The Comic Interview with Don Heck

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This post was inspired by a wonderful new Facebook site dedicated to Don Heck.

Here is an interview that Don Heck did for Comics Interview.  At the end of the interview I also put up the bio that was published in Avengers Annual #1. It is referred to in this article. Surrounded by artists including Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, Don Heck often did not get the recognition and appreciation that he deserved.  There is a scene in the Avengers movie when the group is standing together in a circle.  Half the characters had their initial appearances drawn by Don Heck.  Heck did the first Iron Man stories (Jack Kirby did the first cover) and he drew the first appearances of the Black Widow and Hawkeye.

Before you read the article, just look at the work he did as a penciller for Marvel.  (I left out the inking.)

Adventure into Mystery 4

Amazing Adventures (I) 5

Amazing Adventures (II) 6 - 8

Amazing Fantasy Omnibus (HC) 1

The Amazing Spider-Man (I) 57 - 64, 66

The Amazing Spider-Man (II) 20

The Amazing Spider-Man Annual (I) 3

Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus (HC) 2

Ant-Man and Wasp TPB: Small World 1

Astonishing 46, 50

Avengers 9 - 15, 17 - 40, 45, 108 - 112, 145 - 146, 157

Avengers Annual 1 - 2, 5

Battle 66, 68, 70

Battle Action 21, 24 - 25, 28

Black Goliath 4

Captain America Annual 10

Captain Marvel (I) 5 - 10, 16

Captain Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders •  12 - 16

Chamber of Chills 3, 13, 17, 25

Chamber of Darkness 1 - 2

The Champions 1 - 2, 5

Creatures on the Loose 14 - 15, 17, 20, 23

Crypt of Shadows 12, 15, 17 - 18

Daredevil (I) 103 - 106, 118

Fantastic Firsts TPB 1

Fantasy Masterpieces (I) 1 - 8

Fear • Adventure into Fear 2 - 6, 10, 29

Frontier Western 3

Ghost Rider (I) 22 - 25

The Ghost Rider (Western Hero) 2

Giant-Size Avengers (I) 4 - 5

Giant-Size Chillers (II) 2

Giant-Size Defenders 4 - 5

Giant-Size Dracula 2 - 4

Giant-Size Iron Man 1

Giant-Size Man-Thing 2 - 3

Giant-Size Spider-Man 2

Heroic Age Magazine 1

Invaders (I) 35, 38 1

Iron Man (I) 26 - 31, 33 - 37

Iron Man Annual (I) 1, 12

Jann of the Jungle 11

Journey into Mystery (I) 50, 53, 55 - 65, 67 - 68, 73 - 74, 76 - 77, 79 - 80, 82 - 86, 88, 98 - 100

Journey into Mystery (II) 14, 17 - 18

Journey into Unknown Worlds 55

Ka-Zar (I) 3

Ka-Zar (II) • Ka-Zar: Lord of the Hidden Jungle 2 - 5, 11

Kid Colt • Kid Colt Outlaw 91, 99 - 100, 103 - 105, 127 - 128, 135

The Kid from Dodge City 1 - 2

Love Romances 84 - 85, 93 - 95, 102 - 103

Marvel Feature (I) 1

Marvel Premiere 29 - 30

My Love (II) 4

My Own Romance 73

Mystery Tales 25, 30

Mystic 46, 55

Navy Combat 1 - 16, 19

Not Brand Echh 2

Our Love Story 25

Police Badge #479 issue #5

Psi-Force 22

Rawhide Kid (I) 17, 27, 31, 54 - 55, 57, 68

Rugged Action 3

Secret Warriors Special: Who's Your Daddy? 1

Spider-Man Comics Magazine 3 - 5

Spider-Man Magazine 2 - 3, 8 - 9

Spider-Man Magazine Winter 1994 1

Spidey Super Stories (TV) 2

Strange Tales (I) 67, 69, 71 - 83, 87 - 88, 90 - 92, 95 - 96, 98 - 101, 103, 105, 140, 145 - 148

Strange Tales Annual 1 - 2

Strange Worlds 2

Sub-Mariner (I) 64 - 68

Tales to Astonish (I) 2, 4 - 5, 7 - 17, 19, 21 - 25, 27, 30, 32 - 35, 37 - 43, 45 - 48, 54

Tales of Suspense (I) 1, 3, 6 - 13, 15 - 19, 22, 24, 26, 29 - 36, 38 - 39, 42, 44 - 46, 50 - 72

Tales of the Zombie • Zombie (I) 11

Teen-Age Romance 81 - 84

Thunderbolts (I) 39

Thunderbolts TPB: Marvel's Most Wanted 1

Tomb of Darkness 15 - 16, 19, 22

Tower of Shadows 2, 4, 8 - 9

Two-Gun Kid 45, 56, 58, 60, 81, 103

Two-Gun Western (II) • 2-Gun Western 10

X-Men (I) 38 - 42, 44 - 49, 52, 54 - 55, 64, 

Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction 4

Western Kid (I) 3

Western Trails • Ringo Kid starring in Western Trails 2

World of Fantasy 17 - 19

World of Suspense 5

Wyatt Earp 29

 The Comic Interview:

LOU MOUGIN: Let’s start out with the origin of Don Heck. In your bio piece in AVENGERS ANNUAL #1 you say that you became an artist when you first tried to draw Donald Duck.

DON HECK: Yes, when I was a kid that was the first one I started with. At least my aunt tells me that -- I must have been five or six or something like that.

LOU: I guess that’s when all of us start getting involved with cartoons and comics and all of that good stuff.

DON: Right, in other words, you’re quiet, your mother and father take you out somewhere and you grab a piece of paper and start scribbling.

LOU: Tell me a lithe something about yourself, who you ate, and what got you onto the road of becoming a comic-book artist.

DON: I always like strips. I used to go over to my grandfather’s on Sunday and they had the JOURNAL AMERICAN there. And all of a sudden, wow, you know, everybody’s in the kitchen back in those days -- and you’re in the other room and you have this whole thing of drawings in front of you. I guess I liked Milton Caitiff quit° a bit.

LOU: TERRY And THE PIRATES was quite a strip.

DON: Oh, it was fantastic!

LOU: The thing is!, people growing up right now, even people like me who started reading comics in the late 50s, early’ 60s, didn’t realize how good those things were back then. Not to mention being printed in larger sizes.

DON: Much more subtle colors. You would have to back to PRINCE VALIANT and that stuff. You had all these muted colors, which were beautiful. I have a collection of PRINCE VALIANT and STEVE CANYON from the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s.

LOU: And of course back then they could afford to print them better, because it didn’t cost so much.

DON: It’s funny because they didn’t charge that much, either.

LOU: I guess that was a long time before inflation.

DON: And before everybody decided the super pay they were going to get and they were only going to give half the amount of effort.

LOU: Unfortunately, that’s the story from the ‘60s onwards. You say that a college friend, in the early 50s, got you into the business when he turned down an interview with a comics publisher because it wasn’t in his line of work?

DON: We had graduated school together, from what is now New York State Tech, I think. It is similar to a community college nowadays. It was the first one which was opened up in Brooklyn. We were the first class, we were the guinea pigs. Actually, Tom Dewey came to our graduation. He was actually still governor at the time. I guess he had lost the presidential election to ‘Duman so he went back to being governor. So I graduated with this guy and the first year I was out there wasn’t a lot of stuff available. I got a call from someone, I can’t remember who, but he knew I wanted to be a cartoonist, so I went for the interview.

LOU: Who was the interview with?

DON: Harvey Publications. I worked paste-up and that sort of stuff, you know.

LOU: Who actually; interviewed you?

DON: Leon Harvey interviewed me. It was a Saturday afternoon. I said to the guy, “I have a date tonight, it’s five o’clock in the evening, are you kidding or what?” I said, “It’s going to take me an hour to get there.” I was in Queens and they were in New York City. He said, “We’ll wait,” so I went in anyway.

LOU: You eventually ended up doing artwork for them?

