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If you haven't read Part 1 and Part 2 yet, read Part 1 and Part 2 before you read Part 3, which is this part, the final part…

I only met Frank Robbins once and then only for about fifteen minutes. It was either 1975 or 1976 and it was at a cocktail party staged by ACBA during that year's New York Comic Art Convention. Those initials stood for "The Academy of Comic Book Arts," which was a short-lived society for professionals in the field.

So I was standing there, not having a cocktail — which is what I do at cocktail parties — and a man I'd never seen before in my life approached me. He asked if I was Mark Evanier and when I owned up to it, he said, "I understand you're a Vince Colletta exorcist." I begged his pardon and ask him what in the world he meant.

He said, "I understand you were responsible for getting Vince Colletta moved off inking Jack Kirby's pencils at DC."

For a moment, I thought this might be some relative of Colletta's preparing to sock me in the gut or something but I said, "I guess so." Whereupon the man extended his right hand in friendship and said, "I'm Frank Robbins. How is it done?"

Much of the fifteen-or-so minutes was spent talking about inkers. I asked him who he'd prefer to have ink his work and he answered, "Me and only me." By that, he meant Frank Robbins, not me. He went on to say that one thing he didn't like about doing comic books was the whole idea of one artist penciling and another guy — often, a stranger — finishing the work: "I don't understand why anyone with any artistic talent at all would want someone else finishing their drawings or would want to finish someone else's drawings." He was not the only penciler or inker I've met who felt this way.

Another thing he said he didn't like about doing comics: Being switched from strip to strip. This is an approximate quote: "I like to really understand the characters I'm drawing and once I learn the characters on one book, they move me to another one." When years later Mike Sekowsky said that line to me about being a chess piece, I immediately thought of Frank Robbins.

Frank and I talked a bit about Jack Kirby that day. He loved Jack and the feeling, I assured him, was mutual. He also told me about his plans to retire to Mexico and paint. By whenever this encounter was, those plans were very much at the "probable" stage. He seemed like a nice man who took great pride in his work and I wished I could have talked with him longer. I did remind him that depending where he wound up living in Mexico, it might be a short commute to the annual comic book convention in San Diego.

I told him I was sure I could persuade the con to invite him as a guest. He thanked me for the thought but said that if and when he relocated to Mexico, it would be to put comics behind him.

By 1977, Johnny Hazard had lost enough newspapers that he and his syndicate decided jointly to put it behind him and to end its 33 year run. The last installment ran in papers on August 20, 1977. He finished out his Marvel contract early the following year and, as wished, moved to Mexico — to San Miguel de Allende, located in the far eastern part of Guanajuato, to be exact. There, he produced a great many paintings, some of which still hang in galleries around the world.

As far as I know, he never drew another comic book or comic strip though he had many offers. That's what I heard from Alex Toth, the only person I knew who kept in touch with him. Alex supplied Frank's address via which I got him invited to the comic convention — an invite that he politely declined. San Miguel de Allende, it turned out, is about 1,600 miles from San Diego so maybe that was a factor in his decision. Or maybe he simply didn't want to discuss the work he'd done in what by then he may have regarded as a previous life.

His run as a comic book artist for Marvel only lasted a little over four years during which he indeed averaged two comics a month…so roughly a hundred stories. I think I've now seen more than a hundred Facebook threads in which someone is losing it over the fact that Frank Robbins briefly drew some super-hero comics almost a half-century ago. It's like their whole childhoods were scarred by the site of a slightly-spongy Captain America or a Daredevil with unrealistic anatomy…as if most other super-hero artists drew the realistic kind.

It bothers me to see so much ire directed at Mr. Robbins for not being John Buscema or Curt Swan, never at the editorial decision to place him on a certain feature with someone else finishing his work. They think he was untalented. As I keep saying here, I think he was miscast…and in the theater or in film, when an actor is miscast, you blame the person-in-charge who miscast him or maybe the business realities that forced the miscasting.

In comics, a lot of that has been because the company was really stingy with their rates. I once asked Sol Brodsky, who had a lot to do with who drew or inked Marvel Comics of the sixties, why a certain artist was employed as an inker. I should have known what he'd say: "Because we were desperate and I couldn't find anyone else who'd work for what the publisher would allow us to pay."

And sometimes, a comic looks like the artist knocked it out as fast as humanly possible…which indeed he may have done because the company needed that artist to knock it out as fast as humanly possible. To be fair, some of the best comics ever done were truly knocked out as fast as humanly possible but that's not a reason to make people do that. And sometimes, oddball "casting" results in something wonderful…but again, that's not the best way to do things.

Frank Robbins passed away at the age of 77 on November 28, 1994 from a heart attack. Alex Toth gleaned from their correspondence that Robbins couldn't have been happier in those last years of his life, painting to please only himself. I've seen photos of some of those paintings and I wish I owned one. Beautiful work.

I understand why some people didn't like what he did in some of the comics that got him there to Mexico and I can even understand why some of them thought he was just a bad artist. What I don't get is why some of them are still incensed over his work long ago and why they blame him. To me, that's a lot like watching a losing game of chess and blaming the pieces instead of the person who moved them to the wrong squares.

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If you haven't read Part 1 yet, read it before you read Part 2. This is Part 2…

Comic book readers today seem to be more tolerant than fans in the seventies of seeing their favorite heroes rendered in a variety of styles and interpretations. Back then, some readers were outraged if a Batman story wasn't drawn by Neal Adams or at least by someone trying to draw like Neal Adams. Frank Robbins wasn't at all of that school.

I thought his work was wonderful and I recall his fellow professionals like Alex Toth, Jack Kirby and Gil Kane praising it to the heavens. Some readers though are still, more than a half-century later, angry about it. He did a few issues of The Shadow also when Mike Kaluta left that book and there's a guy on Facebook who is still hating on those issues and thinks (I guess) that someone should have forced Kaluta at gunpoint to stay on the project.

Robbins worked for DC until 1975 when he jumped to Marvel full-time. DC was not buying enough material from him or paying him that well at a time when Marvel was desperate for artists who could pencil super-hero comics. The parent corporation was demanding more and more such books and the editorial side of the firm simply didn't have the manpower to competently produce all the comics that the business side was demanding.

John Romita (Senior) was then the Art Director at Marvel. If you felt qualified to draw for Marvel, you took your samples to him and he'd look them over and give you a solid critique. More than nine times out of ten, he'd say "You aren't quite ready yet" and recommend books and artists to study. Then he'd tell you to come back in a year and maybe by then they could start you on some unimportant back-up feature. One time when I visited John, he told me about a kid who'd come in six weeks earlier and been told that: Come back in a year.

The kid didn't come back in a year. He came back a few weeks later when Marvel called. They were so seriously in need of pencilers that they'd offered him not an unimportant back-up feature but a major book. Mr. Romita told me this story by way of explaining why, admittedly, some of the art in the comics being produced was not up to the standard he would have liked to have maintained. (No, don't write and ask me who the kid was. He did eventually turn into a pretty good artist worthy of the job. He just wasn't, in John Romita's estimation, good enough to be drawing the book he was drawing then.)

That was the situation at that company when Robbins inquired as to whether they could make use of his services. Marvel instantly wanted him…not for writing (they had plenty of writers) and not even for inking his own work. They needed comics penciled so they asked him what his page rate at DC was. Committing a bit of dishonesty that most freelancers commit at one time or another, Robbins fibbed and said he was getting more than he actually was.

Marvel instantly agreed to give him a slight increase on the fibbed rate to lure him over. For a few months, his work appeared in both companies' books, then Marvel offered him another slight increase to be exclusive to them in comic books and to pencil two books a month for them. He did not ink any of his Marvel assignments. As you'll hear in Part 3, he would have liked to but it better served the company's needs for Robbins to pencil two comics a month rather than to pencil-and-ink one.

By this point, his income from the Johnny Hazard newspaper strip had slipped such that Robbins knew its demise was not far off. He was also thinking about retirement in the not-too-distant future. He wanted to get away from comic strips and comic books.  He wanted to spend his days painting what he wanted to paint at the pace at which he wanted to paint it. Retiring to a home in Mexico seemed like an attainable fantasy if he could amass some money quickly. Towards that goal, he took the Marvel offer.

Some artists would have struggled to pencil two comics a month even if that was all they were doing. Robbins continued to write and draw Johnny Hazard while penciling the two comics a month for Marvel. One of them was usually an issue of a new comic called The Invaders written by Roy Thomas. Roy was running the editorial division at Marvel at the time so he could easily have replaced his penciler if he didn't like what Robbins did but as it turned out, he loved what Robbins handed in.

The Invaders featured Marvel Super-Heroes in World War II and a lot of fans thought it was a great comic in every way. Others felt it was a great comic except for the artwork. He also during his stay at Marvel drew for Captain America, Daredevil, Ghost Rider, The Human Fly, The Man From Atlantis and a few others.

At some point in this scenario — I can't place precisely when — someone at Marvel figured out or learned about Robbins' fib about his DC page rate and similar fibs by others moving between companies. There was a squabble that does not seem to have directly involved Frank. It did involve Roy Thomas, who as I mentioned was Marvel's editor-in-chief.

As Roy tells the story, he was ordered to check with DC whenever a freelancer quoted a page rate there and he was to comply if DC called to check on a freelancer who might have been fibbing to them about his Marvel rate. Roy felt this kind of cooperation was illegal and refused to go along with the practice. The squabble ended with him stepping down as editor-in-chief at Marvel but continuing to work for them as an editor on books he wrote, including The Invaders.

Roy and the other writers who worked with Robbins seem to have loved the experience. Most of these comics were done "Marvel Method" with the penciler involved, sometimes heavily, in the plotting of the stories. Being a fine writer himself, Robbins was very useful in this regard.

Tony Isabella, who wrote a number of stories Robbins drew told me, "Frank wanted panel-by-panel plots and I gave them to him. Then he would go over them with me panel by panel and would come up with great ideas we could put into the stories. We got so much in rhythm with each other than he would place the word balloons and captions before I even wrote them and his choices were always impeccable. On one Ghost Rider story we did, he reconstructed a whole scene with airplanes so it made a lot more sense."

