Start Spreading the News: Marvel Wants to be Part of It, New York, New York!!!

Start Spreading the News:

Marvel and New York

“Start spreading the news
I am leaving today
I want to be a part of it
New York, New York”

Stan Lee: Instead of having them live in a fictional place like Metropolis or Gotham City I’d plant them right down in New York City because I knew New York City. I would write about New York City and I figured why not let them live in a real place.

Let’s start with a fun quiz: Simply, at the beginning of the Marvel Age, from Fantastic Four #1 to the period before expansion (January 1968) which Marvel Age title characters had NOT lived in New York? (Title characters include those who had their own comic or their own series in the anthology comics, such as Iron Man in Tales of Suspense. This excludes the western and romance comics)

To have all the characters, good guys and bad guys, interact with each other in the Marvel Universe, Stan Lee placed them all in the same city. This was uncommon in the comic books of the Silver Age. In DC comics, for example, every hero lived in his own city with his own villains. While there was an occasional guest star in a DC comic, in the early 1960s joint appearances could be found only in World’s Finest and Justice League of America.  In Marvel’s new universe, their heroes guest-starred in each other’s comics all the time both in cameos and in full length stories.  It was not only one Universe and one city, it was a real city: New York, where Stan Lee was born and bred. This, too, was unique for its time.

It didn't exactly start out that way. For their first issue (August 1961, I am using the actual street date of the comic, not the cover date), the Fantastic Four lived in Central City. In issue #4 (February, 1962), however, they were in New York. They hadn’t moved and nothing else changed but the name. From this point on, ALL the new super-hero comics written by Stan Lee had their characters living in New York. As super-heroes took over the lead spots in the four anthology titles—Journey Into Mystery, Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense— their stories were mostly written by Robert Bernstein, Ernie Hart, and Larry Lieber. Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman even wrote two Human Torch stories. But just where these new Marvel super-heroes lived and fought crime was rarely disclosed.

When the Human Torch was spun off from the Fantastic Four, beginning with Strange Tales #101 (July 1962),  his solo adventures were written mainly by the aforementioned trio. Instead of living with the F.F in N.Y.C.  Johnny Storm lives with his sister Sue, in the town of Glenville in the borough of Queens, which is part of Long Island. Further disconnecting him from the original series, the Torch has a secret identity in Glenville although that disappears in issue #106 when the Acrobat and Sue tell Johnny everyone knows he is the Torch.  When Lee takes over the writing (issue #114, August 1963), Johnny is shown more at the Baxter building than in his own home. Sue moves out in issue #122 (April, 1964) and the town of Glenville is never mentioned after issue #127(September 1964).

An interesting note:  Central City was used again in 1978. Jack Kirby used it as the home of Machine Man!

Queens was a busy place for super-heroes in the early 1960s. The first story in Amazing Spider-Man #1 (December, 1962), written by Lee, has Peter Parker present at the launch of a manned space rocket (carrying Astronaut John Jameson) into outer space. In 1962, this only could happen at Cape Canaveral, Florida, implying  that Peter Parker lived there. However, in the second story of the same issue, Spider-Man visits the Fantastic Four, who, since the previous February, had been living in New York.  At the beginning of Spidey’s second issue, February 1963, Stan establishes the setting as New York City. Parker is a student in a school in Manhattan called Midtown High.In New York, Midtown would only refer to mid-Manhattan.  This implies that he lives in Manhattan. Forest Hills, located in Queens, is not mentioned until issue #7 (September 1963). (A map of New York is included in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #5 (1968).

Queens is where Iron Man also resided. In his initial stories, written by Bernstein and Lieber, Iron Man—that is Tony Stark—was often in Washington at the Pentagon but his home residence and his Industrial Plant were in “secret” locations within an unnamed metropolis. In Tales of Suspense #49 (October 1963), the Angel, who lived in Westchester, flies over LaGuardia Airport in Queens and encounters Iron Man. In issue #55 (April 1964), Stan Lee, now scripting, places the factory in Queens. In issue #65 (February 1965) he becomes more specific and places it in Flushing, Queens.

This corresponds with the Avengers’ location, a series Lee was also writing.  The team‘ met to be in Tony Stark’s home library on Long Island. In the Avenger's second issue, September 1963, Giant-Man mentions that it is just across “The Grand Central Parkway” which travels through central Queens. In fact, since Stark’s factory is in Flushing, it is at the Jewel Avenue Exit.  Turn north and you go into Flushing, turn right and you wind up in Forest Hills and you can visit Peter Parker! In Avengers #3 (November, 1963), the team is shown to be close to the Fantastic Four’s Baxter Building.

This is the real Grand Central Parkway that Giant-Man will jump over.

The early Thor stories in Journey Into Mystery, written by Lieber or Bernstein, have Dr. Don Blake living in a nameless, but familiar city. That is, in issue #85, August, 1962, we see a subway and the Statue of Liberty and in issue #88, November, 1962 there is a Center Park (not a Central Park). Sandu attacks the U.N. in issue #91, but Don Blake is in “another city.” In issue #93, The Radioactive Man arrives “in (Times Square) the heart of Manhattan, but there is no indication that Don Blake lives there.

Lee takes over the scripting of the book with issue #97 (August 1963). In issue #101 (December 1963), Thor meets with the Avengers, who are established in N.Y., in his own office. In issue #107 (June 1964), the local airport which had been nameless becomes JFK which is in New York.

   The early Ant-Man/Giant Man stories in Tales to Astonish were written mostly by Lieber or Hart and they were a bit inconsistent. In his second adventure as Ant-Man, Pym operates in a “vast metropolis” which can only be New York because the defeated Egghead ends up in “a dingy Bowery flophouse" (Tales to Astonish #38, September 1962). In issue #39, insects led by Scarlet Beetle steal dynamite from the 9th Regiment Armory (which is on West 14th Street in Manhattan). Seven issues after his premiere, Henry Pym is said to live in Center City (Tales to Astonish #42 and 43). In issue #44 (March 1963) an “alien thing” advances on the George Washington Bridge and Manhattan is being evacuated! Ernie Hart implies that Pym lives in or near New York City in  issue #47. When Stan Lee takes over the writing with issue #49, August 1963, Pym is shown is his home in the New Jersey Palisades overlooking the Hudson River and New York City. This is near to the Avengers, which premiered the previous month.

