Search Results for: archie

This is a rerun of an item that first ran on this blog on September 27, 2003. It's about two pilots that were done in the seventies that attempted to turn the Archie comic books into an hour-long live-action prime-time TV series. I was peripherally involved as they were done by the company for which I was writing Welcome Back, Kotter.

Contrary to what has been reported elsewhere, I was not a writer on either, though I turned down an offer to work on the second. I was an unbilled consultant on the first. What happened was that the Komack Company had obtained the rights to do these special-pilots and Jimmie Komack had this odd notion of how to approach doing an adaptation of an existing property. His view was that it should be done by writers and producers who were completely unfamiliar with the source material so their minds were uncluttered by what had been done before.

While I was working there, he also did a pilot that brought back the not-dissimilar character of Dobie Gillis. Dobie's creator Max Shulman had co-written a pilot script for the revival — a real good one, I thought, that updated the property but still captured what was great about the old series. ABC assigned the project to Komack's company and Komack used the Shulman script to attract the necessary actors from the original version — Dwayne Hickman, Bob Denver, Frank Faylen and Sheila James. Then, once they were committed, he tossed out the Shulman script and had a new one written by two writers who'd never seen the original show. (If you think I'm making this up, read Dwayne Hickman's autobiography.)

Jimmie took a similar approach to turning Archie into a TV show. The creative staff he engaged were not totally unfamiliar with the property but he urged them not to read the old comics and to instead work from a rough outline someone had written about who they were. This did not sit well with John Goldwater, who ran and co-owned the Archie company and who regarded himself as the creator of the feature. One day, Komack called me in and said, "You know all about comic books, don't you?" I said I did. He said, "Archie Comics?" I said I did. Later that day, he brought me into a meeting with Mr. Goldwater, who was visiting from New York, and introduced me as his resident Archie expert and consultant.

The meeting went roughly like this. I was introduced to Mr. Goldwater and I managed to get in that I'd written many comic books and that I'd apprenticed with Jack Kirby. Mr. Goldwater was impressed at the mention of Jack, who'd worked for his company a few times. We spoke for a few minutes and somehow, I managed to wedge in a nice nugget of trivia. Kotter was sharing a stage then with a new ABC sitcom called Fish, a spin-off of Barney Miller starring Abe Vigoda. I mentioned that Abe Vigoda's brother Bill Vigoda had been a top artist for Archie. "Is that true?" Jimmie asked. Goldwater nodded it was true…and since he was impressed that I knew a lot about Archie Comics, Jimmie decided to quit while he was ahead and send me back to work. So I never got to talk much with John Goldwater. Later, Jimmie did consult with me on a number of points including some of the final casting. But I didn't write on the shows, nor was I credited on them. Here's the interesting (I think) story I posted here about them in 2003…

Okay, I promised this story. But first, let me note that Gary DeJong did some research and unearthed the info that the first of the two Archie pilots done in 1976-1977 aired on December 19. 1976 and starred Audrey Landers as Betty, Hilary Thompson as Veronica, Mark Winkworth as Reggie, Derrel Maury as Jughead, Jane Lambert as Miss Grundy, Susan Blu as Midge, Jim Boelson as Moose, Whit Bissell as Mr. Lodge, Michelle Stacy as Little Jinx, Tifni Twitchell as Big Ethel and Amzie Strickland as Mrs. Lodge. Byron Webster played Mr. Weatherbee and Gordon Jump (whose passing started this discussion) played Archie's father. In other words, referencing the earlier anecdote, Gordon Jump came in to audition for Mr. Weatherbee and got the part…then, since the producers couldn't properly cast the role of Archie's father, they moved Jump to that slot and put their second-choice in as Mr. Weatherbee. As I recall, the role of Archie's father was much larger than the role of Mr. Weatherbee so that may explain the decision.

Who played the title role of Archie Andrews? Well, that's the story I wanted to tell. After extensive auditions and screen tests, they picked a young man with brilliant red hair but no real acting experience, at least on television. Somehow, things didn't work out. I never heard exactly what happened but suddenly, the role of Archie was being played by the producers' second choice, an actor named Dennis Bowen who had appeared a few times on Welcome Back, Kotter. (Kotter was produced by the same company. Dennis played the recurring role of Todd Ludlow, an honors student who sometimes heckled the Sweathogs.)

The Archie pilot was an odd mix of sitcom and variety show. It was an hour in length and there were blackouts and little, self-contained storylines of about ten minutes each. Between these, the focus would shift to a rather generic rock band that played bubble-gum style music. The whole thing was being targeted for the 7:00 Sunday evening slot and I recall a lot of argument over how many scenes there could be of Betty, Veronica and a number of good-looking female extras in swimwear and sleepwear. The writers had scripted a number of quick jokes at a swimming pool, and one of the short stories involved the boys crashing a slumber party that Veronica was throwing at the Lodge mansion. Both had been planned expressly to get the ladies into scanty outfits, which the ABC programming department encouraged. At the same time, their Standards and Practices folks ran around demanding less-revealing bikinis and nighties. Some of the best jokes in the show wound up being cut because the girls were showing a half-inch too much of their physiques.

The mix of sitcom and sketches didn't quite work. There was a second pilot with the same cast and pretty much the same idea and it didn't work, either. As I recall, the main change from the first one was that they replaced the generic rock band with one comprised of Archie, Betty, Jughead, etc. Danny "Neil's brother" Simon was the head writer on this try.

Anyway, the great story, the one I wanted to get to, was what happened because they replaced Archies in the first pilot. Somehow, the ABC publicity department never got the word and all the p.r. they issued for the show contained the name of the first actor, the one who was replaced during rehearsals. Poor Dennis Bowen had to endure publicity photos that displayed his face but identified him as the first guy. A few years ago when the Archie comic book folks published a book on the character's history, they said the first guy had played the role.

What happened to that first redheaded guy? Well, he eventually got a TV series, then he left it and made some movies. Now, he's back with another TV series. Can you guess who it is?

George Gene Gustines in the New York Times writes about the empire that is Archie Comics. I'm linking to this piece because it's relevant and it's timely but most of all because it quotes me.

One of those folks who opts to remain nameless — to you, not to me — read this post here and then sent this my way.  But before I get to it, lemme warn you: This is going to be long and it'll get kinda sappy and most of you are smart enough to know what I'm about to say in reply to my anonymous correspondent…

I was very intrigued by your post about having crushes on women in comics or on TV. I've had more than my share of both and as I get older, they feel to me like they aren't healthy but I'm not sure why. I would be interested in your take on this. Did your crush on Mary Tyler Moore have negative repercussions for you, especially when you finally met her?

"Met her" is too strong a term. What happened was, as I wrote in this obit about her, I stepped on her foot at a screening. I apologized every way I could, she politely accepted my groveling… and that was the end of my contact with the former Laura Petrie and Mary Richards. I felt bad as I always feel bad when I do something as dumb 'n' clumsy as that and it had little to do with her ever being what we're calling here a "crush."

But I don't think there's anything wrong with finding someone attractive…not that it's a voluntary thing. It's kind of built into our DNA as an incentive to find happiness and/or propagate the species and if you find someone attractive, you find someone attractive. That's just how it works.  What I think can be dangerous is when you convince yourself it's not what it probably is: A placeholder until you find someone with whom you can have an actual relationship.