DON: Yeah, I worked inside for two years. Then I decided that I was going to try and go freelance. I did all paste-up and stuff on the reprints at Harvey. I did work on TERRY AND THE PIRATES up until the end.

LOU: In 1952 or so, you started at . . .

DON: March 21 to be exact.

LOU: I guess that is a thing you tend to remember! You started at Comic Media, right?

DON:’ First, I worked two other places. In fact, the first day I went to go out, I called up and got three places to show my stuff. The first two places, I got jobs. I didn’t go to the third place, because I was afraid they’d give me a job, and then I’d have to have them all done at the same time. I did wind up with Comic Media and Allen Hardy. Allen had worked for Harvey also in circulation and then he left and decided to open up his own place. He called me up and I ended up doing covers and inside stuff. I even ended up doing the lettering on a couple of the first few books.

LOU: I remember your cover from HORRIFIC, which has a guy’s  head with a bullet hole through it.

DON: Yeah, well, the was no real gore and stuff like that like it was at EC. In those cases, the writer writes it out and the artist tries to fulfill what the writer writes.

LOU: You did a character called Johnny Danger, a detective series.

DON: Something like that; it was so long ago. I think it was in DANGER COMICS or something like that. I did the lead character — you’re talking about something I did forty years ago. I could draw him, I remember what he looked like, but don’t ask me his name.

LOU: Who else did you freelance for?

DON: I worked for Toby, Quality, a few others.

LOU: What were working conditions like then, back in the 50s?

DON: Nothing spectacular. You went in, picked up your job, and then went home and worked on it. I did a job for Quality and the guy gave me the job and asked me what other stuff 1 had worked on. I told him, “This was my first job.” I looked at him and said, “Hello!” He gave me a decent price to do the work. (Laughter.)I didn’t hear from them again for about a year and he wanted me to work on BLACKHAWK. He called me and I said I was going to take a chance because, after all, it was a whole year before I got the second job. You can’t blame them, I was just a beginner.

LOU: Of course, the Wertham thing and the Senate investigations put a lot of companies out of business around 1955. In the industry, as it was back then, was there a lot of paranoia about what Wertham was doing, that you might lose your jobs?

DON: The outfit I was working for at the time was Comics Media, around 1954 they went out of business. There were other things happening at that time. A lot of companies were going into the 3-D comics and things like that. They eventually lost a lot of money. In those days, they had to have a very high percentage of sales in order to break even. Generally in the 60% range to break even, even though they weren’t paying all that great — but somebody was getting the money. You know, I don’t know who, I don’t know what the deal was back in those days.

LOU: You feel that the 3-D craze put a lot of them under?

DON: I think it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, because so many other things were happening at the same time. As you say, they were blaming juvenile delinquency on comics, that sort of thing. Things haven’t changed much in forty years, now somebody else is doing it and blaming TV.

LOU: Maybe they could tell us what people like Ivan Boeskey were reading . . .

DON: I’d like to know because he made a lot of money. (Laughter.)

LOU: Marvel, or Atlas as it was known back then, was one of the companies that was still alive and kicking?

DON: Yeah, right, they were called Timely.

LOU: Why don’t you tell me about your early days at Marvel?

DON: Pete Morisi had gone up there to see Stan Lee and Pete had brought a book with him, on which he had done some work for Media. And Stan kept pointing at my stories, and he finally said„ “If you want Don Heck to come up here, why the hell don’t you tell me —he’s looking for work, too.” (Laughter.) Pete called me but I was gone for a few days. I finally went up to see Stan Lee and he went outside to look at my work and looked at two pages and he said, “1 know what the hell you can do for me, I’ve got a job for you.” And that was September 1, 1954.

LOU: Was it the same way for Marvel, pick up the job and then bring it back in the morning, that sort of thing?

DON: In most cases, yes, you would pick it up, take it home, work it up, and then take it in for Stan to look over and take another one home with you. Very casual, this was in the ‘50s. In April of 1957, that was when Marvel stopped giving out work. They were called Magazine Management at the time. They were cutting back and just going to use inventory, and almost all of the artists were let go, at that point.

LOU: Were you also let go?

DON: Yes, everyone - all of us were let go. I got a call a year later from Stan and he asked if I would be interested in doing more work. I called DC but couldn’t get any work and there weren’t many companies left. I went to a friend who kept saying, “Look if you ever have any time let me know and maybe I’ll have some work.” I called him and said, “Look, I have all the time in the world.” And I wound up doing model airplane plans and that sort of thing.

LOU: So you went back to work in 1958, which would have been after they got the thing straight with their distributors?

DON: When you vent in, then, Stan was in one little room back in the corner. It’s amazing when you go in there now, and see what they have against what they had, way back then. I went in to the Christmas party a few years back and I looked around and I said, “I don’t know anybody.” Back in those days there were only four or five guys, Kirby, Dick Ayers, Ditko and myself.

LOU: What type of memories do you have of working with those guys?

DON: Well, Jack ‘,was always in there, because he lived near there. Jack was so proficient it was incredible. In fact, I went in there a couple of times, and went to the same place to pick up the same paper he was using, because it wound up being good paper and it was reasonable. I’d go in there and he’d be sitting there, with his little drawing table and the cigar smoke. The room was filled with pocket books, all science-fiction stuff. He was a very avid reader. He was unbelievable, he would turn out five, six pages a day. I was struggling and he was knocking this stuff out like it was going out of style. He was a very nice guy, very pleasant.

LOU: What about Steve Ditko, did you ever get to know him?

DON: I know of him, we met a few times, but not like I got to know Kirby. Dick Ayers I got to know a little bit better.

LOU: After you got back on track you did a zillion fantasy and western stories.

DON: That was what was available.

LOU: I remember one story about dogs taking over the world. (Laughter.)

DON: One time, I was looking at a job that was upside-down on a desk and I thought, “Gee, that doesn’t look too bad.” When I turned around to get a better look at it, I realized it was one of mine. In those days, you’d do one job, forget about it, and move on to the next one. It wasn’t a standard character. When you did a regular character then you were aware of who was doing it.

LOU: You did a character for one of the jungle books and, when I saw it, he looked an awful lot like Tony Stark, all the way down to the moustache.

DON: Well, that was normal. When you’re drawing out of your head like that, it’s almost natural that they’re all going to look pretty much the same. It’s a lot like handwriting, that sort of thing.

LOU: You were also working for companies like Dell and Gold Key doing stuff like ON STAGE and VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. What was that like?

DON: Doing the adaptations was a little bit rougher, because you really don’t have the time to get the character down right. You’re trying to draw portraits and some people are a little more gifted at it than others. You really had to do a caricature of the person, in order to be able to draw them, panel after panel. I was having trouble with Napoleon Solo. That’s why I was glad when I was given a regular character like Iron Man.

LOU: Iron Man was your first superhero and he was a relative newcomer; TALES OF SUSPENSE was more a monster book with a superhero in it. Tell me something about Iron Man and what it was like to do that title.

DON: It was fun to do, especially in the beginning. There were two characters, Happy Hogan and Pepper Potts, that I enjoyed doing. To me, Happy was a pug, so it was great.

LOU: Happy was always one of my favorite characters.

DON: 1 had fun with them. And Tony Stark was the man-about-town type of thing, so that worked out fine. There was more characterization at the time and I had more fun with it. That was the first time that I started to work with getting a synopsis. The synopsis usually wasn’t even that much, at times it was just discussed over the phone.

LOU: One of the things I noticed about your IRON MAN work was Tony Starks look and all of the beautiful people, the movie-star look you set up. I recall when IRON MAN always had a great deal of tragedy, and pathos.

DON: That was Stan Lee thing, he was thinking of HAMLET and stuff like that. You knew that at any time he could die, his heart could go out on him, stuff like that. That to me is a hell of a lot better than, say, the TERMINATOR in movies, that no matter what you did to him, you couldn’t kill him. Movies like FRIDAY THE 13TH — you hit him with an axe and nothing stops him. I much more like the fact that you can have a character die; that’s the type of character that I like.

