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Secrets in the Shadows The Art & Life of

by Tom Field Introduction by Glen David Gold Afterword by Mark Staff Brandl

Secrets in the Shadows: The Art & Life of Gene Colan

by Tom Field Book Design by Rich J. Fowlks

Published by TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614

919-449-0344 • www.twomorrows.com Softcover ISBN #: 1-893905-45-4 Hardcover ISBN #: 1-893905-46-2 First printing, July 2005 • Printed in Canada

Copyrights: Iron Man, Daredevil, Captain America, the Owl, Red Skull, Mandarin, Scorpion, Dracula, Howard the Duck, Jester, Mr. Hyde, Cobra, Dr. Doom, Dr. Strange, SubMariner, Human Torch, Toro, Krang, Freak, Captain Marvel, the Avengers, Leapfrog, Electro, Stilt Man, Gladiator, Matador, Falcon, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Black Widow, Galactus, Medusa, Black Bolt, Clea, the Hulk, Frank Drake, Rachel Van Helsing, Taj Nital, Edith Harker, Quincy Harker, Blade, Black Panther, Lilith, Torgo, Mandrill, Dr. Bong, Man-Think, Korrekk, Jennifer Kale, Brother Voodoo, Ringmaster and his Circus of Crime, Shanna the She-Devil - all TM and copyright 2005 Marvel Comics. All rights reserved. Batman, Superman, Supergirl, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Spectre, Demon, Night Force, Swamp Thing, Robin, Alfred, Nathaniel Dusk, the Phantom Zone, Hard Time, Batgirl, Nocturna, Thief of Night, Our Army at War - all TM and copyright 2005 DC Comics. All rights reserved. Jughead and Archie - all TM and copyright 2005 Archie Comics. The Escapist - TM and copyright 2005 Michael Chabon. Detectives Inc., Ragamuffins, Stewart the Rat, Blood Scent, Curse of Dracula, Warren Magazines - all TM and copyright 2005 their respective copyright holders.

Table of Contents Introduction by Glen David Gold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

Chapter 1 - The Other G.C.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

Chapter 2 - The Early Years

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 Portfolio: Travel Sketches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20

Chapter 3 - Emerging Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 Portfolio: Art School Days . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30

Chapter 4 - The 1950s: High Hopes and Hard Times . . . . . .31 Secrets #1: Timely Secrets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39

Chapter 5 - A Love Story

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45

Chapter 6 - The Early 1960s: Make Mine Marvel

. . . . . . . . .47 A Conversation with Stan Lee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55 Portfolio: Warren Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66

Chapter 7 - Glory Days with DD and Doc

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73 Special section: Colan in Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .(following page 80) Secrets #2: Inking Gene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81 A Conversation with Tom Palmer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87 Portfolio: Dream Teams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .94

Chapter 8 - Dracula Lives! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97 Secrets #3: Writing for Gene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .107 A Conversation with Steve Gerber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .114

Chapter 9 - Marvel: the Last Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123 Chapter 10 - DC and the Ups & Downs of the Eighties . . . .131 Portfolio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .138

Chapter 11 - The 18-Panel Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .143 A Conversation with Adrienne Colan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .146

Chapter 12 - The Fan

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Afterword by Mark Staff Brandl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .153

Appendix The Essential Gene Colan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157

Bonus Features (Hardcover edition only) Secrets #4: How Gene Draws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .161 Portfolio: Secrets In The Shadows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .164

Colan, too, grew to enjoy a stellar career–as a comic book artist, developing a unique illustrative style, which he lent to the likes of Hopalong Cassidy, Daredevil, Dracula and Batman, entertaining generations of comics fans with his cinematic approach to storytelling. Reflecting, Colan regrets that he never actually met his hero. “If it had been today [with the Internet and fan conventions], there would have been a much greater opportunity to meet him,” he says. “But at the time? No.”

If he had met Gary Cooper, what would Colan have done? “Oh, my God! I’d probably have sat down and cried, he meant so much to me,” Colan says, thinking aloud. “He summed up what a man should be like. Everything he appeared to stand for on the screen sent a clear message about integrity.” Colan pauses for a minute, then answers: “I might have asked him if I could see his artwork.”

Gene Colan: Self-portrait drawn in 1970 for Marvelmania magazine. GENE COLAN

2 The Early Years

icture: A mid-Manhattan town house in the 1930s. It’s the boyhood home of Gene Colan, who cradles his father’s box camera and walks slowly from room to room, framing his environment like he would a film on a movie screen. “It was like a pan shot,” Colan says. “I enjoyed that sensation of seeing the images go by me as I walked from one room to another.” And although no one knew so at the time, this exercise was the birth of Gene Colan’s cinematic approach to comic book storytelling.