In their first appearance in July 1963, Lee places the X-Men in Westchester County, a suburb just north of the City. Also, in his first appearance in February 1964, Daredevil is placed in New York’s Lower East side. 

Dr. Strange, one of the few anthology series Lee scripted from its beginning, had to wait for his third appearance to be placed into Greenwich Village, in Strange Tales #114 (August, 1963). Much later, in Strange Tales #147 (August, 1966), Strange would even get an address: 177A Bleecker Street. So all the books Stan wrote had his characters in the Big Apple, and when Stan Lee took over the writing of the heroes in the anthology books they all got moved to New York.

Nick Fury (who was born in New York, by the way) and S.H.I.E.L.D. would emanate out of New York when they weren’t flying above it on their Helicarrier. 

The Sub-Mariner was a New Yorker, too. He spent years in the Bowery, with amnesia. Johnny Storm finds him in Fantastic Four #4  Maybe that’s why he always attacked New York.  

The Hulk, in between his failed series of six issues and his run in Tales to Astonish, apparently lived at the Avengers mansion in New York (Avengers#1-2). He had to move out because Captain America moved in during Avengers #4 (January 1964).  














The Inhumans had their own series in Thor #146-152, and even then, Medusa and Crystal lived in the Baxter Building. In fact, the only series Marvel had from 1961 until their expansion in 1968, that didn’t have a New York-based character was “Tales of the Watcher,” in Tales of Suspense #49-58! (1964).

Not as distinct as artists, writers nonetheless have styles. Stan Lee gave a specific location within a few issues of every series he wrote and Larry Lieber didn’t.  Lee used alliteration for his characters’ names: Matt Murdock, Peter Parker, Sue Storm whereas Lieber didn’t: Tony Stark, Henry Pym and Don Blake.  Stan’s dialogue was introspective and stressed characterization, and Lieber’s dialogue usually just advanced the plot. So with the Dr. Droom series, in Amazing Adventures 1-6, which was published without credits, we can surmise that Lee, was editor, came up with the plots, but Lieber probably wrote the stories. This is because the stories took place in an unknown part of the “mid-west” and the dialogue was never reflective and only advances the story.

Even in the 1940’s, when DC used fictional cities such as Gotham and Metropolis, Martin Goodman often placed the original Human Torch in New York.

Of course westerns did not ignore the big apple!

And if I can make it there
I'm gonna make it anywhere
It's up to you
New York, New York, New York

A HUGE shout out goes to Carl Thiel who worked super hard on this blog too!  And to Nick Caputo who supplied the Kid Colt scans and Decaffeinated Coca Cola.

Time magazine March 14, 1988: Superman at 50

In 1988 it was Superman’s 50^th Anniversary.

Time magazine, March 14, 1988, ran an interesting piece celebrating one of its own. That is, Time Warner owns Superman, DC Comics and Time magazine.

Our world has changed; our viewpoints have changed, but Superman, although a very different one, is still with us. But every generation remakes Superman in their own image, he is a strong reflection of what we think of ourselves and our country. Superman, is always as powerful as we feel the United States is.

The article, written by Otto Friedrich and reported by Beth Austin and Janice C. Simpson is interesting to read, often because we get to see how the character (and Lois Lane) has changed.  And we get to see a bit of how we have changed.

Up, Up and Awaaay!!!

America’s favorite hero turns 50, ever changing but indestructible. 

“Behold, I teach you the superman. The superman is the meaning of the earth. “

    —Friedrich Nietzsche

"I'm lying in bed counting sheep when all of a sudden it hits me. I conceive a char­acter like Samson, Hercules and all the strong men I heard tell of rolled into one. Only more so."

        —Jerome Siegel

Where do enduring legends come from? Where do mythi­cal heroes come from? Where do classic works of popular art come from?

"As a high school student," Jerry Sie­gel once recalled, "I thought that someday I might become a reporter, and I had crushes on several attractive girls who ei­ther didn't know I existed or didn't care I existed . . . It occurred to me: What if I . . . had something special going for me, like jumping over buildings or throwing cars around or something like that?"

Great ideas, even when they seem to come all at once, actually emerge from a tangled undergrowth. Siegel, a scraw­ny, bespectacled teenager who was then drifting through Cleveland's Glenville High School, worked as a delivery boy for $4 a week, gave part of the money to help support his impoverished family and invested much of the rest in the ad­ventures of Tarzan, Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. Imitating and burlesqu­ing such heroes, he began concocting science-fiction tales that he mimeo­graphed and sold to other students. One of Siegel's lesser creations was a story called The Reign of the Superman, which featured an evil scientist with a bald head. Superman as villain? The thought is enough to make posterity shudder. But this was not the stuff of greatness. It was only during a sleepless summer night in 1934, after Siegel had graduated, that the grand inspiration came: Superman as hero.

It was a heroic scenario: the explo­sion of the doomed planet Krypton, the miraculous escape of the infant son of a Kryptonian scientist, the discovery of the baby's spaceship by an elderly cou­ple near the Midwestern town of Small-vile. And the gradual revelations of the child's superhuman strength, the foster parents' exhortation that he "must use it to assist humanity," the youth's adop­tion of a dual identity—the mild-man­nered, blue-suited newspaper reporter, Clark Kent, and the red-caped, blue-haired Superman, the man of steel. And Lois Lane, the toothsome fellow report­er who attached herself to the Super­man-Kent duo, loving the one and snubbing the other.

Siegel went running to the house of his classmate and neighbor, Joe Shuster, the equally penniless son of a tailor from Toronto, and the two of them worked all day—Siegel writing and Shu­ster drawing—until they had finished no fewer than twelve newspaper strips. Then they set forth to sell their new hero to the waiting world, which proved utterly indifferent. "A rather immature piece of work," said United Feature. "Crude and hurried," said Esquire Fea­tures. Even at Detective Comics, which finally bought the feature after much ar­gument and delay to help launch Action Comics four years later, Publisher Harry Donenfeld looked at the first cover, of

 Superman lifting a car over his head (a treasure that now can fetch $35,000 from collectors), and delivered his ver­dict: "Ridiculous."

Woke up this morning, what do I see?

Robbery, violence, insanity . . .

Superman, Superman . . .

I want to fly like Superman.