LOU: I know Tony Stark was about to die from a heart attack about every fifth issue or so. In the ‘60s it seemed like every issue of IRON MAN he would clobber a Commie supervillain. How did you like beating up on the Commies?

DON: That didn’t bother me, they were just villains. Back in the ‘40s it was the Japs or something like that. Today, I guess it’s Saddam Hussein. There’s always going to be a villain somewhere. That’s why I always remember Jack Kirby, talking about the Sandman. It was like people going to the beach and all of a sudden there’s a wind storm, and a guy gets up and walks away and it’s the Sandman. He walks away and under the beach is a garbage dump. That’s the way Kirby used to think. He really did a terrific job on creating most of those characters.

LOU: One of my favorites from the ‘60s, which you did, was Ant Man. I remember the scripts which were done by Ernie Hartz, he did the first Porcupine story and the origin of the Wasp. I remember those stories as being really well written. They were like THE THIN MAN but with superheroes. What can you tell me about that work and about mystery man Ernie Hartz?

DON: Actually, I don’t remember Ernie -- it may have been a pseudonym for someone else. I know you’re expecting me to say some spectacular thing about Ernie but the truth is that, in those days, the script would come in the mail. Most of the times you wouldn’t know who the writer was.. Even today I sometimes will get something from Marvel and it won’t even have the writer’s name on it. You get it in the synopsis form and then send it back to somebody; you don’t even see it in the final stage until is sees print.

LOU: What was it like working on Ant Man?

DON: It was fun because it was completely different. All of a sudden you’re wondering how you are going to draw this thing, where, you can see the things that he sees. It always had to be something where you looked up at the people, past Ant Man, and towards the other guy. You had to get a relationship between something small and large and you also had to put something close by to give a gauge, like a matchbook or something, so that when you looked down all of a sudden the other character took most of the panel and Ant Man was small. Jack Kirby had already started it,

so I had stuff to work from.

LOU: You did a good job with it, especially drawing the Wasp.

DON: When I first started drawing girls I couldn’t draw them worth a damn. I always liked the Caniff stuff, you know, Burma, the Dragon Lady, and stuff like that. !always ended up keeping that right next to me at the drawing board. I didn’t copy it, but when I would see something that was really pretty, that was what I would try to do. I tried to model from movie stars like Ava Gardner, who had a pretty good-looking face.

LOU: Another series that comes to mind, THE AVENGERS?

DON: That same type of thing, I got a phone call that says, “Guess what, you’re going to be doing THE AVENGERS next month.” I guess they already had eight issues done by Kirby so I had something to work from. I guess the first issue I did was #9.

LOU: Did you have to ask who was in THE AVENGERS?

DON: No, they would just send you the stuff and you would start working on it. I had  done a few of the characters before. At that point, for me, superheroes were no big deal anymore. I had been working from a synopsis for a few years, so 1 had it down pretty good.

LOU: AVENGERS was one of the first strips that Roy Thomas made a name for himself with — what was it like working with Roy?

DON: Same thing, I never saw the guy. 1 really didn’t have any problems with anybody. Just send me a script or a synopsis and I would work from there. Later on, when they became a little more well-known with the fans, then they would start to say, “This or that isn’t right.”

LOU: Yes, right, continuity.

DON: As they became bigger, it became an entirely different situation. But that’s normal. You can start to go crazy with that stuff. Anyone can sit down afterwards and say what you could have done with it.

LOU: John Buscema replaced you on AVENGERS and you ended up doing a plethora of strips like CAPTAIN MARVEL and IRON MAN again.

DON: Basically, whatever they sent me I wound up doing. 1 never knew what the hell 1 was going to do or who was going to ink it. That was the fun part of it. Guys would come up to me and say, “When I first started, I got to ink you,” and I would say, “Yeah, I remember that one.” (Laughter.) I’d get stuff back years later, when they started sending the art back, and I didn’t: even recognize some of the stuff. What I used to do was make Xeroxes of my stuff before sending all of it off.

LOU: Around 1970 you went over to DC and did some nice stuff on DETECTIVE COMICS with Batgirl?

DON: Yes. Actually, that was 1972, I think.

LOU: Also some work for LOIS LANE, I remember. What got you back to DC and what was it like working there?

DON: I don’t know for sure — I guess I just wanted a change. You start to feel stale after a while. It was a different scene at Marvel at that point. There were a bunch of new guys and I felt like I was getting a little short-changed. I decided to see if I could get any work over at DC. Someone said they might be interested, so I went there. I remember that at Marvel I was going to do some book, and they were going to put an inker on me that I wasn’t thrilled about, so I said, “No, forget it.” I went over to DC for a couple of years.

LOU: In the mid-70s you came back to Marvel, at least partially.

DON: It was one of those things, it wasn’t working as well at DC as I wanted, so I went back to Marvel. I had seen Marvel’s production manager, John Verpoorten, a few times at these meetings they used to have, when they were trying to start artist groups .. .

LOU: Like ACBA . .?

DON: Yeah, so I went to a few of those, and they asked me to come back to Marvel.

LOU: In the late 70s you gravitated back to DC again . . .

DON: I wasn’t happy with some of the stuff I was getting at Marvel. I felt like I was getting short-changed again, so I talked with Vinnie Colletta and he said they were willing to give me a contract at DC. I didn’t have a contract with Marvel at the time.

LOU: You were still freelancing?

DON: Right, and I never knew when the next job was coming. 1 went back to DC in 1977; I stayed with them until a couple of years ago.

LOU: I remember a lot of the features you worked on at DC — TEEN TITANS, FLASH, JUSTICE LEAGUE BATGIRL, and SUPERGIRL .. .

DON: And WONDER WOMAN, for about three years.

LOU: You inherited JUSTICE LEAGUE from George Perez and Carmine Infantino, just in time to do that last super complicated crossover among the Justice League, the Justice Society and the All-Star Squadron.

DON: I remember one job when that was just crazy -- you had Superman, Wonder Woman and two or three other superheroes. I said, “Come on, one guy opens the door, the other goes through it, the next one opens the screen door, and someone does something else.” I mean, it was damn stupid; one character alone could have whipped the villain, himself. You had Superman, what the hell did you need all of the rest of them for? It ended up that each one had to do something. To me it became foolish and silly. Plus the fact that if you’re working late at night and you wake up early in the morning, you find out you put the wrong stars on this guy, that sort of thing. (Laughter.)

LOU: You once again ended up at Marvel. Was that about the time your contract ran out at DC or what?

DON: Yes, and all of a sudden they didn’t have any more work for me. It was just one of those things. I asked for more work and they would say, “We’ll see,” and I said, “Uh oh.” The funny part is that, the year before, an editor at Marvel called me and wanted me to do some work and I refused because I didn’t want to push off from DC. I had been getting steady work out of them. I said, “Gee, if I go and do the other work they may get mad and then I’ll get nothing.” It happened that way anyway, so I called up to see if I could get back at Marvel; I had no choice at that point. The guy from Marvel who had called me originally was Mike Higgins, and at about the point I had wanted to go back to Marvel he had left. I sort of felt like a black cloud was settling over me.

LOU: You were the regular inker on the HAWKEYE comic.

DON: That was one of two jobs I did right after I went back there, I did the Hawkeye and the Swordsman story. I had to do both of them at once and I was surprised, myself, when I saw the story a year later — some of the stuff looked pretty good — because I had to rush that one and yet it worked out fine.

LOU: What gives you the most pleasure out of your career as a comic-book artist?

DON: I most enjoyed working on IRON MAN and TORPEDO TALES, it was fun to suddenly be doing these underwater adventures. It all depends on whether or not they had some character to it.

LOU: Now don’t forget to send your photo to David Hamilton, who’s doing the layout on this interview.

DON: Where is he from?

LOU: Before COMICS INTERVIEW I think he used to work for Fantagraphics .. .

DON: You mean Hambone?

LOU: Yeah, that’s right — you know him then?