Eugene Jules Colan was born in the Bronx, NY, on Sept. 1, 1926, the only child of Harold and Winifred Levy Colan. Harold, whose grandparents had emigrated from Germany and changed the family name from “Cohen” to the unique “Colan,” was a musician at heart. A violinist, he played for a time in singer Sophie Tucker’s band, but the group had broken up by the time Gene was born, and so Harold went to work at his father-in-law’s ribbon factory. After the stock market crashed in 1929, signaling the start of the Great Depression, Harold lost his job and moved into the insurance business, where Gene says his dad enjoyed quick success. “He was a great salesman,” Colan says. “My father was such a good communicator; he could have been a trial lawyer.”

childhood in a well-to-do neighborhood at 88th and Broadway, and his family always employed a live-in maid. “I wasn’t aware of any need for anything,” he says. “My parents always saw to it that I had what I needed.” Which isn’t to say he always got what he wanted.

Winifred, in contrast, had the makings of a good field general. A strong-willed, decisive woman from a wealthy family, she had attended Columbia University at a time when many young women didn’t pursue college educations–and she clearly headed the Colan household. After nursing young Gene through infancy, Winifred decided she wanted a business interest of her own. So, she began trading vintage German beer steins, which quickly grew into a self-supporting antiques business. Ultimately, Winifred opened her own antiques store, and Harold quit the insurance business to help support it. “She was very bossy–my mother kind of ruled the roost,” Gene says. “My father always sort of gave in to her a lot as far as how things should be done. I realized that more and more as I got older, and I didn’t always like it. But that’s the way it was.” As a young boy, Gene had no interest in school, sports or even socializing with the neighborhood kids. He liked being alone with his imagination. And although he grew up in the heart of the Depression, moving from the Bronx to Manhattan as a toddler, Colan doesn’t recall any sense of deprivation. He lived most of his

Gene as a toddler: One of the earliest photos of young Eugene, probably about age two, complete with curly locks. T H E E A R LY Y E A R S

GENE COLAN

3 Emerging Style

icture: Gene Colan at the movies in the 1940s, wondering how he could depict with a pencil what he saw on-screen. How were the sequences staged? How were the night scenes lit? “I developed my drawing style from film,” Colan says. “I would always refer in my head to what I’d seen on the screen, and I would draw my stories that way. So many thematic scenes were shot in the evening, at sunset or in the rain. Warner’s, it seemed, was always staging dramatic scenes in the rain, with the pavement wet – they put a lot of weather in their stories. And I picked up on all that stuff.”

New York City had the perfect place for teen-aged Gene Colan: the School of Industrial Arts (later known as the School of Art and Design – the visual arts version of the performing arts school portrayed in the movie Fame!). This public school boasted the best art education in the city, and proved to be the training ground for many of Colan’s eventual contemporaries, including Carmine Infantino, Frank Giacoia and John Romita. But, alas, Colan’s lackluster study habits betrayed him. “I passed the art test with no problem, but my academic scores were nowhere near high enough,” he recalls. Having to settle for a traditional education at New York’s George Washington High School, Colan continued to draw, inspired by the movies, and he set his sights on an eventual career in comics.

Profile: Undated sketch of Gene’s grandfather. Then came the war. When the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, 15-year-old Colan was caught up in the same fervent wave of nationalism that flooded the rest of the country. And two years later, at 17, he even lied about his age and tried to enlist in the Marines. “I thought it was a very romantic thing to do, very heroic,” Colan says. “But when my father heard about it, he came right down to the recruiter’s office with me and told them I was way underage and had no business enlisting. They took me off the list.” The service setback did pay career dividends, though. After high school graduation in 1944, Colan was able to use his drawing

Diploma: Gene’s high school graduation diploma. 23

EMERGING STYLE

Gene Colan Art Studies These are life studies from Gene Colan’s days at the Art Students League of New York in the 1940s. Even then, he had an eye for expression and a pretty lady!

GENE COLAN

4 The 1950s: High Hopes and Hard Times

icture: The first meeting between Gene Colan and Stan Lee, 1947. Colan, determined to break into comics professionally, prepares art samples and drops in unannounced at Timely Comics. The art director, Al Sulman, is impressed and takes the samples to show Timely’s editor, young Stan Lee. Minutes later, Colan is summoned to an inner office. “I walk into this office, and there is Stan Lee, playing cards and wearing this beanie cap with a propeller on it!” Colan says. “Stan is boyish, very charming. He says to me, “So, you want to be in comics, eh? Sit down!”