I don't believe Robbins was best-suited to draw costumed super-heroes. His figures were somewhat rubbery and the whole impact was a bit more on the cartoony side than some readers liked…but in The Invaders, he probably captured the mood of the time period better than anyone else Marvel then had available. It didn't help that others were inking his work and in some cases, I thought there were some especially bad match-ups of penciler and inker.

As you might have read on this blog before, I believe the number one cause of poor comic books over the years has been Bad Casting. A lack of talent or even initiative in some writers and artists has also been a factor and there are a few others…but I think Numero Uno has been putting together a mix of series, writer and artist(s) who were just plain wrong for each other. The writer didn't have a feel for the material. The artist didn't either and was maybe a bad match for the writer and his/her approach. If the artist didn't ink his or her pencil art, the wrong artist did. Sometimes, even the colorist or the letterer were miscast.

I was once offered the Star Trek comic book to write…why, I have no idea.  I've never been a fan of the property in any form. If I'd needed work and that was the only thing available to me, I might have taken it. I might have had to.

Folks who worked in comics in the first half-dozen decades of the industry often didn't have much say in where those with hiring power wanted to place them…or who else would be working on those issues. Mike Sekowsky — who was high among the most misassigned artists of his generation in my opinion — once said to me, "I sometimes feel like a chess piece being moved around the board by some guy with no strategy at all."

If I'd written the Star Trek comic book, the scripts would have been rotten. And if by chance you're sitting there thinking, "Everything you ever wrote, Evanier, was rotten," then trust me on this: My Star Trek work would have been even rottener. And the comic could have been rottener still with the wrong artist(s).

That said, I think a lot of what Robbins drew for comics in the seventies was wonderful. He was expert at the aspect of drawing a comic book that Jack Kirby often said was the single-most important thing about drawing comics: Figuring out exactly what to draw in each panel and from what angle. To Jack, it didn't matter how pretty that picture was if it was the wrong picture to "tell" the story.

I think Robbins always drew the right picture but sometimes the heroes' bodies looked a bit odd. If Marvel could have deployed him on some other kind of comic that might not have been a problem. Or if the heroic figures of someone like John Buscema had not been the accepted norm at the time, we might not now see as much Facebook hating of artists like Frank Robbins.

Or if they'd let him ink his own work. Some artists — Joe Kubert, Doug Wildey, Dan Spiegle and several others come to mind — were never at their best when the company assigned them to only do part of the task of drawing.

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Hi. Before you venture into the sixth part of this series, it might be a good idea to read the First Part, the Second Part, the Third Part, the Fourth Part and, just for good measure, the Fifth Part…

All up to date? Good. So when we last left me, I was ten years old and wondering why many (but not all) of my favorite Dell comic books had suddenly turned into Gold Key comic books. Here is a simple before-and-after of one of those comics. At left is The Flintstones #6 with a cover by Harvey Eisenberg,  It's Fred mooning the readers.  At right is The Flintstones #7 with a cover by Pete Alvarado…

As you can see, apart from a different symbol in the upper left hand corner, not much difference. There was not much difference inside, either but some of these comics changed as they passed from Dell to Gold Key. Below left we have the first page of the last Dell comic of Bullwinkle and at right, we have the first page of the first Gold Key issue of Bullwinkle. For this, it will help if you click on the image to make it larger on the screen…

See the difference? I don't know the names of the artists on the two pages except that they're not the same person and neither one of them is Al Kilgore. But the two pages have the same letterer — Ben Oda, who in his long career lettered an insane number of comic books for half the companies in the business. The difference in the word balloons was not Ben's idea. He was just doing what he was told by his editor.

They dispensed in this story with the traditional panel borders.  They put the words in oddly-shaped balloons and floated them away from the edges of the panels so the white of the balloon did not meet the white of the gutters between the panels.  This was supposed to make for better coloring since the colorist didn't have to deal with a huge blob of white in each panel throwing the color compositions off-balance.  They also reduced the "tail" (the pointer) on each balloon to a single line…and to do all this, they put fewer words in each balloon and limited the amount of space the artist had to draw in.

Personally, I thought it was a bad idea.  But suddenly, a lot of Gold Key comics were doing this to some (not all) stories in each issue.

As I mentioned in an earlier chapter that I'm too lazy to look up, some of the comic books produced by Western Publishing — at first under the Dell label, later under the Gold Key imprint — were produced out of an editorial office in Los Angeles and some were done in an editorial office in New York. There were several editors in each office but the main guy in L.A. was Chase Craig and the main guy in New York then was Matt Murphy.

Chase Craig was a traditionalist when it came to doing comics. (Full Disclosure: He was my main editor when I wrote comics for Western in the early seventies. He was a lovely man who was very good to me and he taught me a lot. He was also the primary — but by no means the only — person who gave me the information I am imparting to you in this series.) Matt Murphy was of the opinion that the switchover from Western producing comics for another company to Western producing them for their own company was the perfect time to try reinventing not so much the contents of the comic books as the graphic style. (Full Disclosure: I never met Matt Murphy but I met many of his associates.)

The two above issues of The Flintstones were edited by Chase Craig out of the Los Angeles office of Western Printing and Lithography. The two above issues of Bullwinkle were edited by Matt Murphy out of the New York office of Western Publishing and Lithography. Chase and Matt fought a lot.

I don't mean they were bitter enemies. They got together for friendly conferences and meals a few times a year on one coast or the other. They agreed on a lot of things. They just didn't agree on everything…and among the non-agreements were many of Murphy's ideas of changing how comics looked. To complicate matters, the New York office did most of the production work on covers, including things like title logos and lettering placement, and the coloring of all the interiors. Though he was in charge of roughly half the line, Chase did not have final say on the coloring on the comics he edited and he often disliked it a lot.

When Murphy persuaded the folks upstairs to try some of his innovations, Craig was told to apply them to the West Coast books. He balked and stalled…and he had an advantage. Most of the comics he edited had long-range contracts and were in no danger of being canceled so he was allowed to get them way ahead of schedule. He had issues of Mickey Mouse that had been completely drawn for the "old" format and wouldn't be going to press for a year.

But a lot of New York books were doing these experiments with no panel borders or balloons not touching panel borders or one-line tails on word balloons or color in-between the panels. Here are pages from two New York books from this period. And again, you can make the image larger by clicking on it…

I don't know who did the page on the right but the one on the left was drawn by Mike Sekowsky for the Boris Karloff Thriller comic. And both were, again, lettered by Ben Oda.

According to Chase, the New York office had the idea that these new approaches made the comics feel more sophisticated and set their books apart from what the other comic book companies were doing.  They were "gung ho" (that was the term Chase used) to make the whole line like that, even printing up new page blanks for the artists to draw upon.

Comic book companies have occasionally done that.  They print up sheets of quality (hopefully) drawing paper that are cut to the proper size and they print guidelines on each piece in light blue ink. The artist then fills in the blanks. It saves them from having to buy paper, cut it to size and then rule off the size of the image on the page and where the gutters between the panels will go. Also, if the penciler buys his own paper, others who work on it (like the letterer or inker) may complain they don't like his choice of drawing paper.

When a comic book page is finished in ink and is photographed for printing, light blue ink doesn't reproduce unless the camera guy or scanner makes special adjustments…so it can become invisible in the final image.  Western printed up pages with the margins for the art indicated in light blue and within each panel, there were margins to show how far from the panel borders (that were not going to be inked with black lines) the word balloons should be.

At first when Chase passed out these new page blanks to the artists drawing for him, Chase told them to ink in the panel borders and to ignore the dotted line margins that kept the word balloons away from the panel borders. And when he did that, a kind of intra-company Civil War broke out.

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Before you read this, you'll want to have read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8 and Part 9. Whew!

Alex Toth was one of the ten-or-so best artists ever in comics.  He may even have been in the Top Five. But he was a difficult man to work with, which is why he never worked for one editor or one employer for very long. It was that way with his career in comic books and also in his more-lucrative career in TV animation. Three times during my own, briefer period of working for Hanna-Barbera, I walked down to Alex's office to see if he wanted to go to lunch and I found out he'd quit.

When he was at his best, no one was better…and even at his worst, he was better than a lot of folks at their best. But, well…

As I mentioned eight hundred chapters ago here, Alex was in genuine awe of the work Dan Spiegle was doing on Blackhawk. Alex did not like most of what was then being done in American comic books and would go on long tirades about terrible artwork he saw on certain books, some of which looked jes' fine to me. But he sure liked Spiegle, a contemporary of his who worked in some of the same traditions. There was a period when both men were working on similar material for Dell Comics. Until experts straightened it out, the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide identified a number of Dell books drawn by Dan as by Alex and vice-versa.

After Wildey and Sekowsky began working on Detached Service Diary stories for Blackhawk, Alex told me he wanted to do one…but he had conditions. He wanted to pencil-only, which was okay, even though there was a good chance he'd hate whatever the inker did. I asked him to give me the names of a few inkers he liked and I'd try to get one of them but he said, "No, I want to see what someone new will do with my pencils. DC always gives my work to Frank Giacoia and I love Frank but I'm tired of him. You pick someone new you think will do a good job." He also wanted to do the story "Marvel Method."

Others will tell you there are two ways of writing a comic book. There are actually quite a few but some people in the field only know of "The Full Script Method" and "The Marvel Method." In "The Full Script Method," the writer composes a script that specifies the number of panels on each page, and what the artist is to draw in each of those panels.  Then the writer also writes out the captions, word balloons and sound effects. The artist then follows those instructions…not that he or she can't occasionally fiddle with this or that to make it better.

"The Marvel Method" is called "The Marvel Method" because, though it was employed here and there earlier, it was popularized when Stan Lee worked with guys like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko in the early sixties. It's usually described roughly as follows: "The writer writes out a plot outline and then the artist decides how to tell that story in panels, draws it out that way and then the writer composes the dialogue to fit the pictures." That's how a lot of writers who were not Stan Lee have since done it, and sometimes their written outlines are very detailed.

Stan's weren't, especially when working with Kirby or Ditko or any artist he thought was really good at plotting out a story. Often, he'd let them devise the entire plot and then, verbally or with notes, they'd explain the story to him and he'd write the copy. And when he did have input before drawing commenced, it would usually be in a story conference with the artist, the two of them exchanging ideas, and then the "outline" would often be verbal, not written.

There are pros and cons of both methods and of the others. I am of the opinion that the effectiveness of each has everything to do with the particular strengths of the writer and artist involved…and often with the nature of their relationship. I think a lot of poor stories have resulted from a tag-team employing the wrong method.