DON: I think I Sent him a sketch once, and not because he was working for THE COMICS JOURNAL. (Laughter.) I don’t have any great love for THE COMICS JOURNAL, not when the big cheese up there calls me the worst cartoonist in the world.

LOU: ‘thought that was Harlan Ellison.

DON: It was in that interview, but Gary Groth put the words in his mouth. The funny part was that the guy they were actually talking about was not me. In other words, the story they were referring to was something I hadn’t even drawn.

LOU: I don’t believe in the character assassination interview anyway

DON: It’s stupid; if you say you don’t like my stuff, that’s perfectly all right. But to call me the worst?

Here is the text from the above page:

Don Heck in Avengers Annual #1

My comics career can probably be dated from that most-forgotten day when I first grabbed a pencil and proceeded to try to draw my favorite character of the another guy named Donald—Duck, that is! Seeing this, my father thought that my interests might be guided to other things, and he decided that drafting might make a good profession for his son. It scarcely occurred to him that I could really be interested in the make-believe world of cartoon characters.

But, when I reached the age of fourteen and asked to take a correspondence course in cartooning, he got his first inkling that maybe his pride and joy might not turn out to be a draftsman after all!

After four years at Woodrow Wilson Vocational High School in Jamaica, New York, and two years at Community College in Brooklyn, I was all set to go into the advertising field—hoping all the time, of course, for a chance to break into the comic art field. Then, one Saturday afternoon, a college friend of mine called to say that he had had an interview with a publisher, but that the job was not in his line. It was more the type of thing 1 was after, he said—in other words, comics! Needless to say, I hustled to see that same publisher —and got the job. I was in!

And so it started—but not quite in the grand style that I had imagined! I wound up doing mostly paste‑ups and corrections, at first. There were too many good, experienced artists around at the time, I thought, so I'd just have to wait my turn to really get off the ground.

Years later, looking over some of my samples of that era, I. realize why it took so long—in fact, sometimes I am amazed that I got started at all! In 1952, after my stint with Harvey, I free-lanced for a budding young outfit called Media Comics, where I did mostly mystery stories and a feature called Duke Douglas. That lasted a couple of years. In 1954, however, when Media  (along with quite a few, other outfits) went out of business, another friend told me of a comics editor who might toss some work my way.

Now, as it turned out, the very worst day and time to bring samples to that editor was on Wednesday afternoon---so, naturally, that was the precise day and time

that I showed up! (I could have sworn that was when my friend told me to go! ) I suppose the editor was so amazed that anyone would dare show up then, that he actually came out to look at the samples I'd brought. He proceeded to turn a couple of pages, then said, already know what you can do. Come on in and I'll give you a script."

It was the first of many that I was to receive from Stan Lee—and I've been working for Marvel ever since. In the years since then, I've worked on just about every type of comic around: super-hero strips like Ant-Man/Giant-Man, Thor, Iron Man, Captain Amer­ica, and Shield; countless war, mystery, and western tales; and a couple of characters called Torpedo Taylor

and Cliff Mason! (Anybody here still remember them?) And, of course, the Avengers which is something like working on half a dozen strips at once! But, there

are consolations—not the least of which is that I'm the only Marvel Bullpener who gets to draw three beau­tiful super-heroines in the same story!

And to think that it all started on January 2, 1929— just before the crash!

Roy Thomas

From comics fan to comics pro in only two short decades—this is your life, Rascally Roy Thomas!

I was just 41/2 years old when I first discovered those strange, colorful picture-books called comics in a local drugstore in Jackson, Missouri. Something clicked, and I was never the same again! (Actually, some skeptics claim that I was never the same before, but who can remember that far back?)

One of my earliest favorites, whom I used to sneak-read between swimming lessons, was the Sub-Mariner! I've been told by psychology majors, who should know, that there is a profound psychological explanation for my hero-worship of nautical. Namor—that, secretly and in the dead of night, I envied him! And, I readily admit it—they're right! All my life, my Great Dream has been to grow a triangular head.

By the time I entered grade school, I was writing and drawing my own comics, which were eagerly read by indulgent parents, thrill-starved friends, and occa­sional waylaid strangers. The name of my first venture into the field was ALL-GIANT COMICS, which con­tained such immortal, unforgettable characters as Elephant Giant and others whom I forget.

But, alas, though I. remained steadfastly devoted to my childhood heroes, the super-hero comics began dropping by the wayside in the late '40s. When the last issue of THE HUMAN TORCH was published, 1 burned my library card in a silent but eloquent protest.

And so, in the fabulous Fifties, I was forced to satisfy myself with other intellectual activities. I read some Burroughs (Edgar Rice, not William), a smattering of science-fiction, and several works on the territorial instincts of the duck-billed platypus. I'm not certain, however, just which of these three fields contributed most to my development as a potential Marvel maniac.

In 1961, after graduating from college magma com laude (which is Latin for -Now what am I gonna do?"), I spent four years as a high school English teacher—which was logical, since my majors had been history and social science. But, in the teachers' lounge, I read avidly about the ever-multiplying creations of Stan and Jack: the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, the Amazing Spider-Man, and the Vanishing Ant-Man ( He didn't really vanish, of course, he just became ten feet tall, which isn't quite the same thing.)

Also during this pedagogical period, I took my most important step towards becoming a comics pro. Jerry Bails, a Detroit college prof, and I started the first super-hero comic-book fanzine, which we christened ALTER EGO. I still publish it in what I laughingly refer to as my Spare Time. The current quarterly issue is about two years late, but I'm zeroing in on the deadline fast, by editing articles while I shower.

Naturally, though, my major activity is working for Marvel Comics. Just two years ago, I wandered into the Bullpen, my Smith-Corona under my arm, and casually mentioned that I was looking for a job. Merry Marvel has kept me busy ever since. And, I've got no regrets—except, perhaps, that every once in a while silly chains get in the way of my typing finger,

In closing, may I state that I'm a simple guy with but three goals in life: to write the longest story in the Marvel Age of Comics; to marry Brigitte Bardot and/or the Black Widow; and to star in a film biography of  Woody Allen.

With this AVENGERS SPECIAL, I'm one third of the way home!

Marvel Comics: The Way It Began...For Me!!!

I have read over 15,000 comics in my life and two thirds of them have not been Marvels.  Most had been DCs. I started reading comics in the late 1950s when DC dominated the superhero field. I was not immediately attracted to Marvel, contrary to popular belief; my favorite at the time was Challengers of the Unknown. Of course Superman was still a daily treat on TV, I watched it on WPIX, Channel 11 in New York. Who knew then of the incredible connection between these two!!! Marvel’s comics, as well as those of ACG, at first seemed a bit smaller, with not only less vibrant colors, but also less sharp printing than DC’s or Dell's. In fact, when I was very young, I once thought ACG and Marvel were the same company. And with Steve Ditko drawing for both Charlton and Marvel in a very distinctive style, I thought Charlton and Marvel might also be the same.

We all know that the Justice League’s success prodded Marvel to get back into the superhero line.

To a young reader at the time, Fantastic Four #1 did look like it was inspired by an existing superhero group, but not the JLA which featured DC’s stars. It looked like DC’s Legion of Super-Heroes, which had similar members. Sun Boy had heat powers similar to the Torch, the Invisible Kid had powers like Sue Storm's, and Jimmy Olsen as the Elastic Lad had powers similar to Reed Richards. Also, unlike the JLA but like the Fantastic Four, the Legion seemed to live together, often like brothers and sisters.

I was not immediately a big fan of the Fantastic Four - that would take until issue #19, “Prisoners of the Pharaoh.” I enjoyed many of the comics until that point, but for some reason that comic seemed so much different than anything else. Issue #4 had featured the Sub-Mariner. When it came out I had no idea that there was a “Golden Age” of comics in the 1940s, that would take until Feiffer’s “The Great Comic Book Heroes” published in 1965. So I thought, as with the Fantastic Four, that the Sub-Mariner was a copy of another DC character, Aquaman.

