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HIS MANY LIVES FROM 1939 TO TODAY

The Blue Beetle Companion: His Many Lives from 1939 to Today © 2007 Christopher Irving and TwoMorrows Publishing. ISBN 978-1-893905-70-2 First printing • March 2007 • Printed in Canada Published by: TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, North Carolina 27614 www.twomorrows.com e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com Front cover illustration and colors by Cully Hamner of Gaijin Studios. Back cover illustration and cover by Tom Feister of Jolly Roger Studio. Proofreading by John Morrow. Action Heroes, Batman, Birds of Prey, Black Canary, Black King, Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Brother Eye, Captain Marvel, Carapace, Catwoman, Checkmate, Countdown to Infinite Crisis, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Dr. Fate, Formerly Known As The Justice League, Gotham City, Green Lantern: Mosaic, Guy Gardner, I Can’t Believe It’s Not The Justice League, Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, JLA: Classified, Justice League and Justice League of America, Justice League of America: Year One, Kingdom Come, Legends, Martian Manhunter, Maxwell Lord, Mister Miracle, OMAC, Oracle, Question, Robin, Secret Origins, Spoiler, Sue Dibny, Superfriends, Supergirl, Superman, Swamp Thing, The Kingdom, The L.A.W. and all other DC Comics characters and logos are trademarks of DC Comics. The Amazing Spider-Man, Daredevil and all other Marvel Comics characters and logos are trademarks of Marvel Characters, Inc. Down is a trademark of Warren Ellis Transformers is a trademark of Hasbro Special thanks to Chris .R. Notarile of Blinky Productions.

This book, my first, is dedicated to my father, Elliott Irving, who always went comic-hunting with me on Wednesdays and is the first author I ever had the pleasure of knowing.

The Blue Beetle Companion

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

THE GOLDEN AGE: 1939-1950 The many faces of Officer Dan Garret. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 “The Blue Beetle”, from Mystery Men Comics #1, 1939 . . . . . . . . . . . 23 “A Tougher Bird to Catch!”: The ill-fated Blue Beetle comic strip . . . . . 27 The Jack Kirby Blue Beetle daily strip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Mystery Men #20 excerpt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 “Nippin’” it in the bud: the Blue Beetle’s foray into radioland . . . . . . . . 49 “The Dope Peddlers” radio script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 The Blue Beetle radio show episode guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 The Golden Age II: From Holyoke to Fox and back. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 The enigma of the U.S.S. Blue Beetle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 The Golden Age Blue Beetle appearances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

THE SILVER AGE: 1954-1983 Blue Beetle’s rebirth at Charlton Comics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Appreciation: Alan Weiss on completing a long circle . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 The Silver Age Blue Beetle issue guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Taking a final bow...and a Last Kiss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

THE MODERN AGE: 1986-Today The Blue Beetle becomes part of the DC Universe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Appreciation: Alex Ross on The Blue Beetle and his re-interpretations of the character. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Appreciation: Cully Hamner on his Blue Beetle design . . . . . . . . . . 115 The Blue Beetle Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Appreciation: fan film-maker Chris .R. Notarile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Character files: The many lives of the Blue Beetle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Afterword: “Ace” Irving on the inside by Jon B. Cooke . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Author’s Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Author’s Note