There are artists who do not do well working "Marvel Method" and any writer who's worked a lot that way can tell you painful tales of trying to dialogue pictures that simply weren't telling the story he or she wanted to tell. I have occasionally been placed in the position of having to write dialogue on pages that did not display any story I could fully comprehend but I didn't have the time and/or the power to have the pages redrawn. I was not Stan Lee, the editor-in-chief of the company, and not every penciler is Jack Kirby.

Actually, no one is Jack Kirby these days and some people who can draw very nice pictures don't have a great sense of plot or storytelling. And every so often, you encounter one who doesn't care. I once had to write the copy on pages drawn by an artist who admitted to me that all he cared about was the art looking cool so he could sell the original art for more money. If the story didn't make a lick of sense, readers would blame the credited writer, not him. (Don't try to figure out which story it was. I was happily not the credited writer on it. I was ghosting for a friend who couldn't figure any coherent narrative either but didn't have the power or time to demand redrawing.)

In these articles, you have seen me rave about the skills of the main Blackhawk artist, Dan Spiegle. He was amazing. But he did not do well working, as some writers and editors tried to force him into, "Marvel Method." Some of the best artists in comics were roughly analogous to Laurence Olivier. Lord Olivier was hailed as one of the greatest actors of his century but he had no gift for improvisation. He could brilliantly interpret any script he was given but he had to have it all written down for him.

I got the best out of Dan by giving him a complete, full, everything-spelled-out script with occasional rough sketches. I did not specify camera angles very much because he was better than me or anyone in his selection of them. But it was like they tell young film directors: There's such a thing as giving your actors too much direction and such a thing as giving them too little. A good director knows how much to give and it may not be the same amount with every actor.

Toth was on a kick to work "Marvel Method." A few years earlier, we'd done one successful (I thought) collaboration with him working off my full script. This time at his insistence, I gave him an outline and then I discussed the story with him. He assured me he liked the plot and then went off to draw it all out in pencil.  Soon after, he turned it in to me, saying he had a great time and was eager to do another.

Here's where it all went off the rails. When I sat down to go over it…well, it was the story I'd outlined and it was the story we'd discussed…but only sort of. There was, of course, nothing wrong with the drawing. Alex Toth simply did not do poor drawings. But it was what he'd drawn that gave me a problem. To tell a certain story, you need to convey certain information and he had just not conveyed certain story points in his staging, nor had he left me opportunities to insert them into the dialogue. To make what I hope will be my last movie analogy here, it was like he'd filmed my screenplay but he'd replaced certain key scenes with improvisations of his own.

I went painstakingly over the pages and made notes of panels I felt I needed Alex to revise. It wasn't much — way less than a half-hour of work for a guy as fast as he was — but I was somewhat scared to ask him. I'd heard him carry on about idiot editors and stupid producers who demanded what he thought were inane changes. But what had to be done had to be done. I drove to Hanna-Barbera, all the time mentally rehearsing the calm, respectful way I could explain to Alex why he had to redraw what I needed him to redraw.

When I got there, his office was empty and someone told me he'd just quit again.  I'd missed it by minutes.

I decided that on my way home from H-B, I'd stop at Alex's house and make my little speech. But before I left to do that, Don Jurwich came into my office. Don was the current producer of Super-Friends, a series Alex had largely designed and for which he still did a fair amount of artwork — model sheets and storyboards. He asked if I was available to write an episode of the show and before I could even answer, he told me what had happened with Alex.

Alex had been drawing storyboards for the series. Storyboards, in case you've never seen them, are like comic books with the dialogue under the panel instead of in word balloons. They're a visualization of the material and every artist who thereafter works on that episode is following the staging and camera angles indicated by the storyboard artist. Alex was a very, very good storyboard artist.

But in this case, he'd also taken it upon himself to play story editor. He found major faults with the script and in boarding it, he'd rewritten a few large chunks of the story including the dialogue that went with those chunks. Let us call that "Script A." He handed in that storyboard for Script A and before he went over the board, Don gave Alex the next episode, which we shall call "Script B."

Alex read it over, thought B was worse than A, and sent it back to Don with the following note…

In the meantime, Don had examined the board for Script A. Thirty minutes or so before I found Alex's office empty, Don was in it telling Alex that he'd have to redo most of the storyboard for Script A. The network had approved it as written and much Hanna-Barbera money had been spent to have the show's large voice cast come in and record all the lines, including the ones Alex had then changed. Everything had to be put back the way it was…

…and it was, though not by Alex. He'd started yelling at Don and Don had started yelling back…and I later heard the story from Alex and his account matched exactly, differing only in recollections of which of the two men had hurled which profanities and threats of physical violence at each other.

As Don told me his version, I suddenly decided this might not be a great day to go to Alex's home and ask him to redraw pages on that Blackhawk story.

If I'd had a week or two to let him cool down, I might have but I didn't. I had an inker waiting and before it went to him, I had to get it lettered. I'd promised Alex someone who wasn't Frank Giacoia and hadn't inked his work before. There were plenty of good people in that category and one of them was Steve Leialoha. Steve was (and remains) a superb artist and as such is always in-demand. But when I called him in San Francisco and offered him the chance to work with Alex Toth, he couldn't say no. He told me, "I have a little window of opportunity open." If I could get him the pages by a certain date, he would be thrilled to ink them.

So I went home and did the best job I could at writing captions and balloons that would make the story make sense. I just read it again for the first time in many years and I did a worse job than I remembered…and I remembered doing a pretty poor job. I also — with a chutzpah I couldn't summon up today if my life depended on it — did a little repenciling of a few things. No one has ever noticed but I, an artist about a thousandth as skilled as Alex Toth, changed a few things Alex drew.

I would not do that today. I did a lot of things back then I would not do today, along with some I couldn't do if I wanted to.

I sent the pages and my script off to DC Comics in New York with a note to have them lettered and sent to Steve Leialoha and I gave them his address. An assistant back there had them lettered and then gave them to Frank Giacoia to ink.

No one told me this. I found out on the day before Steve's "window of opportunity" opened and he phoned to ask me when he'd be getting the Toth pages to ink. I called New York and found out that Frank had already done that. When I asked the assistant there why Frank and not Steve, I was told, "Frank came by and he really needed work. That was the only thing we had around to give him." Ernie Colón was still the editor of Blackhawk then and he'd okayed it even though he'd also okayed sending the job to Steve Leialoha. Steve, thankfully, forgave us both.

I don't think I ever made those mistakes again, at least not all on one story. I also never wrote an episode of Super-Friends. The regular writer had a contract to write them all and that was fine with me. I'm not so sure I could have lived up to Alex's recommendation in that drawing so even later when that writer didn't have all the episodes locked up, I declined other offers to write for the show.

And perhaps because of that, I managed to stay friends with Alex after that Blackhawk story, though I don't think we ever mentioned it. Maybe that's another reason we stayed friends. My visits with him increased for a time after his wonderful wife Guyla died in 1985 and he went through periods of wanting to be alone, alternating with periods of very much wanting not to be alone. But the more we talked, the more we had arguments — often about politics — and I increasingly felt a friendship-ending one was coming.

Also, Alex had enablers for his darker hermitic periods — fans who did his shopping so he didn't have to actually leave his house. I was thinking that those of us doing him favors like that were not doing him any favors, and that those who were telling him over and over what a friggin' genius he was were making it harder and harder for him to just sit down and draw a comic book. I finally decided to end our conversations and my visits before things turned ugly.

Some time after Alex passed in 2006, Howard Chaykin wrote in an article, "I am and have been for many years an avid admirer of the work of Alex Toth. I knew him — not all that well, but well enough to realize at a certain point that avoiding contact with Alex Toth was a positive and healthy lifestyle choice." I knew Alex for a longer time than Howard did and it took me longer to arrive at the same conclusion. But I think I also had some better times with Alex. The non-complaining Alex could be as fine a human being as he was an artist.

In 2015 as the first step in fulfilling my lifelong dream of becoming Robotman, I had my right knee replaced. During the operation, I somehow picked up an infection and they had to go back in and change out the metal gizmo they'd put in there. This was about as much fun as you'd imagine.  And then after I was discharged from a rehab center, a male nurse came to my home every day for two weeks to give me a shot of some antibiotic I couldn't pronounce. Naturally, he noticed all the comic books on the shelves and on the walls and everywhere.

He said to me, "I had a patient ten or fifteen years ago who had comic books all over his home. I think he wrote or drew them or something. But he was the angriest man I ever met in my life. Every time I was there, he was yelling and cursing about something."

I then asked this male nurse, "Uh-huh. And how long did you treat Alex Toth?"

He laughed, amazed that I'd guessed correctly. Then I told him, "That man just might have been the most talented human being you will ever meet. Or at least inject."

Click here to jump to the next part…and no, it's not the last one.

Before you read this, you'd be a fool not to have read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Part 8. In that order…

When we started doing the Detached Service Diary short stories in Blackhawk, other DC editors started calling to ask me to give Detached Service Diary assignments to certain artists drawing their comics. There was a reason for this.

Several DC artists had contracts that guaranteed them steady work. The minute they finished one assignment, they were to receive a script for their next job. Artists who only make money when they're drawing don't like to sit around with nothing to draw.

So one Tuesday, Len Wein called me and asked if I'd like to have Jim Aparo draw a Detached Service Diary. I thought Jim Aparo was a superb artist so of course, I said yes. Len asked, "Can you get me a script for him by tomorrow?" and he explained why the rush…

Aparo was drawing a book for Len. I think it was Batman and the Outsiders but I may be wrong about that. Whatever it was, Mr. Aparo was about to deliver the finished art for an issue — all 23 pages of it.  All DC books then contained 23 pages of story and the next day, Len had to FedEx Aparo the 23-page script for the next issue.  So what was the problem?  Simple: Len didn't have that script. The writer of whatever book it was hadn't turned it in yet.

Sending Aparo a script to draw was not a problem. There were several editors there who had scripts that were as yet unassigned and they'd have been pleased to have Jim Aparo draw those scripts. The trouble was they were all 23 pages in length. The stories for my Detached Service Diary series stories were six or seven pages.  They were at the moment the only stories being produced for DC that were less than 23 pages.