I had then become a fan of Marvel’s full length comics, but I was not thrilled by their anthology ones: Tales of Suspense, Tales to Astonish, Strange Tales and Journey into Mystery.  I really began to miss those five page stories, especially the ones done by Kirby and Ditko. I was not a big fan of Iron Man, Thor, Hulk or Ant-Man either. It took until Steve Ditko redid Iron Man in issue #48 and the introduction of good supporting characters (Pepper and Happy) to bring me strongly aboard. Tales to Astonish was never a favorite when it just starred Ant-Man. When he fought a small villain, such as the Scarlet Beetle, I wondered why he just couldn’t grow to full size and step on it.  He also had full conversations with ants, who alerted him to bank robberies. How does an ant know about bank robberies? It got better when the Hulk was added to the comic. Then Marvel once again called on Steve Ditko and he recreated the Hulk and added strong supporting characters to the mix.

Thor, in Journey Into Mystery, was fun in the beginning, but when he started fighting Earth-bound villains, like in “Prisoner of the Reds,” or the Cobra and Hyde, it was all a bit dull to me because they never seemed a powerful as Thor. I renewed my interest in the series when Lee and Kirby returned.  They introduced Tales of Asgard, giving Thor great new characters and a back-story, and me a great comic to look forward to.

The Human Torch stories in Strange Tales were rarely fun in the beginning, but got better and funnier when the Thing was involved. However, I slowly got taken in by Dr. Strange, which I still feel was some of Ditko’s best work. And Marvel’s.

While the Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Nick Fury, and Dr. Strange stories were not full length in their anthology homes (their stories were ten to twelve pages), they were able to develop longer and more complicated plots by frequently having continued stories. At first there were a lot of two parters, but eventually they went much longer than that, Dr. Strange has the record for going 17 issues. .

These days, I occasionally read articles critical of the promotion and cross referencing Marvel did in the early 1960s, as today it seems  over the top and distracting. Many of the comments come from people not around then.  Nowadays it seems that Marvel was always going to be successful, but back then, they really had to fight for their market share (and news stand space) to survive. Yes, it did help when a new character, Ant-Man, the Hulk or Daredevil showed up in a comic you read to promote their new title.  Also, Stan’s Special Announcement became more and more important and interesting as he connected with the fans and told us what to look for on the stands.  There were no comic book stores; you often had to look for these comics!

I had traded away, or just not kept, several of those early anthology comics, perhaps ten in all. I noticed in myself that I was buying Marvel Tales and Marvel Collectors' Item Classics to get the stories I had given away. In those days older comics often cost less than new comics and new comics only cost 12 cents. So by 1964 I got them all back and I have kept everything!!!!!

Sgt. Fury was the only Marvel comic I did not read from the beginning. I wasn’t interested in war comics although I had picked up issue #1. But I borrowed issue #8, “The Death Ray of Dr. Zemo,” which tied Fury strongly into the Marvel Universe, and then I started to collect the back issues. Of course, issue #13 where Captain America starred was wonderful, with one of the best covers of that era! Oh, I didn’t know of Captain America until he appeared in Strange Tales #114.

Spider-Man was unusual from the beginning, but really began to kick into high gear for me by issue #9, with Electro, and #10 with the Enforcers.

Daredevil had great potential, but most of his early villains including the Stilt-Man and the Matador, seemed silly. Then, when Wally Wood came in and did Daredevil #7, with the Sub-Mariner, I was hooked. I hated when he left, but really enjoyed Johnny Romita’s take on Ka-Zar.

I enjoyed the X-Men, but for me the series took off when the Stranger was introduced. Why? Magneto was about their only villain and he got banished in that issue. Soon we had the Sentinels. I wish to this day that Kirby had stayed on a little longer to establish that series. The stories he co-plotted were wonderful.

The Avengers got me with issue #3. The Hulk had resigned and now, for the first time in my comic book life, it seemed that a resignation would be permanent. Of course, Captain America in the next issue elevated it even further. 

Then in issue #16, the comic that was most like the Justice League changed its members and removed it big stars. This was different!

I enjoyed Captain America, Sub-Mariner and SHIELD series from the beginning, although at the time they were 'Latecomers."  I enjoyed Gene Colan on Subby, in spite of the Colletta inking. Nick Fury was great - then, as so many artists came and went, it declined until Steranko took over and made it one of the best runs ever. I enjoyed Cap, even when George Tuska took over and gave us the Sleepers. But Kirby's Cap was always the best in TOS.

As I was growing up, I felt that Marvel was growing up with me, but that DC was not. The stories became more complex, with more character development at Marvel, not so much at DC. And the Marvel artwork stressed individuality I thought, whereas DC had a corporate, house look. When Marvel expanded, I cut back on my DCs.

Once again my thanks goes out to the generous Kid Robson for his help!

Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby: Who Created What?

I appreciated so much the wise words of Steve Ditko regarding the five pages Jack Kirby drew of a rejected Spider-Man tale.  The only witnesses to these pages seem to be Mr. Ditko, Joe Simon and Stan Lee.  I have not commented on this, nor have my informed friends because we have never seen these pages.  Never having seen these pages has apparently not stopped many Kirby advocates who seem to know all about these pages. Perhaps that springs from a Jack Kirby interview with Howard Zimmerman in 1981 when he said, “I did a mess of things. The only book I didn’t work on was Spider-Man, which Steve Ditko did. But Spider-Man was my creation.”

These advocates seem to feel that coming up with a title to a character, and a rejected sketch of him, is a complete creation.  Let’s look that that.  Since the beginning of the 20^th century, the term, “spider-man” was slang for a cat burglar who climbed up walls and into the windows of homes. As far back as 1934, Ed Wheelen’s comic strip entitled “Minute Movies” had a “spider-man.” character.” Captain Marvel fought one in “Whiz Comics” #87 (1947); “Startling Comics” had one in 1945; and “Beyond Comics” in 1954. There were many more, in fact, Marvel had a few of them in the 1950s, “Uncanny Tales” #26 and “Journey into Mystery” #64.  “Anansi, The Spider-Man” was a popular Caribbean Folk Tale of the 1950s.

Stephen King once said, “Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.” I believe Stan Lee when he said he got an idea one morning to do a super-hero named “Spider-Man,” I just don’t think the name came completely out of the blue.  The Jack Kirby drew five pages that were rejected. Much to my chagrin, and with some fatigue, at this point I must remind people that I am a huge Kirby fan. However, many Kirby advocates feel that you are either all in or all out; there is no middle ground for your admiration of him.  Kirby did so much, just not for Spider-Man. Perhaps his biggest contribution here was showing Lee and Ditko what not to do. Jack Kirby drew five pages that were rejected. It would be like giving Derek Jeter an assist after he struck out and Arod hit a homer.

There are aspects to a comic’s popularity, both artistic and commercial, that are just not analyzed enough by those outside the field. We are not just discussing the look of a character but the reasons for its success. To imply that just coming up with a name, or even a costume, made a series so successful is ridiculous. Ditko just didn’t create a new, unique looking Spider-Man; he created all the important elements that lead to its success. 

Let us look at what Steve Ditko, with Stan Lee, gave us:

The Character of Spider-Man: Steve Ditko gave us a great costume, of course, but he also gave us the unique look and movement and poses of the character. And the Spider-Signal!

The Characters of Spider-Man: Where else in comic book history, do you get so many interesting and well defined characters in 25 issues? 

A hero’s secret identity is always the first supporting character. This is because he is always someone who is different from the hero. Clark Kent was different from Superman and Bruce Wayne was different from Batman.  Peter Parker was shy and quiet; he was a “wallflower” and a “bookworm.” Spider-Man was none of those things.  Lee and Ditko developed Aunt May, J.J.J., Betty, Ned, Flash, Liz, Frederick Foswell, Mrs. Watson, and Almost Mary Jane. Then toss in Curt Connors and Professor Smythe. Where else do you get that in two dozen issues of any comic? And each one could be and often was a centerpiece of any story.  Dr. Strange had the Ancient one, and Peter had the older Aunt May. Both elders wanted their younger charges to confide and take advice from them.  What a contrast, Dr. Strange did and Peter didn’t.