—The Kinks

Today, of course, Superman is an in­stitution. After a half-century of crime-busting adventures in Action Comics and Superman Comics (as well as in some 250 newspapers), 13 years of radio shows, three novels, 17 animated cartoons, two movie serials of 15 installments each, a TV series of 104 episodes, a second ani­mated-cartoon series of 69 parts, a Broad­way musical and five feature films (not to mention a hoorah of shows featuring Su-perboy, Supergirl and even Krypto, the Superdog; not to mention, for that matter, a plunder of spin-offs and by-products: Superman T shirts, Superman rings, Su­perman bed sheets), the man of steel is now, well, unique.

"He is our myth, the American myth," says Screenwriter David New­man, who collaborated on the Broadway musical and three of the films. "When we first started writing Superman I, some friends said, 'What are you doing that for?' And I said, 'If I were an English screenwriter and I were writing about King Arthur, you wouldn't be asking that.' " John Byrne, who actually is an English-born writer but now turns out the monthly scripts and drawings for the Su­perman comic books, calls his hero the "ultimate American success story—a for­eigner who comes to America, and is more successful here than he would ever be anywhere else." But though Superman lives in America (mainly), he is a hero all over the world. One admirer, Science-Fic­tion Writer Harlan Ellison, has estimated that there are only five fictional creations known in practically every part of the earth: Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, Mickey Mouse, Robin Hood and Superman.

So, bravo! Bravissimo! For last week the man of steel celebrated the grand mile­stone of his 50th birthday. Technically, it was not exactly the occasion of his birth, for April 1938 was when he made his debut on the cover of the first issue (dated June) of Action Comics. If he was then about 25, as he looked, he would actually now be 75, his superbody weak and weary, his X-ray vision dimmed. But since he still looks about 25, he can be said to be timeless, im­mortal. And although nobody is sure ex­actly how old he is, there is a tradition that his birthday falls on Feb. 29 (the leap-year day appropriate to Lois Lane's repeated ef­forts to get him to marry her).

CBS broadcast a prime-time special on the great day, and DC Comics rented part of Manhattan's Puck Building to throw a big party; several thousand fans came to watch favorite film clips, buy balloons and nibble on birthday cake. The obser­vances will continue throughout the year, starting with the anniversary of Action Comics next month. The Smithsonian's exhibition of Supermanobilia will run un­til June in Washington. In Metropolis, Ill., they are refurbishing for summer visitors the large statue that proclaims the dubi­ous proposition that this is "Superman's hometown." And in Cleveland, which really is Superman's hometown, a booster club that calls itself the Neverending Bat­tle is planning an international Superman exhibition and a ticker-tape parade down Euclid Avenue in June.

One of the happiest additions to the birthday celebrations is the publication of a charming book titled Superman at Fifty: The Persistence of a Legend, edited by Dennis Dooley and Gary Engle (Octavia Press; $16.95), which provides nostalgics with a cotton-candy dose of Superman lore. Like the proposition that Super­man's sun sign is Leo. Or that he voted for Reagan in the past two elections. Or that one of his leaps over a skyscraper would require an acceleration force 20,000 times his weight and thus would cause hurri­canes that would flatten any bystanders. The book also tackles trickier questions, like whether Superman is still a virgin. Also, is Superman Jewish? His creators are, and Dr. Joseph Goebbels is reputed to have denounced the man of steel as a non-Aryan, but one of the book's contributors boldly answers, "To be honest, no. The man has all the ethnicity of Formica." And is there anything that Superman cannot do? Yes, since his superskin is in­vulnerable, he cannot get a vaccination or a tattoo. "And," adds another essayist, "since he can't get a blood test, he can't get a marriage license."

Superman at Fifty finally settles the identity of the girl who served as the inspi­ration for Lois Lane. It was not Siegel's schoolmate Lois Long, who sang in the choir, or Lois Donaldson, an editor of the Glenville H.S. Torch. It was Lois Amster, the class beauty, who hardly glanced at ei­ther Siegel or Shuster. "She's a grand­mother now in Cleveland," according to Shuster, "but I don't think she has any idea that she was the inspiration."

Oh, yes, she does. And when asked if she would have laughed at Siegel and Shu­ster if either of them had asked her for a date, she smiles and says, "Probably." Married for 46 years to retired Insurance Agent Robert Rothschild, she reveals that she never had any interest in being a newspaper reporter. "You know what I wanted to be? A detective."

The only Superman enthusiasts not taking part in the current festivities are Siegel and Shuster, both 73, living three blocks from each other in retirement in Los Angeles, Siegel suffering from a heart condition and Shuster legally blind. When DC Comics bought their creation 50 years ago, it acquired all rights, initially paying them only $10 a page for their work in writing and drawing. When the first issue sold out, and sales of subsequent issues soon climbed to 250,000 copies each, the two men sued for their rights. DC Comics dropped them, and the courts ruled against them.

Their litigation dragged on until the late '70s, when Warner Communica­tions, which by then owned DC and wanted to make a movie version, paid off the creators with $20,000 a year for life. (Superman's estimated overall val­ue: more than $1 billion.) Siegel and Shuster agreed to keep the peace, but they are giving no interviews and join­ing no celebrations. "They are just in such pain over this situation," says Thomas Andrae, a Berkeley sociologist who knows them, "particularly as it gets closer to the anniversary."

Clark Kent personifies fairly typically the average reader who is harassed by com­plexes and despised by his fellow men . . . any accountant in any American city se­cretly feeds the hope that one day there can spring forth a superman who is capable of redeeming years of mediocre existence.

—Semiotician and Novelist (The Name of the Rose) Umberto Eco

Although Superman's adventures were a fairly crude story, fairly crudely il­lustrated, their overnight success not only earned millions but also created shoals of imitators, such as Batman, Captain Mar­vel, Hawkman, Green Lantern and Won­der Woman. "Oddly enough," says Car­toonist Jules Feiffer, "the Depression enlivened the American dream that any­one could make it, and that's what Super­man did. I loved the fantasy of this guy who had all this strength. While Superman went around beating up crooks, in my dreams I was beating up authority figures."

But if Superman was a reassuring hero for troubled times, for the Depres­sion and the coming World War, why has he endured so long? Partly because trou­bled times have endured in other forms, and partly because he has always had qualities that go beyond the flying fists. He was orphaned, and thus forced to rely on himself, just like Little Orphan Annie or Huck Finn. He is a foreigner from out­er space in a land built by foreigners. And he is one of the good guys, fighting for "truth, justice and the American way," which seems to many people a very good thing to do. Superman's violence is never cruel, however; he punches villains but rarely does them any real harm. His greatest powers are exerted to deflect vio­lence, by stepping in front of bullets, say, or moving huge objects out of harm's way.