My crushes on the TV stars I listed were quite different from the ones I had on girls in my high school. I could never have asked Judy Carne out on a date…and not just because at the time, she was married to Burt Reynolds. I could (theoretically) have asked one of the girls in my Geometry class to dinner and movie…not that I thought there was a chance in Hades of any of them saying yes.

I didn't ask any classmates out but I at least talked with them.  They knew my name.  Most of them giggled at the proper moment when I said something funny or when I drew a passable Fred Flintstone on the brown-paper-wrapping cover of one of their textbooks.  (There are many reasons some of us learn to draw and a big reason for a lot of us is that it impresses people you might want to impress.  It's the same reason a lot of us at an early age took up magic.  I did that too.)  One of the many, many dumb things I did in high school — not to be confused with the many, many, many I've done since — is that I never asked a girl out on a date.

Why the hell not?  Three reasons, one being that I was sure whoever I asked would say no…so what was the point?  Another was that I knew that if I did and got the inevitable turndown, I'd re-experience the pain every time I saw that girl — the one who said no — on campus.  That might be (shudder!) several times a day.  Lastly, I felt that if I asked one out and got the expected turndown, no matter how gracious it might have been, it might be a long time — somewhere between Years and Never — before I mustered up the courage to try, try again with someone else.

What was I waiting for?  Beats the heck outta me.  Maybe for some misguided young lady to ask me.  I don't know if it works that way for that age bracket in current times but it sure didn't in 1969.  (Thought I'm reasonably certain that however it works today, it works the same way when both parties are of the same gender.)

Other classmates of mine were dating back then. In the boys' locker room, guys were even bragging/lying about what happened on those dates.  Having read many an Archie comic book, I understood the concept of a "date."  And from the fibs in the locker room, I had some sense of things that could happen that never happened 'twixt Archie and either Betty or Veronica.

I was just plain afraid.  Fortunately for my life since, I had one of those "it's now or never" impulses on Graduation Day.  It led to me asking three different young ladies for their phone numbers and some indication that they wouldn't phone the police and demand protective orders if I called.  I wrote about that day here in three parts, the first of which you can find here.  Warning: It's kinda long and I come across as a real jerk in it.

If it feels like I'm forcing Too Much Information on you, forgive me.  I just recall that day as a major turning point in this silly life of mine…and I see a very strong connection between Mark getting up the guts to ask a girl on a date and, a few weeks later, Mark walking into the office of a big publishing company and for the first time, trying to sell something I'd written.  Amazingly, I got the answer I wanted there too and it was another major turning point.

I know a lot of people — and thanks to Social Media, can see a lot on Facebook and other forums — who are clearly unhappy with their relationships and/or their careers.  There are many reasons for each dissatisfaction and I've written plenty on this blog about why I think careers go askew or just plain don't happen…and don't worry.  I haven't the time or the experience to list all the possible reasons why marriages fail or couples split up or never get together in the first place.  I'll just say that Unrealistic Expectations have to be a major factor…and I don't see how anyone could not have Unrealistic Expectations about someone they lust after from afar.  Some even have them from lusting anear.

In my teen years, I probably had "crushes" on about fifteen or sixteen movie or TV stars.  I probably got to actually meet about ten of them eventually…and by "meet," I don't mean stepping on someone's foot.  I mean talking to them, sometimes for a little while, sometimes for more.  The total number of them who turned out to be the people I thought they'd be was approximately zero.

Some of them were very nice.  A few became actual friends in some loose sense.  But none of those ladies turned out to be, when not performing, precisely the person I'd had the crush on…which is the problem with crushes: You're not infatuated with an actual person.  You're just infatuated with a figment of your imagination — one perhaps built around the visual of the crush but not much more.  To have a real relationship, you kind of need to fall in love with a real human being.

But you already knew that.  Most of you, anyway.  This was just for anyone out there who somehow didn't and especially for the guy who wrote me.  The next e-mail I answer here will be about comic books or cartoons or something I'm more qualified to discuss.

This is a message from my pal Jerry Beck, following up on this post about how the TV networks used to decide what shows to cancel on their Saturday morning schedules, which ones to renew and which ones to revamp. Here's Jerry…

Great answer, Mark — informed as always by your inside knowledge of the industry and your personal role as a producer and writer for that daypart.

My answer about there being "new" programming each year on Saturday morning (the "one season thing") was always based on my observation as a viewer – and being 3000 miles away from the Hollywood cartoon factories. I actually think we are saying the same thing — though you added more insight from your end.

This all first occurred to me the year CBS put on Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space (in 1972). I didn't think about it that much at the time, other than "why would they change the series format so drastically?" The following years brought forth the likes of a re-titled The Think-Pink Panther Show (1975), and the expanded Tarzan and the Super 7 (1978), as well as various Saturday renewals (though each year under a new name) of The Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Superfriends and The Archies.

Bottom line: Putting a new title on a popular series made sense for Saturday morning marketing — especially in those annual centerspread advertisements in Marvel, DC, Archie and Harvey comic books. There were a few exceptions to the rule — a popular show was occasionally renewed for a second season under its original name, but usually with a smaller order of new episodes (six?) for that second year. Star Trek: The Animated Series is one of those that comes to mind.

Of course, Garfield and Friends was a major exception to everything I said here.

I probably need to explain why Garfield and Friends was a major exception before I get a ton of e-mails asking me why and how it was. That show went into production with a two-season guarantee, which was very rare for Saturday morning. They ordered two seasons of thirteen episodes each and they also gave us more lead time than a new series usually got. Our producers could make this deal for a number of reasons, the main one being the extraordinary popularity of the character in his prime-time specials, the sale of his books and other merchandise…and the fact that Jim Davis and Lee Mendelson (two of our exec producers) said in effect, "Either we get this deal or we don't do the show."

Most cartoon studios couldn't say that — or if they did, they were bluffing. I don't think Hanna-Barbera ever said to an offer, "No, that's not enough money to do the show properly" or "No, that idea you want us to animate is a terrible idea for show."

When you had a studio that was set up to produce one or more weekly shows, you had this massive overhead of a building and a business and all the people you have on staff, many of whom have contracts and can't be laid-off if you don't sell a show or two one year. More than once, a studio was in the position that if they didn't sell X number of shows — sometimes even just one — they'd have to close down. It would be like trying to maintain a big restaurant when you don't have a single customer for a year.

But Jim and Lee had no studio. They had a relationship with Film Roman which was then a small operation doing mostly prime-time specials including the Garfield specials. Film Roman could have easily survived if the show didn't sell or didn't sell that year. When it did, they expanded their operation, hiring on new people and eventually moving to a larger building in order to produce it. It also mattered that Lee Mendelson had that long, mutually-prosperous relationship with CBS over the Peanuts specials and other prime-time productions.