Nothing like first impressions. Colan distinctly remembers discovering Timely Comics’ location in the Empire State Building (he looked up the address in the indicia of a comic book); preparing a sample war story (“I even inked and lettered those pages,” he says); the anticipation of how editor Stan Lee would receive his work; and then his actual audience with the man in the beanie cap. “A big stiff wind was blowing through the window and would take that propeller on his cap and give it a twirl,” Colan says, “He was certainly a departure from what I thought he’d be like!” Departure, indeed. Colan left Lee’s office with his first staff job – igniting the spark that thrust Colan headlong into his comics career. For the next decade, Colan would hone his skills in genre comics, at Timely and elsewhere in the industry, experiencing the highs and lows of the business – from the collegial atmosphere of Lee’s Timely bullpen to the raging outbursts of editor Bob Kanigher at DC. And from the peaks to the valleys, his personal life kept pace.

The Time of His Life at Timely All-True Crime, Justice Comics, Lawbreakers Always Lose, Amazing Mysteries, Marvel Tales. These were some of the Timely Comics for which Colan drew in those formative years. Horror stories, war, Barn Dance: Archie-style teen comics clearly were on Gene Colan’s mind western, humor – he worked all the genres, honing with this undated ‘Barn Dance’ illustration from the 1940s. 31

HIGH HOPES AND HARD TIMES

story just as Romita did: He’d thumbnail every page on bond paper, then lightbox it. “I caught that sickness, too, and it used to cost me money,” Romita says. “But it’s the only way we felt we could pace the story the way we needed to. It was a hell of a thing to ask a guy to sacrifice two or three days without earning any money, but it was for the good of the story.”

Gene and I talk about pacing a story. The thing is Gene would put a lot of action shots – big panels – at the beginning of a story, and then he would run out of space. And you know who was worse at it? Jack Kirby! If you look at Kirby’s stories, one of the things that drove Stan crazy – and one of the reasons I started doing corrections on Kirby – was that he would do this wonderful 10- or 12-page epic, and then he would squeeze in the balance of the story Stan gave him on the last four pages. He’d end up with these tiny little one-inch panels on the last page. It drove Stan nuts because he’d want to do a billboard for the next issue. He had me and Gene talk a couple of times about pacing the story and leaving enough room to finish up the story with enough power. But very few of us paced a story to Stan’s satisfaction.

Increasingly in the ’60s, Stan relied on Romita as a defacto art director, and occasionally he asked the artist to counsel Colan on storytelling. Romita: I do remember once or twice that Stan would have

Idiosyncrasies aside, Colan meshed beautifully within the melting pot of styles at Marvel. Asked for his opinion on how Colan’s work fit in with that of his contemporaries at Marvel in the mid-’60s, Thomas says “Oddly. He was always a little out of the mainstream.” But that was a good thing, Thomas stresses – for Marvel and for Colan. Thomas: Other artists – the John Buscemas and even the Sterankos – they all fit the same kind of Kirbyesque mold. Ditko was out of that mold, but even he told stories much the same way. Gene was off in a corner by himself, but you want people like that. Steranko was sort of like that; Barry Smith became like that. Jim Starlin made his own take a little later. With Gene Colan, you don’t see that same style in his work in the 1940s and ’50s. You see the same photographic realism, but you don’t see anything like what he developed when he came back in the ’60s doing Sub-Mariner, etc. Here was something that was very dramatic, and the artwork was exciting… What he brought to comics was his realism, which brought people back a bit from the true dynamism of Kirby, which was good, but it was good to get back to the realism. Gene could do both. He had the dynamics of Kirby, but the realism of some of the comic strip artists – the things that people liked later in Neal Adams and other artists. Maybe Gene was kind of a transitional figure between Kirby and Neal Adams – two of the great influences. Mainly, he just told a lot of good stories – and he’s my wife’s favorite comic book artist.

Father & Son: Namor meets his Dad in this Colan/Esposito page from Sub-Mariner #46, 1972. GENE COLAN

Conversations Stan Lee and Gene Colan

In mid-December 2004, Stan Lee and Gene Colan were reunited via telephone for a conversation that spanned decades of collaboration, friendship and merriment. To paraphrase a Stan Lee caption from the Colan-illustrated Daredevil #33: “If anyone else can write an introduction that will do justice to this great exchange between Lee & Colan – be the author’s guest!” Stan Lee: Y’know, don’t tell anyone, but we used to fight all the time! Gene Colan: No, we did not! Lee: He used to say, “How do you expect me to draw all that stupid stuff you keep writing?” And I kept telling him “Will you stop ruining my great stories?” We were at each other’s throats all the time. Colan: [laughing] No, we were not! The only thing I remember us at odds over was the car chase that ate up about six pages of story (in Captain America #116), and you said “What did you do here? You could do this in two panels, but you take up six pages of story to tell it?!” Lee: [laughing] You hear about writers who get paid by the word? Gene got paid by the panel! (To Colan) The one real masterpiece I thought you did – I’ve probably mentioned this before – was in a Captain America story (issue #122) where you just had him walking down the street for, I don’t know, three pages – it seemed like 100 pages! – doing nothing in particular. And the way you drew it was so interesting – each panel was like watching a movie. It was such a pleasure to write that. I’ll never forget it. Colan: Everything to me was a movie. Every story I ever got, I would pretend that I was watching it on the screen. I was highly influenced by the films. Lee: You were the first guy who ever told me that you used to save video cassettes of all the movies. Colan: I still do. I’m into it up to my neck!