Jim Aparo was one of those dependable, like-clockwork artists. He penciled, lettered and inked one finished page per day. Len explained to me, "The next script I need him to draw will be in any day now. The way the schedule is, I can't afford to lose him for 23 work days." If Mr. Aparo drew a six-pager for Blackhawk, Len would only lose his services for six work days — and by that time, that next script would be in. Made sense.

Len's call came in about 3 PM my time. I was on my way to a 4 PM doctor's appointment so there was no way to write the script and get it to Federal Express by 6 PM, which was the cut-off time for overnight to New York. Ah, but I could get it to the post office out by the airport by 10 PM that evening. 10 PM was the deadline for Express Mail to be delivered the next day in New York City.  Many a time back then before fax machines and e-mail, I made the drive to that post office to overnight something to a publisher in Manhattan.  I usually got there at 9:59 and the same nice lady each time would take my envelope and sweetly tell me not to cut it so close next time.

I told Len he'd have a script to send Jim Aparo, then I figured out a story on my way to and from the doctor's office and as soon as I got home, wrote a script I thought would be perfect for Jim Aparo. It was a breeze to get it to that airport and into the hands of that lady well before 10 PM. I think I got it there at 9:58. The next morning, Len called to say he'd received it…

…but as luck would have it, he'd also received that next 23-page script for his book. Jim Aparo never did draw that script or any script for Blackhawk.

But that was okay because a few days later, I got a call from DC editor Julius Schwartz, who had the exact same problem Len had had, but with Curt Swan. The following day, Julie had to send Curt his next assignment and that next script was late. Julie asked if I'd like to have Curt Swan draw a Blackhawk back-up. Well, of course, I'd like that. Name me a writer who wouldn't have wanted Curt Swan drawing a script of his. I decided the script that was perfect for Jim Aparo was even more perfect for Curt Swan and I told Julie that Len had a script of mine that was ready-to-go…

..and Julie said, "I know. I have it in front of me. Len's the one who gave me the idea."

I told him it was fine to send it to Curt…and he would have except that the next day before he did, the 23-page script Julie wanted him to draw arrived. So Curt never drew a script for Blackhawk either.

But that was okay because it wasn't long before I got a call from Pat Bastienne, who was an editorial coordinator for DC, asking if I'd like Gene Colan to draw a Detached Service Diary for Blackhawk. I asked her whose script was late for whatever comic that Gene was drawing and she told me. Deciding the script that was perfect for Jim Aparo and more perfect for Curt Swan was super-perfect for Gene Colan, I told her, "Fine…send him my script.  If Julie doesn't have it, Len probably does."

By now, I knew how this would go and so do you.  Gene never drew a script for Blackhawk while I was doing it.  (He actually did draw a Detached Service Diary tale once but not for me. He penciled the one in Blackhawk #211 back in 1965.)  I think the script that Aparo, Swan and Colan didn't draw wound up being drawn by Don Newton. The script for whatever comic Don was then drawing for DC was really and truly late and mine was super-super-ultra-deluxe perfect for him.

In the meantime, Len or Marv talked Howard Chaykin into drawing a Detached Service Diary story which turned out quite well, I thought. I got one drawn by Dick Rockwell, who was then the ghost artist on Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon newspaper strip and I persuaded Will Meugniot, Pat Boyette, Mike Sekowsky, Doug Wildey, Richard Howell, Joe Staton, Ken Steacy and Alex Toth to all do short stories.

These were all artists who were not drawing a regular monthly book for DC so it was easy. The one Mike Sekowsky drew had been perfect for Irv Novick when I wrote it…and I wrote it because a script for another book Irv drew was running late, just as Pat Boyette's had been perfect for Gil Kane because a script for a book Gil drew was running late.

Also, there were a couple Detached Service Diary tales drawn by Dan Spiegle, one of which he finished and inked over my rough pencil layouts.  He made it passable and professional in spite of that handicap.  My time on Blackhawk ended before I could give scripts to Al Williamson, Ernie Colón and Murphy Anderson, all of whom wanted to do stories.

As I mentioned in the previous chapter, there came a day when DC was using Dan Spiegle for so many other assignments that he couldn't draw a certain issue of Blackhawk in time. So what we did was to have him draw a short sequence to introduce three Detached Service Diary stories from the pile of those that had been completed by then. The editor at that point was Ernie Colón…I think. Let me check…

Okay, I checked and it was Ernie Colón and it was Blackhawk #260, sporting a great, generic Howard Chaykin cover. Len, in his capacity as Cover Editor for DC, had had Chaykin do a few of those "it'll fit any issue" covers, just in case. Ernie and I picked the Detached Service Diaries that had been drawn by Chaykin, Dick Rockwell and Alex Toth for that issue.

I've written so much here about how happy I was with how those Blackhawk comics turned out, I should probably tell you about my least favorite story from that run. It was the one drawn by Toth and much of why it was my least fave was my fault.  I'll tell you about that next time.  This series is running way longer than I'd intended…longer even than my run on Blackhawk did.

Click here to jump to the next part of this long, long tale

This should be the next-to-last part of this article. Once again, if you haven't read Parts I through V, it would be wise of you to click this link which will whisk you to Part I…and from there, it will be a simple matter for you to find your way back to this chapter.

Two more men were key to establishing the "new look" for the Batman comics. Julius Schwartz's stable of freelancers included Joe Giella and Sid Greene, two artists who would be deployed mostly as inkers. Giella had been primarily an inker for some time. Greene's career at DC had been as an artist who penciled and inked but after Schwartz lost Mystery in Space and Strange Adventures, Greene found himself mostly being offered work inking other artists.

Neither man was the kind of inker to just trace what the pencil artist put there in pencil. Both inked Schwartz's three main pencilers — Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane and Mike Sekowsky. With Giella or Greene aboard, the end product rarely looked a lot like Infantino, Kane or Sekowsky. Giella especially approached pages penciled by others using an eraser as much as he used brush, pen and ink. This was never out of laziness. He might add as much as he omitted. He might redraw where he felt he could improve on what the penciler put down.

Editors might tell either inker (or any inker with such tendencies) to retain as much of the penciler's style as possible in certain situations but Schwartz did not tell that to Giella or Greene. Rather, he said he was counting on them to make the pencil art Bob Kane handed in less like Bob Kane art — less cartoony, more realistic and generally darker with more shadows. This was the art that was actually done wholly by Sheldon Moldoff but, as noted, most folks at DC either didn't know Moldoff was working on it, thought Kane was doing some of it or just decided not to ask for trouble and ask who was responsible for it.

After years of drawing roughly the way Kane might have drawn the comics himself since 1953, Moldoff felt lost. It was like "Draw it like Bob Kane but if Bob was drawing in a style he never drew in" and Moldoff hated the job. For one thing, it took longer to pencil a page that way but no raise in pay accompanied the new marching orders. For another, Schwartz asked for way more redraws than Schiff had ever demanded on the "old look" pages. He asked Kane and then Shelly had to do them…with at least one famous exception which Julie Schwartz described once on a panel I hosted at Comic-Con…

One time when Bob Kane dropped off pages, I asked him for a quick revision on one panel. Batman was punching someone and I wanted it to be a Marvel-style punch with a big fist coming right out at the reader. Bob said, "Okay, I'll take the page home and fix it and get it back to you tomorrow." By now, I knew he was going to have some assistant redo it so I decided to have a little fun with him. I said, "No, I need to send this story off to the letterer right away. Just sit down at a drawing table down the hall and redo the panel. He was turning pale. He said, "No, I need my own drawing table and my own art supplies to work." I said, "Come on. It's just one fist. The great Bob Kane should be able to knock that out in two minutes."

I kept after him until he finally agreed to do it. He took the page and went off down the hall to where there were some drawing tables for artists to work at. It took a half-hour or so but he finally came back with the page and the fist was perfect. He did a real good job. I was impressed until later, I found out what happened. He sat there for twenty minutes, erasing and redrawing, erasing and redrawing. Finally, he paid Murphy Anderson ten bucks to redraw it for him.

The "Bob Kane" art done by Shelly Moldoff for the new order was awkward but adequate, I guess. Let's say "barely adequate." It definitely was not the old style but it was not very organic. Shelly was no longer drawing like Bob Kane but he wasn't drawing like Shelly Moldoff either. He got a lot of help from the inks by Giella or Greene.

It was nowhere as fine as what Carmine Infantino was doing on the covers and on the stories that Kane had nothing to do with. Infantino's Batman had great movement and charismatic poses. Batman moved like Batman, not just like any old guy in a bat-costume. And Infantino "told" the stories — especially the ones by John Broome — very well. Most importantly, the Batman stories in Detective Comics (where Infantino alternated with "Kane") looked like today instead of like reprints from the Batman comics your father might have purchased when he was your age.

It was an exciting time to be a kid reading those comics. I'll tell you about that in our final chapter tomorrow. It starts with me going to the comic book rack at Pico Drug, the store near my home, on Thursday, March 26, 1964.

Click here to jump to PART SEVEN

I've forgotten the precise sequence of my adolescent crushes but I think Abby Dalton came a bit before Mary Tyler Moore and somewhat after Betty Rubble. Ms. Dalton did an awful lot of TV and movie appearances before I became aware of her on a TV show called Hennesey, in which she starred with Jackie Cooper. It's one of those programs I haven't seen since it first aired — in this case from 1959 to 1962 — and I'm not sure if I'd like it now but I liked it then.

She was one of the reasons. She was very lovely and very funny so it wasn't a surprise that when Hennesey was canceled, she went directly to another series — in this case, The Joey Bishop Show. He played his wife on this sitcom and she was again very lovely and about as funny as anyone could be playing Joey Bishop's wife. I've met quite a few folks who worked on that series, including Joe Besser and Corbett Monica and not heard one extol the joys of working with Joey Bishop.

Abby Dalton worked on an awful lot of other shows — comedy, drama and game — and yes, I have a story about meeting her. It was at one of those Hollywood Show events where actors meet their fans and sell autographs and autographed photos. I went with my friend Jewel Shepard, who has herself sometimes been behind the tables there, signing still from her movies.

Jewel knows everyone I don't know and she introduced me to a stunning lady named Kathleen Kinmont, whose work I'd seen on screens large and small and we had a nice conversation. At one point, she asked me who among the celebs signing there, I most wanted to meet. I said, "Your mother." Kathleen Kinmont is the daughter of Abby Dalton, who was selling 'n' signing photos at the next table. I told her I'd had a teenage crush on her mother so she took me over and said, "Mom, here's another guy had a crush on you." The word "another" stood out.