So they got the deal and they gave me a two-year contract to do the twenty-six half-hours. When we went on the air, the ratings were so strong and the show reran so well that CBS came back and said, "Can we make it an hour?" So the second season, instead of being thirteen half-hours was thirteen hours…and as we were finishing those, they gave us an order for Season #3 and shortly after that, for #4. No one ever came to us and asked, "Can we freshen this by putting it into outer space or adding in Baby Garfield or anything?" We wound up producing 121 half-hours of what was basically the same, unfreshened series…and it could have gone on for longer but with the annual raises built into the contracts, it got too expensive for the network. And there were a few other reasons.

Thanks for the message, Jerry, and I'll tell everyone reading this that, first of all, you'll be appearing on March 8 here in Los Angeles on a program called "The Genius of Jay Ward: Rocky, Bullwinkle, Rarities and More." It's free and it's in connection with U.C.L.A. and ASIFA and details about it can be found here.

And I'll also tell them that you'll be at WonderCon Anaheim and that one of the many things you'll be doing there is appearing on a panel on the history of Hanna-Barbera with our friend Greg Ehrbar and me. That'll be on Friday right after a panel I'm hosting on "How to Write for Animation." I'll be posting a schedule of all the panels I'm doing there when we get closer to the convention.

And lastly, I'll also tell everyone that Jerry and I are part of the committee that is arranging for a memorial/celebration of life for our dear friend Mike Schlesinger who left us on January 9. We think we have a time and place for it and will be announcing it soon. It should be a great event all about a great guy.

Rob Baker writes…

As I've followed a Facebook group called "TV Cartoons that Time Forgot," where I believe Jerry Beck is a moderator, as folks continued discussing so many old Saturday Morning cartoons, one thing finally stood out to me: That such a huge number of SatAM cartoons only lasted one season!

So I mentioned this on one post (which now seems to have surpassed over 200,000 followers, while inexplicably showing fewer posts being made to it?), that one-season thing. Yes there've been occasional exceptions to this within the 60s and 70s (such as Fat Albert) but for the most part, even popular cartoons re-branded every year so we had the New Scooby Doo Movies, Archie's Funhouse, etc. So Jerry Beck, I recall, weighed in and stated that it was because for Saturday Morning, everything had to be "new." That made some sense! I remember the exciting promos being run, the CBS "Cartooniverse" etc., and for kids, that may have once been extremely vital, to keep them excited over all the new stuff happening.

But I find not really anything to research that spells it out any more clearly nor definitively. I know that as we got into the 80s, many cartoons did run many seasons, the Chipmunks, the Smurfs, The Garfield, you know. So that must've also been seen as a vast policy change, though I remember some diversity still existed like Alf Tales versus a spinoff of sorts which dealt with the Alf characters acting out classic stories; same with Alvin Goes to the Movies; a few things like that.

I'd love to know what all you know, if anything, about that. I've told this Beck answer to a few people, as it seems unfair in the long run that Hong Kong Phooey only ever had 16 episodes all said, which were run ad nauseum while we kids still ate it up anyway. It's strange that there were SO many Hanna-Barbera shows and none of them seemed to last worth a darn, like why did they even bother if they kept getting cancelled? So it's clearly part of some strategy. That's what I'd like to learn about and maybe have your site to offer up as a great answer to that!

Simplified question, if you like: So many Saturday Morning Cartoons only lasted one season in the early years, which seems strange because some of them were really popular. Were they just cancelled or is there a better explanation for why they were treated this way?

You may be reading more into Jerry's answer than he intended but here's my answer: It had a lot to do with two problems that the programmers faced when they were buying shows to run on Saturday morning back in the days when CBS, NBC and ABC ran shows for kids then…problems which didn't exist for the folks down the hall programming live-action shows for prime time.

One was the lead time necessary for animation. The new shows that were ordered for the season beginning in September usually had to be ordered by around the end of February. The other problem was that the way the math worked on the budgets, you — I'm making you the programming person in this explanation — had to order a year of shows at a time. You ordered thirteen episodes that would each run four times to fill out 52 weeks.

The guys in the prime-time division could order thirteen episodes of a new sitcom. They could order six. And as those shows were shot, they could visit the sets and watch the filming or look at rough cuts of episodes in progress. They could look at the first few episodes of Happy Days and say, "Hey, let's give that Fonzie character more screen time"…and Fonzie would have more screen time in the episode shot the following week.

Or they could order thirteen of a new show called Three's Company (this is just one example of many) and then after the first few aired and got good ratings, they could quickly order more episodes so Show #14 could air the week after Show #13 and be followed immediately by Show #15 and Show #16 and so on. You couldn't get new episodes of an animated series that quickly…and the way things were budgeted, you really couldn't buy Show #14 until the following season. You had to run that first batch of thirteen over and over.

So let's say, Mr. Programmer, that you order thirteen episodes of a new show we'll call Stinky-Poo. You buy it in February to be delivered beginning in September…and while you can read scripts and look at storyboards and attend voice recording sessions, you really don't know what you've got until they deliver the first episode of that show in September. And if Stinky-Poo turns out to be stinky-poo, guess what: There's nothing you can do to fix it.

And furthermore, there are twelve more coming down that assembly line and they're probably going to stink too. I can't think of any Saturday morning cartoon that got a lot better as it went along. Once in a while, you can bail on a show. Your network can kick in the money to take a new show off the air before it's run four times…but you can't do that too often and you can only really replace it with a rerun, not a different new show.

As I mentioned in another post here, the test of a show was not how good the ratings were the first time you aired the thirteen. Lots of shows did well when they were new but when they began airing reruns, the kids decided to watch the reruns of something else. A hit show was one that held its audience in reruns or perhaps even went up in the ratings.

So beginning in September, you air those thirteen episodes of Stinky-Poo…and maybe you slip in a rerun on Week #9 or Week #10 to stretch out the supply of never-before-run episodes. Or maybe you slip in reruns because the studio is having trouble meeting air dates and Show #13 won't be done by Week #13. But at some point around November or December, you're into all-reruns and you can start looking at ratings and trying to determine if the show has developed a loyal-enough viewership to stay with it for another year you need to purchase way in advance.

Around November or December, you have to be seriously thinking about what you're going to renew for another season and what you're not going to renew. Because around February, you have to commit to the schedule you're going to start airing the following September. If Stinky-Poo has collapsed in the ratings, that makes it simple. You cancel it. If its ratings have been good and the numbers are holding strong or even improving, you pick the show up for Season #2.

Ah, but what if it's in the middle, which is where most shows wind up? It's not a tremendous hit but it's also not a complete failure. There's something there the kids like. So what do you do then? The answer often was this: You freshen. You split the difference between an all-new show and another year of the exact same program. That's when you might decide to do The Stinky-Poo Movies or Stinky-Poo's Funhouse or maybe introduce Stinky-Poo Junior into the show. It also tells the audience that it's not the same thirteen Stinky-Poo episodes that they had committed to memory by the third rerun.

A lot of shows fail for the same reason a lot of restaurants fail or a lot of movies fail: They just don't click with the customers. Some shows succeed because they do but there aren't enough of those so you have to do something. So you take that car which runs fine but it isn't as attractive as it might be and you slap a new coat of paint on it. You could get some good mileage out of it then. Hey, how about Stinky-Poo's Superstar Cosmic Space Adventure Fairy Tales? That might get us a pickup for thirteen more.