Mood and Environment. Mr. Ditko set the mood of these stories from the very beginning.  Although the stories took place in New York, this was NOT the same New York that the Fantastic Four lived in. Ditko’s was often dark and moody; it often was raining or looked like it just had been. Kirby’s city was bright and shining, Ditko’s was often dark and mysterious, like a film noir movie.

Of course the Villains: Where else do you get Doc Ock, The Vulture, the Molten Man, The Green Goblin, Mysterio, The Molten Man, The Enforcers, The Big Man, The Sandman, The Spidey-Slayer (robot) and the Lizard in 25 issues? Even Mysterio, not one of the most powerful villains, is drawn so spectacularly that he fits in perfectly. The concepts and personalities of these villains were priceless and their illustrations were timeless.

Last but not least, the actual stories: Using the elements mentioned above, Lee and Ditko wove together the various elements and gave us a tapestry of stories that were compelling, unique and addictive.  And issues #26 and #27, “The Man in the Crime Master’s Mask!” were even startling.

So just coming up with a character is not enough. Let me give an example:  In his comics, Kirby externalized the quest for knowledge, Ditko internalize it. On a journey to the Infinite Kirby took us to the outer reaches of the universe. On a journey to find Eternity Ditko took us into the minds of the Ancient One and Dr. Strange.  With the Incredible Hulk Lee and Kirby created a creature that turned from man to “monster” by peripheral events: A bomb blast, the sun setting and finally a gamma ray machine. It failed after six issues. It was Steve Ditko who internalized the situation and gave Banner an anger management problem. Now Banner, himself, was the cause of the change. This is what made the Hulk and iconic character. While Kirby look outward to cause the change, Ditko looked inside the person and made him a successful and unforgettable character. This unique insight has made all the difference, for all of Ditko’s characters. It’s not just the costume.

.

Certainly Lee and Kirby created Sgt. Fury, S.H.I.E.L.D., Hydra and Baron Strucker. In Strange Tales #135, Lee and Kirby placed Nick Fury, a blue collar fish out of water, into his leadership at S.H.I.E.L.D. Yet it was Jim Steranko who mixed up these ingredients and gave us the sophisticated, man of the world, Nick Fury that is still around even today. Steranko also elevated Hydra, formally a “villainous group” used just to introduce S.H.I.E.L.D, and gave it a Nazi past and a great future by making it so technically advanced. It was Steranko’s Hydra that we saw in so many Marvel Comics and the Captain America movie.

Baseball 2013

Baseball:

"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops ... and summer is gone."

Bart Giamatti

Stan Lee: WNYC Radio Interview, October 15, 1970

             Stan Lee: WNYC Radio Interview, October 15, 1970

Lawrence Van Gelder: There was a time about fifteen or twenty years ago when I guess most of the people our age stopped reading comic books, they thought they were too old for them, they thought t1-ley had grown uninteresting. But something new is going on today, and you're the man who I think is most responsible for it.

Can you tell us what is new and what is surprising in comic books today?

Stan Lee: Well of course none of it is surprising to me since I'm right in the middle of it. I guess the thing you're referring to as "newness" is the so-called relevancy that seems to be in the comic book magazines today. Jr stead of just a superhero trying to fight a villain who wants to blow up the world, or little green-skinned monsters from Mars, we try to set our

stories in  in the real world. A character like Spider-Man will be involved in a campus protest and things of that sort.

Lawrence Van Gelder: Do you find that this has an impact among young people, that you get a response?

Stan Lee: Well, I would guess we get a response amongst people of every age. Actually we don't knock ourselves out for the so-called "relevancy" in the sense of getting political issues and so forth and dragging them in. We've been trying to do this for the past, I guess, ten years since Marvel Comics started its so-called "New Wave of Comics." We tried to get relevancy before there were these big burning questions that are playing out now, in the sense that instead of superheroes that are obviously cardboard figures, why not treat our superheroes as real people living in a real world. I think that the theme that we've had is that these are like "fairy tales" for grown-ups, but they were to be completely realistic except for the one element of a super power which the superhero possessed, that we would ask our reader to swallow somehow. You had to believe that somebody could climb a sheer wall or that his body could burst into flame or that he was a green-skinned monster. But excepting those sort of ridiculous points which just made for colorful stories, we tried to do everything else as realistically as possible. For example, if a hero had a superhero power, we didn't, ergo, just assume that he'd be lucky in love and have all the money in the world and everything would come his way. We tried to show that nothing really brings total success, and just because you have big muscles, this doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have big triumphs. And we wouldn't have a character in a silly costume walk down the street and have people not notice it, as they had been doing in comics for years before. We'd likely as not have another character in the story say, "Who's that nut in the skin-tight underwear prancing down the street?" and so forth. We felt that we were being relevant even then; we were trying to get people to act the way real people would act given a set of circumstances.

Stan Lee: well, in trying for realism of course, if something is going on today and something we're all concerned with, it's really almost , it's  impossible to keep it out of a story. Now for example, pollution. We've had ecology stories in Sub-Mariner. One of our writers, Roy Thomas, has been doing many stories of that sort with great bearing on problems that concern people today. We've had ecology stories, I guess. . . . In fact we're big in ecology stories today, in Iron Man comics, Daredevil. . . . The one in Sub-Mariner dealt with the so-called surface race, which is polluting the seas, and Sub-Mariner, who as everyone knows is the king of Atlantis, he took a dim view about all this. We've had, as I've mentioned, stories about campus riots. We've had Captain America involved in student dissents. We've tried to do more than just involve the characters in these contemporary problems. We try to also show how our characters themselves react to the problems. And well, one thing that I try and do in my own limited way is to show that nothing is really all black and white. Captain America can't—although he's considered an establishment figure really—he's beginning to have second thoughts about the whole thing. He realizes he can't really side with the establishment 100 percent. He realizes that there are a lot of things that are wrong, and it seems that many of these things that are wrong, well, it seems to be no real simple, legal, effortless way to correct them short of extreme measures. By the same token he's always fought for law and order. He's afraid that too much violence will breed too much violence and where do you stop it. And, well, obviously this is really my own philosophy too. I have the toughest problem in the world in taking a definite stand on almost anything, and I have ambivalent feelings about virtually everything, and this is either going to make our stories extremely dull or extremely realistic. I don't know.

Lindsey Van Gelder: Well are these issues calculated because these are what kids care about or are these issues that your artists and writers and you yourself spend time off the job worrying about?

Stan Lee: Oh, I think you have to say that it's what we care about. I mean, after all, we writers and artists and editors are really, well, we were kids not too long ago, a little longer for some like myself. But we live in the same world as our readers, and certainly what our readers are concerned with, we are concerned with. And I think this is another reason that our books are somewhat successful over the past few years. We've never tried to anticipate our audience's desires. We never thought of ourselves as separate and distinct from our audience. We are our audience. And we've always felt that if we can do stories that interest us, stories about themes that interest us, well, they have to interest the public because we're part of the public. So far it's worked out.

Lawrence Van Gelder: In dealing with some of these problems, you take on problems that some people don't think are problems. I mean, they think that always the police are right, that always the establishment is right, always that the government is right. So in a way you are taking a political stance certainly in the eyes of some people who may disagree with you. Does this lead to a lot of critical comment from readers? Do you get mail from certain parts of the country from people saying, "Now look, this is wrong and how can you do it? You poison people's minds."