In some ways, Superman's relentless virtue goes even beyond virtue. In his extraterrestrial origins and the shining pu­rity of his altruism, some commentators have detected a divine aura. "Superman, I've always thought, is an angel," says An­drew Greeley, gadfly Roman Catholic priest and best-selling novelist. "Probably the angel stories found in all of the world's religions are traces of the work in our world of Superman and his relatives. Who is to say I'm wrong?" Proponents of the angel theory believe it is no accident that when Superman is in full flight, his flared collar and flowing cape resemble wings.

Such speculation goes even further. Experts have pondered the fact that Superman's original Krypto-Man name, Kal-El, resembles He­braic syllables meaning "all that God is." Greek and Norse mythology have been in­voked to show that Superman resembles a god who comes to earth and walks among men in mortal guise. Screenwriter New­man sees yet more exalted implications in the legend. "It begins with a father who lives up in heaven, who says, 'I will send my only son to save earth.' The son tales on the guise of a man but is not a man. The religious overtones are so clear."

In secular terms too, Superman repre­sents something quite special. "It's very hard for me to be silly about Superman," says Christopher Reeve, who plays the role in the movies, "because I've seen firsthand how he actually transforms people's lives. I have seen children dying of brain tumors who wanted as their last request to talk to me, and have gone to their graves with a peace brought on by knowing that their be­lief in this kind of character is intact. I've seen that Superman really matters. It's not Superman the tongue-in-cheek cartoon character they're connecting with; they're connecting with something very basic: the ability to overcome obstacles, the ability to persevere, the ability to understand diffi­culty and to turn your back on it."

"0 Superman, 0 Judge, 0 Mom and Dad. Hi. I'm not home right now, but if you want to leave a message, just start talking at the sound of the tone."

   —Laurie Anderson

Americans are inclined to think they know Superman and know him well and have known him forever. In fact, we hard­ly know Superman at all, for the details of his life have been changed again and again, according to either the whims of his owners or the demands of the market. His originally nameless father on Kryp­ton, for example, became Jor-L, then Jor-El (and eventually Marlon Brando). His employer in Metropolis, before it was the Daily Planet, was the Daily Star and then the Evening News. His Luciferian arch­enemy Luthor, the mad scientist who wants to conquer the world, once had red hair, then became bald, then reacquired red hair; in the movies he was played as a buffoon, but now he has turned into a rea­sonably sane but incurably wicked con­glomerate tycoon. Superman is also vulnerable to Kryptonite, the stuff that Krypton was made of, except when he is sometimes not vulnerable to Kryptonite. There is no longer one Superman, in other words, but half a dozen or more. The com­ic-book hero is different from the movie hero or the TV hero, and all of these differ from what Jerry Siegel imagined one sleepless night in 1934.

Nothing illustrates this mutability better than the delicate matter of Super­man's sexuality. Superman at Fifty asserts that the essence of Superman is to remain perennially pure: "Virginity is a large part of what makes him so godlike . . . The superior being has to be sexless; further­more, it must be thought a taboo or a dese­cration even to look upon him/her as a sex object." Although Superman over the years has generally remained impervious to Lois Lane's wiles, he has succumbed occasionally to other entanglements. In the 1950s there was a handsome brunet named Lori, "mysterious as the sea," whom Clark rescued from her runaway wheelchair. She puzzled him by issuing orders to an octopus that had wrapped its tentacles around her, but he fell in love with her anyway and proposed. "Al though I love you," she replied, "I can never marry you." Because, as Superman soon learned, she was a mermaid (Lore­lei?), and the reason she rode in a wheel­chair was to hide her tail.

At one point during the age of subur­ban "togetherness," Superman's keepers actually married him off to Lois Lane, but they soon explained that the bride had only dreamed of her wedding. Since those keepers were generally desperate for new plot twists, they often amused themselves by bringing in rivals to Lois. Lana Lang, for example, was an old acquaintance of Kent's from Smallville who applied for a  job at the Planet. Then there was a Super-girl who appeared as a result of Cub Re­porter Jimmy Olsen's making a wish over a Latin American idol. No sooner was she dispatched back to pre-Columbian limbo than it turned out that Krypton had not exploded all at once and that Superman's cute cousin Kara had also rocketed to earth as another Supergirl, a.k.a. Linda Lee. (Why all the females in Superman have names beginning with L remains unexplained, and might make a promis­ing subject for a Ph.D. dissertation.)

In this month's 50th-anniversary is­sue of Action Comics, one episode opens with the man of steel indulging in a long and steamy kiss with Wonder Woman. After a good deal of fisticuffs and flying around, though, the tale ends with Super­man saying "I was fooling myself when I thought there might be a chance for ro­mance between the two of us, Wonder Woman . . . I admire you, Wonder Wom an. I respect you. But I really am just a boy from Kansas." From which it seems clear that the comic-book Superman, at least, remains as squarely virtuous as ever.

The movie Superman is a different matter. He has to contend with Margot Kidder as a liberated Lois Lane who can look on him with an earthy yen ("How big are you?" she asks in a tone that even Su­perman can almost understand). In Su­perman II she throws herself into the Ni­agara River just above the falls to tempt Christopher Reeve's Clark Kent into re­vealing his identity by rescuing her. Kent avoids the trap by helping her out with a tree branch. Only when they are drying off in front of a fireplace does his failure to be scorched by a flame inspire Lois to try again: "You are Superman!"

Before they go any further, a message from Superman's mother tells him he must give up all his superpowers before he can get involved with a mortal. This raises a philosophic question of Thomist subtle­ty: Can the figure subsequently seen na­ked under the sheets with Lois be consid­ered the real Superman? Or is he now just a newspaper reporter on a spree? To eradicate all such problems, the screen­writers magically imbue his kiss with the power to make Lois forget her discovery.

If I were asked to express in a single sentence what has happened mentally to many American children . . I would say that they were conquered by Superman. Dr. Fredric Wertham, in Seduction of the Innocent

Much of Superman's complex evolu­tion derived from his reincarnations in different media. On radio, for example, which could not show the red-caped hero in full flight, an imaginative scriptwriter dreamed up the deathless lines: "Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall build­ings in a single bound! Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Super­man!" Because radio shows had to be performed by real people, and because Actor Bud Collyer demanded a vacation, the writers invented the Kryptonite meteor­ite. For two weeks, all that was heard of Superman was muffled moaning from a closet, until Collyer returned.