The Blue Beetle Companion

THE THE BIRTHGOLDEN OF THE MYSTERYMAN:AGE The many faces of Officer Dan Garret

1939-1950 Comic books exploded as an industry in the 1930s, taking pop culture by storm in a four-colored blur. While an army of four-color mysterymen and crimefighters were successfully jettisoned upon an unsuspecting world, changing the mighty course of movie serials, merchandising, and radio shows, dozens more would-be heroic successes fell between the cracks, washed away with the gutter trash from the Great Depression. The Golden Age of comic books began with Superman’s premiere in the first issue of Action Comics in June of 1938. The first true superhero, Superman was a combination of Flash Gordon, the mysterymen of the pulp magazines, and Captain Easy from the Wash Tubbs comic strip. Even though, Detective Comics only printed 200,000 copies of Action Comics #1 and sold 130,000, a fact Detective wasn’t made privy to until three months after the comic’s release. The Blue Beetle was neither jettisoned, nor did he necessarily fall between the cracks: he just hung on and remains to do so more than sixty years after his birth. Kind of an anomaly unto himself, the Blue Beetle could have easily disappeared from comic pages everywhere before the end of World War II…or he could have been a raging success that would have given Superman and Captain America a run for their tights-clad money. Like many figures in the formative days of the comic book medium, Victor Fox was a colorful character straight out of a Dickens novel. “Victor was short, round, bald and coarsely gruff, with hornrimmed glasses and a permanent cigar clamped between his teeth,” artist Al Feldstein told historian Jon Berk. “He was the personification of the typical exploiting comic book publisher of his day- grinding out shameless imitations of successful titles and trends, and treating his artists and editors like dirt.” “Victor Fox actually had his own apartment in the same building with the Fox Features offices,” Chuck Cuidera revealed. “One day, he asks me to do a favor for him. He has this box of liquor, and asks me to take it up to his apartment, near the top floor of the building. I go up there, and who answers the door but a beautiful woman dressed only in a slip! She invited me in, asked if I wanted a cup of coffee or anything. I was polite, but got out of there fast as I could! That was Fox, though — he always had a girl around, stashed away somewhere!” “Fox found out I was also a painter,” Don Rico said in a 1975 interview with Barry Alfonso for Mysticogryfil. “So he commissioned me to do a mural for his home and he kept me prisoner in his house.”

A young Will Eisner, in 1941.

The Golden Age

The Blue Beetle Companion

THE AGE A TOUGHERGOLDEN BIRD TO CATCH!: The Ill-Fated Blue Beetle daily strip

Victor Fox, bent on expanding his comics empire, decided to take over the daily newspapers’ comic section in late 1939, even advertising in an article in the October 28 issue of Editor and Publisher. “He told the column [Fox Feature Syndicate],” the article reads. “Has prepared for release Dec. 3 a four-page, eight-comic ready-print Sunday supplement in four colors. The comics include: The Green Mask, Patty O’Day, Dr. Fung, Yarko the Great, Rex Dexter of Mars, The Golden Knight, Tex Maxon, and Spark Stevens, all features being polled by FFS for reader popularity. These can be serviced in black-andwhite, he added. “In addition, Mr. Fox said, FFS will release this month to newspapers four daily comic strips, The Green Mask, Spark Stevens, The Blue Beetle, and D-13 Secret Agent. These are black-and-white. Of FFS’s 70 comic features, the column was told, more than 50 are available to newspapers.” Fox’s four-page comics supplement premiered on January 7, 1940, to undoubtedly high fanfare. The Springfield Republican in Springfield, Massachusetts carried the short-lived Sunday strips. In order to save on ordering new features, Fox would print two comic book pages side by side and resume the page count each Sunday, until the full stories were told. Each story opened with a half-page splash on the first page; when it came time to print up Sunday strips #2 on up, Fox would chop off the top half of page three of the comic book and paste up the half-splash from the first page. As a result, there would be huge leaps in continuity from week to week. Blue Beetle could be knocked out one Sunday, but would be in the middle of a fist fight the next. The only attempt made to give any flow was in a hastily lettered caption imposed on the “splash.” To make things more confusing, the stories were printed out of sequence. The first two weeks of The Blue Beetle reprinted his introduction in Mystery Men Comics #1(where he resembled the Green Hornet), followed by Mystery Men #3, then Mystery Men #4, followed by the third story...all of which had the Blue Beetle in different costumes. Not worried about character integrity, Sunday funnies readers got four variations on the character within two months.