They're saying Abby Dalton was 88 when she died last week and I don't know how that can be. This particular Hollywood Show was in 2011 and given the way she looked then, she couldn't have been much over 65 at the time.

We talked for a while and she asked me a lot about myself. When I mentioned I did comic books, she said, "Oh, maybe you can help me." From under a stack of photos she was selling, she pulled out copies of the two issues of the Hennesey comic books that Dell published when the show was on.

She said, "Is there any chance you know who drew these? I've always wondered." By every chance, I could. I told her they were drawn by Gil Kane and she wrote the name down. (I did that from memory. If we'd opened them so I could check the art style, I would have told her that Kane did the first one and he might have contributed to the second but I didn't think so. It was a gang bang of several artists including Bob Fujitani and Mike Sekowsky.)

That's almost the end of this story except that, given what I'd heard about The Joey Bishop Show, I wanted to ask her if its star was as difficult as others had said. Before I could figure out how to tactfully phrase the question, I heard someone else ask her, "Hey, was Bishop as hard to get along with as people say?" To which she gave one of those proper, "I don't like to speak ill of the people I work with" replies…so I didn't ask her.

But a few minutes later, I was picking out one of the photos she was selling to purchase and have her sign. She had quite a selection there which reminded you how many films and TV shows she was in and what a career she had. I pointed to the ones from The Joey Bishop Show and asked her, "Are these cheaper because he's in them?" She laughed…and the way she laughed gave me my answer.

Gosh, I enjoyed meeting that woman. So lovely and smart…it's nice when they don't disappoint you in any way.

Scott King writes with a question about the fine comic book artist, Jim Aparo…

In a recent post, you mentioned that Aparo was very reliable and delivered 214 pages per year, every year.

Doesn't this mean that if he was on a title for a year he would end up one-two issues short? Most comics are/were 20-24 pages which is 240-288 per year, so the editor would have to find a fill in for part of that years run? Or was this the accepted price for having a skilled and reliable artist for the majority of the year.

Actually, Paul Levitz mentioned that Jim Aparo delivered 214 pages a year…but yes. When Aparo was doing the Batman and the Outsiders comic with Mike W. Barr, there were a few fill-in issues by other artists and I think in an issue or two, Aparo penciled but did not letter or ink.

There were also a couple of issues where they had a fifteen-page lead story drawn by Aparo and an eight-page featurette by another artist. I'm sure everyone involved with the comic thought that having Aparo as the regular artist was worth the occasional need to work around him.

This may interest someone. During that period, I was writing or sometimes writing-editing Blackhawk for DC Comics and it was drawn by Dan Spiegle. Dan was fast enough that he could easily have drawn every issue but The Powers That Were Then occasionally wanted him to draw a different book for them…like, I think he did a Sgt. Rock special and he did some educational comics that few people ever saw and a few other things.

They also liked the idea of guest artists in Blackhawk so we did a number of eight-page stories drawn by folks other than Dan, including Dave Cockrum, Alex Toth, John Severin, Howard Chaykin, Mike Sekowsky, Will Meugniot and Doug Wildey.

At the time, a DC comic book was 23 pages plus a cover and almost every story then being published there was twenty-three pages in length. So the following situation would happen again and again and again…

I would get a call from some other DC editor and he would say — and this is a real example — "Mark, I'm in a jam. I need to give Curt Swan a story to draw starting next Monday." This was because Curt had a contract that guaranteed him that when he handed in one assignment, he would immediately get another. It also happened sometimes because a freelancer had an informal understanding with the company or the editor to get work like that.

The editor — in this case, it was Julius Schwartz — wanted to give Curt the next issue of Superman to draw but the writer was running late and the script might not be in and ready for Curt by next Monday. Julie might have had another script to give Curt or some other editor down the hall might have had one but it would have been a twenty-three page script that wasn't needed as urgently as that next issue of Superman.

It would take Curt 2-3 weeks to draw that which would mean 2-3 weeks before Curt got to that next issue of Superman and that was not good for the schedule. Which is why Julie called me. At that moment, those Blackhawk eight-pagers I was doing were just about the only stories being done at DC that were less than 23 pages. If I had one (or could quickly write one) that could be given to Curt on Monday, that would keep him busy for a few days until the Superman script came in. You follow?

I, of course, would say "Sure" and if I didn't have one ready, I'd sit down and write an eight-page Blackhawk story for Mr. Swan to draw…and right after I finished it, Julie would call and say, "Never mind! The Superman script just came in!" And then a week later, a different DC editor would call and say, "I need a script to give Irv Novick next Monday!"

This happened at least, I would guess, eighteen times. The one I wrote for Swan wound up being drawn by Don Newton because a script for whatever comic he was drawing then — Batman, I think — might not be in on time. But before it went to Don, it was going to be busy work for Novick and later for Jim Aparo.

Not all the Blackhawk shorts were done this way. Sometimes, I actually hired the artist and he drew the script I wrote for him. Still, a lot of them were written as per this scenario — because some other script was running late and another editor might have needed it so he didn't have to give some artist a twenty-three pager. Another Secret Behind the Comics!

Over at the Cartoon Research website, there's an article by Devon Baxter about the comic book work of Owen Fitzgerald. Owen's name is barely known in the comics community, in large part because it almost never appeared on any of the hundreds of comic books he drew. As far as I know, he only got credit on about three comics he ever worked on, all of which were written and edited by me…and I had to talk him into letting me do that.

It's a good article but Baxter couldn't fit in all the impressive things about Owen. The one I would have tried to find room for is that when he worked for DC, his work was occasionally inked or assisted by a kid in the DC Production Department — a kid who went on to become one of the world's great cartoonists himself. The kid, who told me he considered Owen a mentor and a teacher, was Mort Drucker.

Owen passed away in 1994. Quiet guy that he was, we didn't hear about it for a while and it wasn't until the 2/9/96 issue of The Comic Buyer's Guide that I was able to devote a column to telling folks about him. This is a slightly abridged (but still quite long) version of that column. I will meet you on the other side of it with some additional information…

It has been called to my attention by absolutely no one so far that I occasionally tell stories in which the editor of a comic book is the bad guy. And I'll admit: Though I have occasionally had the title of Editor hung on myself, my heart is ever that of a freelancer. And I don't even like to think of myself as a writer-editor…I prefer to be called a writer who occasionally edits. In the interest of Equal Time though, this column is about editors and how they can sometimes be victimized…how the freelancer (writer or artist) can sometimes be the villain.

A new editor had just been hired by the company and given a book to write and edit. It was a comic with a large cast and therefore quite the challenge to any artist. The editor got lucky when he managed to secure his first choice for the art assignment. The end-result was on-time and rather well-drawn.

But the editor was new at this and didn't realize that he should have had #2 well in the works as the art for #1 was being completed. At first, he didn't worry for the artist he'd picked was super-fast and reliable.

But then, the super-fast and reliable artist announced that he was leaving for a lengthy cruise on an ocean liner. He was willing to take work along — and he certainly would have gotten it done swiftly — but he wouldn't be anywhere he could mail pages in for at least six weeks. This clearly would not do and the editor began looking for a new artist.

He needed someone just as fast and just as reliable so he studied all the likely candidates and settled on one who was known for having both these qualities. The editor called the artist, quoted top dollar, warned him about the tight schedule and offered him the job. The artist thought it over for maybe ten seconds, then agreed. He also said he'd have no trouble making the deadline.

A cause for celebration! The editor finished his script quickly and sent it winging to the artist, along with reference on the characters.

A few days later, he called the artist to see that the package had arrived safely. "Got it," the illustrator announced. "Great script! I've already got it all broken-down and I've even got a few pages done. As for meeting your deadline…no problemo."

The editor exhaled, thanked various deities and relaxed for the first time since he found out Artist #1 was signing aboard the Love Boat.

Over the next week or ten days, the editor periodically called the artist. He liked the reassurance that the work was proceeding on schedule and, each call, the artist told him what he wanted to hear. If you've ever worked in comics, you've no doubt already guessed where this is leading.

The artist was to deliver a finished book — penciled — by the 15th. That was the day it had to go to the letterer and the inker and, from there, to a colorist, then through production and on to the engravers. As a general rule, a good editor would never cut it that close; he'd have a little "pad" in the schedule so that if someone got sick or slow, it would all still get to the printers on time. But the editor had gotten lucky on #1 and, well, he was young. He would, however, soon be growing older at an alarming rate.

On the tenth, he phoned the artist and was told, "I just have a few pages to go…you'll have it on the fifteenth, no problemo."

"Could you send me the first half of the book?" he asked. "I can get the inker started."

The artist hemmed and hawwed. "Uh, I don't actually have too many finished pages…see, when I work, I like to jump around and finish panels randomly 'til it's all done. But you'll have it on the fifteenth. No problemo."

The editor grudgingly agreed to wait…and he didn't worry a lot when he got off the phone. The artist was a pro and a pro delivers when he says he's going to deliver. At least, some do.

Came the fifteenth and there were no pages on his desk. He called the artist. "Just need another day," he was told. "I had to redo the first page…you would have hated it."

"I wouldn't have hated it if it were here," the editor responded. This was a Friday and the artist promised to have it in on Monday. "No problemo," he said seven or eight times.

Monday morn, there was a problemo: Not a page in sight. The editor called. No answer. No answer at the artist's number all day.

No answer on Tuesday.

By Wednesday, the letterer was coming by, asking the editor when that book would be in. The inker, who was holding himself available for the job's imminent arrival, also was inquiring. "Any day now," the editor told them…for indeed, that is what he believed.

Thursday arrived. The pages didn't.

Nor were there any on Friday, at least in the morning. He dialed the artist's number every ten minutes all day. Finally, long after quitting time, someone picked up.

"I'm coming over for the pages," he told the artist.

"No, don't," said the artist, who had only answered his phone, thinking it couldn't be the office calling at this hour. "I don't have them all done yet."

"You were almost done a week ago."

"Yes, well, I had some problems…personal things. I'd rather not go into them. But I can have it all in on Monday."