Gene and Stan: Photos as printed in Lee: You must live in one closet, and the rest of the house is all full of video cassettes! Fantastic Four Annual #7, 1969. 55

A C O N V E R S AT I O N W I T H S TA N L E E

From Eerie #10 (May 1966). GENE COLAN

7 Glory Days with DD and Doc

icture: Midtown Manhattan in the late 1960s. Gene Colan strolls purposefully, his Polaroid camera in tow, snapping photos of people, places and things. Images. He’s creating visual context for his Daredevil and Doctor Strange comics. “I loved the research,” he says. “It wasn’t something anyone asked me to do. I took it on myself because it made the work in the end look good to me.”

To Colan, this legwork represented his commitment to Marvel, which made a commitment to him by finally giving him ongoing series of his own – characters he could get to know and bring to life. “Just living with the character, it became real to me – a real person,” he says. “I liked that.” In a sense, Gene Colan has Steve Ditko to thank for Daredevil. When Ditko, the enigmatic co-creator and illustrator of SpiderMan and Doctor Strange, abruptly quit Marvel in 1966, his assignments were quickly doled out to emergency replacements. Bill Everett, the creator of Sub-Mariner (and co-creator of Daredevil), inherited Doctor Strange, while Spider-Man – which was quickly becoming Marvel’s most popular character – was DD Sketch: a 1998 sketch of Daredevil – the character with whom Gene Colan is entrusted to John Romita, a slick most fondly associated. stylist whose only real superhero For Colan to be offered Daredevil was a heady experience. Up to this experience was drawing Daredevil from issues #12 through #19, just point at Marvel, he had been given major characters to draw, true – Subprior to the Spidey assignment. When Romita shifted to Spidey, DD Mariner and Iron Man were among Marvel’s “A list” of heroes, and they was offered… to Colan. remain popular even today. But each character shared its respective comic book with a co-star, hence the stories were only 10-to-12 pages long. Daredevil was unique – a blind superhero who overcame his Half a standard comic book. Daredevil was a feature-length assignment, disability to fight crime as both a costumed hero and a top-notch attorney. presenting Colan with 20 full pages to dig in and really tell a story. Created by Stan Lee and Bill Everett in 1964, the Daredevil comic book had plugged along ever since under the guidance of Lee and “I said ‘Oh, God, let me have it!’” Colan says, recalling his response artists Joe Orlando, Wallace Wood, Bob Powell and Romita. to Stan Lee when offered the DD job. “I didn’t know how long it would 73

G L O R Y D AY S W I T H D D A N D D O C

DD Drawings: Top, Colan’s 1999 Christmas card; bottom, cover to The Comics Journal #231. GENE COLAN

Together Again: DD and the Black Widow in a wistful piece drawn by Colan in 2003. V

COLAN IN COLOR

Gene Colan Portfolio Dream Teams Gene Colan’s Pencils Interpreted by Comics Superstars By Glen David Gold

I’ve heard athletes say that marathons are good for proving yourself, but if you want a glimpse into your soul, try competing in an Iron Man triathlon. That’s what I imagine inking Colan is like. There are so many ways to ruin a Colan page and, when it’s done right, so many different ways it can be right – think of Sinnott versus Palmer, for instance. That’s what inspired me to get some non-traditional inkers on Gene’s commissioned pieces.

When I saw Gene’s pencils of the Black Widow/Batgirl piece, I immediately thought of George Pérez, who took on the commission enthusiastically... and without reading the letter I’d enclosed, which suggested he ink it with a brush. By the time he’d finished – inking the entire thing with a pen, which he uses exclusively, as he has double-jointed fingers – and looked at the note, he thought I might hate what he’d done. He told me that at times he worried he would never actually finish the obsessive detail of the stairs, the bricks, the iron ball, etc. He did a magnificent job adding his sense of order and precision to Gene’s impressionistic dungeon. GENE COLAN

Michael Kaluta was a sudden inspiration. I was standing in front of his table at a convention, looking at his work, and thought I saw some communion with Colan’s pencils. I showed him this Daredevil pinup, and learned that the Chrysler Building is Kaluta’s favorite piece of architecture. He knows everything about it. “Should I throw in the Shadow and an autogyro?” he asked. Like I even had to answer. Mike says that this is the first piece he’d ever inked by another artist. Nervous about taking over someone else’s work, he managed to plunge right in. What’s interesting about this is he didn’t erase Gene’s pencils, using them instead as grey tone shading. 95

PORTFOLIO