That's the Big Town Market. It was located at the corner of Pico Boulevard and La Cienega in the eastern part of West Los Angeles but it's no longer there. Twenty…probably more like thirty years ago, it and the "dime store" (that's what we called them even though nothing there was a dime) next door were replaced by a building that now houses a Chase Bank, an Autozone and a big retail space that's been unleased for quite some time. For a while in my teen years, I was a frequent patron of the Big Town Market even though I don't think I ever bought anything edible there.

Why was I a frequent patron when I wasn't buying food? To explain that, I have to explain how we bought comic books in those days.

There were no comic book shops or conventions and certainly no Internet. Comics were distributed like magazines. A store that had rack space for them would get deliveries of the current magazines, usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The store took them on a consignment basis, meaning that they put the magazines on display for sale…then they paid for the ones they sold and returned the ones they didn't sell. They could also return the ones that got wrinkled and shaggy from browsers poring through them without purchasing. They could also return the ones they didn't want to display or didn't have room to display.

Let's take Action Comics as an example. It came out monthly so every month, a store would get in X number of copies of the new issue of Action Comics. "X" was determined by the distributor's representative and the store manager taking a look at how many they were selling, how many they were returning and (mainly) how much rack space was available. They generally did not look at how individual titles were selling or whether the store's customers seemed to like super-heroes or talking ducks. The distributor gave them an assortment and the store manager might say, "Give me 20% fewer comics next week" or "I have space on my racks…give me 20% more comic books."

The store would keep the January issue of Action Comics on the rack until one of these things happened..

1. He was sold out of it.
2. The remaining copies became too tattered to sell.
3. The February issue of Action Comics arrived or…
4. The rack was getting too crowded so he'd return some of the comics that had been there for a few weeks to make room for the new arrivals.

Regarding #4: Curious about the process, I asked a few storekeepers how they decided which ones to send back. The unanimous reply was "The ones that look like they've been there for a while"…meaning the ones getting wrinkled and tattered. Comic books then were printed on the cheapest paper possible so they had a tendency to wilt easily in the racks.

This decision was usually made with no regard to the content of the comics or the publisher or anything. The guy who ran the store didn't know one comic from another and they made too little off each comic they sold to bother paying attention to whether their patrons preferred Archie over Casper. But there may have been one exception to this.

I have a theory that one of the reasons Marvel did so well in the sixties — to the point where they had DC sweating — is that some Marvel fans made their presence felt. They actively began asking at stores when the new Marvels would be in or complaining because the store was sold out of Fantastic Four. I don't know if Marvel fans were more plentiful than DC fans but I think they were more loyal. It may also may have had something to do with Marvel doing so many stories continued from one issue to the next.

The arrival of the February issue of Action Comics was, in theory, the time to send back the unsold copies of the January issue.  In truth, most distributors would take back any unsold product at any time.  Also in truth, most comics did not get a full month on the racks.  See #4 above.

And in my theory, when it came time to send back unsold comics because they needed the space for newly-arriving books, some store proprietors were aware they had kids asking about the Marvel books and chose to not send them back. So the Marvels got more time on the racks and therefore, more time to sell.

Now, I know this is getting too deep into the weeds for some of you and you may be wondering what this has to do with Mark going to a supermarket often to not buy any food. I'll get to that in Part 2, which will be up here in the next few days.

You can read Part 2 of this article here.

If you haven't read Part One of this series, you might want to do that before you proceed.

When I was reading Dell Comics in the fifties, I had a favorite artist not only before I knew his name but before I was fully aware that comic books were drawn by anyone. Until about the age of six, I thought they just magically appeared…you know, the way cartoons on TV did. If I'd given the matter any thought, I might have suspected that the guy at the drug store where we bought my comic books was creating them when he was not busy filling prescriptions.

My favorite artist, it turned out, was a man named Dan Spiegle.

Oh, I liked other artists as well but Dan did a lot of adaptations of movies and TV shows and when he drew them, the people he drew not only looked like the people on the screen, they pretty much acted like them too. They had the perfect facial expressions and body english to go with what was in the word balloons over their heads. Even at a young age, I was more impressed by that than by an artist's ability to draw a cool-looking monster or a powerful fight scene. I would appreciate him even more when we began working together.

In 1962 when I was ten, some Dell Comics branched off and became Gold Key Comics (explanation here). Dan branched off with them and drew for Gold Key — Maverick, Korak, Space Family Robinson, lotsa Disney movies, etc.

In the seventies when I made little field trips up to the Santa Barbara area, as I explained in Part 1, I would always visit Dan Spiegle. He was as nice as he was talented and he was one of the most talented artists in the business.

The first time I made one of these expeditions to the Santa Barbara/Carpinteria area, some friends of mine and I first visited Dan. He was then drawing, among other assignments, the Scooby Doo comic book that I was writing for Gold Key Comics. We would later collaborate on a great many projects including Blackhawk for DC, Crossfire for Eclipse Comics and more Scooby Doo comics for several different publishers, not all of them in the United States. As you may have figured out, that's me on the left in the above photo and Dan on the right. We're in his studio in Carpinteria. It was a big shed amidst a forest of avocado trees.

At the time, I was unaware how close we would become and how often we'd work together…but if I'd known then, I would have been quite pleased. I had met him briefly before at Richard Kyle's bookshop in Long Beach…at its grand opening party, I think. That day in Carpinteria, Dan barbecued lunch for me and my friends — something else he did quite well — and we had a wonderful, long talk. Later, there were other visits and once or twice, we met Russell Myers at Santa's Kitchen, the restaurant at Santa Claus Lane, for lunch.

That work we did on Scooby Doo turned out to be the start of a about a forty-year relationship. I wrote and Dan drew stories published by Western Publishing, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Eclipse Comics, Archie Comics and several foreign publishers.

Not once was Dan late with anything. Not once did he disappoint me. And I can think of at least a half-dozen times when, on projects that did not involve me, he was a true hero producing superior work on impossible deadlines. Often, it was because some other artist had botched the work or could not possibly have gotten it done on time. He was just amazing…and we never had an argument of any kind.

Dan didn't live far from Santa Claus Lane…about three miles. It's impossible for me to think about the place without thinking about stopping there on the way to his home…or on the way home from his home…or eating there with him on some visit. The food was awful but the company was always gourmet quality. I can't tell you how much I miss that man.

CLICK HERE TO READ PART 3

Rolling Stone has posted an article about the personal side of Steve Ditko, co-creator of Spider-Man and Doctor Strange (among others) and one of the most gifted and personally-secretive figures in the comic book industry. Since he died in 2018, the world has learned much about him through his family and will learn more.

I read the piece on the Rolling Stone site yesterday and there was much in it that I thought needed additional context or correction. Since I was so busy, I decided I'd get back to it today and write something here…but now it's behind a paywall. I don't want to pay to reread it or to write a lot about an article that you folks can't read once without paying. If you are a subscriber, you can read it here.

Three things I remember from it that I can write about: One is that it's long been part of The Official History that a rift developed between Ditko and Stan Lee that at some point led to Stan refusing to talk to Steve. That, in turn, led to Steve ultimately quitting because, as he put it in one of his much-later writings…

Why should I continue to do all these monthly issues, original story ideas, material, for a man who is too scared, too angry over something, to even see, talk to me?

