Search Results for: lionel ziprin

So here's where we are with the mystery of Lionel Ziprin, who claimed to have written war comics for Dell Comics in the late forties and fifties that sold in the millions and paid him $10 a page.

A few of you wrote in to suggest Mr. Ziprin was talking about Dell Comics of the World War II years like USA is Ready (1941), War Comics (1940), War Heroes (1942), War Ships (1942) and War Stories (1942). I don't think these are what he was talking about. They didn't come out in the late forties and the fifties, they didn't cover all different wars, they didn't sell in the millions and they certainly didn't pay $10 a page for scripts. Also, Ziprin said he wrote movie adaptations, and Dell published very few movie adaptations until the mid-fifties.

A lot of you wrote in to suggest he wrote Dell Comics of the mid-sixties like Air War Stories (1964), Combat (1961), Guerilla War (1965), Jungle War Stories (1962) and World War Stories (1965). Again, these books don't fit the timeline, they didn't sell anywhere near "millions" and they didn't pay $10 a page for script. They were also, according to most sources including Paul S. Newman, largely written by Paul S. Newman. There weren't all that many published, either. On the other hand, Dell in that same period did do a lot of movie adaptations…and did employ some writers who have never been identified.

So if Ziprin said he wrote for Dell "through the late forties and into the fifties," might he have meant 1961-1965? Possible. One of the challenges one faces when one tries to dope all this stuff out is that people err, people exaggerate…and sometimes, they just plain lie. It would not be at all unprecedented if Mr. Ziprin inflated the amount of money he was paid, though it would be a little odd, given that he was simultaneously complaining about having to sign away his rights to the work and not receive credit. Usually if you're bitching about how poorly you were treated in a job, you understate the pay. (Dell in the sixties probably paid everyone around $5 a page for script…or less. For a time, Don Segall was their star writer and he got $5 a page.)

It would also not shock me if he or anyone overestimated sales…in this case, by at least 400%. The date error seems less likely to me…but then again, we don't have a direct quote from Ziprin that the work in question was done in the "late forties and into the fifties." Someone else wrote that and maybe that person got it wrong. I'm correcting stuff like that all the time in obits about comic book people.

So that's as far as I can take it, I think. The only other "lead" would be for someone to call Sam Glanzman, who drew many of those war comics for Dell in the 1961-1965 period and see if the name "Lionel Ziprin" triggers any recollection. Anyone in touch with Sam these days?

My longtime friend (30+ years) Tom Stern writes about that photo I posted of the Flesh Gordon premiere, and also about the one I took of Harvey Kurtzman…

There is a very simple reason you don't remember taking that picture at the premiere of Flesh Gordon: you didn't take it. I did. We had both gone that day to Westwood; you to write about the movie, and me to take photos for you.

And while I don't have a photo of the young lady who wanted to play Little Annie Fanny, I do have some of the woman who decided to get her body autographed. I still remember Harvey's reaction, which was to yell "Whoopee!" flip the marker in the air, catch it in mid-spin, and write (starting on her hip) "Best of Luck from Harvey Kurtzman and Little Annie…" (pulling down the back of her shorts) "…Fanny."

I remember that. Harvey looked like it was the high point of his life…and I believe that woman's ass is up for bids in the next Heritage Auction. Anyway, my apologies for thinking I took that photo. I was there and I had a slide of it amidst hundreds I did recall taking at other locales so I assumed what anyone would assume.

Then: You all might recall a discussion here of a man named Lionel Ziprin, whose obits said he wrote Dell Comics. We were wondering which ones he'd written and I just received this from J. Reed…

I knew Lionel Ziprin and spoke with him about his comic writing for Dell. He never told me about any of the WW II titles he worked on. He did tell me that he wrote several issues of Kona, Monarch of Monster Isle but was uncredited. One issue that he told me about featured a creature that could pull itself apart into 22 pieces and be reformed as something else. This was an allusion— for Lionel anyway, probably not to the readers of Kona — to the kabala and the formation of words from the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Does that ring a bell?