Partly, too, Superman evolved in re­sponse to changes in American so­ciety, starting with the cataclysm of World War II. In one misguided early effort, his creators had him fly to Berchtesgaden and Moscow and haul both Hitler and Stalin before a League of Na­tions tribunal in Geneva. Believers in veri­similitude began wondering how Super­man avoided getting drafted. Simple. Clark Kent patriotically went to take his physical exam, but when he looked at the eye chart, his X-ray vision caused him to read figures from a chart in the next room. He was rated 4-F.

So Superman went back to catching Axis saboteurs. The Army sent his patri­otic adventures to G.I.s around the world, but when they returned home, they want­ed more pizazz. Superman's physical powers became more and more extravagant. Not only could he fly through space, but he could wrestle planets out of their orbits, and with his superbreath could extinguish a distant star.

More significant, it was time for Super­man to move on from radio and comics and enter a new medium, time for a mere mor­tal to impersonate the man of steel on the screen. Kirk Alyn, an agile dancer, began appearing in Saturday serials in 1948, let­ting his voice drop by an octave each time he reached for his necktie and declared, "This looks like a job for Superman!"

But Hollywood's technology was still so rudimentary that when Alyn lifted his arms and cried, "Up, up and away!" only a spliced-in animated cartoon could show Superman in flight. "When I was Super­man, I did it with my attitude," recalls Alyn, now 77. "In my mind, I'd visualized the guy I had heard on the radio. This was a guy nothing could stop. So that's why I

stood like this, with my chest out, and a look on my face saying 'Shoot me.' " To demonstrate, the old man rises from his easy chair and adopts the Pose, and once again, Superman lives. "And by the way," Alyn adds, "I didn't wear any padding, the way the other guy did."

Yes, it is true: when Superman moved to television, where George Reeves first donned the cape in 1953, his bulging mus­cles were made of foam rubber. No matter. There are plenty of viewers who can still recite, at any mention of Reeves in his foam-rubber muscles, a quasi-liturgical text: ". . .Strange visitor from another planet, who came to earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Superman! Who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel with his bare hands, and . . fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way!"

Reeves, a rather lardy figure, had seri­ous acting aspirations (he had been one of the Tarleton twins in Gone With the Wind), and he felt that Superman was somehow beneath his dignity. He also dis­liked the need to diet for the role. He once referred to his heroic tights and cape as a "monkey suit." After growing famous as Superman, Reeves encountered great dif­ficulty in finding work as anything else (the same problem ended the careers of Alyn and Noel Neil, who played a perky Lois Lane in both the serial and TV show). When he did get a minor part in From Here to Eternity, the preview audi­ence guffawed. "Every time he appeared, they yelled again and again," says one witness, Jack Larson, who played Jimmy Olsen in the TV series. The producers cut Reeves' part to almost nothing. Reeves dutifully went on playing Superman, but when filming for the seventh season was about to begin, he shot himself.

"The attitudes of Superman to current social problems . . . reflect the strong-arm totalitarian methods of the immature and barbaric mind." —Marshall McLuhan

Despite the success of the TV series, which is still being syndicated to this day, Superman had some bad times during the '50s and '60s. For all his superpowers, he proved quite helpless against the on­slaughts of Dr. Fredric Wertham, one­time senior psychiatrist for New York City's department of hospitals and author of a widely read anticomics diatribe, Se­duction of the Innocent (1953). Though much of Wertham's crusade was a com­mendable attack on the sadism in crime and horror comics, he denounced Super­man before legislative committees on rather dubious political grounds. He at­tached weighty significance to the deriva­tion of the name from Nietzsche, and to Nietzsche's supposed popularity among the Nazis. Wrote Wertham: "Superman ' (with a big Son his uniform—we should, I suppose, be thankful that it is not an SS) needs an endless stream of new submen, criminals and 'foreign-looking' people not only to justify his existence but even to make it possible."

The publishers responded to such at­tacks with a code, guaranteeing in effect that all comics would henceforth be as mild as milk toast. But just as the publish­ers promised sweetness and light, the '60s began to demand "relevance." What had Superman's crime fighting ever done about civil rights or Viet Nam? Youthful eyes turned to the work of "underground" comic artists like R. Crumb, whose heroes used and acted out words that would have shocked the irremediably respectable man of steel. Even in the swinging '60s, Superman's idea of a really strong exple­tive was "Great Scott!"

Then came, out of nowhere, nostalgia—including nostalgia for things the nostalgia lovers were too young to know. That mood gave rise to the first of the feature films in 1978, and sudden­ly Superman was soaring again. And this time, when Christopher Reeve waved his arms and pointed his heroic chin upward, he really seemed to takeoff over Metropolis. "Honest to God, I was disappointed by the flying," Reeve says of the TV version that he had seen as a boy. "I remember thinking, 'He's got to be lying on a glass table.' I want­ed him to really fly." Reeve did his flights on an elaborate series of wires suspended from ceiling rails. These shots were then superimposed on foot­age taken from a helicopter. With such special effects, the film reportedly cost Warner's a then record $40 million, but it earned $245 million in the theaters.

Bay-bee, I can fly like a bird

When you touch me with your eye.

Flying through the sky,

I never felt the same.

But I am not a bird,

And I am not a plane.

I am Superman.

It's easy when you love

me . . .

—Barbra Streisand

As Superman evolved over the years, so, of course, did Lois Lane. Shuster's dream girl was a sketchy figure with bobbed hair and a working girl's hat; his successors filled her out a bit, made her almost glamor­ous; today she wears slacks, bangs and a look of grim deter­mination. From the beginning she has been an object of her cre­ators' male chauvinist sport. When she asks, in one of the very first comic-book install­ments, to cover the collapse of a crumbling dam, Planet Editor Perry White gruffly insists on sending the less experienced Clark Kent: "It's too impor-tant!—This is no job for a girl!" Lois reacts by tricking the de­voted Clark ("Would you do me a favor?" "You know I'd do any­thing for you") into missing the big assignment so that she can grab it. Clark gets fired; Lois gets stuck in the path of a flood; only Superman can rescue them both, as he always does.