Ditko had been handing his work in to production manager Sol Brodsky who, in turn, passed it on to Stan. And what he wrote may be true but…

1. Both Stan and Sol told me it was the other way around; that Ditko refused to talk to Stan and would deliver the work to the office on the days when Stan was not there. It was no secret that Stan worked at home on certain days of the week.
2. My pal Steve Sherman and I spent an afternoon with Ditko in 1970 — not all that long after he quit — and he didn't say anything about that. His stated reasons for leaving Marvel then were frustrations with Stan changing his stories, Stan being too often credited as the sole creator and writer of comics that Ditko largely plotted, and with the company heads not making good on promises that he would share in the merchandising and profitability of Spider-Man. And…
3. I met with Stan in that office. If he was in there and didn't want to talk with me but I wanted to talk with him, I would have just walked into his office and confronted him. I don't think he kept his door locked but if he did and Ditko tried to see him, I think Ditko would have mentioned that.

As I said, Ditko's version may be true. I'm not saying it isn't; just that maybe it shouldn't be accepted at face value. Then there's this…

It's also part of the legendary tale of the creation of Spider-Man that Jack Kirby started drawing the first story and Stan stopped him after five pages and turned the job over to Ditko because Stan wanted the character to be a teenager and felt Jack was drawing the character too muscular and heroic. I don't buy that. Here's just some of what's wrong with that narrative…

1. Before Jack started drawing that first story, he drew a presentation piece showing what the character would look like. Stan had okayed it.
2. The story then was about a young orphan kid (roughly early teens) who lived with his aunt and uncle and who gained the powers to turn into the mighty, adult super-hero Spiderman (sans hyphen) at will thanks to a magic ring from a mysterious stranger. It was much the same way young orphan kid Billy Batson could turn when needed into the mighty, adult super-hero Captain Marvel or the way young orphan kid Tommy Troy could turn when needed into the mighty, adult super-hero The Fly. Jack wasn't supposed to be drawing a super-powered teenager. That wasn't the concept then…and a young kid turning into an only-slightly-older teenage super-hero is kind of a weird premise for a comic.

3. Jack and Steve agreed that Jack drew five pages before he was stopped and that the costumed Spiderman only appeared once on those pages — in the first panel. But if that's what Stan wanted, that first panel could have been redrawn by Ditko when he inked it.
4. It could also have been redrawn by Jack. Stan was never shy about asking Jack to redraw things — it was a source of frequent friction between the two men — and he apparently didn't even ask this time. He just decided not to use the five pages…which, by the way, do not seem to exist anymore. Ditko in one article said he thought he threw them away.

5. And Jack could so draw teenage figures. Look at Johnny Storm in Fantastic Four.  In fact, Ditko drew a cover for Amazing Fantasy #15 — the first time the comic-buying public would see the new hero — and Stan tossed it and had Jack draw a new one making Spider-Man more powerful and dynamic.  He also later had Jack redraw the Spider-Man figures that Ditko drew on the covers of Amazing Spider-Man #10 and #35.
6. And lastly for this list, Stan did not hand the same story to Ditko and tell him to redraw it making the character younger. They changed much of the concept of the strip. He was no longer a young kid. He was not able to turn into an adult super-hero at will. There was no magic ring or mysterious stranger. He was instead a teenager (all the time) who had super powers (all the time) and how he got those powers was completely different.

Why the changes?  We may never know for sure but I have what I think is a good guess.  Ditko once wrote…

Stan said Spider-Man would be a teenager with a magic ring that could transform him into an adult hero — Spider-Man. I said it sounded like The Fly, which Joe Simon had done for Archie Publications. I didn't believe Jack was involved with that feature because the issues I had seen lacked the usual Kirby flair.

I'm thinking someone was worried about a lawsuit. Simon was quite litigious and so were the folks who owned Archie. My guess is that once alerted by Ditko, Stan or someone at Marvel looked into it and decided that their new strip bore too much resemblance to The Fly. Simon was somewhat litigious and so was John Goldwater, who owned the Archie company. Ergo, the theory sez, they decided the strip required major changing. Logical deduction, right? Right — but it has this hole in it: I asked both Stan and Jack and neither man recalled that as a concern.

Which doesn't mean it wasn't the reason.  Anyway, I think that Stan didn't decide to make the new spidery hero a full-time teen until after Kirby's pages were discarded and they needed to differentiate the strip from what Simon and Kirby had done.  Something is wrong with the "Jack made him too muscular" explanation. (Note how in Ditko's above-quoted recollection, he recalls Stan saying the strip Jack was then drawing was about "a teenager with a magic ring that could transform him into an adult hero.")

And the third thing that the Rolling Stone article said that brings up another theory is the story that Stan and Steve did that first Spider-Man story in Amazing Fantasy #15 knowing it was the final issue so they got experimental with it. My theory — and it's not just mine; others came up with this — is that they didn't find out it was the final issue until well after it had gone to press.

Which is why #15 tells you twice — once at the end of the Spider-Man story and again on the letters page — to make sure to not miss future issues. It does not say — and this was the kind of hype Stan excelled in — "This is the last issue unless you readers get together and buy lots of copies and tell your friends and floor our publisher with letters demanding more Spider-Man!"

What some of us believe is that after finishing that 11-page Spider-Man origin story that ran in Amazing Fantasy #15, Stan and Steve created a 14-page Spider-Man story about an astronaut that was planned for Amazing Fantasy #16. Then they at least started on a 14-page Spider-Man story for Amazing Fantasy #17 about a villain called The Vulture. In each issue, the lead Spider-Man story would have been followed by a couple of the short non-series fantasy stories that had appeared previously in that comic like the two non-series fantasy stories that ran in #15 after the first Spider-Man story.

But before #16 went to press, the company's publisher Martin Goodman decided to pull the plug on Amazing Fantasy. This would have been before he had any sales figures on #15 and it would not have been unusual for Goodman to do such a thing. He did tend to cancel a book, then see later sales reports and decide to bring it back…especially when he had purchased-but-unpublished material on the shelf.

Soon after, he got some encouraging response (sales figures and letters) for #15 and since he had that already-paid-for Spider-Man material on the shelf, he okayed a new comic called Amazing Spider-Man. #1 featured the astronaut story plus a newly-concocted ten-page Spider-Man story to fill out the issue. And #2 featured the Vulture story followed by another newly-created ten-page Spider-Man story. That would explain why Amazing Spider-Man didn't feature one book-length story — like all the other Marvel super-hero titles did in their first issues and almost every one thereafter — until #3.

There were a few other things in the Rolling Stone piece that I might have something to say about. It's overall a good article and its author reveals some things I'd never heard before. If it comes out from behind the paywall, make sure you read it. It might even be worth buying a subscription. I just think there are some illogical things about the way the story of how Spider-Man was created is usually told.

Marty Golia has a question about Western Publishing…

I have a question about Western Publishing, but realize it concerns a section of their business that you may not have had much/any contact with.