Victor Fox forecasting the future of comics, from Editor & Publisher. The Golden Age

This recreation of The Blue Beetle #4's cover is by original artist Edd Ashe, and was provided by Heritage Comics.

The Blue Beetle Companion

Gorilla gangsters with tommy guns? This Blue Beetle story from Mystery Men Comics #20 (March 1941) is an example of the Azure Avenger in his Golden Age prime, from creepy chain mail to dropping off of rooftops like his namesake. A tip of the hat to historian Will Murray for providing the scans from his original comics.

The Golden Age

The Blue Beetle Companion

THE AGE NIPPING ITGOLDEN IN THE BUD: The Blue Beetle’s Foray into Radioland

In its Golden Age, the land of radio harbored more than a handful of masked crimefighters and avengers: the Lone Ranger rode, the Shadow clouded men’s minds, and the Green Hornet stung criminals. Before the advent of the television, radio shows based off of popular comic strips were not unusual. Heroes like Dick Tracy and Superman found themselves transformed from agents of the funnies pages to sound effects and disembodied voices. The Blue Beetle first hit the airwaves on May 15, 1940, in a syndicated attempt that was perhaps doomed from the get-go. Frank Lovejoy, who would eventually become a prolific radio and movie actor (with parts ranging from the villainous Laugher on The Shadow to the starring role of reporter Randy Stone on Nightbeat), voiced the Blue Beetle and his alter ego Dan Garret for only the first four shows. Lovejoy brought a rather maniacal, almost sadistic, cackle to the character. His Blue Beetle seemed as if he took some sick pride in hurting criminals, not unlike a homicidal version of The Shadow. Born in New York City in 1917, Lovejoy’s father was a salesman for Pathé Films. Frank was a runner on Wall Street when the infamous 1929 stock market crash threw the country into the Great Depression, observing the “naked emotion” displayed by the people around him. After attending New York University and becoming a player in stock companies, he debuted on Broadway in 1934. The play, Judgement Day, went from September 12 to some time in December, with 92 performances. The lights of Broadway didn’t work well with Lovejoy, and he went back to stock companies. While waiting two weeks for a stock company to assemble in Cincinnati in 1934, Lovejoy got work at radio station WLW and stayed for a year. It was an unplanned entry into the foray of radio acting, a lightning bolt carried on radio waves, launching Lovejoy’s career more than any stock company or Broadway role had before. By 1950, (by his estimation) Lovejoy had acted in 4,000 radio programs. He was eternally the tough guy, his gruff and cocky voice emanating the type of guy you’d like to have covering your back in a barfight; he became a succession of cops, hard-nosed reporters, private investigators, thugs, and FBI agents. The 1949 movie Home of the Brave launched a film career that would befit every great character actor: a part in the cult Vincent Price vehicle House of Wax (playing, unsurprisingly, a cop), and a few starring roles like I Was A Communist for the FBI. On the television front, Lovejoy starred in the detective show Meet McGraw.

Veteran character actor Frank Lovejoy.

The Golden Age

The Blue Beetle Companion

THE SILVER AGE FROM CHAIN-MAIL TO STROBE GUNS: Blue Beetle’s rebirth at Charlton Comics

1954-1983 The Blue Beetle’s new home was built by yet another immigrant with a court record: John Santangelo, who came to America from Italy in the early part of the 20th century as a manual laborer. Living in Yonkers, New York and traveling to Derby, Connecticut to lay bricks in the ’30s, Santangelo began pursuing a young high-school girl in the neighborhood. Unable to fulfill her wish of finding printed popular song lyrics in the city, Santangelo came across the idea to print them out on his own. The beginnings of the Charlton Publishing Company stemmed from crude printed single pieces of paper, folded in half and printed at a fellow Italian friend’s print shop. Santangelo drove around Connecticut and New York with his wares, dropping them off with cigar store owners. The lyric sheets cost Santangelo 2 cents to print, and he split the 10 cent price tag 50% with the store owners. “He had a saying many years later,” Santangelo’s son Charlie said. “When he’d become wealthy, that ‘I never made a dollar; I always made a half-dollar’.” Pretty soon, Santangelo’s song sheet took off and Santangelo increased production. Copyright infringement caught up with John, and he found himself sentenced to a year and a day in the New Haven County Jail. “My old man was an immigrant and he didn’t know anything about copyright laws,” Charles said. “It certainly wasn’t terrible or intentional, but he did violate the law.”

