mother and said, ‘Look at all that... there’s a TV inside the room! I thought that was pretty funny. It was two years red carpet, there’s a band, there’s hundreds of people out there ... I after I had done Isis, and there it was playing at the White House on wonder who’s on our plane?’ And my mother said, ‘I think that’s for Saturday morning!” YOU!’ I just hadn’t put it all together, but it was indeed all for me! Pang toured around the world with an Asian dance company, Besides my being the grand marshal at the parade, they took me over to performing Chinese, Japanese, and modern dance. When her son was in a fair where many people had come to see me and we conducted an pre-school, she began to develop an arts in education program to teach hour-long Q & A session. That was a lot of fun. They also took me over dance at schools, utilizing her background in the field and knowledge to a nursing home where the people always watched the show. I walked she gained from touring different countries. Today she has her own around, shook hands, and talked to the elderly people who lived there. company, facilitating multi-cultural dance residencies throughout New We had a wonderful time.” York and New Jersey. “I work for different organizations that place me After the first season of Isis, Pang’s character was abruptly written at locations from 4 to 10 weeks and I teach different dance classes from around the world,” she said. “At the end of each residency a production out of the series. Why? Filmation may have opted to revive and merge in is put together for the community, with the children performing the the show’s original “youth crime-solving group” concept with new dances I taught them. I also do assembly programs at the schools. I love actors, which became apparent in episodes from the show’s second working with kids.” season ... or perhaps it was simply Filmation’s habit of replacing established cast members on proven hit shows, with the belief that children When out and about with her husband, Pang is still occasionally wouldn’t know the difference or even care (as in the case of Jackson recognized from her role in Isis. And her mother keeps a picture from Bostwick being replaced as Captain Marvel by John Davey shortly into It was common for the Isis crew to frequently run into the Shazam! crew. “We had a couple of shows that crossed-over with Shazam!” Pang remembered, “and both shows were always working in the studio at the same time, so we got to know the people from Shazam! quite well.”

Alter Ego #55