During the 50s and 60s, Dell and Gold Key put out a lot — a lot — of comics based on TV shows and movies, either as their own title or as part of the "Four-Color" series, and many of these seem short-lived. Some were based on shows that had some "kid-appeal" (The Danny Thomas Show, any number of Westerns), but others were based on more adult fare (Burke's Law, The Gale Storm Show).

So, my question is: To arrange licenses for so many titles at a pretty rapid pace, did Western have contacts at the networks or studios who were able to set up a "standard" deal as shows were announced? And was this part of a strategy to keep the pipeline filled, whether there seemed to be an audience for things or not?

I think I can answer this…and also point out that the Burke's Law comic book was published by Dell after it had severed ties with Western. And to respond to the last question first: They put out what they thought would sell and a lot of that was based on knowing what had sold for them in the past.

When it came to landing licenses for comics based on movies and TV shows, Western had at least three tremendous advantages over companies like DC, Marvel and Archie…four if you count the fact that some companies simply weren't interested in publishing characters and properties they didn't own. But here are the other three that come to mind…

1. Western had an office in Los Angeles. Actually, for most of the fifties and sixties, it was located in Beverly Hills on the same prestigious block as the local branch of the Friars Club, hangout of a lot of folks in show business. DC and Marvel had no such offices. Representatives of the movie and TV studios could visit those offices and Western staffers could visit the studios. That made for closer relationships.

Before Alex Toth (based in Los Angeles) drew that comic of The Danny Thomas Show, he visited the set of The Danny Thomas Show. Before Dan Spiegle (based in Santa Barbara, an easy drive) drew the Maverick comic book, he visited the set of Maverick. DC was not going to pay to send an artist to Hollywood.

2. Western did more than comic books. Let's say you were working for a TV show or movie and it was your job to arrange for merchandise and promotional marketing for that movie or TV show. If you went to DC or Marvel or any of several other comic book publishers, they might make you an offer to a do a comic book. If you went to Western, they might make you an offer to do a comic book, a coloring book, some activity books, some hard or softcover kids' books, a "color by number" book, a "paint with water" book, a jigsaw puzzle, a paper doll kit, a Big Little Book, etc. Comic book companies that published only comic books didn't make all those deals.

At one point, Western even did "scratch-and-sniff" books.  Winnie the Pooh could sit down to eat some honey on a page of the book and you could scratch a little patch on that page and smell the honey.

3. Western was with Disney. And if you were in that line o' work, you were constantly studying what the Disney organization did because they were the undisputed masters of merchandising a movie or TV show. Nobody did it better and the core of much of that was their close relationship with Western Publishing, aka Western Printing and Lithography. If the guys at Disney trusted 'em, so would you.

And I suppose there were other reasons. If you had a property that appealed to kids, it made sense to deal with the company that handled that kind of thing not only with Disney but with Warner Brothers, Walter Lantz, Jay Ward, Hanna-Barbera and others. Those animation firms were pretty happy with their relationships with Western.

The company had a good rep. In the seventies, though Western was on the downslide, the Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate very much regretted moving their licenses from Western to DC and then to Marvel. The Hanna-Barbera folks very much regretted moving their licenses from Western to Charlton and then to Marvel. (I was involved in recovery efforts from both of those disasters.)

Western was an amazing company. I used to say — and I guess I still say — they did a lot of things right that other comic book companies did wrong but eventually, they were done in by doing a lot of things wrong that other comic book companies did right. I'll probably be elaborating on those right and wrong moves in future posts on this blog.

Did you know that Western, alone among the major comic book publishers, was as far as I know alone in having pension plans for some of their freelance writers and artists as well as incentive plans that paid bonuses to such people…and they did this at a time when DC or Marvel would have laughed in your face if you suggested such a thing?

It's 1959 and someone thinks — not for the last time and maybe not even for the first time — it would be a good idea to adapt Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series into a weekly TV show. So they cast Kurt Kasznar (not a bad choice) as Nero Wolfe and William Shatner as his sidekick, Archie Goodwin. Not a bad attempt if you ask me…

The Comics Code Authority came into existence in 1954 because many comic book publishers feared that government regulation of their product was a' comin'. Most of the major publishers formed an organization called the Comics Magazine Association of America, drew up rules as to what could and could not appear in a Code-approved comic and hired someone to whom each comic had to be submitted for approval before publication.

It was technically a voluntary measure but a lot of smaller publishers quickly found out that it was tough to get distribution and/or advertising if they didn't join. One example: At about the time The Code was instituted, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were attempting to start a new comic book publishing firm called Mainline. According to both men, their distributor, Leader News, told them that if they didn't comply with the C.M.A.A., their books would never get on newsstands.

They went along with it and Mainline's books still didn't get decent distribution, at least in part because Leader News had also distributed Bill Gaines' E.C. line of crime and horror comics like Tales From the Crypt. Those books were largely killed by The Code but both Joe and Jack felt that the major publishers still had it in for Gaines and his distributor. Several other small publishers also folded despite displaying Code approval. Both Joe and Jack felt that was one of the reasons the major publishers banded together: To drive out smaller publishers.

But there were at least two companies then publishing that thrived despite refusing to sign onto The Code. Those two were Gilberton (which put out Classics Illustrated and other somewhat educational comics) and Dell (which put out Disney and a lot of TV and movie-based comics). Both those firms felt that the content of their books protected them and that they should let the wholesomeness of their lines be used to help the companies that had, as one editor who'd worked for Dell back then put it, "damn near destroyed our entire industry."

Later, when Dell Comics split into two lines — Dell and Western Publishing's Gold Key Comics (explained here) — neither outfit subscribed to The Code. Several times in interviews, whoever was the spokesperson for The Code at the moment would be asked about those two holdouts and they'd say something like, "Those companies choose not to participate but they've assured us they unofficially follow our guidelines," whereupon someone from Dell and/or Western would fire off a letter to the C.M.A.A. which said something like, "That's a lie and if you say it again, we'll sue your sorry asses!"

The Comics Code seal of approval/compliance was designed by the great designer of logos for DC Comics, Ira Schnapp. It appeared on the other publishers' wares until Marvel dropped it and stopped submitting their books in 2001 and the other companies withdrew over the next decade. And that was the end of the Comics Code.

A reader of this site, C.K. Bloch, wrote to ask me a whole bunch of questions about the Comics Code and I answered most of them in the above paragraphs. But he also wanted to know…

Do you know of a lot of cases where good stories or art were ruined by the Comics Code demanding changes?

Nothing in my career but I started in 1970. At the inception of The Code, that seems to have happened a lot. The C.M.A.A. had to prove that its rules had teeth and so they demanded way more changes than they did later. Arnold Drake, who started writing for DC around 1956, said that the editors there sometimes put in dialogue or images that were specifically intended to give The Code something to cut. There was also this problem: At the moment The Code was instituted, every publisher had a lot of material in the pipeline that was written and maybe drawn when those rules did not exist. Much of that material had to be laundered to pass The Code.

At Marvel, the guy stuck with making a lot of the alterations on as-yet-unpublished material was the Production Artist, Sol Brodsky. He not only relettered and redrew a lot of stories then in the works, he was told make "before" and "after" stats that the C.M.A.A. could put in press releases to show how the new standards were cleaning up the business.