Stan Lee: We get such a minuscule amount of that type of mail. I'd think we might say that we almost get none. We either have the most broadly-minded, clear-thinking audience in the world, or else the nation isn't in as bad a shape as everybody thinks. Well, that may sound like a very self-serving statement, in other words, "if you like our stories, then the country's in good shape," I didn't mean it to sound that way. But what I mean, we get many letters from people who disagree with some of the points that we have in the books and take issue with us, but they are very rational well-reasoned letters. And as much as I can tell, they seem to be the letters of fairly reasonable people who have an opposing point of view. Well, my god, we have people in our office who have opposing points of view. I was working on a piece, booklet, for Ken Koch, the poet whose new book just came out—plug—and he's on the staff of Columbia, and the two of us were working on a comic book which would hopefully inform the voters as to which congressmen to vote for who might help end the war in Vietnam a little sooner. And we asked one or two of the people in our studio, the bullpen as we call it, to illustrate the book, and a few of them were desperately anxious to do it, and a few of them said, "Oh golly no, I'm no big dove. I wouldn't want to do anything like that." So even in our bullpen we have divergent opinions, which is something of course if you think about it, everybody belongs to a family, and how often in a family is there ever complete concurrence on every issue? And when you try to think of making the whole world harmonious, or getting people who are so totally different and have different interests throughout a nation to agree on any issue, why it's just a staggering concept.

Lindsey Van Gelder: I want to ask you about the age groups of the people who read Marvel. I've noticed that the letters to the editor column read like a, well, sometimes like a SST session. But usually it seems to be older people arguing very

cogent political points. What kind of letters do you get from kids, eight, nine, who might not be steeped in this, or are they?

Stan Lee: Younger people arguing cogent points. No, actually luckily we still seem to have a lot of young readers. We receive as many letters from the younger readers. Usually we don't print as many so it seems like we have perhaps an overwhelming amount of older readers. I think it's pretty well balanced though. You see, we try to keep our letters page interesting and indicative of the feelings of our readers.

Lindsey Van Gelder: They're great.

Stan Lee: Thank you. But what happens is that most of our younger readers will write letters such as "Gosh! Wow! Your last issue was groovy!" or "Take Stan Lee out and shoot him! That last issue was terrible! We know he can do better!" And that's about the extent of it.

Lindsey Van Gelder: Do they pick up on politics though?

Stan Lee: Not as much as the older readers, no. But they'll say things like "Sub-Mariner's trunks should always be purple, but in one panel they were green." Well, you can only print so many of those kinds of letters. It doesn't make for a real philosophical situation. So for that reason we do print the more interesting letters, which are nine times out of ten from older readers. But to answer your question a little more specifically, I guess I've strayed all around the point. We do get, an unexpected—unexpected, a few years ago—amount of letters from our readers which deal with politics. In fact, I just wrote a Soapbox column for a future bullpen in which I mention a fantastic thing, in Captain. . . . Oh, I might preface this by saying selfishly I use the letters to help me edit the magazine. It shows me what the readers want and don't want. And for the most part I try and follow their dictates because they're the ones that buy the books. Well, I've been very frustrated with our Captain America magazine. I find it's as if I've been left alone on an ice floe somewhere and I got to shift for myself. I don't know what the readers want

because every letter we've gotten for the past three months for Captain America has merely dealt with political issues. Nobody's said a word about the stories or the artwork themselves. Now I don't know if people are just reading the magazine just to pick out whatever philosophy or political connotations there might be. I don't know if anyone cares if we have super villains or if there's any action or anything. I put a little notice in the Soapbox asking a few readers to just kinda drop us a line and let us know if they are still reading the book.

Lindsey Van Gelder: How did you get the idea for the women's liberation issue of the Avengers?

Stan Lee: Oh, I didn't. That was probably Roy Thomas's idea. He wrote the thing. But I would imagine it's a question that almost answers itself. Women's lib is so big now, how can you not have a story or two about it?

Lindsey Van Gelder: Do you think you might let the Black Widow or Invisible Girl get her own book?

Stan Lee: Well, that won't have as much to do with women's lib as it does with if the book will sell or not. Actually we put the Black Widow in her own strip in one of our books.

Lindsey Van Gelder: She's with the Inhumans.

Stan Lee: That's right. It's either an "Amazing" or "Astonishing." I always get those two mixed up. We're just waiting for some sales figures. I think it will do well. If it does sensationally well, we'll take the two strips that are appearing in the one book and give them each their own book of course.

Lawrence Van Gelder: There was a time, and I'd like to go back a little to the fifties, when every time you picked up a newspaper or listened to a speech, some psychologist or some congressman was taking on comic books. That they were too violent, too gory. What's happened since then? It hurt the industry at that time, and I think it left a lot of people who are parents themselves with the idea that they didn't want their kids exposed to it. What governs you now?

Stan Lee: I'm sorry that every question seems to cause a speech on my part. I'll try to answer simply. We are living in such a fast-changing world that things that were bad, or . . . well, even women's clothes, if you could ever see a girl wearing her skirt as high as they've been wearing them in the mini-skirt age of a year ago, ten years ago it would have been impossible to even conceive of in the street. Now we accept it. I remember the Beatles' haircut when they first came out and everybody saw the Beatles' hair, you know. "Wow, how can they go out in public that way?" I just saw some old pictures of them recently, and they seemed so conservative. You sort of wondered what all the fuss was about.

Well, the reason I mention that in the age of Dr. Wertham and all the ... I shouldn't really say "all"—he was the leading opponent of comics and the most vocal one. At the time when he was having his big harangue against comics, people were very concerned about violence and sex and about,

well, I guess anything Dr. Wertham wanted to mention. And he would point out a panel in a book somewhere where a person was being killed, and he would make it sound so terrible, and the fact that he was a psychiatrist, this impressed parents and they began to think, "Golly, what's going on in these comics?"

Today—and this is why I mention it's a quickly changing world—today, and it's certainly not an original thought on my part, it's been said so many times, there's so much real violence in the world that we live in, you just have to pick up a newspaper. I don't think there's anything we could do in a comic book that would even approximate the terrible things that are going on in the world about us. Not that we attempt to. But I think it's been put in its proper perspective now. Comic books are just an entertainment medium. They are certainly written far better, illustrated more beautifully than they were, they are probably written better than your average TV show or grade B movie. Unfortunately most adults aren't aware of this because they don't think to pick up one and read it. They tell an exciting story with more imagery, more imagination, more fantasy and wonder than you can get anywhere else, except in an occasionally good new science-fiction story, and even that won't be quite as imaginative. That will just cover one point usually, whereas a comic book just seems to explore the whole realm of fantasy and wonder, and it's all for fifteen cents, and it's all in pictures. And I think a person would have to be paranoid to start criticizing comics today. I think they are virtually a public service, and they should be subsidized by the government! (everyone laughs)

Lawrence Van Gelder: Looking at the covers of them I think parents will notice that there's a little seal on them "Approved by the Comics Code," "Approved by the Comics Code Authority," and that is something that came in after the massive attacks on comic books in the fifties. Could you tell people a little bit about this code? I think it might set some parents' minds at rest.

Stan Lee: Well, it's headed by Leonard Darvin, a most capable attorney and most conscientious code administrator. And Len Darvin and his staff of experts or censors or critics or observers, I really don't know what to call them, his staff. They read everything that goes into the comics, and they put their seal of approval on every book before it goes to the engraver. Now this is not just a cover-up. It's not just some window dressing to impress people. Oh, we spend a lot of time arguing with the Code: "Why can't we have a story like this or a theme like this or a picture like this?" And he says "Well, you got to remember it may be okay for older readers, and I know you have many of them, but we still have a lot of younger readers, and we have to think of them." And he very often sets us back on possibly the right path of worrying about the really young readers. . .. So I think this mentioning of the Code, which I don't always agree with, as far as any parent being concerned with a young child reading these magazines; I think these magazines are policed as carefully and possibly more carefully than motion pictures or really anything else a child will read. I might add that because I am a big fan of children's books. I know many of the authors and illustrators, and I look at them occasionally. There is far more liberalism as far as giving an author and artist free reign to do things that might not have been able to have been done a few years ago for the children's market. There's more liberalism in the children's books then there are in comic books, and the average parent is not going to worry about children's books.