"Fine," said the editor. "Get me the last pages on Monday but I'm coming over now for whatever's done." It was a two-hour drive to the artist's house — four hours, both ways — but things had gotten desperate.

"No," the artist barked. "I don't have enough to make it worth your while."

"I'll take whatever you've got," the editor said. "How many have you got?" The book was twenty-four pages.

"Well, let me see…" The artist went through the sounds of apparently counting out a number of pages. "I only have ten finished," he said.

"Okay…I'll drive out and get the ten."

The artist gulped. "Well, they're kind of rough…"

"I'll live with it. The inker can tighten them up."

"Oh no, I wouldn't want an inker to do that."

"I'll pay him extra," the editor said.

The artist's voice grew firmer. "I'll tighten them up and have the whole job to you by Monday. No prob-"

"I know, I know — no problemo! Well, I have a problemo. The inker has been sitting around with no work for a week. He turned down another job because you assured me the pages would be here for him last week. So he's already lost a week's pay. And the production department is ready to burn me in effigy. I have to have those ten pages. I'll be there in about two hours."

"Well, I don't really have ten pages," the artist said.

"A minute ago, you had ten pages."

"I just counted again and I guess I miscounted."

The editor raised his voice, ever so slightly: "How many do you have?"

The artist paused and answered, "Two."

"Two?"

"Two."

The editor queried how "almost finished" had turned into ten pages and how ten pages had now turned into two. "I think you're using the wrong end of the pencil."

"I have it all drawn…but only in my mind. I can put it on paper real fast. If you'll give me until Monday…"

"I'll be there in two hours," the editor said. "I hope the two pages haven't turned into one panel by then."

The editor jumped in his car and started driving, pondering en route just what he was going to do. After a while, he stopped thinking about what he was going to do to the artist and began wondering what he was going to do about getting a book to press. He decided that trusting this artist to have anything in on Monday would establish new high scores on the Stupidity Meter.

Eventually, he found his way to the artist's house. It was dark and there was no answer when he rang the bell. A manila envelope was on the porch. It contained the script, which meant that the artist was not going to attempt to draw any more of it. There were also two penciled pages — not good but not bad. The editor got the distinct impression that all or most of them had been drawn in the past two hours while he'd been on the freeway.

There are few feelings more awful than sitting there with a deadline long past and no way to meet it. The editor felt more than a little helpless that night as he returned home late and paced the floor of his home, alternately fuming at the fibbing artist and pondering how to get twenty-two pages drawn in record time. He momentarily considered publishing a reprint instead but didn't figure that the readers would be too thrilled to have the second issue of this comic be a reprint of the first issue of this comic.

The next morning — a Saturday — he began phoning artists, looking for someone fast who could do some or all of the pages of this book with the huge cast. One after another proved unavailable…but then one of them said that he'd heard somewhere that Owen was looking for work.

Suddenly, there was sunlight…

"Owen" was Owen Fitzgerald. When I started this tale, I intended to keep everyone unnamed but, as I wrote, I recalled the feeling of helplessness that overwhelmed me that night — yes, I was the naive editor of our tale — and I remembered the way Owen saved my hind quarters, as he saved so many in his long, incredible career. For most of that career, he was utterly anonymous and, in gratitude, I decided I shouldn't keep him anonymous here…even if it means admitting to you that I was the guy who was so stupid as to get himself into this predicament.

Owen Fitzgerald was the fastest artist I've ever known.

And I know about fast artists: I've worked with Jack Kirby, Dan Spiegle, Pat Boyette, Alex Toth and others who have been hailed as the fastest ever. Many say that my best buddy Sergio Aragonés is the fastest artist alive and in a recent column here, I suggested that the late Mike Sekowsky might be due that honor. I forgot about Owen when I wrote that.

It was easy to forget about Owen. He was quiet and unassuming…and he talked with a slow, Arkansas drawl that didn't suggest he could do anything quickly. Still, put a pencil in his hand, blink, and you totally missed the creation of the picture.

Owen worked mostly in animation. He'd worked at Disney, worked at DePatie-Freleng, worked everywhere. In director Chuck Jones' autobiography, Chuck Amuck, there's a group shot photo of all the artists working with Chuck at Warner's at the time. Even Chuck forgot about Owen and had to identify him in the photo caption as an unnamed "Talented layout artist."

When I met Owen, he was the all-purpose trouble-shooter at Hanna-Barbera. Whenever a show was in deadline trouble, they'd put him on it and the show would suddenly be on or ahead of schedule. His work was so good, he'd have been hired anywhere, had he been one-tenth the speed. His velocity was an extra bonus as was his versatility. Some guys can draw humor but not adventure, some can draw adventure but not humor. Owen could do it all.

He was a layout artist and in animation, the work of a layout artist is measured in scenes: "How many scenes did you do today?" A good, competent layout artist ought to be able to do forty scenes in one week. A fast one does fifty or maybe even sixty. There were tales of Owen doing well over a hundred without breaking a sweat and that's with extra-long lunch breaks. All he needed was a pencil, paper, his cigarettes and an unlimited supply of Coca-Cola.

At one point when H-B was producing Jana of the Jungle, two episodes had to be done quickly and simultaneously. The supervisor put seven artists on one of the shows; on the other, he put Owen along with Jack Manning. (Jack was another fast artist; in fact, he was the guy who drew #1 of my comic and then got on the cruise ship.) Owen and Jack finished first. And they were both in their sixties, whereas the seven guys on the other crew were all in their twenties or thirties.

Owen worked occasionally in comics, mostly in the fifties. He was the first artist on DC's Bob Hope comic book. He also drew Ozzie and Harriet and a few issues of The Fox and the Crow. For a time, he assisted Hank Ketcham on the Dennis the Menace Sunday page and ghosted those wonderful, unsung Dennis the Menace comic books. Shortly before his death, he drew the Bugs Bunny newspaper strip for a while.

That Saturday morn, when I heard Owen might be available, I did figurative cartwheels. I got his number, called him and explained my predicament. "Can you draw this book and can you jump on it right away?"

In his slow, measured way, he asked, "Would Monday morning be okay?"

I gasped. "You can't start until Monday?"

"Hell, no," he chuckled. "I'll finish by Monday." I would never have thought that humanly-possible…but this was Owen.

I drove out and met him at noon in a parking lot midway between his home and mine. I ran some errands afterwards and when I got home at three, there was a message from Owen on my answering machine: "Hey, this is easier than I thought…already have three pages done. I'll have it finished by tomorrow afternoon, easy." Darned if he didn't.

For the issue to be done at all in that time was amazing but as it happens, he also did excellent work — no short-cuts, no cheating. It didn't look at all like a rush job.

By now, I'd learned my lesson. I quickly wrote #3 and gave it to Owen to draw. He took his time on this one. He took three days. I could have gotten the whole first year of the comic done in a month if Owen hadn't gotten another animation job and declined further comic book assignments. In the year or two following, he occasionally had a few days free and I'd rush out a script for him. I am said to be a very fast writer but Owen could draw 'em faster than I could write 'em.

I was sad to hear he'd passed away recently…and not just because I might someday need his services again. I was sad because he was a very nice man and he came to my rescue in a desperate hour of need. Wherever he is today, I'll bet their comics are all on schedule.

Okay, that's the story and by now you've figured out that the comic book all this panic was about was Hanna-Barbera's Laff-a-Lympics. The inker, letterer and colorist were — in that order — Scott Shaw!, Carol Lay and Carl Gafford. They were also all heroes in getting #2 and #3 done and off to press in a hurry.

Still, through no one's fault but mine, #2 got in two weeks late. When I published this article originally, I left out part of the tale because I thought it might be in bad taste just then. Enough time has passed that I think it's okay to share it here…

This, of course, is a story about me screwing up and engaging in much panic and worry about the consequences. The main consequence I was worried about was not me getting fired. It was me getting yelled at by John Verpoorten. My job as an editor in the Hanna-Barbera Comic Book Division in Hollywood was to deliver a publishable, ready-to-print comic book to Mr. Verpoorten, who was the Production Manager for Marvel Comics back in New York.

Mr. Verpoorten was a much-beloved gentleman who was very good in the thankless job of getting freelancers to hand in their work on time.  He handled so many comics that probably every day of his life for years, he dealt with much the same problem I had.

I suspect that part of the reason he was hired for that position was that he could look very menacing. He was large — taller than me and I'm 6'3" and he was even wider than me. When he was perturbed or it was necessary to get tough with a tardy writer or artist, he could sport a really chilling scowl and be a very effective Bad Cop.

I was really afraid of him. I'm not sure specifically what I was afraid he would do. He was 3,000 miles away from me so I didn't think it would be physical but…well, let's just say I was dreading the phone call demanding to know where the hell the issue was. Really dreading it.

Okay, so let's scroll back to the point in the story where Owen has drawn the comic over the weekend. I have Carol and Scott working madly on finishing it with Carl standing by but it's still going to be late…perhaps two weeks late. I decide that instead of waiting for that call, it will be more professional and less painful if I call John and tell him the book's going to be late. "Might as well get it over with," I muttered to myself. And also, I didn't want to do to him a version of what Mr. "No Problemo" had done to me.

I put it off until Wednesday I think but that morn, I steeled up all the meager courage I ever possess (about a gerbil's worth) and dialed Marvel's number in New York. An operator answered and I told her, "Mr. Verpoorten's office, please." She said she'd connect me. It rang and another woman answered, "Production Department." I asked for John Verpoorten. She asked who was calling. I told her and then she said…

"Oh, Mark, I guess you haven't heard. John died over the weekend."

In my life, I have never celebrated or even grinned at the death of another human being; not even folks who have seriously wronged me…not even serial killers or torturers or people who call you up and tell you they're with Microsoft and you have a virus on your computer which they can remove if you give them remote access.  I have never been happy when anyone dies…

…but for just one moment there after I heard what the lady on the phone told me, I did a little mental fist bump and went, "Yessssss!"

Then I settled down into proper reverence along with the guilt about the mental fist bump.  I sent in the second issue as soon as it was done and no one said anything.  Not a word.  We got #3 done A.S.A.P. and then…

Well, remember how the artist on the first issue, Jack Manning, drew it and then left on a cruise?  I had a couple days before he left so I wrote two Laff-a-Lympics scripts in two days and gave them to him to take along and to draw on the boat.  Around the time we finished #3, Jack got back from his trip and he turned in the pencil art for the two issues so I had #4 and #5 all drawn…and plenty of time to find a new artist and get him to work on #6. (Jack was too busy to do any more just then.)  I remained well ahead of schedule for the rest of the book's run.  Almost.