In the mid-seventies, I had a long talk with Sol about how The Code had affected the business and I came to the conclusion — this is my view but he agreed with it — that the main impact The Code had was that editors, writers and artists more-or-less censored themselves. And they may at times have erred too much on the side of timidity.

Comic books have always been a business where things are being sent to press at the last moment and there were penalty fees if your book got to the engraver or to press late. So people tended to also err on the side of caution. Most did not try things that they were afraid might cause the Code Administrators to demand changes. Changes took time that they often did not have.

I experienced something similar when I worked in animation for Hanna-Barbera or Ruby-Spears or other companies making Saturday morning cartoons. Most shows operated on tight deadlines. If production on a show had to be halted to make changes demanded by the Standards and Practices divisions at the networks, a few days might be lost…and those few days might cost the show a lot of money. It might even jeopardize an episode making its air date.

At least a half-dozen times when I worked for H-B, the network folks (especially at ABC then) would ask for changes and I would talk them out of them…and even if it was only took a day or two to get them to say, "Okay, leave it in," Bill Hanna would already have made the alterations in a rush to get the show off to Korea or Taiwan or wherever it was being animated.

In that conversation with Sol, he admitted to me that Stan Lee or someone else in the office would decide to rewrite something or have something redrawn…and perhaps it was a creative decision or perhaps they were afraid something might not get past The Code and the book was running late. But the change would be made and if anyone asked or the writer or artist objected, the excuse was "The Comics Code made us change it!"

Over the years, I asked several folks who edited comics in the sixties and seventies, the following question: "Did you ever make a change in story or art and when the writer or artist complained, you fibbed and said the Comics Code had demanded it?" Offhand, I recall asking that of Julius Schwartz, George Kashdan, Joe Kubert, Len Wein, Archie Goodwin and maybe one or two others. All of them said yes. And of course, I asked Stan Lee and of course, his answer was, "I don't remember but probably." You got that answer a lot when you asked Stan a question about almost anything. He once said it when I asked him if he'd gone to lunch yet.

I am not saying the Code did not at times insist on changes…and often stupid changes. I am saying that I think it got blamed for a lot of changes it did not demand, especially in later years. And I think its main damage was that its mere presence — the fact that someone was going to look over the work and look for things that were in questionable taste — inhibited a lot of writers and artists and editors.

Ever since that conversation with Sol, I've been skeptical when I hear, "Oh, the Comics Code made us change that" or the assumption by readers that when something was changed that it was the restrictive, puritanical Comics Code at work. Here's an example. At left below, you see the cover of Captain America #101 as it first appeared, drawn by Jack Kirby and inked by Syd Shores. At right, we see the cover of an issue that reprinted the same material years later. You will notice that the head of the villain, The Red Skull, is different…

Comic book scholars noticed the difference and the theory/assumption or whatever you wanted to call it, went like this: Jack forgot and drew the old, uglier version of the Red Skull from the forties. When the artwork was submitted to the Comics Code, they thought the villain looked too scary and demanded that it be redrawn…which it was, not by Kirby or Shores. Years later, when the material was reprinted, Marvel used a stat of the cover as it stood before submission to The Code and whoever was at The Code then saw the material differently and let it pass.

That is all entirely possible but I have an alternate theory. When Syd Shores was inking Kirby on Captain America, he often made changes in Jack's work which Stan didn't like. Mr. Shores had been told that any issue now, he would stop being just the inker on the comic and it would take over the penciling of the book so that Kirby could be rotated to another project. That transfer of power never happened but when it was the plan, Shores took some liberties with Jack's art from time to time. And more than a few times, Stan had the work retouched back closer to the way Jack did it.

I don't think we know which artist — Kirby or Shores — made the Red Skull look like he did in the forties when both men drew him. If I had to, I'd bet on Shores but I think this was retouched before the folks at the C.M.A.A. offices saw it. Stan Lee often (very often) would look at a cover that was being ready for publication and ask to have the character's face redone by a staff artist, usually John Romita Sr. If you can't spot a lot of touch-ups on Marvel covers of that era, you aren't paying attention. Romita redraws abound and when they aren't by him, they're by Marie Severin or Herb Trimpe or someone else. Some editors just love to tamper.

Later when the reprint was sent to press, a pre-retouch stat was used but Stan wasn't in charge of covers by then…and if he did see it, by then he didn't care. And the Comics Code never cared.

There was plenty wrong with the Comics Code and we can talk more about that at another time. I just think that arguably-necessary-at-one-time institution didn't make all the obvious changes that comic fans think. And again, a lot of changes were made (or work softened) because someone was afraid of what The Code would say…which is not the same thing as The Code demanding something be changed. That's what I think.

As everyone knows, the character of Spider-Man debuted in the fifteenth and final issue of Amazing Fantasy, which reached newsstands on or about June 5, 1962. Amazing Fantasy was only Amazing Fantasy for that one issue. Before that, it was called Amazing Adventures for a while and then it was called Amazing Adult Fantasy. The change of titles and formats were (obviously) because it didn't sell all that well.

Stan Lee used to always say that since his publisher, Martin Goodman, had decided #15 would be the last issue, he and artist Steve Ditko decided to get a little experimental. With the attitude of "What do we have to lose?" they gave the first half of #15 over to this new character called Spider-Man. They did that one story and when the issue got the reaction it got, the publisher was willing to launch the character in his own comic book. Amazing Spider-Man #1 came out on or about December 12 of 1962.

That's how the story is always told and I tend not to believe it. There is evidence supporting the theory that when Lee and Ditko did that first story, they had no idea that that would be the last issue of Amazing Fantasy; that that decision had not been made yet. There is, in fact, a blurb in that issue urging you to purchase the next issue. I believe the decision to terminate the title was made not only after they'd finished the story in #15 but after they'd finished a Spider-Man story for #16 and done at least some work on one for #17. When Spider-Man got his own comic, those stories appeared in that book.

The reasons some of us historian-types believe this will be discussed at some later date. It is a fact though that Amazing Spider-Man #1 came out around 12/12/62 and that Amazing Spider-Man #2 followed on (approximately) 2/12/63. Here are the covers of those issues. See if you can notice the big change between #1 and #2. Go on. I'll bet you can find it…

You see it? Starting with #2, the comic — in fact, every comic published by Marvel — featured a little box in the upper left-hand corner with an image of the star(s) of the comic and the word "Marvel," which was not seen on their comics until then.

(Oh — and before we leave that first issue, let me point something out. See where it says "2 Great Feature-Length Spider-Man Thrillers"?  Well, in case anyone asks you, "feature-length" at Marvel in those days was 10-14 pages.)

Moving on: Those corner boxes were important in establishing Marvel as a brand.  Before they came along, if you liked the comics they put out, you didn't really know what company it was that had put them out.  They had a little "MC" on the cover but you had no idea what that meant.  If you looked inside the comic in the little legal stuff text, it only told you which of Goodman's many shell companies the comic was officially being published through. There was some sort of legal and/or tax advantage to doing it that way.