Some women profess to regard Lois as a pioneering role model, the only go-getting female reporter. (Older  observers can recall that Brenda Starr has  been tearing through the comic pages since 1940, and that real-life role models  of the period included such famous by‑ lines as Anne O'Hare McCormick, Mar­tha Gellhorn, Dorothy Thompson, Genet,  Marguerite Higgins and Dorothy Kilgallen.) As a chauvinist creation, Lois not only bungled most of her assignments and  repeatedly double-crossed the faithful  Clark, but also subordinated all profes­sional demands to her one romantic obsession. After she parachutes into a flood, she tells her rescuer, "I'd like to be in your arms always, Superman! As your wife (sigh!)."  The latter-day comic-book Lois broke off from Superman in 1982 because their relationship, such as it was, "didn't seem to be working anymore." But they remain friends. After a recent rescue, she offered him some white wine and brie. Lois has won a Pulitzer Prize. And she is dating none other than Lex Luthor, the onetime mad scientist, now transformed into the "most powerful man in Metropolis." This is liberation?

The cry for the Superman did not begin with Nietzsche, nor will it end with his vogue. But it has always been silenced by the same question: What kind of person is this Superman to be?

              —George Bernard Shaw, in Man and Superman

One of the odd paradoxes about Su­perman is that while he is a hero of nostal­gia, the constant changes in his character keep destroying the qualities that make him an object of nostalgia. "For one bright, brief moment, we had a hero right there, and then we lost him, dammit," la­ments one disillusioned enthusiast, Mar­shall Fishwick, who teaches communica­tions at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. "You have to look back to the '30s for the real thing. There are too many M.B.A.s now and not enough Supermans."

The most radical alteration of Super­man is also the newest, the work of Writ­er-Artist Byrne, 37, who redesigned him for DC Comics in 1986. Circulation had slumped below 100,000 copies a month (compared, for example, with nearly 500,000 for Uncanny X-Men), and DC

Comics President Jenette Kahn decided that "there was a coat of rust on the man of steel." She also knew that the audience for comics was changing. The corner can­dy store where kids used to buy comics has largely disappeared, and the kids have grown older. Today's buyers average about 20 and are apt to be science stu­dents or even engineers, "techies" with money to spend on modems, vcrs, quad­raphonic sound and the book-length com­ics now known as graphic novels.

"We knew we were going to offend some people," says Byrne, "but the modern audience now wants a superhero who  grunts, sweats and goes to the bathroom. He used to be a SUPERman; now he's a super­MAN. " Byrne's Clark Kent brushes his hair straight back and wears round glasses. He and Su­perman are also drawn quite dif­ferently, more cinematically and in more garish colors. Superman's superpowers have been modified, and to keep in shape he works out with weights. He reflects the con­temporary vogue of male "sensi­tivity"; DC officials hint he may become involved with AIDS vic­tims and the homeless.

There is in this a deplorable element that might be called adultification, in which a figure created for children is subjected to adult concerns, much as though Tom Sawyer or Alice in Wonderland were updated by being made to confront sexual problems. Yet despite the myri­ad changes in the legend, some­thing strong and fundamental remains. DC Comics is delight­ed that its newest Superman has doubled sales, to 200,000, but that is a relatively paltry number compared with the millions who cherish an older image from their childhood.

This older image, this Classic Coke, the real Superman, is a figure who somehow manages to embody the best qualities in that nebulous thing known as the American character. He is honest, he tells the truth, he is idealis­tic and optimistic, he helps people in need. He not only fights criminals but is indiffer­ent to those vices that so often lead the rest of us astray. Despite his heroic abilities, he is not vain. He is not greedy. He is not an operator, a manipulator, not an inside trad­er. He does not lust after power. And not only is he good, he is also innocent, in a kind and guileless way that Americans have sometimes been but more often have only imagined themselves to be.

This is what Reeve saw—and was touched by—in his encounters with his fans. This is why we can give three cheers and sing Happy Birthday to the man of steel on his more-or-less 50th. Let us just hope that he someday reaches 100!

'—By Otto Friedrich.
Reported by Beth Austin/Cleveland Janice C. Simpson/New York, TIME, MARCH 14, 1988

The Original Ghost Rider Volume 1, with Dick Ayers

After a long wait, the first edition of the ORIGINAL Ghost Rider western series arrived at my door. As a surprise, the Incredible Tony Isabella wrote the introduction.  Few people know that Tony’s first name is “Incredible” as he was named after the Hulk.

Many readers are only familiar with the Marvel versions of Ghost Rider. Their first one was a western, the second and more famous one, is the super-hero on a motorcycle.  But, from 1949-1951 Magazine Enterprises, owned by Vin Sullivan, published the first Ghost Rider, a western drawn by Dick Ayers, who would go on to draw Marvel’s first Ghost Rider in 1967!!

Dick Ayers: “Vin Sullivan told me The Calico Kid (introduced in issue #6) was becoming The Ghost Rider (issue #11). Some renegades were to overpower (him) and his assistant and kill them. They would meet the spirits of successful famous lawmen in Purgatory who would teach The Calico Kid their superior skills. The publisher had the first script written and The Ghost Rider debuted in 1949 as a backup feature in Tim Holt. In developing the character … Sullivan told me to think about The Headless Horseman by Washington Irving, and also asked me to draw The Ghost Rider thin and lanky so he would appear “ghostly”…The Ghost Rider also utilized this black lining to completely disappear into the darkness just like The Shadow... I also suggested that Ghost Rider use ventriloquism—another Shadow specialty.” He went 14 issues, but appeared in 58 other comics.”

When trademarks expire, names and even characters can become “fair game” for other publishers to use.  In February 1967, with Dick Ayers as artist, Marvel began to publish another western entitled Ghost Rider. Dick Ayers, “Stan Lee assigned me to do a new Ghost Rider series. The character was changed but I drew him in the same costume.” It told the story of Carter Slade, who was left for dead by evil cattleman. Flaming Star, the “local” Comanche medicine man tends to Carter and he gets better. Carter is given some “mystical” devices, luminescent substance that could be used to make clothing, guns, horses and suchlike glow in the dark. He only lasted seven issues.

While we are in a “golden age” of comic reprints had been missing a great deal of the 1950s material. While EC is an exception with almost everything available, DC and Marvel have lagged behind in 1950s material. PS publishing has recently done 70 volumes from that era including works from ACG, Harvey and Avon among others. “Crime Does Not Pay” is also being reprinted.  However, three genres from the 1950s are sorely missing from all companies: western, war and romance. Even PS Publishing has bypassed these genres.