No, but I haven't read a Kona in twenty-some-odd years. I'll bet I hear from someone who knows which issue, though.

In any case, this would indicate that Ziprin worked for Dell in the mid-sixties, so the bio of him had events somewhat out of sequence. The war comics he wrote were probably for Dell's titles of the same period like Combat…so some of those books which have usually been credited to Paul S. Newman were probably written by Mr. Ziprin.

And since he worked for Dell then, he had to have been misremembering or exaggerating when he said he got ten dollars a page for his scripts. Dell paid around half that in the sixties. He was also far from reality when he said, "…I was America's best-selling writer of comic books, my comic books sold in the millions of copies." Dell, back in the fifties, did have a few comics that sold in the millions — mainly Disney titles — and it's unlikely but possible that he worked on a few of them. Dell of the sixties was an entirely different company (see explanation here) and it never had a comic that sold above around 300,000 — and even that was rare. Kona sold about half that.

Thanks for the info, though. These people never received the credit they deserved. Sorry Mr. Ziprin didn't get more before he left us.

Here's a little puzzler or possible area of research for us comic historians…one brought to my attention by Scott Edelman. Last week, a gentleman named Lionel Ziprin passed away at the age of 84. I had never heard of Mr. Ziprin but he was apparently rather well known as a New York-based writer of poetry, mysticism and other heady topics, and the center of some artistic circles. He also apparently had a connection to the comic book industry. In his New York Times obit, it says, among other things…

Physically unfit for military duty, Mr. Ziprin began writing poetry after attending Brooklyn College and worked at an assortment of extremely odd jobs. He helped create a short-lived puppet show called "Kabbalah the Cook" for television. For $10 apiece, he wrote the text for a series of war comic books published by Dell.

And over on Mr. Ziprin's website, Scott found the following…

Through the late forties and into the fifties, Ziprin also cranked out comic books for Dell Publishing. At the time, DC Comics had a lock on the superhero genre. "You couldn't write about Superman or space. Dell made contracts with all the movie companies and I wrote a series of comic books on every battle in the Pacific and European theatres. They gave me the theme, or movies would come out, big movies; they handed me the script, and I had to put it into comic book form. All I got was ten dollars a page: six boxes, balloons and lines, and I had to sign away everything, that it was not my property, no credit. But I was America's best-selling writer of comic books, my comic books sold in the millions of copies."

Hmm. Like I said, I never heard of Mr. Ziprin and have seen no mention of him in any of the comic book history projects. That last sentence above is an obvious exaggeration. Dell had, during the period mentioned, a number of comics selling a million copies per issue and one or two that sold upwards of two million…but those were of name characters, mostly Disney, and if you ever wrote Donald Duck, you'd certainly mention that any time you talked about your work.

I am, however, not here to suggest Ziprin never worked for Dell. I assume he did, and there certainly are plenty of folks who did who have never been identified. I'm just a little fuzzy on what he worked on and when. I can't think of a series of comic books that firm published about "every battle in the Pacific and European theatres," especially not one done in the late forties and into the fifties. They weren't paying ten bucks a page for script back then, either. (As an aside: At that point, if you were working on the comics published by Dell, you were actually working for a separate company called Western Printing and Lithography. A more detailed explanation of the relationship between the two firms appears here.)

It would seem more likely to me that he worked for Western in the late fifties when they were really cranking out the movie adaptations. A few of them did sell into the millions and if the material was complicated, they might have upped the money occasionally to ten bucks a page. All those, however, were edited out of Western Publishing's Los Angeles office, which rarely employed writers outside of town. (They had a New York office and an L.A. office, and the only times I know of a writer or artist crossing over were cases where someone had a contract with one office and there was some special reason to have him do a job for the other.) The obit for Ziprin says he lived in New York until the late sixties when he moved to Berkeley.

So it's all kind of puzzling. Anyone here have any other ideas? Am I forgetting some Dell-published war series that would make all this make more sense?