So Amazing Spider-Man #1 was officially published by Non-Pareil Publishing Corp. while the same month's issue of Fantastic Four — which obviously was published by the same firm — was officially from Canam Publishers Sales Corp. Meanwhile, The Incredible Hulk was published by Zenith Publishing Corp. and that comic with Thor in it was published by Atlas Magazines, Inc. and that same month, the Hulk was guest-starring in the Fantastic Four comic and all those books seemed to be from the same folks and they all cross-plugged each other and…

This kind of thing can be very confusing when you're ten years old. Especially since I liked to file my comic book collection: The DCs in this pile, the Dells in that one, the Archies in that one…

Stan Lee once said that the idea for the corner boxes came from artist Steve Ditko and that once they adopted them, it caused sales to soar. Ditko, it is said, got the idea when he went to his local newsstand in New York to buy comics and found it difficult to find the ones he wanted on those racks. Most racks did not display the full cover of each comic. A lot of them only showed you the top left corner of the comic.

So the story is that Mr. Ditko thought something like, "Hey, we should put a little picture of Spider-Man in that space on the Amazing Spider-Man comic and a little picture of Thor on the comic he's in…" and I think I know where he got that idea. If he was browsing newsstands for comics, he would have seen such pictures on comics from the Harvey Comics Group. In 1962, they'd been doing this for about eight years. Look at this…

And while you're at it, look at this…

Beginning around 1954, Harvey put those little "stamp" images on all their comics that featured recurring characters. A few years later when they began marketing cartoons of some of those characters on television, the stamps changed into little TV screens but the principle was the same: Put a picture of the character(s) in the upper left hand corner to attract potential buyers.

Ditko couldn't helped but see this and he also would have seen Gold Key Comics and Charlton Comics and maybe a few others putting the name of the comic in the upper left hand corner. He especially couldn't have missed Charlton doing it because he was drawing for that line and even drawing a lot of their covers.

And were those little pictures then the key to Marvel's sudden spurt in sales? I suspect not…and I base that suspecting-not on the fact that other companies did not race to do likewise. The industry since Day One had been a place where publishers looked at what was selling for their competitors and shamelessly aped what seemed to be selling. Everyone had easy access to other companies' sales figures and DC especially would have noticed a sudden spurt in Marvel's sales because DC was then Marvel's distributor. But DC didn't try anything of the sort on their covers until 1970 and they gave it up after less than a year.

No, I think three things began steadily raising sales at Martin Goodman's company around the time of Amazing Spider-Man #2. I think it was the quality of their comics, the sense that that line was expanding (which was kind of exciting) and, most of all, that they finally put a name on that line. Suddenly, us kids buying them could say, "Hey, have you seen the new Marvels?" It was Basic Branding 101. If you have a product people want, give them a name by which they can ask for it.

They say that one picture is worth a thousand words…and maybe some pictures are. But in this case, I think one word was worth a thousand pictures. And an awful lot of money.

I have occasionally mentioned the Ivar Theater in Hollywood on this site. It's an unremarkable little theater that at various times has seated between 250 and 350 and has gone through many changes.

It was built in 1951 by a gent named Yegishe Harout who owned various restaurants in the area and for twenty years, it featured plays that online sources tell me included The Barretts of Wimpole Street, The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Pajama Game. I believe Billy Barnes had one of his famous revues at the Ivar in the early sixties.

Bill Bixby played there in The Fantasticks and later in Under the Yum-Yum Tree. Stop the World, I Want To Get Off played there, as you can see in the above photo. And I know of two other plays that graced its stage. I know because I saw them — one of them twice.

In the late sixties, my parents took me there to see a production of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple. Jesse White starred as Oscar, Roy Stuart played Felix and it was directed by Neil's brother Danny Simon, who was in some ways the inspiration for Felix. I've written about it a few times here (here, for instance) and guessed then it was in 1967. I also reproduced this ad…

It later dawned on me that the ad gave me a clue as to when I saw the play. It says, as you can see unless the image is missing, that the play opened on Thursday, August 24.  In the late sixties, August 24 only fell on a Thursday in 1967…so I was right.  We saw it not long after it opened and it was a wonderful production. A lot of my love of live theater and that play and its playwright came from that evening at the Ivar.

The musical You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown played there from March 12, 1968 to November 9, 1969, which was one of the longer runs a play ever had at the Ivar.  This is the one I saw twice.  I no longer have or can find my Playbill from either visit but I found online this list of the cast members: Gary Burghoff, Judy Kaye, Russ Caldwell, Hal James Pederson, Nicole Jaffe and Robert Towers. I have no idea if that's the cast from opening night or closing night or if any roles changed hands in-between. Probably, some did.

And yes, playing Charlie Brown was the same Gary Burghoff who played Radar in the movie and the TV series, M*A*S*H. According to IMDB, the movie filmed from April 19, 1969 to June 22, 1969…so Mr. Burghoff either took time off from the play or was working two jobs for a while. I'm about 80% certain he was in it when I saw it the second time, which I'm 100% certain was its next-to-last performance on Saturday evening, November 8.

The first time, I went with my parents. The second time, I took a girl named Lynne on a first date. It was my third first date and while I would never claim I ever got real good at first dates — or second or third, etc. — I was a lot worse when I was 17 than I was later. And before your imagination runs away with you: No, nothing happened that would have riled the Comics Code had it happened in an issue of Archie.

Still, I had a great time and I made a mental note to keep an eye on what was playing at the Ivar for future dating purposes. Alas, I never took another date there. Two years after Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and Snoopy departed, naked women and porn queens took the stage at the Ivar and it turned into…well, certainly not the kind of place your parents would take you or you'd take a first date or any date. And now that I have your attention, I'll tell you that this is a two-part story and the conclusion should appear here in the next few days. Maybe.

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"Tam" wrote to ask…

Obviously those great early MAD parodies of DC superheroes, such as "Superduperman" and "Bats Man" from the 1950s are pretty well known but did MAD ever parody Marvel comics (prior to them appearing on the screen) and if so, what were the earliest examples?

Nope. MAD pretty much gave up parodying comic books of any sort when MAD became a magazine and when Al Feldstein took over from Harvey Kurtzman as its editor. For those who don't know, MAD was a 10-cent comic book sold on comic book racks for its first 23 issues and in those issues, Kurtzman as editor-writer did "Superduperman" (MAD #4), "Black and Blue Hawks" (#5), "Melvin of the Apes" (#6), "Bat Boy and Rubin" (#8), "Woman Wonder" (#10), "Starchie" (#12), "Plastic Sam" (#14") and a few others, plus a number of parodies of newspaper comic strips.

There were no Marvel parodies because in those years, Marvel wasn't publishing anything worth parodying. When MAD became a magazine, they began aiming at more widely-read (or widely-watched) targets. Newspaper strips were okay. Comic books weren't. Feldstein, in fact, was very pleased to be out of the comic book business and didn't even look at what other companies were publishing. When they did spoof something like Superman, it was the Superman newspaper strip they were parodying, not the concurrent comic books. They did almost nothing about Marvel until, long after Feldstein had retired, they took on a few Marvel movies.

If you'd asked Al just before he left why they didn't do comic book parodies, I suspect he'd have said something like "MAD is selling over a million copies per issue. The best-selling comic book sells 300,000 or less. Most of our readers won't be familiar with what we'd be making fun of."