You know an interesting thing about my continuing argument with the Code. I've been wanting for the longest time to have stories that involve the theme of drug addiction, just as we have ecology and civil rights and demonstrations and so forth. And this is one thing the Code is very staunchly against. They think more harm can be done than good if we even mention drug addiction. My point, of course, is that it's a fact of life. It's like not mentioning the Sun, if for some reason you don't approve of the Sun. At any rate, just yesterday I received in the mail—and I can't wait until they contact the Code—I received something from the government, oh I forget which office, the office of health, education, and welfare or so, and from somebody apparently highly placed with all sorts of brochures, a lovely letter that I'm going to keep. "Dear Mr. Lee, we understand that Marvel Comics is very influential among young people and so forth. We'd consider it a very fine thing if you would mention drug addiction and do what you can, and here's. . . ." They enclosed a number of pamphlets to give me background. And I felt, by god, I cannot wait to call this guy and say "Don't send me the letter, call the Code and tell them this." Which is what I'm going to do as soon as I get off the mike here.

Lindsey Van Gelder: Stan Lee, what about sex and comics? I know that your competitors have story lines having Superman and Batman pretty well running away from women, and you don't. You've had some pretty racy implied sex which may have been in my imagination, but it's the last place you can read stories and use your imagination. I wonder how that can be handled within the framework of the Code.

Stan Lee: You scared me for a minute when you said sex and comics and your competitors had Superman and Batman. . . . You finished the sentence pretty quickly. . . . Well, actually as far as we're concerned we try to be reasonable and rational. Where you wouldn't see a girl wear her skirt above the knee years ago, but now you do, there might be situations. . . . For example, I can't see anything wrong if there's a married couple and you want to show them waking up in the morning in a double bed. But we don't concentrate on those things. I don't even know how the Code would feel about it. I don't even recall if we've done that yet. But we certainly have our characters fall in love, have romantic problems. Again, we try to make everything as realistic as possible without offending anyone. Without offending what we'd consider to be any reasonable person. Now, of course, you could have a radio show on "what is a reasonable person?" But we really have so many older readers and younger readers whose parents look at the books also—we've had no letters of complaint. So, as far as sex, I think we're probably handling the thing perfectly fine, and I know the Code has not complained, and I don't think we're doing it in the way you just described like the cowboy who will only kiss his horse. We sort of give the idea that our characters are reasonably normal human beings who won't turn the other way if a pretty girl comes by. We're not selling sex in our stories. Let me put it that way. We don't attempt to play up the sex in anyway. But if a story should call for somebody who is attracted to somebody of the opposite sex or whatever, we try to put it in so that it makes sense.

Lawrence Van Gelder: There was a time, I know, and I think it still goes on, when you go out and do a lot of lecturing on campus. I gather you get ideas from students. I wonder what feelings you get when you talk to them generally about the magazines.

Stan Lee: The same thing seems to happen. We start out talking about the magazines. And they are tremendously interested in the magazines, which is why I do receive so many invitations to lecture at about every college in the free world I guess. But a strange thing occurs. After we've been talking about oh, five or ten minutes about the magazines. Suddenly one student will say "Well, what do you think about Vietnam?" or "What do you think about Angela Davis?" or whatever.

And we're off and running on things that are far more relevant possibly than on whether Spider-Man should marry his girlfriend. And this takes up almost the whole seminar. In fact these things go on for hours. They're totally fascinating. If I've learned anything from the kids on campus, the thing I've learned is that you got to make your comic magazines or your televisions shows or your movies or whatever relate to the real world because unless they do, you have meaningless cardboard characters, and that's not really what people are into today. They want stories that will tell them something about the world they are living in now. If you are clever enough to make those stories entertaining or exciting and to use continuing characters that they want to read more of, I guess that's the ideal solution. But I've never known anything like [the way things are now].... Why, years ago I used to lecture, and the whole lecture was just about the comics. But now it seems every age group, whether they are radicals or whether they are conservatives, they want to know what about today? What about what's happening now?

A Review of Peggy Carter and the Iron Man III DVD/Blu Ray

Just to fill you in…

Superhero comics were a product of the depression and their popularity had waned by the early 1950s. Only characters from the DC Universe - Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman - remained on the newsstands, with Batman on his last legs.

The original Captain America, published by Timely Comics (now Marvel), was cancelled in 1950. He was brought back for a handful of issues in 1954, but then went under again.

Spurred by the success of DC’s Justice League, Marvel re-entered the super-hero field in 1961 with the Fantastic Four. Then Marvel introduced most of the heroes we know today, including Iron man, The Hulk, Ant-Man, and Thor. In 1963 the new heroes were combined into a group called “The Avengers” and with issue #4 re-introduced Captain America. As he did with the Fantastic Four’s Human Torch, Stan Lee, writer and editor, erased the blackboard of previous continuity and treated Cap as a new, not established character. Marvel’s new Captain America had his past redone. Yes, he had been given the super solider serum, but unlike Timely’s original model, this Cap would not make it to 1950. 

While saving the world in 1944, the story goes, he was caught in an explosion over the ocean and frozen in a Capisicle for 20 years, then found and defrosted by the Avengers in 1963.

The complete story of these events are best told by Roy Thomas and John Buscema in Avengers #56, 1966.

Since only 20 years had gone by, Cap was able to reunite with old friends, including Nick Fury and his former girlfriend, Peggy Carter. Peggy, now two decades older, thought that Cap was long-dead. Soon Cap would meet her sister, Sharon Carter, a SHIELD agent, and a romance began. This begins in Tales of Suspense #75 in 1966, and Sharon would be known for years only as SHIELD Agent 13. (Remember when Barbara Feldon was known only as Agent 99?) Sharon’s resemblance to her sister is so great it causes Steve Rogers to reminisce about the woman he met and lost during WWII (Peggy). She was then a French resistance fighter who got amnesia, ending their brief romance.

Not always a regular in the comic, during the first few years Sharon is usually the very strong damsel in distress, sent out on various SHIELD missions (against Modok, Batroc, The Red Skull, etc.,) with Cap invariably turning up to rescue her.

It takes until 1973, in issue 161, for the relationship between Sharon and Peggy to be more fully explained.

50 years later:

There is a newer Marvel Universe and it is on our movie screens. To make Cap current, the story has him frozen for 70 years and waking up in the year 2011. Although aging in comics is a funny and inconsistent concept, Cap’s WWII buddies and girlfriend would be too old to be the supporting characters they once were. Samuel L. Jackson is the new Nick Fury. This Fury was not around in 1940 and Marvel cements him firmly in their current universe.

So whatever happened to Peggy Carter?” Marvel answers that in a new 15 minute film on the Iron Man III disc.

In the 15 minute short, director Luis Esposito fills us in. It's 1945, one year after Captain America has disappeared and WWII is over. Peggy Carter, played by Haley Atwell, is working for a top secret government spy agency, but only doing menial work and being treated very badly. When the “guys’ all go out for drinks, she is not invited. And good thing too! Alone in the dark office, she is handed an important mission designed for three or four people, but she goes it alone (and without permission).

After her success, Howard Stark (sitting next to Dum Dum Dugan, played by Neal McDonough) invites her to help run his new organization: SHIELD!

This is a fun, inexpensive, 15 minute short with no special effects. While there is nothing surprising in the plot here, the whole thing works because of Hayley Atwell. She is just terrific. In the Captain America movie her character was often a bit restrained by the storyline, but on her own she does a memorable and wonderful job. And it finds a proper place for a great Marvel character that could have been lost in time.

If Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD takes off, there is a rumor that this could be turned into a series.

I already reviewed the movie, (http://forbushman.blogspot.com/2013/05/iron-man-iii-review-and-look-back-at.html) so let discuss the other aspects of the DVD/Blu Ray. 

• The picture and sound are perfect; both get a 5 on a 1 to 5 rating. The 3D effects were okay, nothing special. This was obviously not made to be a 3D movie.
• The DVD extras show how the airplane sequence was done. To my surprise it was NOT mostly computer generated effects, but they actually had people jumping out of the airplane. This was done by the same person who did it in the opening of the movie Moonraker, 30 years ago!
• The gag real is short and barely okay, but you can see that the actors knew they were doing a gag reel.

A SPECIAL Thanx to Kid Robson!!!!!!