Anyway, that's the story of how Owen Fitzgerald saved my hide when I made just about the dumbest mistake a boy comic book editor can make.  If you ever become the editor of a comic book, don't count on anyone bailing you out the same way.  They don't make 'em like Owen anymore.

No, I have not seen the Wonder Woman movie, which some friends tell me is spectacular and others say they liked about as much as I like cole slaw. Maybe I'm wildly outta touch with society today but I can't recall the last time I rushed to see any movie. It would probably be before the rise of home video ensured that they'd all be around and readily available for viewing at any time.

There are those who feel somehow disconnected from society if they haven't seen the movie everyone's supposedly stampeding to experience. Me, I sometimes have a sense of urgency to see a given play or other live performance because those things go away. Movies don't. I always figure a movie will be there when I'm ready for it. I don't have to go when it wants me to see it.

If I did camp out to see a movie, it wouldn't be a Wonder Woman movie. Years ago, after dragging myself through way more issues than most people ever experience, I gave up for a long time trying to read any comic books about the lady. I like the name, the costume, the way Lynda Carter looked in the costume, the way the character functioned in brief guest-star appearances or comics like Justice League of America where she only played a minor role…but that's about it. When a pal told me this new film "is faithful to the comic book," I thought, "Oh, for its sake, I hope not."

I would say I've enjoyed less than about 5% of all the Wonder Woman comics I've read and I've read a lot of them.  Still, even during periods when the comic book was the only place the character existed, I was fond of the character.  I will gladly explain why this is just as soon as I figure it out for myself.

The 5% would include close to 0% of all the issues supposedly written by the strip's creator, William Moulton Marston.  Even when I was younger, it wasn't because it was about a "girl," as we called them back then. I liked Supergirl just fine. But Wonder Woman's feature just never struck me as being grounded in a mythos and premise as primal and appealing as those of Superman or Batman or many other comics I enjoyed. It was like Dr. Marston said, "Hey, a female version of Superman would be commercial" so, despite not really having an idea for one, he whipped one up anyway.

Yes, yes…I know that's not the way it happened — a brief history of Mr. Marston and his Amazon Princess can be read here — but that's the way the comic always felt to me. Never cared for the art by Harry Peter, either. It seemed ugly, and I don't just mean he made Wonder Woman unappealing. I thought he made everyone unappealing, plus you were never far from a pointless bondage scene and some gratuitous lesbian innuendo.

When I was younger and reading Wonder Woman, I used to spot the kinda-kinky elements and think, "Well, maybe when I get older, this will all have some meaning to me." When I got older, it didn't. They just seemed like themes that couldn't be developed or resolved in a comic book for kids, plus they undermined the scenes with Steve Trevor or any potential romantic interest. You would think a comic book created by a psychologist would at least have a convincing male/female relationship but it always seemed like a muddle to me.

The 5% also did not include the issues written by Robert Kanigher, who took over when Doc Marston died. Kanigher was the writer-editor of Wonder Woman from 1947 until 1968 and the writer of many, many issues thereafter. What's still amazing to me about Kanigher's stint was not just that he did it for so long.  It was that he did it so long without doing anything I thought was particularly good.  Having never, in all the years I've been around comics and their collectors heard anyone express any fondness for them, I don't think I'm alone.  I think the name, the look (for which Mr. Peter deserves credit) and the sheer idea of a female super-hero carried the comic for decades.

This is not to knock Kanigher, who demonstrated in the other comics that he was a fine writer.  Most of them, like Sgt. Rock and Metal Men, were quite gripping.  Many, unlike his Wonder Woman, won rave reviews and huzzahs.  This always made me feel that it was Wonder Woman the feature that was flawed, not its writer.

The first Wonder Woman comics I ever really liked formed the 1968-1971 story arc done at first by Denny O'Neil and Mike Sekowsky and then by Sekowsky alone.  Sales had slipped to the point where it should have been canceled but they couldn't do that.  Under the terms of Marston's contract, if they didn't publish a specified number of Wonder Woman comics each year, the rights to the property would revert to his estate.  This was when Batman was raking in a bat-cave of money due to that TV show and there was interest in (and one unsold pilot) of Wonder Woman.  There was also increased merchandising of her as an adjunct to all the bat-toys and bat-shirts and bat-tchotchkes.

DC, of course, didn't want to lose her…but they also didn't want to publish her comic at a loss.  The solution?  They removed Kanigher and we got a somewhat different version of the character, one connected to but quite unlike Marston's vision. They de-powered her, took her out of the famous costume and even did some of Marston's mildly-depraved stuff better than he had. The book shot up in newsstand sales for a time…and then when Sekowsky quit or was fired (long, ugly story there), it neatly coincided with an increased interest in classic Wonder Woman as a feminist icon.

That movement was gaining traction and the "old" Wonder Woman was on the cover of the first issue of Ms. magazine…so the comic went back to that version. Since then, it's been handled for a while by darn near every editor and writer who wandered within six blocks of the DC offices and wasn't me, and she's still to this day passed around with (mostly) short runs by different creators. Some of them made her interesting, many did not, but with so many people trying, there had to be some good ones. That's when I began sometimes reading it again and got most of my 5%.

Three times in my life, by the way, it could have been me.  The first time I was offered the job of writing her comic, I was new in the biz and landing that assignment would have been impressive.  Still, I declined. I was expected to write the then-current Wonder Woman, not reinvent her, and I hadn't liked enough previous non-Sekowsky issues to be sure what a good Wonder Woman story even was.  When the other two offers were made, I still wasn't certain, and I still view the good issues as exceptions that prove some kind of rule.  Compliments to those who did them.  I doubt I could have done one I'd want to read.

If the new movie is as sensational as some say, great. Maybe someone really has rethought the character and made her more than a great name and look. In the past, fans have bemoaned movies and TV shows that adapted a comic book and didn't get it "right." Lately though, we've had some movies that redefined a property and got it "right" in a way that the comic rarely did. If that's the case here, I'll be thrilled to see the film but I'm going to do that when it's convenient for me. Like I said, the movie will be there when I'm ready for it.

And besides, I started reading Wonder Woman around 1962 and I've waited this long to really enjoy a story about her. I can wait a little longer.

Since the other day when I posted those cover sketches I did for Gold Key Comics, I've received a number of e-mails like this one from Don Baynor…

Those drawings you did looked pretty good. I didn't know you drew and I wonder why you don't draw more. If not, why did you give it up?

Well, I never really thought of artwork as a career. Since about age six, I wanted to be a writer — and that's really all I ever wanted to be or felt I could be. I drew because it was fun and because when I came up with ideas, there was no one else who'd draw them. Back when I was younger, I used to make up adventures and put on puppet shows…but I never really thought of becoming a professional puppeteer. It was just a way of presenting my stories since no one else was going to perform them in any way. Once others were around to "present" my stories, there was less reason for me to do it.

For my first decade or so in comics, I kinda thought of myself as a writer who could draw a little when necessary. When I edited comics, I did the art direction, lettering corrections, some logo design, some art fixes, etc. Once in a while in a pinch, I'd draw a cover or ink part of a story. I did the pencil art on a number of covers like these two — though I protected myself by assigning the inking of them to Scott Shaw!, knowing he could make anyone's art look good…

I also did all the hand-lettering you see on the covers including the title logos. I used to joke that was because I was the editor so there was no one around to stop me but really, it was mostly because I didn't have anyone else available to me I trusted to do those things the way I wanted.

Still, I was aware that I was pushing the upper limits of my ability and that I did so little drawing that I was always rusty. To be even a mediocre artist requires a lot more hours than I was willing or able to put into it…and I could practice forever and not be a hundredth as good as some of the artists who I could get to draw for me like Dan Spiegle, Owen Fitzgerald, Pete Alvarado and Scott. I've just never been one of those "I can do anything if I put my mind to it" kind of guys. I find it more workable in life to be at least somewhat aware of my limitations, especially since there seems to be no limit as to my limitations.

The more I was around people like Jack Kirby and Sergio Aragonés and Dan and Scott and Alex Toth and Mike Sekowsky and so many others, the more I realized that my drawing did not come from an organic place within me. It was natural to those guys. It was labored and forced and unnatural to me. Those cover sketches I ran here before took me a long time and a lot of erasure…and of course, the two I ran here were the two best ones I had. On the covers above, Scott was there to rescue me.

I see so many creative people around me who don't seem to be aware that they can't do anything. It's fine to try and stretch and to do things you've never done before. Some people are multi-talented and it would be a shame if they limited themselves to only one of the many things they can do. But some people do one thing a whole lot better than they do another…and are oblivious to it. I'd rather minimize the chance of me being one of those folks. I prefer playing games where I figure I have a decent chance to win.

So basically, the answer to your question is that writing feels to me like something I should be doing whereas drawing never really did, even if now and then someone would pay me to do a little of it. And it's more fun when I do it now because I'm only doing it for fun.

A couple of folks have written to ask me about this piece by Howard Chaykin about Carmine Infantino. It has some good observations about Carmine as an artist but that's not what they're asking me about. They're asking me about Howard writing about Infantino, Gil Kane, Alex Toth and Joe Kubert and then saying…

As noted above, all these men had known each other since their early adolescence — and, for the most part, they regarded each other with distaste, frequently bordering on genuine loathing. Perhaps it was the postwar contraction of the comic book industry, creating more competition for work, that was responsible for this mutual hatred, but I tend to believe it was a simple case of familiarity breeding contempt. There was no greater animosity in that generation than the one that existed between Gil and Carmine. They hated each other with an operatic passion from the day they met — and, since I was regarded as Gil's protégé, I was never one of Carmine's boys.

"Is that true?" my correspondents ask. Well, yes…though I don't think Kubert, who in that group of four was easily the most secure of himself as an artist, ever had anywhere near the same animosities…and I suspect whatever hostility Infantino had towards Chaykin was more a resentment of youth and talent. Some — a clear minority but some — of those in comics' first generation had an underlying bitterness towards an incoming talent pool that seemed to be shoving them aside by its sheer presence. And of course, older men often have a primal jealousy towards younger men, especially younger men who seem to have more opportunities to make money, more opportunities to get laid, more opportunities to not die in the next twenty years, etc.