(When I write on the web, I have learned you can’t write, (briefly) in generalities because someone always has to show they know more than you!!!!  Among the 30 or so Masterworks from that era, Marvel did two volumes of Rawhide Kid and one war, Battlefield. However, Marvel had many war and western titles at that time.  DC has done four Sgt. Rock volumes and some black and white Showcase editions of their war and suspense comics. 

In the beginning of The Marvel Age of Comics (1961) there were basically two writers (Lee and Lieber) and four artists (Kirby, Ditko, Heck and Ayers) who carried the load. (There were a few others!!!)  Even back then, I thought DC had a house style for artists and anyone who did Superman or Batman had to make sure that the characters looked much the same.  I never thought that of Marvel.  In my opinion Marvel had a “house” layout (Jack Kirby’s, of course) but their artists could personalize their art. Don  Heck and Dick Ayers were not as innovative in their styles as Kirby and Ditko, but were wonderful storytellers and fine artists and they very much brought their own vision to their illustrations. That is why I felt they did their very best, not on creatures from outer space, but on REAL people in romance, westerns and war comics.  Ayers excelled in the last two. The Ghost Rider stories in this volume are great examples. Dick Ayers liked to tell a story at his own pace and the Marvel method was ideal for him.  In his later years we became friends and I, along with Nick and John Caputo and Mike Vassallo visited Dick and his  lovely wife Lindy in their house in Westchester, near Professor's X's school for exceptional children.  Dick never ran out of funny and great stories about him and Stan Lee and how much he liked working with him.

These Ghost Rider stories actually start in “Tim Holt” Comic #11, (1949) when his origin is given. And faster than you can say “Amazing Spider-Man I and II” the series is rebooted in “Ghost Rider” #1 (1950).  The second version uses much of the first origin but expands it into a supernatural world where Rex Holt meets famous dead western heroes. Fortunately, those first stories are included here, but are featured last, after the first five issues from Ghost Rider. I guess they want you to get “fixed” first on the second incarnation. 

While Rex Holt, Ghost Rider does not seem to have supernatural powers he tries to convince all the bad guys he does by speaking in word balloons that have more ridges. 

In many ways he reminds me of the Shadow, although he does not cloud men’s minds, but does raise some dust and often speaks in that "otherworldly" and "all knowing" tone.

These are not modern comics with modern story telling. There is little to no continuity and each story stands on its own. After the origin story you can read the stories totally out of order.  There are flashes of violence but none that are severe. None are gratuitous, they are always used to advance the storytelling.  Still these are pre-Comics Code stories and it shows. . These are fun stories but don’t try to read them all at once, they get repetitive.   Stretch the book out a couple of days.

 The reproduction, the print quality is okay to good, but certainly not exceptional. Sadly, with so comics from so many companies no longer with us, the original artwork, or original photographic plates have long since disappeared. This is the best we will get, scans from the original comics, which originally may not have been printed that well to begin with.  

As with so many comics of that era, you may cringe a bit at the portrayal of some Native Americas (called Indians here) and of his “sidekick,” the Asian Sing-Song. Sing-Song is probably the smartest person here, but speaks in broken English throughout the run. I think he is related to Chop-Chop. But Ton is right again when he says, “Take these stories for what they are.”  They are just fun to read.

Most of the stories were written by Gardner Fox and some of the covers were by Frank Frazetta

Ghost Rider’s In the Sky

One more note: Take a look from time to time of the Ghost Rider on his horse. It doesn’t fly, but is drawn that way.  Using shadows, and “disappearing” background, in both versions, Ayers draws the horse as if it is totally off the ground.

"Tonyilocks"

Dick Ayers told us a “Goldilocks” tale involving Tony.  Ayers said he would get scripts from certain writers and they were too long and detailed and he couldn’t tell the story at his own pace, he had to squeeze everything in. Others would give him summaries that were way too short and without substance and he felt he had to make up too much of the plot.  But Tony? Tony’s were just right and loved working with him.

You can see Ayer’s wonderful pacing in the telling of these stories. Nothing seems rushed.

There was one thing I didn’t see in the comic books but saw in the actual artwork, which he had in his home. Incredible detail!!! It was just wonderful, but it didn’t show up well or distinct in the comic book reproduction.

Dick’s inking was superb and he was just the right guy for the beginning of Marvel’s Age. His consistency linked the characters that were being drawn by different artists.  He placed them all in the same “universe.”  I think that is too often forgotten.

In regards to writing about comics Tony is unique as far as comic book creators go. He has the heart of a fan and can write as one, not just as the “all-knowing insider.”  Tony was obviously excited to see these stories go into print. His intro here is just right. He gives the history of the strip and tells you what to look for in the stories.Tony  had also included the first Ghost Rider comic in his wonderful, informative and fun “1000 Comic Books You Must Read!!” Now Tony only has to do 999 more introductions. 

Stan Lee Article: Newsday June 8, 1978 (With Frank Springer)

Here is an article from the Long Island newspaper, Newsday, from June 8 1978.  It had Stan Lee on the cover. Also check out a feature from the paper, about how Marvel comics are created, located on the bottom of this blog. It features Frank Springer!

A special thanks to Albert Bigley  at 

http://bigglee.blogspot.com/ 

for prodding me to put this up! Check out his great blog!!!

By Maureen Early

“Here I am in my 50s, and I still wonder what I’m going to be when I grow up and get into the real world.”

Stan Lee—magnetic mogul of Marvel Comics and creator of nearly a hundred comic book crusaders---was musing in his Madison Avenue office. orchestrating the output of the $25 million organization, even as he was affably giving an interview.

In the wondrous world of comic books, Lee has become a byword, idolized by young fans such as those who’ve been showing up recently at Hunting-ton’s Cartoonerville Gallery. During the past , month, the gallery, at 105 Woodbury Rd., has been holding “Six Super Saturdays”—a salute to Lee and the other artists and writers in his Marvel group—and Lee, himself, will appear there this Saturday, from 2 PM to 4 PM. Admission is free.

Serious art collectors have been bidding up the prices of original comic illustrations at New York auctions, but a good part of the Cartoonerville turnout were youngsters often with their portfolios in hand who seem determined to make it big as comic book artists—or as another Stan Lee.

