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I'm 74 and comic books have been an important part of my life for about 70 years. My parents bought them for me because…well, I think if I'd asked for a Goodyear blimp and a live hippopotamus, my father would have at least tried to purchase them for me. He was that kind of father. Fortunately for him, I preferred comic books — and this was back when they cost a dime apiece.
Comics were not all I read. I loved books from the library and I was always reading — and soon writing — a little above the level that was normal for kids of whatever age I was at the time.
I vaguely remember friends of my parents and a relative or two questioning whether it was good parenting to let your kids read comic books. My folks' response was that Mark was ahead of his classmates in reading skills so something was working there. They weren't going to change what they were doing. If they had, I might have wound up in some other profession than the one I've been in since 1969.
My interest in comics was less in the characters and what they were doing than in how a comic book was made. I'm a fan of Superman and Batman but I think I'm more a fan of the men — for a long time, they were all men — who wrote and drew the Superman and Batman comics I avidly collected. And the Marvels and the Gold Keys and…well, just about everything.
I was and I remain particularly fascinated by the ones who formed the Talent Pool that created comic books for the first three or four decades of that industry. They all grew up either during the Great Depression or in the following years when the nation was still reeling from that dark period. And like all adults when I was a kid, they also had their lives influenced irrevocably by World War II. That was true of those who served but also those who didn't.
During the many conversations I had with Jack Kirby, he answered all my questions. A lot of 'em were about the comic book industry that he entered in its earliest days and impacted so much. His answers usually had a way though of getting around to the battles he fought in the war and the battles he fought, before and after his time in the service, to escape poverty. That's why I was so happy recently to see this at a street corner where, as a kid, he used to sell newspapers and apples…
Now, let's talk about another comic book artist of roughly the same era — a man named Mike Sekowsky…
Six years Jack's junior, Mike Sekowsky went through the same challenges to make a living though he did not serve in the military. I asked him once if he had and he said, "No, I had it worse. I was working for Stan Lee." During his career, he worked just about everywhere and drew every kind of comic book one could draw…with one notable exception.
He drew like Kirby for Timely (Marvel) comics. He drew like Dan Barry for DC Comics. He drew like Alex Toth for Standard Comics. He drew like the other Dell Comics artists for Dell Comics, even doing funny animal funnies. Wherever there was paying work, he drew the way the guy who did the hiring wanted his comics to look. But I'm not sure that, among the hundreds upon hundreds of comic books he drew, he ever drew any like Mike Sekowsky.
The comic book business did that to a lot of guys. They never had much time to pursue and develop their own natural inclinations and styles. That all-important paycheck depended on giving some editor what he wanted in the style he wanted. Charles Schulz first made a living by lettering the work of others. Imagine if that had kept him so busy that he never had time to draw children with large heads and a beagle fighting World War I from the safety of his doghouse roof.
I have one of those theories that no one can ever prove right or wrong that a lot of the men who were in the comic book industry before I was (1970), were like Charles Schulz lettering for a living. Or imagine if Charles Addams had spent his life inking super-hero comics…or if the need to buy the necessities of life had steered Sergio Aragonés into forsaking his delightful style of (mostly) pantomime cartooning and learning to draw realistic-looking war comics.
Or, thinking of MAD artists drawing war comics, what if Mort Drucker had kept doing those for his entire career and never ventured into humor and celebrity caricatures?
There comes a moment in most lives when you need an answer to this question: "What do you want to do when you grow up?" Not everyone comes upon an easy, natural response. When I attended my 25-year high school reunion — which for some reason was held 28 years after we all graduated — everyone was asking everyone else what they were doing for a living. I was amazed how many guys I knew when we were teenagers now said things like "I'm trying to get my shit together and find something to do that I like."
I was more or less set in my goal when I was still in elementary school. These fellows (ages 45-47) still didn't have an answer to that very significant question a few decades later. They had jobs and some of them made very good livings in those jobs. But were they the right jobs?
Reading comics all those years, I of course had favorite artists. One of them was Mike Sekowsky. Not everyone liked his work. It wasn't slick. When he drew Superman in the Justice League of America comic book, it didn't look like Curt Swan's beautiful, balletic version. (Then again, Sekowsky's Superman looked more to me like a guy who could smash his way through a brick wall.)
I liked the stories Sekowsky drew. I think that when he was at his best — which he often was not — he "told the story" better than most guys who could draw anatomically-perfect and poised heroes. And once I got to know him, he was the guy who caused me to see a marked difference between someone who had natural, latent drawing ability and someone who learned how to fake it. Which was kind of what I was doing any time I was called upon to draw something.