A lot of the anger folks like this felt towards each other struck me as a redirection of the anger they felt not about their work but at the seeming disconnect between doing successful work and being rewarded for successful work. Whenever I was around Gil or Alex and they got on the subject of Carmine, that's clearly what it was.

Carmine Infantino was a very good artist…one of the best. His work sold well, the editors at DC were glad to have him doing as much as he could and he made a decent living…but that's all it was: A decent living. Most people on this planet want more than that. If nothing else, they'd like to have enough money in the bank so that if they slow down or get sick or just can't keep up the pace, they won't be out in the street.

To make that decent living back then, a comic book artist had to keep cranking out a certain number of pages per week. Jack Kirby, in the sixties, was outputting 15-25 — an incredible pace even if he'd been doing average pages where he just drew what he was told. As it happens, they were magnificently drawn pages that he plotted or co-plotted and which introduced and developed properties that would be worth billions of dollars…for someone else. You'd think a guy who could do that would be set for life but no. All the time he did them, he was fretting over what would happen to him and his family if his health failed or the company went under or they fired him. One of his eyes was giving him trouble — a big scare when everything in your world depends on your ability to draw and to draw rapidly. All of these guys had lived through the Great Depression. All of them had lived through periods of rampant unemployment in the comic book industry…and fears that comics would soon go the way of the pulp magazines that had once been a similar, flourishing market.

For someone like Infantino when an artist was all he was, it was not a question of, "Gee, maybe if I do my job better, I can get rich." Oh, if only it had been that. All the comic artists I'm mentioning here were men who did their job about as well as anyone could. Doing it better, if that was even possible, would not lead to better paychecks or more security. Harvey Kurtzman, speaking once about his superlative work creating MAD said, "I know what I did had a value far beyond what I was paid at the time. What I don't know is how to get my reward." It's a problem they all faced. Jack Kirby used to say that the guys who didn't do great, profitable work in comics were probably happier in their jobs than those that did. It wasn't that difficult for even a mediocre artist in comics to get the meager top pay. It was impossible for the best guys to get much more than that…or the kind of financial security you get when you're among the best guys in almost any other field.

They all dealt with this disconnect in different ways. Some, like Kirby, just worked harder, hoping somehow there'd be so much profit from one of his brainstorms that some of it would have to fall his way. Jack, by the way, had no animosity towards anyone I'm mentioning here; only respect and empathy.

Some, like Toth and Kane, got mad. In fact, Toth lived in a state of near-perpetual fury at the comic book industry and also his other area of intermittent employment, TV animation. In this other article, Chaykin makes some excellent points about Toth's anger and how difficult he was to work with. If anything, it could be worse than Howard makes it out to be. It wasn't just that Alex could be unpleasant; it's that before he'd completed an assignment, he might well have some sort of anxiety attack about it and find some excuse to quit as matter of alleged principle and not hand in anything. I did a couple of projects with him before coming to the same conclusion as Chaykin; that "…avoiding contact with Alex Toth was a positive and healthy lifestyle choice."

And in his own attempt to escape that disconnect, Infantino had to give up doing what he did best, which was to draw Flash and Adam Strange pages. He had to get himself promoted into management.

Obviously there were other perks besides the salary to being The Boss. There were also downsides. Infantino stepped up from a job he did well into one he did not do well, at least in the estimation of the corporate bosses who sacked him before long. No other management positions came along and eventually he had to return to what he thought he'd left behind: Cranking out pages as long as his health would endure. The disconnect between the quality (or marketability) of a comic creator's work and his or her income lessened in the eighties. It became possible to get rich by writing or drawing a top-selling comic but by the time he returned to DC, he was not capable of doing a top-selling, royalty-earning comic. Howard Chaykin could produce one but Carmine Infantino couldn't.

Before Carmine became DC management, the hostilities Chaykin mentioned in his article had been simpler: Several men of throbbing egos crammed into a leaky lifeboat. Of course, they'd fight but at least the enmity was tempered by the awareness that they were all in it together. Once Infantino was out of the boat — once he seemed to be in a position to fix the disconnect but claimed he couldn't — that's when you got your real antipathy. Plus, there were simple, old-fashioned business disputes. Both Kane and Toth felt they'd been wronged by the company under Carmine…and their rage towards him and each other was nothing compared to the animus 'twixt Infantino and another artist once viewed as a peer and an equal, Mike Sekowsky. I got along with all these men except, after his exile, Infantino. I also learned not to mention Gil in front of Alex, Joe in front of Mike, et cetera, and Carmine in front of any of them.

It was jarring to me. I respected and loved the work of all of them. I also liked them all on a personal but individual basis. But when I saw what the comic book industry was doing to them, I think I liked it a little less. Those men all deserved better.

There have been a number of wonderful things written about Carmine Infantino since his sad passing. There have also been a few in need of some straightening-out…

• Carmine did not create or even co-create Adam Strange. That character first appeared in Showcase #17-19 and Infantino had nothing to do with those issues, the interiors of which were drawn by Mike Sekowsky with inkers Bernard Sachs and Joe Giella. The covers were penciled by Gil Kane but reportedly, the visual image of the hero was designed by Murphy Anderson when he drew a cover for Showcase #17 which was not used. Infantino took over the artwork when Adam Strange was teleported into DC's Mystery in Space comic as of #53. Carmine became the artist most closely identified with the feature but he was not in on its creation.
• Many folks are repeating Wikipedia which says at the moment that "In late 1966/early 1967, Infantino was tasked by Irwin Donenfeld with designing covers for the entire DC line. Stan Lee learned this and approached Infantino with a $22,000 offer to move to Marvel. Publisher Jack Liebowitz confirmed that DC could not match the offer, but could promote Infantino to the position of art director." For what it's worth, I don't believe that offer, which was about as much as Jack Kirby was getting at the time. That was largely a measure of how many pages he produced and I don't believe Infantino could have matched Kirby's output. He hadn't in his work for DC. Moreover, Stan had tried a number of seasoned pencilers who had not been able to give him the kind of work he wanted for the current Marvel line, some "bombing out" as of their first attempt. Infantino hadn't drawn one page yet for that line. Can we really imagine Marvel — then, a notoriously frugal outfit — giving someone a contract the equal of Kirby's when that someone had yet to prove he could work the way Stan insisted his artists work? I sure can't, though I can theorize Infantino told DC he had such an offer to pressure them into countering.
• Some obits say that it was Irwin Donenfeld who promoted Infantino to editorial director and the date is given variously as 1966, 1967 and 1968. It was the middle of 1967 and it was not at the choice of Donenfeld. Donenfeld had been editorial director. He was fired. Liebowitz, who was then ascending to the Board of Directors of the corporation that was then acquiring DC Comics, recommended Infantino for the position. Infantino was promoted to publisher in 1971. Also, Infantino did not bring in Dick Giordano as a DC editor. Donenfeld brought Dick Giordano in as a DC editor. Infantino got rid of Dick Giordano as a DC editor. The two men never did get along very well and one of the things Carmine was angry about after he was let go as publisher was that Giordano was later brought in to fill a job roughly equivalent to his old Editorial Director position.

Lastly: You see the cover to Flash #165 up atop this item? People keep reprinting that as an example of Infantino's superb work as a cover artist on that comic…and I think it's the only cover from the period when he was drawing the comic that he didn't draw. It was penciled and inked by Murphy Anderson. And you see the cover to Batman #180 right next to it? Infantino didn't draw that, either. That's Gil Kane and Murphy Anderson. Carmine may have done rough sketches for one or both of these covers but if they'd been signed, they wouldn't have been signed by him.

Here, thanks to a referral from our pal James H. Burns, we have a nice but error-ridden piece on two veteran comic artists, Al Plastino and Joe Giella. The Giella part ain't bad but he didn't draw The Phantom for DC Comics. He worked on the syndicated newspaper strip by that name. The article also leaves out the most important part of the anecdote Joe tells about his first job…

It was penciled by Mike Sekowsky and Joe was given the job of inking it. He lost the pages on the subway. The next morning, sure that his career was over before it had begun, he admitted his error to editor Stan Lee who told him, basically, "Well, now you have to redraw the whole thing because we're not going to pay Sekowsky to draw it again." Drawing a story was then beyond Giella's level of ability and he didn't know what he was going to do. Then Sekowsky heard about it and told Joe (then, a total stranger to him), "Don't worry. I'll redraw it for you." And he did. Joe offered to pay Mike a few dollars a week out of his paycheck until Mike had received his usual rate. Mike said, "No, just help out some other kid in trouble some day."

See? Isn't that a better story than the way the reporter told it? It's also true.

The part about Plastino is less accurate. No, he didn't co-create "The Legion of Justice." He drew the first story of The Legion of Super-Heroes. No, he didn't use "…his own hairstyle as the basis for Superman's cowlick." He drew the same one the artists before him had been drawing. It says he did a four-year stint on Batman and people will think that means he drew Batman comic books but he never did. He worked on that character's syndicated newspaper strip.

Eyes may widen at the claim he did "…some work on Peanuts during the period when creator Charles Schulz was out sick." To the extent that suggests Plastino ghosted the newspaper strip, it's flat-out wrong and Mr. Schulz got very angry when anyone claimed that. My understanding is that at one point, someone at the syndicate decided to line up a good ghost artist for the strip in case they ever needed one to replace Schulz either for health or contractual reasons. Plastino did up very impressive samples but Schulz never needed replacement or ghosts and the samples Plastino did were never published. I suppose it's possible he did some art on Charlie Brown merchandise so the claim of "some work on Peanuts" might have a little accuracy to it but it's sure misleading.

Lastly, the reporter says of the man, "He also is a frequent guest at Comic-Con, the popular convention for fans of comic books and graphic novels." That suggests the Comic-Con International in San Diego…a convention which Plastino has never attended. He's been invited a few times and has always declined. I believe he has made a few appearances at smaller conventions closer to home but he actually has not been very visible at cons. Maybe he'll reconsider coming out to San Diego some year. It would be great to let his fans out here meet him and honor him for his impressive body of work.

Sorry if I sound irate about matters of little consequence here but I do this for a reason. It reminds me that not everything you read in a newspaper is accurate and that I should apply a certain amount of skepticism to the front page…where things do matter.