Strangely enough, it was never Lee’s intention to become the wunderkind of comic books. While growing up in the Bronx in the 1930s, he had no more interest in comics than any other kid. His real ambition was to become an actor. But a stint with a WPA theater (with Orson Welles) convinced him that he couldn’t make much money that way.

During spare time in high school, Lee got several writing jobs—one updating celebrity obituaries for a news service (“so depressing because I was writing about living people in the past tense”), another publicizing a hospital (“I could never figure out why. Should I convince people to be sick, or tell them, ‘Hey, folks, don’t use their hospital, use ours!’ “).

At 17, he became a part-time go-fer, copywriter and proofreader for Timely Comics, later to evolve into Marvel It was supposed to be temporary. But a few months later his two bosses decamped, and the publisher asked Lee to fill in as editor-art director until he could find someone old enough for the job. In his book, “Origins of Marvel Comics,” (Simon & Schuster), Lee comments, “Well, working in comics must age a fella real fast because he never did replace me and I’ve been there ever since.” Yet he says, “I still think of it as a temporary job.”

It was Lee’s fertile mind that created the many superheroes who were eventually to make Marvel mighty Among them: “The Incredible Hulk,” “The Amazing Spider-Man,” “The Mighty Thor,” “Captain America,” “Ms. Marvel,” “The Fantastic Four,” “The Avengers,” “Dr. Strange” and “Daredevil.” It was a tiny staff, and by the mid-’60s, as editor, art director and head writer, Lee was turning out four or five complete comic books a week.

At the Cartoonerville Gallery the other day, Lee fan Richard Martin of East Meadow put it this way: “Lee’s incredible imagination rejuvenated a dying industry.” It was Lee who innovated reasonably dimensional characterizations, made the stories more relevant and satirical and wove in subplots. And it was Lee who revitalized the language of the comics, gearing it to a college level while teasing it with alliteration.

Says 24-year-old Rick Gray of Levittown, who developed Marvel mania at age 12: “When I started reading, I would have to sit with a dictionary to understand Lee’s stuff. It’s hard for a kid to understand a word like ‘apocalypse.’ “ Contrary to popular opinion, the demography of comic book readership extends well beyond the pre-teen group. About half of Marvel Comics readers are 15 and older. Says Lee: “In the last two decades, comic books were discovered by college kids, who are becoming a big and important market. Until then, comic book publishers concentrated on the 5-and-10-year-olds.”

What’s the attraction for young adults? Lee answers with contagious enthusiasm. “Everyone loves fantasy. Anything that’s bigger than life, that takes you out of yourself. It starts when we’re little kids, weaned on fairy tales and legends. The reason for the success of ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Close Encounters’ was not, because they’re sci-fi, but because they are fantasy. We try to provide that in our comic books. It’s not that all of a sudden the public likes that sort of thing. But that people are beginning to realize that’s what the public likes.”

Such people, it seems, as television programmers, movie makers and book publishers, who are making Marvel’s future even more favorable. Marvel’s “The Hulk” and “Spider-Man” are already on CBS in prime time, and an animated cartoon of “The Fantastic Four” will begin as a series in September. Universal Studios has an option on another 11 of Marvel’s mythic miracle-makers, some of which are now in development. “Dr. Strange” will be released as a made-for-TV feature film this fall, and, says Lee, the studio is working on “Captain America” and trying to decide what other characters to do. Back in New York, staid Simon and Schuster will soon be publishing “The Silver Surfer” as a 100-page original novel in comic strip form, created by Lee with artist Jack Kirby. Meanwhile, Marvel is grinding out 40 comic books a month, many translated to sell at newsstands from Europe to Japan.

Are there more heroes on the horizon? Not for now, Lee says, just better presentations. The famous firm plans to produce a new line of superhero sagas printed offset on glossy paper which, Lee hopes, will make comic books even more acceptable to an older audience. “They’ll be better physically, more permanent, more like books, and more expensive,” he explains They’ll sell for $1.50. (If you haven’t checked recently, the pulp kind go for 35 cents).

“But breaking into this business is just about as tough as breaking into show biz,” says Avonne Keller of the Newspapers Comics Council. “You don’t need a formal education, but it helps to be a genius.” There are many facets of cartooning. Newspaper strips, for instance, are mainly handled by feature syndicates, which, Keller says, get about a thousand submissions a year. But, she says, there are no guarantees even if a syndicate contracts to take your work out on the road. “If it makes it, great! Some last a year, some last forever. The syndicates have no idea what will take off.”

On the comic book end, Lee says, the writer has the most difficult start, and he advises: “Somehow, you have to get a job on staff—as a proofreader, an associate editor, a production person. Little by little you get to know the editor and he gives you the opportunity to write something.” Free-lance ideas from writers are barely looked at because they are hard to visualize. But ideas from an artist are different. “If you’re really damn good, we’ll find a way to give you something to do.”

Still, as artist Frank Springer warns, “You’ve got to be better than the people they’re using.” Once you’ve been published, he adds, one job begins to lead to another.

How ‘they’re created

How does a comic book caper work? It’s literally assembly-line produced, says Marvel artist Frank Springer, and he describes the process:

Step 1. The Writer. Working with the editor, he conceives a story line and writes a general synopsis without dialogue, broken down into so many finished pages. Writers earn approximately $22 a page, Lee says, and a good writer can turn out a 17-page story in a day or two.

Step 2. The Penciler. The storyline is turned over to a penciler, who interprets the story in sketches. According to Lee, pencilers earn about $47 a page. Depending on their pace and how tightly they draw, they can do one to five pages a day.

Step 3. The Writer. The penciled product goes back to the writer, who adds tightly written dialogue.

Step 4. The Letterer. Now it goes to a letterer, who follows the script and places the balloons and captions. The pay. approximately $7 to $9 a page. Production: six or seven pages a day.

Step 5. The hiker. He takes over, making it sharp for the engraving camera. “The inker does more than just trace over the penciler’s work,” Lee says. “A good inker can improve a penciler’s work and a bad inker can spoil it.” A few pencilers prefer to do both Inkers’ pay: $28 to $30 a sheet, with a production of two or three a day.

Step 6. The Colorist. Photostats are made from the inked copy and sent to the colorist, who indicates to the engraver what color goes where—usually with a magic marker or water color The engraver does the final coloring. A colorist gets $5 a page and can do eight or nine a day

Step 7. The Proofreader. Final step before printing: The proofreader looks over the work for misspellings, anachronisms, inconsistencies. (This is a staff job.) —Early