(above) Steve Ditko was known to bring candy to Charlton's female employees. (below) The Charlton Publications complex in Derby, Connecticut.

The Silver Age

Dan Garrett, back from the dead? Busting through in this splash page from AC Comics' AmeriComics #3 (August 1983). Art by Rik Levins and Bill Black. Courtesy of AC Comics. Blue Beetle © 2007 DC Comics. Art © 2007 AC Comics. 92

The Blue Beetle Companion

THE SILVER AGE APPRECIATION: Alan Weiss on completing a long circle

Emerging in the wave of 1970s cartoonists was Alan Weiss, whose work ranged from Westerns (DC’s El Diablo, following his friend and mentor Gray Morrow’s run), to horror (House of Secrets for DC), to super-heroes (The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man for Marvel). Weiss has done work for many companies, also including Gold Key, Defiant, Archie (on Steel Sterling), and Acclaim. Most recently, his art has graced the Young Tom Strong serial in Alan Moore’s Wildstorm/DC comic book Tom Strong’s Terrific Tales. But before his firm body of professional work developed, Alan Weiss had artwork printed in Charlton’s The Blue Beetle (vol. 2) #5 from early 1965. The teenage Weiss’s fan redesign of the Blue Beetle is reprinted here...along with a new take, courtesy of Weiss. On why he redesigned the Blue Beetle: I thought that the Blue Beetle had one of the dullest, most uninteresting superhero outfits I’d ever come across. I couldn’t believe they were even doing it and, of course, at the time I wasn’t even familiar with the original Blue Beetle with the chain mail and all. I thought this guy needed something...But they didn’t say anything about an original...This is right before comics fandom exploded, and you could [learn about comics] history. Even as a teenager, I thought I could do better than that. I tried out a couple of ideas that didn’t go too far from the original design that they had, but just jazzed it up a little bit. In essence, it was just a little piping here and a little color there. Here was a guy with no symbol, no cape —nothing. It was just so weak. I just did it on a lark. I certainly didn’t think there was an opportunity to have it published, and I’m not even sure there was a letters page when I did it. It came as a total surprise when I opened an issue of the magazine and there the thing was, and in color, too.

Alan Weiss' first published artwork was on this letters column.

The Silver Age

102

The Blue Beetle Companion

THE MODERN AGE A WORLD NOT HIS OWN: The Blue Beetle becomes part of the DC Universe

1986-Present By the 1980s, Charlton had one foot well in the grave; the company that once published an empire’s worth of comic books and magazines was now down to a handful of magazines. It isn’t known exactly when Blue Beetle and the other Action Hero characters were bought outright from the sputtering Connecticut publisher (the exact figure has not been disclosed, due to proprietary reasons). Paul Levitz, DC’s publisher and former comics fanboy, apparently bought them as a present to DC’s then editor-in-chief Dick Giordano, the original mastermind behind the line in the ’60s. 1986 was a huge year for DC: they launched their landmark twelve issue “maxi-series” Crisis on Infinite Earths, which resulted in massive companywide editorial changes. When the Blue Beetle landed on a rooftop and fought a gang of thugs holding a girl hostage in Crisis on Infinite Earths #1, George Pérez drew him to move like Ditko had him move...and writer Marv Wolfman had him speak like the Ditko version. “That’s my job,” Beetle tells the grateful lady. “It goes with the blue union suit!” And then...the Blue Beetle was pulled into the continuity of the DC Universe, and things would never again be the same for him.

The Modern Age

103